"How are you at scraping paint?" she asked on impulse, then wanted to yank the words back when she realized the absurdity of putting him to work in her spare room just hours after his foster mother's funeral.
He didn't look upset by the question. "I've scraped the Winder Ranch barn and outbuildings in my day but never done room trim. Is this any different?"
"Harder," she said frankly. "This house has been through ten owners in its seventy-five years of existence and I swear every single one of them except me has left three or four layers of paint. It's sweaty, hard, frustrating work."
"In that case, bring it on."
She laughed and shook her head. "You don't know what you're getting into, but if you're sure you're willing to help, I would welcome the company."
It wasn't a lie, she thought as she led him back to the bedroom after he left his jacket and hat on the living-room couch. She had to admit she was grateful to have someone to talk to and for one last opportunity to see him again before he left Pine Gulch.
"You don't really have to do this," she said when they reached the room. "You're welcome to stay, even if you don't want to work."
Odd how what she had always considered a good-size space seemed to shrink in an instant. She could smell him, sexy and masculine, and she wished again that she wasn't dressed in work clothes.
"Where can I start?"
"I was up on the ladder working on the ceiling trim. If you would like to start around the windows, that would be great."
"Deal."
He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt that looked expensive and tailored—not that she knew much about men's clothes—and grabbed a paint scraper. Without another word, he set immediately to work.
Tess watched him for a moment, then turned the music on again, switching to a little more mellow music.
For a long time, they worked without speaking. She didn't find the silence awkward in the slightest, merely contemplative on both their parts.
Quinn seemed just as content not to make aimless conversation and though she was intensely aware of him on the other side of the room, she wasn't sure he even remembered she was in the room until eight or nine songs into the playlist.
"My father killed my mother when I was thirteen years old."
He said the abrupt words almost dispassionately but she heard the echo of a deep, vast pain in his voice.
She set down her scraper, her heart aching for him even as she held her breath that he felt he could share something so painful with her now, out of the blue like this.
"Oh, Quinn. I'm so sorry."
He released a long, slow breath, like air escaping from a leaky valve, and she wondered how long he had kept the memories bottled deep inside him.
"It happened twenty years ago but every moment of that night is as clear in my mind as the ride we took to Windy Lake last week. Clearer, even."
She climbed down the ladder. "You were there?"
He continued moving the scraper across the wood and tiny multicolored flakes of paint fluttered to the floor. "I was there. But I couldn't stop it."
She leaned against the wall beside him, hesitant to say the wrong word that might make him regret sharing this part of his past with her.
"What happened?" she murmured, sensing he needed to share it. Perhaps this was all part of his grieving process for Jo, the woman who had taken him in and helped him heal from his ugly, painful past.
"They were fighting, as usual. My parents' marriage was…difficult. My father was an attorney who worked long hours. When he returned home, he always insisted on a three-course dinner on the table, no matter what hour of the day or night, and he wanted the house completely spotless."
"That must have been hard for a young boy."
"I guess I was lucky. He didn't take his bad moods out on me. Only on her."
She held her breath, waiting for the rest.
"Their fighting woke me up," Quinn said after a moment, "and I heard my dad start to get a little rough. Also usual. I went down to stop it. That didn't always work but sometimes a little diversion did the trick. Not this time."
He scraped harder and she wanted to urge him to spare himself the anguish of retelling the story, but again, she had that odd sense that he needed to share this, for reasons she didn't understand.
"My dad was in a rage, accusing her of sleeping with one of the other attorneys in his firm."
"Was she?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe. My father was a bastard but she seemed to delight in finding and hitting every one of his hot buttons. She laughed at him. I'll never forget the sound of her laughing, with her face still bruised and red where he had slapped her. She said she was having a torrid affair with the other man, that he was much better in bed than my father."
She drew in a sharp breath, hating the thought of a thirteen-year-old version of Quinn witnessing such ugliness between his parents.
"I don't know," he went on. "She might have been lying. Theirs was not a healthy relationship, in any sense of the word. He needed to be in control of everything and she needed to be constantly adored."
She thought of Quinn being caught in the middle of it all and her chest ached for him and she had to curl her fingers into her palms to keep from reaching for him.
"My father said he wasn't going to let her make a fool out of him any longer. He walked out of the room and I thought for sure he was going to pack a suitcase and leave. I was happy, you know. For those few moments, I was thinking how much better things would be without him. No more yelling, no more fights."
"But he didn't leave."
He gave a rough laugh and set the scraper down and sat beside her on the floor, his back against the wall and their elbows touching. "He didn't leave. He came out of the bedroom with the .38 he kept locked in a box by the side of his bed. He shot her three times. Twice in the heart and then once more in the head. And then he turned the gun on himself."
"Oh, dear God."
"I couldn't stop it. For a long time, I kept asking myself if I could have done something. Said something. I just stood there."
She couldn't help herself, she covered his hand with hers. After a long moment, he turned his hand and twisted his fingers with hers, holding tight. They sat that way, shoulders brushing while the music on her playlist shifted to a slow, jazzy ballad.
She kept envisioning that rough-edged, angry boy he had been when he first came to Pine Gulch. He must have been consumed with pain and guilt over his parents' murder-suicide. She could see it so clearly, just as she saw in grim detail her own awful behavior toward him, simply because he had refused to pay any attention to her.
"I am so, so sorry, Quinn," she murmured, for everything he had survived and for her own part in making life harder for him here.
"The first year after was…hellish," he said, his voice low. "That's the only word that fits. I was thrown into the foster-care system and spent several months bouncing from placement to placement."
"None of them stuck?"
"I wasn't an easy kid to love," he said. "You knew me when I first came to Pine Gulch. I was angry and hurting and hated the world. Jo and Guff saw past all that. They saw whatever tiny spark of good might still be buried deep inside me and didn't stop until they helped me see it, too."
"I'm so happy you found each other."
"Same here." He paused, looking a little baffled. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. I didn't come here to dump it all on you. The truth is, I don't talk about it much. I don't think I've ever shared it with anybody but Brant and Cisco and Easton."
"It's natural to think about the circumstances that brought you into Jo's world. I imagine it's all connected for you."
"I was on a path to nowhere when Jo finally found me up in Boise and petitioned for custody. I was only the kid of a cousin. I'd never even met her but she and Guff still took me on, with all that baggage. She was a hell of a woman."
"I'm going to miss her dearly," Tess said quietly. "But I keep trying to
focus on how much better a person I am because I knew her."
Their hands were still entwined between them and she could feel the heat of his skin and the hard strength of his fingers.
"I don't know what to make of you," he finally said.
She gave a small laugh. "Why's that?"
"You baffle me. I don't know which version of you is real."
"All of it. I'm like every other woman. A mass of contradictions, most of which I don't even understand myself. Sometimes I'm a saint, sometimes I'm a bitch. Sometimes I'm the life of the party, sometimes I just want everybody to leave me alone. But mostly, I'm just a woman."
"That part I get."
The low timbre of his voice and the sudden light in his eyes sent a shower of sparks arcing through her. She was suddenly intensely aware of him—the breadth of his shoulder nudging hers, the glitter of silvery blue eyes watching her, the scent of him, of sage and bergamot and something else that was indefinable.
Her insides quivered and her pulse seemed to accelerate. "I don't regret many things in my life," she said, her voice breathy and low. "But I wish I could go back and change the way I treated you when we were younger. I hate that I gave you even a moment's unhappiness when you had already been through so much with your parents."
His shoulder shrugged beside her. "It was a long time ago, Tess. In the grand scheme of life, it didn't really mean anything."
"I was so awful to you."
"I wasn't exactly an easy person to like."
"That wasn't the problem. The opposite, actually. I…liked you too much," she confessed. "I hated that you thought I was some silly, brainless cheerleader. I wanted desperately for you to notice me."
His mouth quirked a little. "How could I help it?"
"You mean, when I was getting you kicked off the baseball team for cheating and then lying to my boyfriend and telling him you did something I only wanted you to do?"
"That's why Scott and his buddies beat me up that night? I had no idea."
"I'm so sorry, Quinn. I was despicable to you."
"Why?" he asked. "I still don't quite understand what I ever did to turn your wrath against me."
She sighed. "Every girl in school had a crush on you, but for me, it went way past crush. I didn't know your story but I could tell you were in pain. Maybe that's why you fascinated me, more than anyone I had ever known in my sheltered little life. I guess I was something of a healer, even then."
He gazed at her as the music shifted again, something low and sultry.
"I was fiercely attracted to you," she finally admitted. "But you made it clear you weren't interested. My pride was hurt. But I have to say, I think my heart was a little bruised, too. And so I turned mean. I wanted you to hurt, too. It was terrible and small of me and I'm so, so sorry."
"It was a long time ago," he said again. "We're both different people."
She smiled a little, her pulse pounding loudly in her ears. "Not so different," she murmured, still holding his hand. "I'm still fiercely attracted to you."
Chapter Twelve
Her breath snagged in her throat as she waited for him to break the sudden silence between them that seemed to drag on forever, though it was probably only several endless, excruciating seconds.
She braced herself, not sure she could survive another rejection. Nerves shivered through her as she waited for him to move, to speak, to do anything.
Just when she thought she couldn't endure the uncertainty another moment and was about to scramble away and tell him to ignore every single thing she had just said, he groaned her name and then his mouth captured hers in a wild kiss.
At that first stunning brush of his lips, the slick texture of his mouth, heat exploded between them like an August lightning storm on dry tinder. She returned his kiss, pouring everything into her response—her regret for the hurt she had caused him, her compassion for his loss, the soft tenderness blooming inside her.
And especially this urgent attraction pulsing to every corner of her body with each beat of her heart.
This was right. Inevitable, even. From the moment she heard him ring the doorbell earlier, some part of her had known they would end up here, with his arms around her and his heartbeat strong and steady under her fingers.
She wanted to help him, to heal him. To soak his pain inside her and ease his heart, if only for a moment.
She wrapped her arms more tightly around his neck, relishing the contrast between her curves and his immovable strength, between the cool wall at her back and all the glorious heat of his arms.
"While we're apologizing," he murmured against her mouth, "I'm sorry I was such an idiot the last time I kissed you. I don't have any excuse, other than fear."
She blinked at him, wondering why she had never noticed those dark blue speckles in his eyes. "Of what?"
"This. You." His mouth danced across hers again and everything feminine inside her sighed with delight.
"I want you." His voice was little more than a low rasp that sent every nerve ending firing madly. "I want you more than I've ever wanted another woman in my life and it scares the hell out of me."
"I'm just a woman. What's to be scared about?"
He laughed roughly. "That's like a saber-toothed tiger saying I'm just a nice little kitty. You are no ordinary woman, Tess."
Before she could figure out whether he meant the words as a compliment, he deepened the kiss and she decided she didn't care, as long as he continued this delicious assault on her senses.
He lowered her to the floor and she held him tightly as all the sleepy desires she had buried deep inside for years bubbled to the surface. It had been so long—so very, very long—since she had been held and cherished like this and she wanted to savor every second.
The taste of him, the scent of him, the implacable strength of his arms around her. It all felt perfect. He felt perfect.
She supposed that was silly, given the slightly unromantic circumstances. Instead of candlelight and rose petals and soft pillows, they were on the hard floor of her spare room with bright fluorescent lights gleaming.
But she wouldn't have changed any of it, especially at the risk of shattering this hazy, delicious cocoon of desire wrapped around them.
Okay, she might wish she were wearing something a little more sensual, especially when his hands went to the buttons of her old work shirt. But he didn't seem to mind her clothing, judging by the heavy-lidded hunger in his eyes after he had worked the buttons free and the plackets of her shirt fell away.
She should have felt exposed here in the unforgiving light of the room. Instead, she felt feminine and eminently desirable as his eyes darkened.
"You're gorgeous," he murmured. "The most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
"I'm afraid I'm not the tight-bodied cheerleader I was at sixteen."
"Who wants some silly cheerleader when he could have a saber-toothed tiger of a woman in his arms?"
She laughed but it turned into a ragged gasp when he slowly caressed her through the fabric of her bra, his fingers hard and masculine against her breast.
He groaned, low in his throat, and his thumb deftly traced the skin just above the lacy cup. Everything tightened inside her, a lovely swell of tension as he worked the clasp free, and she nearly arched off the floor when his fingers covered her skin.
He teased and explored her body while his mouth tantalized hers with deep, silky tastes and her hands explored the hard muscles of his back and the thick softness of his hair.
"This is crazy," he said after long, delirious moments. "It's not what I came here for, I swear."
"Don't think about it," she advised him, nipping little kisses down the warm column of his neck. "I know I'm not."
His laugh turned into a groan as she feathered more kisses along his jawline. "Well, when you put it that way…"
She smiled, then gasped when he began trailing kisses down the side of her throat. Every coherent thought skittered out of her head when his mouth found he
r breast. She tangled her hands in his hair, arching into his mouth as he tasted and teased.
Oh, heaven. She felt as if she had been waiting years just for this, just for him, as if everything inside her had been frozen away until he came back to Pine Gulch to thaw all those lonely, forgotten little corners of her heart.
She thought again how very perfect, inevitable, this was as he pulled her shirt off and then removed his own.
He was beautiful. The rough-edged, rebellious boy had grown into a hard, dangerous man, all powerful muscles and masculine hollows and strength. She wanted to explore every single inch of that smooth skin.
She would, she vowed. Even if it took all night. Or several nights. It was a sacrifice she was fully willing to make.
Again she had that sense of inescapable destiny. They had been moving toward this moment since that first night he had startled her in the hallway of Winder Ranch. Longer, even. Maybe all that dancing around each other they had done in high school had just been a prelude to this.
A few moments later, no clothing barriers remained between them and she exulted in the sheer delicious wonder of his skin brushing hers, his strength surrounding her softness.
He kissed her and a restless need started deep inside her and expanded out in hot, hungry waves. She couldn't get enough of this, of him. She traced a hand over his pectoral muscles, feeling the leashed strength in him.
And then she forgot everything when he reached a hand between their bodies to the aching core of her hunger. She gasped his name, shifting restlessly against his fingers, and everything inside her coiled with a sweet, urgent ache of anticipation.
She felt edgy, panicky suddenly, as if the room were spinning too fast for her to ride along, but his kiss kept her centered in the midst of the tornado of sensation. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her breathing ragged.
He kissed her then, his mouth hot, insistent, demanding. That was all it took. With a sharp cry, she let go of what tiny tendrils of control remained and flung herself into the whirling, breathtaking maelstrom.
A Cold Creek Homecoming Page 12