Harlequin Special Edition October 2015, Box Set 1 of 2

by Christine Rimmer

  Monique blinked three times in rapid succession. “Really?”

  Chloe stifled a silly giggle and said with great seriousness. “I finally got up the nerve to tell him.” And to show him, as a matter of fact. “And then he asked me out. The rest could be history. I mean, if I play my cards right.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “But, Monique...”

  Monique leaned a little closer. “What?”

  “Don’t say a word to anyone.”

  “Oh. Never. I would never tell a soul...” Translation: she couldn’t wait to tell the world. Monique asked about Prime Sports, and Quinn gave her a card good for a free visit and one class of her choice. And then she turned to Chloe again, her dark eyes sharply gleaming. “I was so surprised when you moved back to town. I mean, we all knew you were headed for great things. No one ever would have guessed you’d end up running back home to Justice Creek. I’m just so sorry that things didn’t work out for you.”

  Six months ago, Chloe would have been shamed and infuriated by Monique’s barbed words and pretended concern. Or at the very least, embarrassed. At the moment, though, all she felt was amused. “Thanks, Monique. You’re all heart.”

  Monique sighed heavily. Across the room, the manager who’d greeted them when they arrived had his eye on her. “Well, good to see you two. Gotta go.” She scuttled off.

  Chloe took a bite of her delicious dessert. “Everything we told her will be all over town. Twenty-four hours—thirty-six, max.”

  Quinn leaned closer and spoke low. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that you had a thing for me in high school.”

  She met his eyes directly and she couldn’t keep from grinning. “Are you kidding? I loved it. Not to mention it was the truth. If Monique Hightower’s going to be spreading rumors about us, they might as well be true.”

  * * *

  After their slow, wonderful meal, they returned to Chloe’s house.

  Quinn eased the gorgeous old car into the space beside the garage and turned off the engine. “Are you up for a walk around the block?”

  “Sure.” It was a nice night. “A walk would be great. We’ll work off some of that amazing dessert.”

  He followed her inside and waited while she changed into flats. Then off they went, down the front steps and out to the street, where they strolled beneath the silver crescent of the moon.

  Their development, Haltersham Heights, had no sidewalks. The houses were set back from the street, among the trees. Quinn stopped at a lot three doors down and across the street from Chloe’s. It had a For Sale sign at the curb with a big SOLD plate stuck on it. The large contemporary log and natural stone house could be seen, windows gleaming, through the trees.

  “The sold sign went up a few weeks ago,” she said. “About time. This one’s been on the market for months.”

  “I know. I bought it. Got a great price, too.”

  She laughed—and then she realized he wasn’t kidding. “Wait a minute. You’re serious?”

  “I am.” He put his hand over her fingers, where they curled around his arm. She’d barely had time to enjoy the flare of pleasure at how good his touch felt, when he said, “I bought it before I knew you would be fixing up my house. But it should work out great. We’re closing on this one Monday, so we can move in here next week. We’ll stay here while you renovate the other one—and not to get ahead of myself or anything, but once we move back to our house, you can start on this one. It’s the same story as the other one. Solid construction, but it’s begging to be brought into the twenty-first century. When you’re finished, I’ll sell it.”

  She only stared.

  “Chloe, your mouth’s hanging open.”

  “And why wouldn’t it be? You’re too much.”

  “Too much of what, exactly?”

  “Well, let’s see. Quinn Bravo, world-champion cage fighter, fitness empire builder, real estate mogul...”

  “That all sounds pretty good to me.”

  “You must have made a fortune as a fighter, huh?”

  “I did all right. The payout for winning a championship fight is a hefty one. And I landed some big-time endorsements, too.”

  “I think I’m speechless, Quinn.”

  He gave her his high school bad-boy smirk. “You’ll get over it. And the truth is, Prime Sports will never make much money unless my franchise plan pays off. The housing market’s rebounding nicely, though. I can make money in real estate.”

  She admitted softly, “Start-ups aren’t easy, and I say that from experience. If you hire me for both of your houses, it will make a big difference for me. I really do need the business.”

  “So you’ve got it. Everybody wins.”

  She made a low, disbelieving sound. “As simple as that?”

  His eyebrows drew together. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to take advantage of you just because you, um, like me...”

  He framed her face in his big, calloused hands. “Look at me.”

  “Oh, I am.” She stared straight up into those soft aquamarine eyes and never wanted to look away. “I really am.”

  “Are you telling me you can’t do the job?”

  She stiffened and answered with heat, “Of course I can do the job.”

  He chuckled then. “See? We got no problem here.”

  Standing there in the darkness of her quiet street with his warm, rough hands cradling her cheeks, she decided he was right. “No, I guess we don’t.”

  He lowered his head, until his sexy, plump lips were a hairbreadth from hers. He had lips like a girl’s, but the rest of him was all man. “I got a request, though.”

  She longed for his kiss. Her heart was beating slow and deep. Sparks flared across her skin. And low in her belly, she seemed to be melting. “Oh, God. Anything.”

  “Work with my brother’s company, Bravo Construction?”

  She made herself focus on what he’d just asked of her—and it wasn’t easy, with those lips of his so close.

  Use his brother’s company...

  She’d left that possibility open-ended when she talked to Manny. But really, why not? Bravo Construction had a great reputation. She felt confident she could develop a solid working relationship with them. It could be good for everyone. “All right.”

  His warm breath touched her lips. The guy was driving her crazy. “I already talked to my sister Nell—just paving the way. Nell says she’ll fit the project in the schedule and they can start work a week from Monday.”

  “That’s quick.”

  “Yeah. And I like to keep it in the family if I can.”

  “I get that.” She tried really hard not to sound as breathless as she felt. “No problem. Bravo Construction it is.”

  “Good, then.”

  “Quinn...”

  “Hmm?” A teasing light shone in his eyes. She realized he knew exactly what he was doing to her.

  And she knew that she couldn’t take it anymore. She only had to lift herself up a fraction higher to get what she wanted. So she did. And it worked.

  At last, he was kissing her.

  * * *

  “Chloe...” Quinn whispered her name right into her pretty mouth.

  And then he let go of her arms—in order to pull her up nice and close. She tasted so good. Hot and wet.

  And all of her, every graceful, sweetly scented inch of her, was so, so smooth.

  Worth the endless, twelve-day wait since the last time he’d had his mouth on hers.

  He lifted his head an inch. She let out a tiny moan, as though she couldn’t bear not to have their mouths fused together. He slanted his head the other way and drank that moan right off her sweet, sweet lips.

  Those slender arms glided up his chest and then her soft hands were stroking hi
s collar, caressing his neck, her slim fingers threading up into the close-trimmed hair at the nape of his neck. He scraped his tongue along the smooth edges of her teeth, pushing deeper, into all that wet sweetness.

  Coffee. Wine. Chocolate.

  Chloe.

  There had been women in his life, maybe too many. Especially when he was first making his name in the Octagon. Women liked fighters. And they particularly liked fighters who won. For a while there he’d gotten carried away with all the attention. Beautiful women everywhere he turned, his for the taking.

  But even an endless chain of gorgeous women got old after a while. He started to see that to most of them, he was just a cheap thrill. And he wanted to be more than that to someone.

  He found he wanted heart in a woman. He wanted someone he could talk to. He wanted real, gut-deep integrity. He wanted truth. He wanted a powerful connection.

  Oh, and yeah. Brains and a sense of humor, too.

  It wasn’t that there weren’t women out there with all that. It was just that most of them had no interest in a guy who still couldn’t read past about fourth-grade level, a guy who got bloodied and battered for a living. Plus, when he was fighting, it ate up his life. He didn’t have time to go looking for the one for him.

  And then along came Annabelle. Her life, her happiness, her chance to grow up and take on the world—suddenly that was what mattered to him. To raise his little girl up right was more than enough. He didn’t need that special woman, after all.

  Or so he’d believed until twelve nights ago.

  Until Chloe led him into her house and straight to her bed.

  Chloe.

  She had it all—everything he’d already accepted he wasn’t going to find. And no one had ever tasted so good.

  Reluctantly, he broke the kiss.

  She stared up at him, eyes full of stars. “Come back to my house? Be with me tonight?”

  “Damn, Chloe. I was afraid you’d never ask.”

  * * *

  Her belly all aflutter with anticipation, her pulse a rushing sound in her ears and her cheeks feeling way hotter than they should, Chloe ushered Quinn in her front door and then turned to engage the lock and reset the alarm. “You can hang your jacket there.” She gestured at the coatrack. He hung up his jacket, and she grabbed his hand. “This way...”

  But he held back, tugging her close, into the hard, hot circle of his arms. He kissed her, a slow one that had her knees going weak and a meltdown happening in her core.

  However, when he lifted his head that time, his eyes were way too serious.

  She frowned, suddenly struck with concern for whatever might be bothering him. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  He pulled her close again. And he whispered in her ear, “I want to take all your clothes off and see you naked. I want to kiss every inch of you.”

  She sighed. “We are definitely on the same page about that.”

  “But...”

  She pushed him away enough that she could see his eyes. “Oh, no. There is something. What?”

  “Don’t look so worried.” With his big thumb, he smoothed the scrunched place between her eyebrows. “It’s nothing bad. I just have some things I want to say first.”

  Would she rather be kissing him? Absolutely. But then again, whatever he wanted to say, she wanted to hear. “So...coffee or something?”

  “Sure.”

  She led him into the kitchen and whipped him up a quick cup, pouring cream in a little pitcher because she’d watched him at dinner and knew he took cream.

  “Aren’t you having any?” he asked.

  Her tummy was all fluttery, what with wondering what kind of thing he just had to say to her. Coffee would only make it worse. “Maybe later. How about the living area? It’s more comfortable there.”

  “Good enough.” He poured in the cream, picked up his cup and followed her to the sofa.

  They sat down together, and he set his cup on the coffee table. She folded her hands tightly in her lap. He’d said it was nothing awful, but he seemed so intense suddenly...

  Was there going to be drama? Oh, she hoped not. She’d had enough drama to last her a lifetime, and then some.

  He said, “There are things about me I want you to know.”

  Uh-oh. She gulped down the giant lump in her throat and gave him a nod to continue.

  “First, about Annabelle’s mother.”

  Chloe realized she’d been holding her breath. She let it out slowly. Annabelle’s mother. Actually, she really wanted to know about Annabelle’s mother...

  “Her name is Sandrine Cox. She’s an actress and model. We went out a few times. She got pregnant. She came to me, told me she was fairly certain it was my baby and she felt I had a right to know.”

  Chloe studied his wonderful face. He seemed...relaxed when he talked about his little girl’s mother. Relaxed and accepting. “You believed her.”

  “Yeah. Sandrine was always straight ahead about things. I believed that she believed the baby was mine. Then later, right after Annabelle was born, a paternity test proved Sandrine was right. Annabelle’s mine. And I knew from the moment Sandrine told me she was pregnant that I wanted the baby. Sandrine didn’t. She didn’t want to be a mom. She liked her single life and she had a lot of ambition, a heavy focus on her career. I made her an offer. I would pay her a large lump sum to have the baby and then she would sign over all rights to me.”

  “And that’s what happened?”

  He nodded. “She kept her end of the bargain. I kept mine.”

  “You haven’t heard from her since Annabelle was born?”

  “No. I doubt I ever will.”

  “But with something as important as a child, Quinn, you never know. Someday Annabelle’s mother might regret her choice, change her mind.”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  “And if she did come to you, if she wanted to meet Annabelle?”

  “Can’t say for certain. If she was as honest and up-front as before, we would work something out so that she could know Annabelle and Annabelle could know her.”

  Chloe liked his answer. It could be difficult for him to make room for his daughter’s mother in their lives. But it was the right thing. “That sounds good. For Annabelle, most of all. It’s very likely, as she grows to adulthood, that she’s going to want to know about her birth mother and meet her, if possible.”

  “Maybe. But it’s like you told me that first night. I’m not going to borrow trouble. I’ll answer Annabelle’s questions and pay attention to the signals she gives me. And then take it from there.” He loosened his tie. “I didn’t want you to wonder anymore about how I ended up with sole custody of my little girl and no mother in sight.”

  Tenderness washed through her—for him, for the kind of man he was. A good man. Honest. True-hearted. A man who would do what was right even if it wasn’t the best or easiest thing for him, personally.

  She reached out and brushed his hand. “Let me...”

  He sat so still, so watchful, as she undid the tie completely. It made a soft, slithering sound as she slipped it from around his neck. She laid it carefully over the arm of the sofa. Then she turned to him again and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his snowy dress shirt, smoothing the collar open, revealing the powerful column of his neck and the sharp black point of one of those intricate tattoos that covered his shoulder and twined halfway down his arm.

  “Better?” she asked.

  They shared a smile as he nodded. He said, “There’s more.”

  She took his right hand and turned it over, revealing his cuff buttons. One by one, she undid them. “Tell me.”

  “I’m dyslexic,” he said, his voice rougher than usual, freighted with something wary, something wounded. “You know what dyslexia is?”

>   “I think I do. I think I remember reading that it’s when a person has difficulty in learning to read or interpret words, letters and other symbols?”

  “That’s pretty close to the generally accepted definition.”

  She took his left hand and unbuttoned that cuff, too.

  He spoke again. “Most people think dyslexia is what you just said. A learning disorder, period. It’s more. It’s a challenge, a tough one. But it’s a gift, too.” She sat with his hand in her lap, the buttons undone, drinking in every word, as he explained, “You remember how I was as a kid. Trouble. Always getting in fights. Everyone thought I was stupid because I couldn’t get the hang of reading. I hated school, hated being the slow kid. I acted out constantly. Only later did I figure out that my problem was I couldn’t learn the way most kids learn. A traditional school environment did nothing for me. I don’t get phonics, don’t get learning things in rote sequence. It completely overloads me. So I would lash out.”

  She did remember that troubled boy so well. “You always seemed so angry.”

  “You bet I was. By the time I was eleven, my mother was at the end of her rope with me. As a last-ditch effort to find something I could do well, she enrolled me in a karate class—and everything changed for me. For once, I got something, really got it. Yeah, I have to work my ass off to try and get the meaning out of a line of letters across a page. But I’d always been damn good at fighting. The way my brain is wired makes me more capable than most people of visualizing the moves of my opponents in advance. I see the whole picture, I guess you could say. And that makes me more willing to follow my instincts. So I was good at karate, and finally being good at something was damn motivating. It got me going, gave me hope. I was driven to excel.” He took her hand then and wove his fingers with hers.

  It felt so good, her hand in his. She held on tight. “Answer me a question...”

  “Name it.”

  “You seemed nervous about telling me this. Were you?”

  He squeezed her fingers. “Yeah, I was.”

  “But I can’t see why you would be, not after the way your life’s worked out.”