Designated Hitter (Reedsville Roosters Book 4) (9 page)

Marina pulled the phone back from her ear and poised her finger over the
End Call
button. Her father had no right to disparage Quinn that way, and she didn’t want to listen to it. At the same time, she didn’t want him to think he had the right to decide who she supported or didn’t support.

“If I want to give him money, I will, and I’ll do it gleefully.” She already had. Quinn just didn’t know it yet.

“Yeah? So, you’ve told him he’s gonna be a daddy, then? Or are you still hiding out in one of your work sites because you know he’s not going to stick around when you do?”

She ended the call. She’d had enough.

Her father was just like the contractors who treated her like her logic wasn’t sound and she wasn’t capable of making good decisions. It was just like she’d told Quinn: she was
damn
good at making big decisions. She’d decided she’d do whatever it took to build something steady with Quinn.

The smaller decisions were harder. Like when she’d tell him about the bills she’d paid for him while he was in Montana. She didn’t want him to think she didn’t have faith in him. She did. But she recognized that him being the proud man that he was, he might not see it that way.

She wished she could be brazen and confident about what she had to do, but she simply wasn’t programmed that way. That was why she’d hired him in the first place.

Finally back in Florida after eight weeks being up to his ankles in cow shit and missing his girl like crazy, Quinn leaned against the console table in his apartment. With his phone pressed to his ear and his car loan statement clutched in one hand, he glared at his roommate Gary, and Gary glared right back.

“Still on hold?” Gary asked, and looked down at the wax strip he was about to yank from his leg. The guy swore up and down that he got more manservant assignments than anyone because he apparently serviced an untapped segment of clientele—ladies who liked their help smooth as the day they were born. Quinn didn’t buy it.

He groaned. “Yeah. Going on five minutes—”

“Client services. How can I help you?” came a chipper voice from the phone.

Quinn straightened up and started to pace. “Oh, hi. Listen. I’m calling about my loan. I’m just trying to make sure everything’s all right with it. I called to make a payment and the automated system wouldn’t give me a balance. You haven’t sent the account to collections, have you? I know you might not be able to tell me, but—”

“Let me put on hold for just a moment.”

“Oh,
shit
.” He rolled his eyes. He shouldn’t have tried to coast the bill to his next payday, but there were more pressing expenses he’d needed to cover first. His student loan payment was probably going to open its huge maw and swallow him whole soon.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Gary asked. “They’ll repossess it? Big deal. You can get another car anywhere.”

“My credit is already screwed six ways to Sunday as it is.”
God, if Marina had any idea just how bad it is…

Well, she wouldn’t want him. She’d want a guy who had his shit together.

He tried so damned hard not to bring up the money stuff, but somehow, conversations kept drifting that way. Maybe Marina would mention she caught an athletic event on television with a team from his old school, and the conversation would turn to tuition costs and such. He always managed to disentangle himself from the discussions as quickly as he could, but he worried she was going to get impatient with him for his lack of candor. She was probably used to being courted by men who didn’t live paycheck to paycheck, and Quinn anticipated that it’d be a long time before he stepped into that economic tier.

“Don’t let it eat you up,” Gary said. “It just happens sometimes.”

“Has it happened to
you
?”

Gary muttered an oath and yanked the wax strip. He rubbed his leg vigorously, swearing all the while. “No, but came close a time or two. I was able to hustle and get the cash at the last minute.”

“Isn’t hustling what got you thrown out of minor league baseball?”

“Yep.”

Gary’s exploits were legendary. Quinn hadn’t yet figured out why he’d played baseball at all. He was an excellent outfielder, sure, but he spent far more time on the bench than he did on the field because of his troublemaking shenanigans.

Thinking about Gary on the bench reminded Quinn of Wallace’s offer. He could earn a little money just from riding the pine for half a season, and then he could tighten up his cleats and step up to the plate again.

A year ago, he might have been too prideful to take the offer. He was tempted at the moment. He still held out hope he could make something out of baseball. It wasn’t like he was anywhere near retirement age. His body was in okay condition and his reflexes were still sharp. If he were lucky, he could still play a couple of years in the Majors. He’d get that debt monkey off his back, for sure, then. Marina wouldn’t have
that
as a reason to be ashamed of him.

“Are you there, Mr. Hathaway?” the rep asked.

“Yep, I’m here.” He rubbed the burn over his heart and forced down a swallow.
Go on and give me the bad news so I can figure out what to do next.

“The loan is showing it was paid off. You should be receiving the title information soon.”

Quinn pulled the phone away from his head and rubbed his ear. Surely, he’d misheard her. “I’m sorry? Are you looking at the right account?”

“Confirm the last four digits of your social security number for me, please.”

“8012.”

“A Silverado, correct?”

“Yes. That’s what it is.”

“It’s showing paid.”

“That can’t be.”

“It was paid off several weeks ago. If it were an error of funds being applied to wrong account, I think we would have reversed it by now. Also, the payment was for the exact balance down to the penny, so it doesn’t seem likely that was a mistake.”

Gary made a come-on-tell-me-what’s-happening swish of his hand.

Quinn held up a finger, because he still had no idea. “Um, let me ask you one more thing. Can anyone pay off an account?”

“As long as they have the right information. It’s harder to do by phone, obviously, because we have certain account protections in place, but by mail, we generally don’t question the origins of a check.”

“Is that what it was? A check?”

“Mmm. I can’t tell with the information I’ve given. If it were a check, we’d have to jump through a few hoops to be able to trace it back.”

“I’m…”
The fuck?
“Uh, look, I don’t want to do a whole bunch of extra work. I just don’t understand how it could be paid. I guess I’ll check back in a few days and see if it’s been reversed or whatever.”

“I really doubt it will be, Mr. Hathaway. As I said, it was paid off several weeks ago. Are you sure you didn’t give anyone access to your account or leave a bill laying around?”

“Nope. Nobody even knew about my status except—” He clamped his lips on the words. Gary knew. His mother knew, and she sure as shit didn’t have any money. And Marina knew.

Marina.
Fuck.

“Fuck,” he spat, because just thinking it didn’t feel good enough.

“I’m sorry?” the agent asked.

“I apologize. I just realized something. Thank you for your time, okay? I appreciate it.” He ended the call and jogged to his room.

Gary followed closely at his heels, and when Quinn stood from rooting under the bed for the box he kept his financial statements in, he shook his head. “Don’t ask me anything yet. I need to see if this hunch I have is just paranoia.”

Please let it be.

He found his student loan servicer’s number and called it. He was so agitated and his hands were shaking so badly that it took him three attempts to input his account number and PIN.

Gary sat on the edge of the bed, watching quietly.

Quinn held his breath as the computer retrieved the balance.

“
Your account was paid in full on…
”

“Fuck.” Quinn tossed the phone onto the bed and gave his hair a tug. “Why the hell did she do that?”

“Who?” Gary asked.

“Had to have been Marina. Who the hell else would it have been?”

“Oh.” Gary leaned back onto his elbows, brow furrowed, but tone lighter than it was before. “But why are you so upset about it? It’s not like the Cassavetes don’t have money to burn. Shit, I’d love it if one of my clients offered to pay off my bills out of the goodness of her heart.”

“Marina is
not
a client,” Quinn hissed.

Gary put up his hands. “Okay. Okay. Not a client.”

“She’s my girlfriend.”

Gary nodded. His expression might have been neutral enough, but skepticism poured off him in waves. Pissed as he was at the assertion that his relationship with Marina was anything but aboveboard, maybe Gary was entitled to his incredulity.

Who does shit like that without even asking?

Agitated, he paced at the bedside and tried to make sense of it all.

Why’d she do it?

“We’re talking about fifty-five thousand dollars on those two loans,” he told Gary. “I’m not even going to check the rest. It’s just going to get me more upset. Why would she…
ugh
!” He walked to the closet and yanked the door open. He needed to put on decent clothes and a pair of shoes. “I can’t just wait around here asking questions when I can go to her and get the answers.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“I don’t care if it isn’t. She had no right to do that.”

He had a sneaking suspicion that if he swiped his credit card for a plane ticket to New York, the transaction wouldn’t be declined.

“Does she think she can buy me? That…she can keep me in her pocket or something?” He wanted to be kept, but not like that. It was never about the money with him. He thought he’d done a good job of convincing her of that. Apparently, he hadn’t. To her, he was just one more acquisition.

“You know what? I bet she had her father make Wallace put me back on the team.”

“Quinn, I really do think you’re overreacting. Could it be that she just wants to do something nice for you?”

“People don’t do nice things for me without expecting something in return. They always expect me to pony up, and usually when I don’t have anything to give. And when I ain’t got it, they like to throw back in my face that they should never have given it to me in the first place because I wasn’t worth it.”

Gary rubbed his temples and let his lips sputter. “You’re messed up, you know that, right? Most people I know wouldn’t turn down a gift like that.”

“Is it a gift, though?”

“I think you’re overreacting.”

“I don’t think so. Live my life for a while, and you’d think the same way.”

“Not everyone is out to get you, Quinn. Sometimes, there isn’t anything nefarious about peoples’ motives. I get it. You’re used to being played. You’re used to not getting what you expected. Hey, I’ve been there. I’ve been burned plenty of times, but if I were you, I’d consider this my fresh start. Without that albatross around your neck, you can do whatever you want. Start investing in a future rather than paying off stuff that happened in the past.”

“I wish I could just let it stand at that. But the last time—”

“Right. The last time someone gave you something big, they took it back. But this isn’t so easy to take back, is it? She can’t make you give her back money you never asked for.”

“No. But she’s gotta want something, and I’m going to find out what it is.”

Gary shrugged and relaxed back onto the mattress. “Just be happy with what you’ve got, Quinn. That’s always the problem with you, isn’t it? You expect people to make sense, and that always bites you in the ass. Just stop caring. You’d be happier.”

“Right. Just like you. You’re
so
happy, huh?”

Gary didn’t respond.

“
Hey.
”

Marina smiled at the simple text message from Quinn, and then furrowed her brow. It was after five. He usually tended bar after five.
“Hey. Shouldn’t you be working? Slow night at the bar?”

“Can you tell the security guard to let me up?”

She read it twice, not comprehending what he was asking at first pass.
“Security?”
she texted.

“I’m downstairs, Marina. Can you call the desk and tell him I’m clear to come up?”

“You’re downstairs?”
She didn’t understand how that was possible. She’d spoken to him the day before, and they’d made plans to reconnect in Miami in a week. He’d never mentioned a trip to New York.

“Shit.”

Her phone buzzed again.

“Marina, please. He doesn’t recognize me and won’t let me in unless you vouch for me.”

“Shit,” she repeated. “What’s he doing here?”

She rooted through the piles of paper atop the catchall table by the door and found the important building numbers. Finding it under a takeout menu, she called downstairs to the security desk. “Hi, Kel. It’s Marina Cassavetes. You can let Quinn Hathaway up. Thanks.”

She disconnected, and sent Quinn a text.
“What are you doing here?”

No response, but she really shouldn’t have expected one if he were on the way upstairs at the moment.

She hurried to the bathroom, and cleaned Spackle dust off the mirror so she could check her reflection, then cringed. Her eyes were bloodshot—both from puking and renovation project dust—her hair was greasy, and at some point during the day, her foundation had worn off unevenly. She looked both sallow and streaky.

“A real beauty.”

She wiped the smudges of eyeliner and mascara from under her eyes, gathered her hair into a ponytail, and turned off the light. It wasn’t how she wanted Quinn to see her after so many weeks, but she couldn’t really make him wait—didn’t
want
to make him wait. She’d been stressed and lonely, and she wanted to see him, even if she didn’t know why he was there.

The doorbell chimed, and immediately after that a knock echoed through the unit.

Marina stepped over drop cloths, paint cans, and assorted tools to make her way to the door.

There was a grin on her face when she opened the door, but it quickly fell away. Quinn wasn’t grinning back. He didn’t look happy at
all
.

He looked wonderful, as always, in jeans and a trim, button-up shirt. Positively delectable, and she would have pulled him in and demanded a kiss if it weren’t for his harsh expression. His eyes held a dare, and she wasn’t sure what the cause of the challenge was.

Swallowing, she stepped away and gestured him in.

Duffel bag in hand, he stepped in, and stopped in the foyer. He didn’t put the bag down. He just looked at her.

“Do you need an invitation to come in and make yourself comfortable?” she asked.

“I’m not staying.”

“You’re not sta—but, why are you here? I didn’t expect to see you.”

“Right, because I was working fourteen hours a day.”

“Would have been less if you were working for me, but I thought we agreed that you not working for me was for the best.”

“Yeah. That was the agreement.”

“Then why are you mad at me? You’re acting like you’re mad at me.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“You know what you did, Marina. Come on. Don’t try to play me like this and treat me like I’m stupid.”

“If this is about the baseball thing, I had nothing to do with that offer.”

He nodded slowly. “Maybe you did. Maybe you didn’t. We’ll get back to that, though. What I’m talking about was the money.”

Damn it.

Marina’s shoulders fell. The man was entitled to his pride, and she hadn’t considered that when she’d been scratching her signatures onto those checks. “Quinn, I just wanted to help you.”

“In exchange for what?”

“In exchange for—” She growled. Anger flashed through her, tightening her fists and clamping her teeth together. “In exchange for
nothing
. I help the people I know as much as I can, and I think I do a little better than just
knowing
you. You do agree?”

“I didn’t ask for help.” His voice was on the hostile end of neutral, and his pale eyes stormy.

“I know you didn’t.”

“I would have told you no.”

“That’s why I didn’t ask. You’re too stubborn.”

He lifted his chin and scoffed.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Gary had warned her as much. He was the one who’d collected all the information Marina had needed to pay those bills. He’d told her not to expect gratitude from Quinn, but Marina had written off his admonition as sour grapes on his part.

“I’m going to have to pay it back,” Quinn said.

“Don’t insult me like that.”

“You insulted
me
by paying those bills without me asking you. They were my mistakes to pay for, not yours.”

“I had the money. I wanted to help. Make things easier for you.”

“You can’t
buy
me, Marina! You can’t just—
Ugh
.” He dropped the duffel and paced in front of the catchall table. “I’m not a thing you get to keep for the right price.”

Marina’s jaw dropped.
Is he fucking kidding me?

“Come on, don’t look so surprised,” he said. “Don’t give me that tripe.”

“I
am
surprised, because I thought you understood me better than that. I never tried to buy you anything more than a sandwich here and there! What a crummy thing to say, Quinn.”

Not gonna cry
.
Not going to
.

Her hormones were creating an emotional cyclone inside her body, and she wanted to scream and pull her hair and lash out, but instead, she stood there impotently just…
staring
at him.

“That was a
lot
of money, Marina.”

“It was
nothing
to me.”

“Years of work for a guy like me.”

“Interest income for a lady like me, if you want to play
that
game.”

“Apparently, it
is
just a game to you.”

“Who’s playing games? I’ve always been very upfront with you. I’ve never hedged, never told you a lie, and yeah, I wanted to keep you, but not as some six-foot-tall toy. I wanted to keep you because I care about you and you don’t scare me, Quinn. Or at least you didn’t before. Don’t you understand that? I wanted to make things easier for you so you didn’t have any good reasons not to stick around.”

“If that’s true, you went about it the wrong way. You should have talked to me. You should have known that—”

“Quinn, shut up. Seriously. Shut up. You can try to paint me as the villain here, but I did what I did because I know how men are when they’re cornered and desperate. I wanted to prevent you from having to make hard choices, so I made one for you by not asking you at all. Now, you only have one big choice left. I’m going to have a baby, and it’s yours. So, what do you want to do?”

“You—” Quinn’s mouth opened and closed several times, but no words came out.

Speechless.

And it didn’t look to her like a happy kind of speechlessness. She laughed dryly and turned on her heel toward the kitchen. If she had a bottle of water, she’d have something to do with her hands, and maybe a drink would settle her upset belly.

“You—”

“Yep,” she interjected. “I’ve known for weeks.”

“And you didn’t say anything!” he called after her.

She didn’t like that accusing tone of his, but at the moment, she wasn’t liking much of anything. Maybe she’d made a mistake in expecting so much as a “thank you” from him.

She snatched the refrigerator door open, scanned the shelves for a cold bottle of water, but there were none there. The painting crew must have taken them all.

A sob caught in her throat.
God, I’m pathetic.

She closed the door, then opened it and looked again to the same result. No water.

She didn’t know why that water was so important all of a sudden—she only knew that she wanted it, and it hadn’t been there.

The blubbering she heard took her by surprise, because at first she didn’t understand that it was hers and that she was crying about a bottle of water or maybe other things she didn’t even want to waste words on.

“Dammit, Marina,” Quinn said softly. “If you cry, I…”

She tried to suck it up and make the tears stop, but that only made the condition worse. Her cheeks were wet and eyes burned from the tears that were yet to be shed, and she didn’t think there was an end in sight. She’d cry until the uncovered subfloor warped, and then she’d have to replace that, and that’d make her cry even more.

“I didn’t mean to make you cry. I—
Fuck
.” Sighing, he pulled her against his body, tucked his chin atop her head, and rubbed her back.

He didn’t say anything and neither did she, but things needed to be said.

She had to stop crying first. Even with the surge of pregnancy hormones and being overwhelmed by life in general, she could take control of her faculties. After all she was a grownup. She brokered deals almost every day of her life, and Quinn was just one more deal she needed to make.

Just a deal. Send him home. Let him off the hook.

Yet again, she wailed.

“I’m sorry, baby, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I just—I’m not handling this right, am I?”

“I only wanted to help, Quinn.”

“I know you thought that was what you were doing, but from my perspective, you were just one more person in my life who didn’t care about what I wanted. I’ve been burned so many times, Marina. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“You think I’m a user.” Her chest began to spasm from her badly suppressed sob, and he held her tighter, shushing her.

“I shouldn’t, but I worried that you were. Put yourself in my shoes, okay? The last time someone helped me like this, they took it all back because I couldn’t be what they wanted me to be. They took it all back and made everything worse for me than it was before I’d met them. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

She sniffled and tried to dry her eyes against his shirt. “I didn’t want you to tell me no, but I should have asked. And I didn’t tell you I was pregnant because I didn’t want you to feel trapped.”

“Because you think I have a choice?”

She nodded. “You don’t have to be with me.”

“And you didn’t believe I’d stick around if you told me? Or that if I stuck around it was because I felt obligated?”

She nodded again.

“Fuck, we’re a mess.” He rubbed her back some more, and she sniffled and meditated on the sound of his heartbeat—on his whispered assurances.

Sighing, she looped her arms around his waist and held him close, because with the mess she’d made of things, it might be the last time.

“I’ll have to pay you back somehow.”

She dropped her arms and took a big step back. “
Dammit
, Quinn.”

And then the tears started again, and she didn’t wait around for him to console her. She snatched her keys and headed to the door.

Quinn followed her out after grabbing his bag, and she locked the deadbolt.

“Marina, listen—”

“No. I don’t want to listen to you anymore. You’re just going to make me cry, and I don’t like crying.”

She sniffled and turned to stab the elevator button. Four times.

It was ten floors away and couldn’t come soon enough.

I should never have hired him. I knew I should have sent him away the moment I saw him on that doormat.

The elevator chimed—finally—and she stepped in, hugging her purse tight and avoiding Quinn’s demeaning stare.

On the ground floor, she stepped out and made a beeline across the lobby with Quinn hot on her heels.

“Everything all right?” Kel asked.

She put her most winning smile and nodded. “Could you hail me a cab, please?”

“Already one out there. The guy’s paying his fare now, so you’d best hurry before someone else slides in.”

“Thank you.”

“Have a good evening, Miss Cassavetes.”

She practically dove into the backseat of the cab, but before she could close the door, Quinn grabbed the handle.

“Don’t run away from me, Marina. We’re not going to solve anything like this.”

“What is there to solve? You’ve been very clear about your priorities.”

He gave the door a little tug, and sighing, she let go and slid all the way over to the other side.

“How far ya goin’?” the cabbie asked, eying Quinn through the rearview mirror. “Police station, maybe?”

“Not necessary. I’ll shake him off soon enough at the rate we’re going. Four Seasons, please.”

Quinn scoffed, balanced his bag on his lap, and shut the door. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“So you say. Looks like you’re searching for any excuse to run.”

“I’m not running. I’m just—”

“Feeling around for a excuse to not let yourself believe that there are some people in the world who don’t want to screw you over. You’d rather cling to your indignation. Yeah, yeah.” Her voice broke at the end and she turned to face the window and swiped the tears off her cheeks.

The cabbie got the car moving.

“Maybe you’re right,” Quinn said quietly.

Then, blessedly, he didn’t say anything else until they were in front of her hotel and he was pressing cash through the Plexiglas barrier to the driver.

He might have been nearly broke, but she let him pay. It gave her a head start into the hotel and away from him.