Neanderthal Marries Human: A Smarter Romance (Knitting in the City) (41 page)

“
Don’t tear yourself up about it.” Kat reached over and patted Sandra’s back, careful to keep her eyes on her friend. In fact, Kat was being careful to keep her eyes either downcast or mostly lowered.

Abruptly, Ashley growled.
“I have a confession to make!” She tossed her knitting to the side and covered her face with her hands. “I am so, so sorry, but I think I might also be to blame.”

We all exchanged wide-eyed glances
—well, everyone but Kat, because she was still avoiding looking more than two inches from the floor.

“
Spill it, Ashley.” Marie prodded her with her elbow. “What did you do? Spike our drinks?”

Ashley groaned.
“Yes! Yes, I spiked the drinks.”

Marie
’s mouth fell open. “You didn’t….”

“
I did. I asked my brother, Cletus, to send me some hooch. I added it to our drinks.” Her shoulders rose and fell with a large breath, then she mumbled, “I added a lot of it to our drinks….”

“
What the hell is hooch?” Dan asked, his hands on his hips.

“
Moonshine! White lightning…it’s nasty.” She peeked through her fingers at me. “I’m sorry.”

“
You dirty hillbilly!” Sandra wrinkled her nose at Ashley, but didn’t sound very upset. “I wish you’d told me. I wouldn’t have handed out the chocolate.”

“
I’ll need a sample of both, what you put in the drink and the chocolate.” Quinn said this between large bites of sausage and eggs benedict.

“
Yes, absolutely.” Sandra nodded at Quinn’s request and huffed an unhappy sigh, her gaze shifting to me. “I’m sorry, Janie.”

I shrugged.
“No harm done, Sandra.”

As soon as I said the words, two interesting things happened.

Kat and Dan glanced at each other then pointedly looked away, Kat turning bright red and Dan clearing his throat.

The other interesting thing was that Elizabeth nodded at my statement.
“Hey, we’ll all get checked out this afternoon, and McHotpants can have his bat-lab do an analysis to see what was actually in that stuff.”

Sandra stared at her, still looking miserable.
Ashley was peeking at all of us between her fingers and seemed content to keep silent.

Elizabeth leaned toward Sandra
and gave her a small smile. “It’s also our fault; we should have known better than to accept chocolate from you. I’ve never seen you share chocolate.”

“
It is not your fault. It’s my fault, and it’s Ashley’s fault. We need to learn how to coordinate our druggings next time.” Sandra folded her arms on the table in front of her and her head dropped.

“
Oh, no. There will
never
be a next time,” Marie teased, turning her work, then asked, “What I want to know is how did Quinn, Nico, and Dan the Man get here?”

Everyone except Sandra
, because her face was still buried in her arms, turned their attention to Quinn. He was mid-bite and looked entirely unconcerned.

We waited for him to finish chewing his food before he responded
. “We were in the desert shooting machine guns and I got a text from Stan. So we took a helicopter over to Circus, Circus and jogged to the chapel.” Then he took another bite as though this supremely odd explanation answered our questions.

Elizabeth looked at him like he
’d just sprouted a fin. “Wait—you were in the desert shooting machine guns?”

He nodded.

“With Nico and Dan?”

He nodded.

“How close is this desert where you were shooting machine guns?”

He shrugged, glanc
ed to the left, swallowed, then replied, “About twenty minutes by helicopter.”

“
Helicopter? You took a helicopter?” Ashley finally dropped her hands from her face.

He nodded.

“Why were you there anyway?” Elizabeth pressed. “Nico was supposed to be in New York this week.”

“
He was. He just came out for the day.”

“
To shoot machine guns…?”

He nodded and punctuated it with a
“Yep.”

Ashley
was studying Quinn intently. After several long moments, she abruptly asked, “Were you there for
your
bachelor party?”

He nodded.
“Yep.”

I looked at Ashley, she looked at me, then we both looked at Marie and Elizabeth.

But it was Sandra who spoke our thoughts. “Can
we
go out to the desert and shoot machine guns?”

Quinn frowned, glanced at Dan. I saw Dan lift his eyebrows then look to the ceiling
and sigh. I had come to understand that, for Dan, this was his silent way of communicating that he was dumbfounded.

Some people say,
“I can’t—I can’t even….”

Some people say,
“Bitch, you
crazy.
”

Some people say,
“I have no words.”

Dan
just glances at the ceiling and takes a deep breath.

Quinn turned his gaze to me, his eyes searching.
“Do you want to go?”

“
YES,” I said immediately and maybe a little too loud. “YES I WANT TO GO TO THE DESERT AND SHOOT MACHINE GUNS.”

His expression softened and his eyes turned dreamy and
adoring as they moved over my features. Then he leaned forward and whispered, “Whatever you want, Kitten. Whatever you want is yours.”

Ten days before
the wedding, my father finally committed to coming. I had Quinn’s secretary, Betty, make the arrangements and reminded Dan to have a tux arranged. I was shocked that he agreed to have dinner with Quinn, me, Katherine, Desmond, Dan, Elizabeth, and Nico on the Thursday before the wedding.

He
’d been my mother’s doormat, and now he was giving me away at my wedding.

But first, I had to make it through dinner with my dad, Quinn, his parents, Elizabeth, and Nico.

A part of me wondered if my dad only agreed to come because he found out Nico would be there.

Shelly
, on the other hand, still wouldn’t return any of my phone calls. Against every fiber of my being, I’d even texted her. Still no response.

I had no choice but to take a day off work and drive down to the farmhouse.
If this didn’t work, I was going to sic Nico on her. No one, it seemed, could resist him.

I told Quinn about my plan
to drive to her farmhouse. He didn’t protest, but he didn’t want to go with me, either. He said we should wait until after the wedding when things settled down to normal, then work on her about starting up Saturday breakfast again.

His plan was unsatisfactory.

If Quinn and I had opted to elope or just go to the courthouse, I don’t know that I would have minded her absence. But her mother had put a lot of work into the wedding. All of Quinn’s family was going to be there as well as my knitting group, and I wanted Shelly to be there, too.

We would be flying out on Monday and staying in Boston for the week leading up
to the wedding day. I didn’t expect her to come and stay the entire time if she didn’t want to. At the very least, I just wanted her there on the day, to share it with us and be a part of it.

It was important to me.

So I sat next to Stan in the front seat on the drive to Shelly’s farm and practiced my speech.

I gla
nced over at him at one point; he was nodding his head along with The Cars song “Good Times Roll.” I discovered The Cars
when Nico made a mix-tape for Elizabeth. I then downloaded their greatest hits to my phone.

Admittedly, one thing I didn
’t hate about the phone was that I could listen to music on it.

Anyway, I soon discovered that all my guards really, really liked
The Cars, and Quinn did too. Therefore, when Quinn and I had our own private panty dance parties, they usually started with “Shake It Up” and usually ended with “Drive.”

Stan, now bobbing his head along with the music, seemed completely at ease. Therefore, I figured it was a good time to apologize for what happened in Vegas.

“So…Stan.”

His eyes flickered to me then back to the road.
“Yeah?”

“
I wanted to just say…I just wanted to say….” I twisted my hands on my lap. “On behalf of everyone, I am really sorry about what happened, what we did to you in Vegas.”

His gaze slid back to mine, held for a beat, then went to the windshield. He cleared his throat.
“Don’t worry about it.”

But I did
, and I was going to worry about it. Even though I had no memory of it, it was going to bother me.

According to Stan, Marie had stolen his phone while he tried to stop us from taking off our clothes. She then threw it out the door of whatever chapel we were in
—the chapel where Elizabeth and Nico apparently got married. He tried to grab the phone, but Marie told a police officer standing nearby that Stan was harassing us and wouldn’t leave us alone.

He was then detained
, and must’ve just missed us when we left the chapel with Quinn, Dan, and Nico.

I shook my head.
“I am going to worry about it. I am so, so sorry. I have no excuse for our behavior, and I hope you will accept my apology.”

He gave me a small smile.
“Nah, it’s fine. Things always get a little crazy during that kind of sh- uh, stuff.”

“
Thank you for being so gracious about it, and please let me know if there is anything I can do to make it up to you.”

He shrugged
and I thought he looked happy, which I felt was a little strange. Regardless, better that he was happy than upset.

We spent
the rest of the journey in mostly companionable quiet listening to The Cars. I watched the scenery change from city to urban sprawl to farmland. Other than mentally rehearsing my speech for Shelly, I let my brain wander.

Surprisingly, my mind meanderings were mostly about my life
and about Quinn, almost like a normal person.

I thought about the private accounts and all the details I
’d learned directly from Quinn some weeks ago as well as from the files I’d reviewed at the office. The Monday after returning from Vegas, I finally looked over the account documents he’d set aside.

I understood now that Quinn
’s assertion that he blackmailed people was a gross oversimplification of the issue. It reminded me of how he kept saying things like “I’m responsible for my brother’s death” when he wasn’t responsible, or how he said, “I’m good at using people,” when he didn’t precisely use people.

I was coming to understand that Quinn actually, truly saw himself as a bad guy. He was a defeatist
; things were black and white, right and wrong, and he’d decided that he was firmly in the not-a-good-guy column.

There was no doubt that
he blackmailed people, especially early on in his business life. He’d blackmailed gangsters and criminals, and had been focused solely on taking down those people who most contributed to his brother’s death.

But now
, from what I’d pieced together, he used information gathered from private accounts to steer his business. He would find out about a plan to open a new club from one of his private clients and then be aggressive about going after the corporate account to provide security. This was especially true if one account—i.e. the club—would eventually lead to a larger account—i.e. casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Monaco.

P
roviding security for clubs led to providing security for hotels, which led to providing security for casinos, which led to providing security for banks. That was the security business food chain.