by Shannyn Leah
The better question was why did he offer?
“Forget it. Hike yourself through that bush for the next hour and when you’re finished get yourself some real food. Whatever you’re eating these days has turned you into skin and bones. You need to eat real food.” He snarled every last word and watched her flare with anger.
For a woman who loved to cook up huge meals...even the evenings when it was only the two of them...he didn’t understand how she’d gotten so thin.
“You need to get a filter,” she said, appalled.
Quinn almost laughed.
He’d heard that term used by Violet and directed at Izzy in the exact same sentence repeatedly over the years.
However, right now he was serious.
“Truth hurts.”
“You’re good at dishing both out. The truth and hurt mixed in with secrets and lies. You’re just one big happy bundle of destruction.”
“Precisely Anya. I am only destruction. Tomorrow.”
Quinn turned on his heel and left.
She’d managed on her own for days sneaking back and forth, she’d be fine tonight. Quinn wasn’t sure that he would be fine tonight...but at least he had a night to get himself back in check and remember Anya was off limits.
Chapter Three
ANYA DIDN’T KNOW what time she dragged herself from bed...”dragged” being the accurate word.
Every inch of her body objected. Her eyes blinked against the intense morning sun spilling through the sheer curtains. She lifted her heavy, deadweight body from the old overly soft and springy mattress. Her body demanded she lie back down into the warmth of the wool blanket that she’d brought from her suite the first night she was there. But she pressed on.
The abandoned cabin was located on the edge of the resort’s property and wasn’t far from Crystal River which flowed into the lake. It was a debate whether the condition was worse on the inside with loose floorboards and sunken ceilings or with the outside’s crumbling wood structure.
Either way it would have to do. It was a temporary fix that kept her off the town’s nosy radar.
Inside the wood floors were soft and dipping, like the sinking feeling of dread she lived with day after day. She’d swept a thick layer of dust off with a corn broom missing half its bristles so she could walk around barefooted, like this morning.
The tattered curtains were like the remains of her soul, shredding more as time went by. They hung across antique four-pane, wood-framed windows. Some were missing the glass and others were cracked and ready to crumble to the ground at any given moment, just like her life.
It was a dump and she was a mess. They were the perfect match. Luckily she wasn’t staying long...actually she’d stayed longer than expected already. As soon as the file was in her hands, she was taking a flight to pick up Rebecca and reuniting Rebecca with her family. Once Anya figured out who they were.
Each wide board squeaked under her as she staggered into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes, and craving a good cup of coffee.
The granite tea kettle and jar of instant coffee that greeted her on the counter were nowhere near good enough.
Instant. Yuck.
As her hands reached for the kettle, someone cleared their throat, loud, deep and familiar.
Quinn.
Anya screamed and jumped before his name registered in her foggy morning brain.
She spun around to find him sitting at the silver formica table...which too had seen better days. Lifting edges, stained top. But with Quinn casually leaned back in one of the chairs with his arms folded across his chest, it turned dumpy into vintage class real quick. His black boots were propped up resting on the chair across from him.
He was even more beautiful in the light. Anya forgot how his bronzed skin glowed and pulled flecks of gold out of his dark, mysterious eyes.
Quinn was smirking as his eyes appreciatively roamed from her black camisole to the hot pink lace undies.
“Quinn! What are you doing here?” She tried to pull her camisole down but it was useless and only garnered a wider smile from Quinn.
“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” he observed.
He was right. Darn him.
Anya let her camisole go, straightened her body and pointed a finger at him as she walked past saying, “There is something wrong with you. Breaking and entering. Following me around.” Something seriously wrong with him. Something seriously wrong with me because I kind of like it.
After being alone for so long, she couldn’t deny even the little interaction with him, someone who knew her, was comforting.
“I’m going to get dressed,” she barked back at him.
Just because he’d already seen it, didn’t mean he was entitled to a free show.
As she reached his side, he casually held out a takeout cup of coffee in front of her, like it was an ordinary, everyday occurrence that he was casually sitting in her kitchen. At one time in her life, she’d wished he would be sitting at her kitchen table while she whipped up a delicious breakfast they could share...dressed being optional. She briefly wondered what he liked to eat for breakfast...eggs, pancakes or was he a bagel or muffin kind of guy.
What does it matter?
Strong and fresh hot coffee wafted from the cup and teased her taste buds.
Anya took the cup and mumbled, “Thank you.”
More like my foggy brain and caffeine craving body thanks you. I’m still pissed you’re in my kitchen uninvited and unannounced. At least that was the story she was sticking to.
Quinn didn’t let go of the cup and her fingers rested over top of his.
Anya swallowed the pleasure that tiny touch brought.
Forced to look down at him, she met his stare. Even sitting in the chair, he was still almost at her height. His appreciative eyes were no longer roaming her body, but instead locked on her eyes...the way only Quinn Barker knew how to do. His dark eyes were like a shovel excavating the truth from her soul.
Quinn was the big, silent type. The sort of man who observed quietly and made a woman shudder from the inside out from only that look...or glance, and especially the smirk like the one when he’d startled her with not thirty seconds ago.
His ability to highjack Anya’s emotions astounded her. And he did it with a simple stare that told her nothing about him, but gave her the security to trust he would when the time was right for him.
The hard truth was Quinn would have never disclosed the details of his arrangement with her father because Quinn had never been serious about Anya. She needed to keep that in mind if he was going to keep popping in and flipping her onto beds.
Anya breathed evenly, trying her hardest to not show him her disappointment. After all these years, her heart still skipped a beat in his presence.
She’d been a young, naive fool two years ago allowing him to jumble her better judgement.
She silently cursed herself knowing that not much had changed.
Right now, that very same look made her forget she was standing in front of him half naked, or that he was in the process of blackmailing her, or even that he’d even broken into her house...twice in less than twenty-four hours.
Anya maintained eye contact, trying to be the strong woman who had told him to leave her suite two years ago. All his games and coffee kindness didn’t change who he was. All her feelings for him didn’t make him a better person...or change his feelings for her.
Now, Quinn’s eyes revealed something she’d never seen before and honestly she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.
He let go of the cup. Breaking the contact sent the current situation rushing back to Anya, as did her need to put on some pants.
She hurried back into her bedroom. She shut the door and leaned against it, cradling the warmth of the coffee.
After a mouthful−or five−of the good−no great−coffee, she dug out a fresh outfit from her suitcase.
Anya settled on a dark blue, crisp, cuff-sleeved dress with buttons up the front and a be
lt around the waist.
With no air conditioner, the humid air was seeping through the old cottage as nature’s way of taking a blow dryer to her hair with no frizz-control serum. The frizzy disaster would be even an eighties tragedy. She pulled her hair into another ponytail and headed back into the kitchen.
Quinn hadn’t moved.
Was she expecting him to be gone...hoping?
His fingers were swiping and typing on his cell phone, diverting his attention from her only momentarily. When he heard Anya, he slid the electronic device, that she knew was getting poor to none reception, into his pocket and watched her. Silently. The way he scrutinized her made her feel like she was still naked.
“What?” she snapped, immediately full of regret.
He was right. She was never good at hiding her feelings or thoughts.
But why did she have to?
Or why should she feel less superior because she was open and honest? What made him better than her just because he didn’t let people see what he was thinking? Nothing. If anything, that only made him weaker. But he sure didn’t look weak. He was intimidating to everyone. But Anya wasn’t intimidated. She was annoyed.
He grinned.
Anya took a deep breath, ignoring the way the movement in his lips broke his hard face. Rare were the grins or smiles to anyone...even to her. It had only been the moments when his laughter erupted in the room that made her believe he had been opening up to her.
Foolish, foolish girl.
Quinn slid a paper bag, one she hadn’t noticed sitting in front of him, across the table.
“I brought you breakfast,” he said.
“I have breakfast.”
He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “No you don’t.”
No, she didn’t. And he probably already raided the unplugged fridge and empty cobwebbed cupboards to confirm it.
How annoying.
“Eat.” His throaty tone didn’t scare her.
“You eat,” she retorted.
“I did.”
She folded her arms across her chest.
“I can tell. You’ve put on some weight since the last time I saw you.”
He hadn’t.
She continued anyway, rather fed up with his blackmailing, barking of orders, and breaking into her houses. “You got a little bit of a double chin going on...” Anya rubbed her own chin and pretended to be examining his for flaws.
In reality, her mouth was dehydrating trying not to remember the way her lips felt tracing his jaw line.
“...or is that this new five o’clock shadow thing you’ve got going on?” she asked, walking across the room.
Oh how I want to lick that five o’clock shadow. Ugh...more like yummy.
“It’s all muscle,” he said proudly, but not cocky.
Anya rolled her eyes. “It’s all ego.”
“I forgot how feisty you can be when you’re wound up. So much like Izzy.”
Anya pushed off the counter she was leaning against. “Stop comparing me to my sisters. So I’m not like Violet and I share my emotions and feelings with people and I might be feisty like Izzy, but I’m not foolish like her. So quit the small talk and tell me what you’re doing here.”
The humor from their banter vanished and the fog of his anger clouded across his face.
Quinn stood up and crossed the tiny kitchen so fast that the motion startled Anya back against the counter. He pushed forward until they were only inches apart.
Anya swallowed hard, not from fear, not from anger but simply from the closeness. He was a good foot taller than her and now he glowered down at her.
“What right do you have to be mad at me? You gave the options. You ended it between us. You left me.”
Gave the options? She left him! Had he gone delusional in the last couple years?
He was a lying, sneaking, ruin-peoples-lives kind of man and he’d thought she should stay with him? After the whole, “we’re having a good time here” shit that he said to her. He thought she should stay with him? Why? So he could throw her into the cross fire with the rest of his victims!
“You can’t walk away from something you never had.”
His jaw twitched. He didn’t like her answers and she could see it. Now who was the one showing their emotions? She would have tsked him, if he didn’t speak first.
“This is going to go one of two ways.” There was his overbearing controlling tone again.
Oh really? Was it now?
“Either you’re going to tell me where you’ve been the last two years or I’m going to dig it all up.”
What did he care where she’d been or what she’d been doing? It wasn’t like he’d chased her down. It wasn’t like he’d cared.
Anya wasn’t about to answer a single question from him.
She narrowed her eyes, not needing to muster up the anger she felt. “I forgot how controlling you are,” she said. Just to get her point across she added, “Just like my dad.”
A flicker of emotion reflected in his eyes before he blinked it clear.
Anya took the opportunity to slip away.
She grabbed the bag of breakfast he’d brought from the table and escaped the stuffy kitchen and out the back door. It wasn’t the ghostly, unlived-in, or abandoned stuffiness she was escaping, but rather their stuffy past.
Anya found solitude on the porch swing, not sure whether to trust its security, but at least its bowing sound was honest with her: sit on at own risk. If only she’d had those warning signs about Quinn when she’d first bumped into him.
Balancing her coffee on the swing, she opened the paper bag with Mrs. Calvert’s bakery logo stamped on the front. The smell of warm, freshly baked croissants made her stomach rumble.
She smiled.
It had been a long time since her body craved food. Maybe it was being home. Maybe it was facing Quinn.
More than likely it was because after tonight she could help Rebecca. It wasn’t her own selfishness at the possibility that Anya could also return home when this was all finished that eased her mind.
Anya wanted to go home. She missed her family every single day and her sadness was the perfect punishment for what she’d done, which made her wonder if she deserved to go home. Did she deserve to leave all that she’d done in the past and move on with her life?
Anya didn’t have the answer, but she had the delicious flavor of croissant and her stomach wasn’t protesting...this was a good morning.
The back door opened and shut lightly before Quinn’s boots stood before her.
Anya couldn’t look up. She hadn’t been prepared to deal with him. Not last night and certainly not now.
Quinn stood quietly while she ate her whole croissant and kept it down.
Her eyes went in every direction but his. The overgrown grass and weeds edging the bush that surrounded the cabin, the old metal swing set that had seen better days, which Anya was sure from the look of it that it wouldn’t hold even a child’s weight and the bright sun in the cloudless sky...anywhere but Quinn.
He broke their silence. She kind of wished he hadn’t. She was enjoying just having him there with her. She didn’t feel so alone.
He distinguished the controlling tone and his voice was softer as he spoke...softer for Quinn anyway.
“Anya, we both know if you don’t tell me I will leave here and find out.”
Of course he would, that was his job. If anyone would understand what she’d done it would be Quinn. He was the jerk who likely handed over the papers that landed Rebecca in hiding. For that very purpose she couldn’t expose the truth about her return. She wouldn’t put Rebecca in that situation.
Anya stood.
“Good luck in accomplishing that in less than twenty-four hours because after tonight, I will be gone again and you will have to start all over. Not that you will, right? Didn’t do it the first time I left. Why bother the second?”
She’d half expected him to chase her down when she’d left the first t
ime, but the hard truth that he didn’t share her feelings was proof enough she wasn’t about to open up to him right now.
The rickety porch moved beneath her feet as she headed back inside. This place was a hazard and ready to fall down any day. Maybe she hoped it would and put her out of her misery. Chasing files and facing ghosts from her past was exhausting...but first she had to ensure Rebecca’s future.
“I assumed you left for the better,” Quinn called after her.
Anya would have slipped inside and slammed the door, glad to be done with him, if the raw sadness in his voice hadn’t gently touched the parts of her that had once wanted him to share those parts with her.
“How do you know I didn’t?”
For all he knew, she could be happier than she’d been in her entire life. It was so far from the truth that it pained her.
His footsteps pushed the wood to its limit and he stopped beside her.
“I wish I was wrong,” he said kissing the top of her head and touching her bare arm with his solid grasp. “I will see you tonight.”
Anya stood paralyzed, feeling his imprint on her arm and the warmth from his kiss mingling into her hair.
She strained her ears to listen to his vehicle reverse out of the driveway and rumble down the gravel overgrown path until all that danced in her ears was the music of insects playing their own harmony.
I wish I was wrong. Who was he to wish such a thing? Nobody.
Anya headed inside and began packing her bags. She hadn’t planned on leaving right after she got the information, but there was no way she was sticking around now.
***
QUINN KNEW WHAT had to be done as he drove away from the tiny crumbling cabin. No one should even step foot in that place, let alone sleep and live there.
He scrubbed one hand across his face and steered the wheel with the other, frustrated she hadn’t told him the truth.
He wasn’t a rash decision maker, unless he needed to be, and most times when a situation came up for a rash decision he was already prepared.
Like today. Like right now.
He’d hoped Anya would talk to him, open up, give him a hint of something to go on. But instead she’d shut him out and announced her departure...again.