Quinn wrapped his arms around her waist and bent to brush soft, tasting kisses across her cheekbones, temples and her closed eyelids. When he lingered at the corner of her mouth, she murmured in protest, her mouth seeking his. His plan to claim a sweet good-night kiss went up in smoke when her lips parted beneath his.
He’d never had a woman kiss him with such honest need and the lure of being desired with a heat that matched his own was irresistible. The kiss went from gentle and warm to nuclear melt-down in one hot second. He cradled her head in one hand and held her locked against him while his mouth ravaged hers with fierce need. His fingers moved over her back, found the dress zipper and yanked it down. It jammed and he growled with frustration, caught the edge of silk to rip it aside and froze.
“Hell.” He tore his mouth from hers and pressed her face against his throat, his chest rising and falling as he struggled to draw breath.
“Quinn?”
Her voice was thready, husky with passion.
“Sorry, honey.” He drew one last deep breath and set her away from him, steadying her as she swayed. “I have to leave. I’m sure Flora stayed up to watch the late show just to make sure she could keep track of what time I brought you home and whether I spent the night.”
“Hmm.” His words were as effective as a dash of water. Victoria’s knees lost their tendency to dissolve beneath her but she didn’t take her hands from his forearms. “Well.” She drew a steadying breath and eyed him. “If Flora has her stopwatch running, then you’d better go. I don’t want to be responsible for ruining the lovely start you made this evening on the new Quinn.”
“What new Quinn?”
“Quinn the Gentleman. The Quinn who, I’m sure, knows that proper etiquette requires that he call me tomorrow to tell me again how much he enjoyed our evening together.”
Quinn chuckled, the low, amused laugh sending rivulets of warmth through Victoria’s already heated bloodstream.
“Pushy, counselor, very pushy.”
“Mmm. Perhaps, but if you’re really going to prove that you’re not afraid of me, you’ll have to date me more than once.”
“You learned a lot about men from those brothers of yours, didn’t you? Did they always rise to the bait and do what you wanted when you dared them?”
“Usually.” She smiled sunnily up at him. “You figured that out, did you?”
“After I cooled down,” he admitted.
“But you still showed up tonight. You could have canceled.”
“Honey, if I didn’t really want to be here, I wouldn’t have been.”
The lazy drawl and the slow sweep of his heavy-lidded gaze to her mouth and back to meet hers shortened Victoria’s breath.
“Oh.” It was all she could manage to say.
He brushed a tendril from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear, his fingers lingering against her face. His eyes lost all trace of amusement. He bent and kissed her. Slow and sure, his mouth moved against hers for one long moment before he released her.
“I’ll call.”
He stepped back, turned and loped down the steps, disappearing through the exit below.
Victoria stared after him, disoriented. He’d kissed her with passion earlier, but this last kiss was possessive. She felt marked by him, claimed in some indefinable way.
Shaken, she entered her apartment.
Quinn called the next evening. On Wednesday he arrived at the pharmacy just before noon and carried her off to the cafe to share lunch. Both of them ignored the sudden silence followed by the hushed buzz of voices that greeted their appearance. Quinn still tensed, but Victoria quickly teased him into easy laughter. She continued to instruct him in the proper actions required of a male while dating until he threatened to drag her off to the nearest motel if she didn’t cease.
Privately, Quinn decided that Colson’s approval of his dating Victoria had less to do with their change of opinion of him, and far more to do with the fact that Victoria charmed everyone who met her. She genuinely liked people and her warmth eased the most curmudgeonly of citizens into grudging smiles. Taking cold showers wasn’t such a high price to pay for the pleasure of her company.
Victoria devoted several hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays to working in Hank Foslund’s office. Because of the time she’d stayed with Becky, clearing the cabinets filled with active files took longer than she’d planned. But when she’d finished with the ones in the outer office, she found that a small stack of misfiled papers atop the cabinet remained, all of them with names scribbled across the top in Hank’s decisive scrawl.
She flipped through documents, scanning the names. Clearly, Hank must have another filing cabinet somewhere.
“Maybe in his office,” she murmured.
The faint aroma of Hank’s pipe greeted her when she pushed open the door to the inner office. A large cherry wood desk sat against the far wall, a high-backed leather chair behind, four client chairs grouped in front. Glass-fronted bookcases held leather-covered law books, a leather sofa stood in front of a draped window, and tucked into a far corner was an old-fashioned, four-drawer, tall wooden filing cabinet.
“Ah-hah.”
Victoria flicked on the overhead light and crossed the room. One swift glance told her that the drawers were labeled alphabetically. She pulled open the top one and ran her finger over the file tabs. The file marked Bowdrie was the last one in the drawer. She tugged it free, hesitated when she saw the word Confidential stamped in red lettering across the outside, shrugged and flipped it open atop the drawer.
The uppermost document was a report made four months ago by a detective agency. Curious, Victoria read the narrative describing the efforts made by the agency to locate a woman named Kathleen Constance Parrish.
She glanced at the letter to be filed. Signed by a vice president of a Helena bank, it confirmed the status of a trust fund for beneficiary Kathleen Parrish and inquired if Mr. Foslund’s client wished to have any changes made in the second quarter.
Who in the world is Kathleen Parrish? And why is Hank looking for her?
Victoria thumbed through the pages to the bottom of the file, her eyes widening as she read the letter.
“Kathleen Parrish is Quinn’s mother.”
Quinn had never mentioned his mother’s name, but it was clear that he’d been right about his father. Charlie Bowdrie had searched for Kathleen Parrish for years and had continued to do so until the day he died. It also appeared that he’d established a trust fund for her, a fund that now held a substantial sum of money.
Victoria wondered if Quinn knew to what lengths his father had gone to find he and Cully’s mother. The fact that Hank kept this particular file separate from the other Bowdrie files led Victoria to believe that perhaps the trust fund was an unfinished matter between the attorney and Charlie Bowdrie.
She filed away the documents and slipped the folder back into place.
She badly wanted to talk to Quinn about the files but knew that was impossible until she cleared it with Hank. She was a bit apprehensive about how Quinn would react to her having access to this highly personal information about his family. He was a deeply private person, and she couldn’t help but be concerned that he might resent her intrusion into his personal affairs. Distracted by the contents of the Bowdrie files, Victoria found it impossible to concentrate. A half hour later, she gave up in disgust and left the office.
The air-conditioned office hadn’t prepared her for the eighty-degree heat outside. Slipping her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose, she stopped at the cafe for a bottle of ice-cold soda before heading for home. The awnings of businesses along Main Street shielded her from the burning rays of the sun and when commercial blocks gave way to green lawns along Colson’s wide residential streets, tall elder trees provided shade. Still, by the time she reached her driveway, she was sweltering, her sleeveless white tank top clinging to damp skin, her upper lip beaded with moisture.
Shrieks and giggles from Cora’s shady backyard drew her attention and she veer
ed across the lawn, slipping through an opening in the hedge and into Cora’s yard. Following the sounds of laughter, she skirted the sideyard’s flower garden and walked around the corner of the big old house, smiling at the scene before her.
Nikki was stretched out in a lounge chair, a straw hat and sunglasses shading her face, her generous curves covered by a brief two-piece yellow bathing suit, long legs tan and bare. Archibald, the cat, was stretched out on the grass beneath the lounger’s shade. Angelica skipped in and out of the shower arcing from a whirling garden sprinkler, her green bathing suit and black hair gleaming wetly.
Victoria circled the sprinkler and dropped onto the empty lounge chair next to Nikki.
“Too warm for you?” Nikki asked.
“Too warm to do anything but lie in the shade,” Victoria confirmed. She glanced at Nikki. “I thought you worked on Tuesdays.”
“I usually do. I swapped a shift with another waitress, she has a dental appointment on Friday.”
“Ah. Well, you got the best of the deal.”
Nikki laughed. “I couldn’t agree more.” She sipped from her glass. “How are things going with Quinn?”
“We’re dating.” Victoria grinned at Nikki’s raised brows. “That’s all.”
Nikki shook her head. “For now,” she predicted. “I tried to get information out of Cully about you and Quinn when he was in the Grill yesterday. The most he would say was that he thinks it’s about time his brother had a woman.”
“Had a woman?” Victoria repeated. “How did he mean that, exactly?”
Nikki grinned. “He didn’t elaborate.”
“Hmm. Speaking of Cully, how are things going with you two?”
Nikki’s animated face fell, her mouth curving downward. “Not well. Most of the time he treats me like his little sister. The rest of the time, I’m not sure he’s aware that I’m alive, let alone female.”
A wealth of hurt lay beneath her words. Sensitized by her feelings for Quinn, Victoria felt an instant stab of empathy.
“I’m sure you’re wrong, Nikki. Besides,” she said consolingly, “you said yourself that he treats you differently from other women.”
“Yes, like a friend.” Her fingers gripped her glass.
“But that’s not a bad thing.”
Nikki shot her a disbelieving stare. “It’s not a good thing when I want to be more than a friend.”
Victoria didn’t have an answer. If this were Quinn and herself they were discussing, she knew that she’d feel the same way.
The following afternoon was every bit as hot as Tuesday. After a morning at the pharmacy, she changed into her coolest cropped T-shirt, sandals and a short, swingy skirt, and drove to Becky’s for lunch. It was after two o’clock when she left Becky’s with instructions to stop at the Bowdrie ranch on the way back to town and drop off a pan of cinnamon rolls from the older woman’s kitchen.
Victoria was happy to run the errand for Becky since it gave her an excuse to see Quinn. She turned off the gravel road and onto the Bowdrie ranch lane. Well-graded, the lane wound around the bulk of a butte. On the far side of the butte stretched a valley and tucked in the curve of hills lay the ranch headquarters. The road ended in a large open space with the barns and outbuildings on one side and a large, two-story white house on the other.
Victoria parked her car in front of the house and got out, balancing the pan of rolls as she closed the car door. A deep porch wrapped around two sides of the house and three oak rockers sat just to the left of the shallow steps. Tall maples stood sentinel on the grassy lawn surrounding the house, their branches throwing shade across the side porch. Charmed, Victoria’s gaze scanned the well-kept old house, guessing that it probably had been built in the early 1900s.
“Hi, Victoria.”
Startled, Victoria’s gaze flew to the entry just as Cully let the screen slap shut behind him and strolled down the walk toward her.
“Cully—hello.”
“What brings you out here? Not that I’m complaining, mind you,” he added with a grin. “But Quinn didn’t mention that he was expecting you.”
“He’s not.” Victoria lifted the pan. “I had lunch with Becky, and she asked me to drop off cinnamon rolls on my way back to town.”
Cully’s eyes lit. “Cinnamon rolls. Bless Becky.” He took the pan from her and sniffed appreciatively.
Victoria glanced behind him, but the doorway and porch were empty. “Is Quinn around?”
“Yeah, somewhere. We were both in the machine shop a few minutes ago. When I left, he said he was going to check on a mare that’s due to foal soon before he came up to the house.” He quirked an eyebrow at her and smiled slowly. “Why don’t you go find him? If he’s not at the barn already, he will be soon. You can give the mare some hay and keep her company while you’re waiting.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the big barn, flanked by a cluster of outbuildings. “All right, I will. Thanks.”
“No problem. I’m starting on the rolls before Quinn finds out they’re here.” Cully grinned and turned to retrace his steps back to the house.
“Becky said to be sure to tell you two that you have to share,” Victoria called after him as he loped up the steps.
“Yeah, yeah, right.” He flashed a grin over his shoulder and disappeared into the house.
The wide lot between the house and barn was powdery black dirt, accented with an occasional clump of straggly grass, and little dust clouds puffed up from beneath her sandals. Victoria reached the barn and paused to peer through the poles. A black gelding stood on the far side of the corral in the shade cast by the barn, head hanging, eyes closed, his tail swishing slowly in the heat.
He didn’t prick his ears or look up when she called. Victoria shrugged and walked on to the barn. The big sliding door was closed and she unlatched and shoved it open. It moved easily on well-oiled rollers, the dim coolness beyond the threshold beckoning her inside.
Dust motes danced in the shaft of light through the door and the air was redolent with the scent of hay and animals. The wide alley that bisected the barn stretched ahead of her. Halfway down the aisle, a horse poked its nose over the top of a stall door, nickering softly in friendly greeting.
Charmed, Victoria walked down the aisle toward her. The horse’s ears pricked forward, her velvety brown eyes bright with interest and intelligence.
“Hello, you pretty thing,” Victoria crooned, holding out her palm. Warm, hay-scented breath huffed across the sensitive skin of her palm, followed by the soft nudge of her nose. Victoria laughed and rubbed her hand over the bristle-dotted, velvety skin of the mare’s muzzle. The horse was well cared for, her glossy black hide heavily rounded in late pregnancy.
“Hmm. Cully said I could feed you hay. Maybe I can find you a snack, does that sound like a good idea?”
The horse bumped her again, nickering in agreement.
Victoria looked up and down the aisle, but no bale of hay sat on the clean concrete floor, no bag of grain in sight. Several feet away, however, a wooden ladder was nailed to a thick support post, leading to a square opening in the loft above.
Victoria cautiously climbed the ladder, hand over hand, the smooth soles of her sandals slipping on the worn rungs, until she reached the opening. The loft of the big barn was three-fourths empty. In the far corner, hay bales were stacked against the wall and a bale lay on the floor in front of the stack, the wires clipped, the bale falling apart in sections.
She climbed carefully over the edge of the opening into the loft, halting halfway across the wooden plank floor to sneeze.
“Oh, great,” she muttered, wiping her eyes between sneezes. “Apparently I can add hay to my long list of allergies.”
She hurriedly grabbed a ten-inch flake of hay and tossed it down to the main floor, moving quickly but carefully down the ladder.
“Horse,” she said, picking up the hay. “I hope you appreciate this.”
The mare shifted her feet impatiently, tail swishing in an
ticipation as Victoria approached. She stopped outside the stall and eyed the gate, the latch, the size of the horse and the distance to the manger at the far end.
She decided not to open the gate and enter the stall with the heavy horse. The adjoining stall was empty, however, and she pulled open the gate, entered and climbed the dividing boards, balancing the hay under one arm. The mare swung around and followed her.
“Hey, none of that,” Victoria said sternly as the horse lipped at the hay. Balanced precariously, she reached over the top board of the divider and started to pull the flake of hay into smaller sections.
The mare grew impatient with waiting. She stretched out her neck, opened her mouth, fastened strong teeth in one end of the hay and tugged.
“Stop that.” Victoria tugged back.
The mare was stronger. She tossed her head and the flake of hay fell apart, showering Victoria with alfalfa.
Victoria lost her balance and tumbled backward, landing in the deep straw bedding that covered the floor of the empty stall.
Stunned, she lay on her back for a moment, looking up at the rough board ceiling, before she pushed up on her elbows. The mare eyed her with a guileless expression, contentedly munching, green hay trailing from each side of her mouth.
“You…” Victoria’s shock quickly turned to laughter.
“What are you doing on the floor?”
Her heart jumped. Her gaze flew to the open stall door. Quinn stood in the opening, frowning at her. Then she sneezed. Twice.
“Are you hurt?” Concerned, he entered the stall and dropped to his heels beside her.
“No,” she reassured him, sitting up and dusting her hands together. Her red skirt was rucked up to midthigh, the neck of her white crop-top shoved off one shoulder. Bits of green alfalfa clung to her clothes and skin. Her nose itched; her eyes began to tear and she blinked to clear the dampness.
Quinn’s gaze ran over her, lingering on the length of bare legs.
“How did you wind up sitting in the straw, covered with hay?”
Cattleman's Courtship Page 13