One in a Million

by Abby Gaines

  “What do you want?” she asked, stepping up to the screen but not opening it. The lawyer stood on the other side, aloof and detached although she noticed that laugh lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes and mouth, or perhaps they weren’t laugh lines, but only the result of hours spent playing golf in the hot Carolina sun.

  “I’m here to see Deidre Brookshire. May I come in?”

  “No,” Quinn said sharply, moving to stand close behind Daisy. “What do you want?”

  “I have a communication from my client, August Carlyle.” The stranger’s gaze flickered to Fiona for a moment then confronted Daisy again.

  “What does he want?” Daisy asked, proud that her voice came out strong and steady despite the way her knees were shaking. She could feel Quinn’s warmth and rock solidness behind her and it helped steady her to have him so close, even though two weeks earlier he had been as much a stranger as the man on the other side of the screen.

  “Mr. Carlyle is giving you one more opportunity to meet with him and his representatives to make arrangements for the future well-being of his grandchild. If you do not agree to such a meeting he intends to go to Child Protective Services and file a complaint. It is my client’s sincere belief that you, an unmarried, single woman of modest means and education cannot properly care for his granddaughter.”

  “That’s not true,” Daisy said, tightening her grip on Brianna so that the baby woke, startled and began to cry. “That’s not true at all. I have a good job. I can take good care of my baby.”

  “That remains to be seen,” the lawyer said in a voice whose very blandness made it even more of a threat than if he had shouted at the top of his lungs. “I take it you’re rejecting my client’s offer of a meeting without even giving him the courtesy of hearing what he is prepared to offer you and your daughter?”

  “I am.”

  “Leave the paperwork,” Quinn said. “Ms. Brookshire will look it over. If she changes her mind we’ll be in touch.”

  The lawyer switched his gaze to Quinn, hesitated a moment as if hoping he might intimidate the younger man, then nodded. “Very well.” He took a legal-size envelope out of the briefcase and laid it on the seat of the rocking chair nearest the door. “Ms. Brookshire, may I give you a piece of advice?”

  Daisy wanted nothing more than to slam the door in the man’s face but that childish gesture, no matter how satisfying, wouldn’t solve anything. “I don’t suppose I can stop you,” she said, proud that her voice didn’t waver.

  “It would be in your daughter’s best interest, indeed in your own best interests, to meet with August Carlyle. You are a young woman alone in the world. You don’t have the means to fight a man with my client’s resources and standing in the community. You are in very real danger of eventually losing custody of your daughter. Think about it.”

  “I think about it all the time,” Daisy said, holding on to her courage as tightly as she held her baby. “But it won’t change my mind. Please, leave us alone.” This time she did shut the door in the man’s face.

  She turned blindly. Her knees were shaking so hard she was afraid they would fold under her and topple them both to the floor. Quinn was watching her from narrowed eyes, his hands balled into fists at his side, but it was Fiona Carlyle’s white, strained gaze that locked with hers. Daisy took a half-step backward. The last few minutes had been so emotionally charged, her attention focused so completely on the confrontation with August Carlyle’s lawyer that she had momentarily forgotten his wife had been witness to it.

  “I…I think you should go, too,” she said. Her head was pounding, her pulse racing with a surge of adrenaline. Fight or flight, didn’t they call it? The lawyer was right. She couldn’t fight August Carlyle and come out ahead so she would have to go. Leave Mooresville and Cut ’N’ Chat and her friends. Leave Quinn.

  “Daisy, please, I knew nothing about this, you have to believe me.” Fiona took a step forward, her hand outstretched. Daisy kept her teeth clamped shut. Did she believe Fiona? Could her husband have been planning something so monstrous as trying to have her declared an unfit mother without his wife knowing about it? “Quinn?” Fiona turned beseeching eyes on her son.

  Quinn returned her look with one as hard as stone. “Daisy’s right. I think you’d better go, Mom,” he said.

  “Quinn, you believe me, don’t you?”

  “I’d like to, Mom,” he said. His expression was still hard but his voice had gentled slightly. “But even if you didn’t know he was planning this you wouldn’t have tried to stop him. You never have before.”

  “Quinn—” She covered her mouth with her hand as though to hold back a sob. “I’ll make this right,” she said, turning to Daisy again. “I swear to you I’ll make this right.”

  Daisy didn’t answer. She didn’t dare. “Please, just go,” she said wearily. She stepped away from the door. “Now.”

  Fiona lifted her hand in a gesture of defeat. She no longer looked cool and detached. She looked as if she’d aged ten years. “Of course, I’ll go. But I will make this right,” she said. “For Brendan’s sake and for my own.”

  Fiona walked outside, her back straight and proud, and shut the door quietly behind her. A moment later Daisy heard her car drive away. The sound of the engine receding in the distance broke the paralysis that had held her still. She looked down at Brianna nestled in the crook of her elbow, her dark eyes wide-open, her tiny face scrunched into a frown that matched the one on Daisy’s face.

  She touched her finger to Brianna’s cheek, let the baby wrap her tiny fingers around her fingertip in a surprisingly strong grip. She took strength from that contact and lifted her face to Quinn’s. “I’m going, too,” she said. “Now, and for good.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DAISY LOOKED AS IF SHE WOULD turn on him next if he made even the slightest move toward her. Quinn wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and hold her close but he stayed where he was, standing with one shoulder propped against the mantelpiece, striving to sound as relaxed as if they were speaking of nothing more important than the chances that the big low pressure system moving up from the south would rain out Saturday night’s race.

  Daisy continued to eye him as if he might suddenly morph into August Carlyle between one breath and the next. Her elfin features were taut with strain and he could see tremors of nervous reaction coursing through her body. She turned shakily and laid the baby back in her carrier, tucking a blanket snuggly around her. She fastened the safety straps as though she were still making plans for a quick getaway.

  “I’ll have to ask you to drive me into town,” she said. Quinn balled his hands into fists again. This wasn’t the moment for him to act on his emotions. She was too close to the ragged edge of panic for him to overload her with declarations…of what? Love? Commitment? He wanted both of those things but he didn’t have the words, the right words, not yet, so he stayed put and attempted to be the voice of reason.

  “Daisy, slow down. August won’t be sending the Child Protective Services people out here in the next fifteen minutes. Sit down before you fall down. You won’t do Brianna any good if you pass out on me.”

  She straightened and gave him a quick, angry glance. “I’m not going to pass out on you.”

  Good. That was what he wanted, for her fighting spirit to reassert itself. He motioned for her to take a seat beside Brianna’s carrier. “Let’s talk about this.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about, Quinn.” Her tone was argumentative not fearful, another good sign. “I’m leaving here and I’m not coming back. I’ll…I’ll keep in touch, I promise you.” She didn’t quite meet his eyes when she spoke and he knew she was lying to him.

  Now it was his turn to almost panic. “Daisy, you can’t run away,” he said, lowering himself into a chair so that he wasn’t towering over her. He didn’t want her to associate him with his bullying stepfather any more than she already did.

  “What else can I do? I can’t afford to pay a law
yer to fight for me and I won’t take money from you,” she said before he could even offer. She picked up one of Brianna’s cloth diapers from the pine table and began to fold and refold it over and over again.

  “You can’t afford to just up and disappear, either. It’s exactly what August expects you to do. It’s what he wants you to do. You’d be even more vulnerable trying to start over among strangers. You know it and he knows it. We have to take our time, work out a plan, find a lawyer, a good lawyer. They’re out there. It’s just going to take some time.”

  “Lawyers are expensive,” she repeated stubbornly.

  “There are also ones who aren’t out to make a billion dollars. Their fees are based on ability to pay, or even pro bono.”

  “I’m not a charity case, yet. I’ll pay what I can.” He ran his hand through his hair, torn between exasperation and exhilaration. She was coming around to his way of thinking…he just had to keep playing it calm and collected.

  “I’ll make some calls, get you a list of names. You can take it from there.”

  “Can you start making calls right away? I don’t trust your stepfather not to go directly to the authorities.” She looked as if she might panic again.

  “Daisy, take a deep breath, think this through.”

  “I don’t trust him,” she repeated stubbornly.

  “Look,” he said as if the thought had just occurred to him. “I know a place you can stay for the next few days where August won’t think of looking for you.”

  Her chin came up. Her eyes were no longer dulled with fright. They were clear and bright, the color of melted honey. He loved her eyes. He was falling in love with everything about her. “What are you suggesting?”

  “You and Brianna are going to Richmond,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I have a motor home rented for the week. It’s being set up in one of the VIP areas at the race track today. I’ll make sure it’s stocked with food and ready when you get there.”

  “I don’t have a car. I’m not supposed to drive for at least another week.” She was throwing up obstacles but he knew she saw the sense in his plan. She had herself under control again. She wasn’t going to run, not now, hopefully not ever.

  Quinn let himself relax a little, a fraction of a degree. “My assistant will drive you. Pack what you need for the trip. Then we’ll go into Mooresville and I’ll go on to Charlotte just like we’d planned. Sheila Trueblood or Rue Larrabee, or maybe your friend Mellie, can drive you to a rendezvous with my assistant. You’ll be in Richmond before nightfall.”

  “What about you?” She was leaning forward now, the diaper still between her hands but she was no longer twisting the cotton rectangle into tortured knots.

  “I told you, it will take time to find the right lawyer.” That wasn’t precisely true. He knew exactly who he was going to ask to take on Daisy’s case: an old college friend, who actually did do a lot of pro bono work for single women with child custody problems. He hadn’t lied to her, not really; he just hadn’t given her all the facts. With Daisy, he’d learned over the past two weeks, you picked your fights.

  “I don’t know?” She was wavering again, having second thoughts. “Maybe I should just take the bus to Florida. My parents will help me all they can.”

  “Florida is the first place August will look for you.”

  “Damn, you’re right about that.” Quinn remained quiet, letting her work through all the questions and doubts that were circling through her brain. After a few long moments she gave him a sidelong glance and a rueful smile that stampeded his heart rate into overdrive. She looked down at the baby who had fallen asleep sucking her thumb as the tension in the adults abated. When she looked over to him again the smile had disappeared. Her expression was solemn. “I have to handle this myself.”

  She stood up and Quinn followed suit. She wouldn’t be alone much longer if he had any say in the matter, but that was for later. He shoved his hands in his pockets so he didn’t reach out and gather her into his arms and undo all the hard work of the last fifteen minutes by overplaying his hand. They hadn’t had a date, a first kiss, any sort of romance. He couldn’t just come out and tell her he was falling in love with her, but damn it, he was.

  “All right, I’ll go to Richmond. The last place a snob like August Carlyle would think to look for the runaway mother of his grandchild would be in a motor home at a NASCAR race, right?”

  “HEY, SWEETHEART, guess what? It’s stopped raining. No really, I’m not kidding.” Daisy giggled. Okay. She was talking to a two-week-old infant as if she expected an answer but she was starting to go a little stir-crazy. She picked up her daughter from her nest of blankets on the couch and held her up to the large window in the salon of Quinn’s luxurious motor home. “See? The sun’s trying to come out. That means there will be a race this evening. Under the lights. They always race under the lights at Richmond.”

  For the past two days watching raindrops chase each other down the window glass had been the only racing going on at the track. A low pressure system had settled over Virginia, taking its time moving off to sea, but not dampening the spirits of the hardy NASCAR fans.

  Not that Daisy had been doing much partying, herself. In fact, the first two days she’d been sequestered in the motor home she’d adapted to Brianna’s schedule and slept most of the time. But on Friday morning she was fully rested and happy to find her self-imposed isolation come to an end when Sophia and her mother appeared at her door and insisted Daisy and Brianna join them for brunch, which Milo and Juliana were hosting in their motor home. She didn’t even question how the Grosso women had learned of her presence at the track. Rue and Sheila would have informed their sister Tarts of her whereabouts and charged them with looking after her. She just went along with the flow of the day, touched to have such good friends to support her.

  After she stuffed herself with homemade cinnamon rolls and fresh fruit Sophia decreed they were going shopping along the line of souvenir haulers, both inside and outside the track. They’d hopped in a gas-powered golf cart and headed out, leaving Brianna with a delighted Juliana, dodging race fans and rain showers. It was the most fun Daisy had had in weeks and she came back with a bib emblazoned with Bart Branch’s picture and autograph, and a tiny pair of booties she’d found at one of the Mom and Pop stands in a campground off track, that were crocheted in Rev Energy Drinks’ signature colors of green and white and gold.

  Quinn had arrived later that afternoon in the middle of a thunderstorm looking sexy and windblown and bearing take-out containers of meat loaf and barbecue from Maudie’s in an insulated cooler filled with dry ice. They shared the barbecue and a bottle of good red wine and Daisy felt the tension that had been building inside her the past few days begin to ease away. While they ate and Brianna dozed in her carrier on the couch in the salon, Quinn told her that neither August nor his mother had contacted him since Fiona had left the cabin, but that he had found a lawyer willing to take Daisy’s case if it became necessary, and had set up a meeting with her on Monday afternoon after they returned to Mooresville.

  But beyond that short time together she had seen him only now and then. He was staying in another motor home in a lot on the other side of the race track with his partner. He kept in touch by cell phone and text message but he had sponsor events planned, commitments to his employees and evenings filled with entertaining dealers and potential new customers.

  She told herself she didn’t mind the solitude. She felt safe, a modern day princess in a diesel-powered, mobile, enchanted castle, only a little smaller in size than her apartment but light years advanced in style and comfort. Yet, as the weekend wore on she found herself spending more and more time watching and waiting for Quinn to walk in the door and fill their quiet out-of-the-way sanctuary with energy and excitement. The realization of how much she’d come to depend on his companionship and guidance frightened her. It meant she had become far too emotionally involved. She had to put some distan
ce between them soon, or it would be too late. She was already more than half in love with him. It wouldn’t take any effort at all to tumble the rest of the way.

  By race time Saturday she’d begun talking to herself—or to Brianna, which at this point in her daughter’s development amounted to the same thing. “We haven’t had a date, he hasn’t brought me flowers or candy—or me him, for that matter. We haven’t kissed.” She shook her head ruefully. “Listen to me telling you all this.” She rubbed noses with Brianna who giggled, Daisy was sure of it. “Mommy sounds just like she did in eighth grade when she had a crush on Tyler Whitman and got herself so tied up in knots she couldn’t eat or sleep.”

  Brianna gurgled some more. “No, really, it’s true. I was head over heels for him. He was the quarterback on the junior high football team and the cutest guy in my class. Now he weighs two hundred fifty pounds and manages a Piggly Wiggly in Memphis.”

  Brianna blinked as though attempting to picture her mother’s old flame, then began noisily sucking her thumb.

  “Of course I’m not having any trouble eating or sleeping,” Daisy confessed, gently removing Brianna’s thumb from her mouth. She might as well have saved herself the effort because as soon as she let go of her hand back it went. “But Quinn certainly has my insides tied up in knots.”

  And she had no idea if he felt anything for her at all beyond an obligation to his dead stepbrother’s child.

  The sudden roar of engines even bigger than those under the hoods of the NASCAR Sprint Cup cars vibrated through the motor home. Brianna kicked her arms and legs and wrinkled her face up to cry. Daisy picked her up, and rocked her in the crook of her arm. “Did those noisy old engines frighten you? It’s okay, sweetie. They’re just drying the track. It’s stopped raining and the race will be starting soon. Quinn will come and get us in a little while and you can go and visit with Nana Grosso.” She was going to join Quinn and a dozen or so others in the Rev Energy Drinks suite high above the track to watch the race. Juliana had offered to babysit Brianna and Daisy had said yes.