Deadly Secrets (16 page)

“Well, he hasn’t dated anyone.”

“Might be a reason for that,” Brody finally ventured.

“For God’s sake, I heard you say Ella,” Aiden said. “What has she got to do with Quinlan not being here?”

Ian looked at his older brother. “Ella’s missing.”

“Who’s Ella?” their father asked.

Yeah, how to explain that one?

Taking a deep breath, Ian stretched his neck. “Ella’s Quin’s . . . wife.” What the hell. “His missing pregnant wife.”

Chapter 11 

New Orleans, late February

Quinlan grabbed enough food at the market to feed both him and her for a couple of days. He’d taken the afternoon off of work, flown down out of Dulles, and here he was.

Why the hell not?

How many years had he put in? He owned the business, or part of it. They had a board, plenty of managers. He could take a few afternoons off, a few days, and the Kinncaid empire would not fall down around their ears.

He checked his watch again. He hoped she was okay with him just showing up.

Quinlan sat on her stoop with the bags and opened a bottle of water. The light was fading quickly. He hoped to hell she didn’t walk home in the dark.

He also wondered if the shelter had gotten his gift. He’d called last week and made sure a local art store had delivered the supplies he’d wanted the kids there to have. He hoped the kids enjoyed it. Granted, his family had always helped others, but after Ella two weeks ago, he’d looked into local shelters in the D.C. area. Especially women’s shelters. He knew that many of them left with their kids, had no place to go. Kids like to draw and art was a great way to deal with issues you couldn’t let out any other way. He’d drawn enough in the last year, and even more in the last couple of weeks. In the last week, he’d painted again. So he also researched art therapy in theory and then talked to Dr. Garner about starting art therapy projects in a couple of the shelters, maybe even some of the after-school programs. He’d gotten the balls rolling and, actually, he enjoyed it. Enjoyed knowing he might be able to help someone, or at least give a kid a reason to believe, to just be able to breathe. Art had done that for him, though very few knew that.

Hell, it had helped him deal with the mess in the last couple of weeks—lovely mess that she was. Drawn, sketched, painted.

Painted her. Painted New Orleans. Painted colors. Bright vibrant colors. He’d forgotten how much he loved art.

Until color had come dancing into his life.

He’d thought about asking his brothers to donate as well, but then didn’t. He wanted this for his own—his own secret, for some reason.

But he did want to share it with someone.

“Well, there’s a sight I didn’t expect to see, sugar,” she drawled, pulling him from his musings.

And there she was . . . dancing color.

He tilted his head and studied her, noticing her hair first and the fact she was dressed in more tie-dyed yoga clothes. The clothing melded orange and purple together in a bright burst that worked and matched her hair. “Purple this week, huh?”

“The blue was too . . .” she started, coming closer. “Blue.”

Quinlan grinned and nodded. “Purple is a bit different, but you are as well.” It didn’t bring out the blue of her eyes as much as the blue had. Now her eyes looked darker, more greenish, the amber flecks near the center more prominent.

She just looked at him until he pulled himself up to his feet and held the market bags out. “I come bearing gifts.”

She stopped at the bottom of the stoop. He watched her take a deep breath. What if she wanted him to go? If she did, he’d probably go. After he tried to talk sense into her. They were married . . . as stupid and impulsive as that had been, they were married.

Brody would have lots to say when he learned about this trip, but Quin didn’t care. He’d called his cousin a couple of days ago and fessed up, sent him copies of the marriage certificate, listened as Brody had yelled and ranted at him for thinking with his dick and not with his brain.

Personally, he was so damned happy his cock worked—and very well at that—that he didn’t care what he’d been thinking with.

He hadn’t planned this, but as she’d told him the day he met her, plans often went awry, so what were they going to do about it?

“Bless your heart, thanks. Now I don’t have to go shopping. What did you bring? Come on.” She motioned to him and he followed her around the corner of her house and into the courtyard. They used the kitchen entrance and she held the door open for him as he carried in the bags. He had a backpack slung over his shoulder with extra jeans and a couple of shirts. “So?”

“So,” he said, setting the groceries on her wooden countertops. He turned and looked at her.

Her grin tugged at him and he stepped closer, leaning his cane to the side. She didn’t move back.

That’s one thing he liked about her. She went toe to toe with him, or at least he remembered her doing that.

“I missed you,” he whispered as he leaned down and kissed her.

Her sigh wafted across his mouth. “I missed you too, even though I knew it was stupid. And I tried like hell not to.”

“Maybe not stupid.”

“Oh, sugar, stupid on so many levels.”

He kissed her, kissed her again, so happy to have her in his arms. “Maybe I like being stupid, consider it living a little,” he told her, remembering something she’d told him in Vegas.

“Why are you here? Didn’t you get my note?” She pulled back. “Oh my God, you didn’t get my note, did you?” She shook her head.

“Yes, I got that lovely bit. Which reminds me, how did you get home? Did you get the money? Did it cover your ticket? You could have ridden home with me, Ella. I was worried and didn’t know if you got home okay.”

“I’m here, aren’t I? Yes, I received your note and the money, which I didn’t need.”

At his narrowed look, she added, “But thank you.”

He tugged her closer. “I have a confession to make.”

“What? We’re not really, legally married?” she asked, her eyes hopeful.

Well then. He could only laugh, though what was funny, he wasn’t sure. Maybe the fact he’d spent years loudly proclaiming his aversion to the matrimonial state and here he was married to someone who clearly would be happy to not be married to him. The irony wasn’t lost.

“Oh, honey, we are very,” he said, leaning down and kissing her, “very much married. Really, really married.” He nibbled on her lip. “And I’m told very, very much legally.”

She sighed into him. “This’ll never work. I’m here, you’re . . . wherever you’re from.” She kissed his jaw even as her fingers went to work on his shirt, her fingers cool as she slipped them beneath his T-shirt.

“D.C. Washington, D.C.”

“I’m not the politician type of wife.”

He picked her up and walked to the bedroom kissing her all the while, all but ripping her shirt off of her. “Great thing I’m not a politician then. I’ve thought about you all damned week. And the week before that. About this. About us.” He slid a hand beneath the waistband of her yoga pants and grinned as he kissed his way down her body, tasting, savoring, enjoying. He stopped at the dragonfly tattoo and kissed the winged creature no bigger than an inch in fading shades of green, blue and purple.
Trust
. He traced the letters with his tongue.

Her hands tugged him up and back to her mouth. “Now. You can play later.”

“I want to play now, honey.”

She hooked her ankles in the small of his back. “Later. I want you now. You’re not the only one who missed this, missed us, thought about it all this week.” She arched up, trying to come into contact with him. “And all last week.”

He grinned down at her. “Nice to know you missed me. I’ll make sure you always do.”

He took them up quickly, the fire between them already out of control and burning them both before he’d known what had happened.

They lay there shuddering after, the room cool without the heater on. He huffed out a breath and fell to the side of her, pulling her closer to him.

He still had his jeans on. Damn. And they hadn’t used anything. Hell.

“Ummm. Condom. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking and—”

She shook her head. “The pill, we’re good.”

He sighed and pulled her to him, kissing her forehead. “Next time we’re going slow and easy . . .”

“Who the hell wants slow and easy when our way is so much more fun?” she quipped.

He laughed and kissed her long and deep.

* * *

One month later

“What are you doing?” she asked herself in the mirror. She had to tell him. She just hadn’t worked up to it yet. About the time she thought she wouldn’t have to, he’d surprised her for dinner one evening, having flown in for the weekend. What the hell did she say to that? He came every weekend for the last three weeks. This was the fourth weekend.

Not that she wanted to say much of anything. She liked spending time with Quin. It was great. They’d talked and laughed, spent time at the shelter. She’d watched as he’d sketched the kids in caricature, bringing smiles where before there had only been wariness.

They talked of expanding homes, of music, of their work.

Work.

“Tell him,” she told herself in the mirror before tugging the towel tight and opening the door.

Taking a deep breath, she said, “You know we really need to figure out what we are actually doing,” she muttered as she hurriedly dressed. Steam wafted out of the bathroom from their hot shower, where he’d already left her.

He laughed as he buttoned his shirt. “Babe, if you need to figure out what we were actually doing, I’ll be more than happy to—”

She threw a pillow at him and he batted it away.

“That is not what I mean and you know it.”

“I think going along as we are is working just fine.”

She sighed and fiddled with her T-shirt before pulling it on.

“What?” he asked. “What are you going to say this time?”

“What I’ve said before. This isn’t going to last, Quin. Not you and me. We’re from different worlds.”

Who could just fly into New Orleans for a lunch or dinner? Just because? The weekend she could understand, but every weekend since the first time he’d shown up on her stoop with food, not so much.

How did she . . .

“Look,” he told her. “I don’t want to end this.”

“Ending ‘it’—this—whatever it is between us or isn’t—”

“Is,”
he said, staring at her with a look she already knew as stubborn. Quinlan was incredibly laid-back and pretty easygoing, but on some things he was as hardheaded as they came.

“It’s the smart thing to do. Ending it, that is. Come on, be honest, have you even told your family yet?” She stopped breathing, and for one stupid second hoped.

“Not yet, no.” He raked a hand through his hair.

She waved her hand and swallowed the surprising sting of disappointment. “See, that’s my point. We both know this isn’t . . . meant to be or whatever. We’re a fun time to each other. The smart thing to do is to get this annulled or whatever we need to do.” She already knew that his eyes tightened whenever she brought up divorce. Why, she had no idea. It wasn’t like they had a real marriage.

He nodded and zipped his carry-on. “Maybe it is the smart thing.” He turned to her then. “Honestly, though, I’m kind of tired of always doing the smart thing. It’s what I’ve done all my life, Ella. I want . . . I want . . .”

She cocked a brow. “Your leg back. I know, I’ve heard of all the things you can’t do. Ski. Run. Marathons. Tennis. Poor you. Get over it. You are beyond blessed, stop worrying about what you see as limits and see what you can accomplish.”

He narrowed his gaze at her. “That’s not what . . .” He raked a hand through his hair. “I can be pissed at my limitations, they’re mine,” he snapped. Then he shook his head. “Look, my leg is beside the point, we have something between us. Something special, and I want to see where it goes.”

“Yes, it’s called lust, Quin.” She hurried around her room, grabbing up stuff and hurrying into the hallway. He had to leave this alone.

“Why do all your yoga pants hug your ass? Not that I don’t enjoy the view in tie-dyed black, but I don’t like that everyone else gets to see it. Can’t you change at the studio?”

Really? That was a concern? “Sugar, I’ve dressed like this for years and haven’t been accosted once.”

Okay, that wasn’t exactly true, there was that one time, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to mention that now.

“You take cabs to the studio? Or gym or whatever?” he asked as she walked past him and into the kitchen.

She muttered to herself as she jerked open the fridge in the small kitchen and filled up her pink water bottle.

“What?” she asked at his mumble.