Under the Gun (CEP Book 3) (2 page)

“Yes, we’re still going. But, uh, this is where it gets tricky,” Tilly answered with a nervous giggle.

Quinn narrowed her eyes as she looked out her window again. She’d known Tilly for ten years now, since their freshman year at Syracuse University where they’d become fast friends then roommates their sophomore year until graduating. Afterward, they’d both headed to NYC where Tilly had moved to Brooklyn to open her own photography studio and Quinn had leased a loft apartment on the Upper West Side in Manhattan while continuing her education at NYU, earning her Ph.D. in psychology. Quinn had next joined a group practice where she’d worked a year then she and Daphne Markham, another woman from the group, had left, partnering to open their own private practice in the office where she now sat. So that all being said, she knew her best friend well enough to know something was up when she heard her giggle.

“Tricky, as in you’re pushing the time back for dinner tricky, or you’re pulling some shit that I don’t want to hear tricky?”

“Uh, option two.” Tilly openly chuckled now.

Quinn dropped her feet from her desk then stood and went to her closet, punching in the code to unlock the door and pulling out her coat then purse which she placed on her desk as she donned her coat. “Don’t fuck with me, Till. It’s been a long week and all I want is to consume copious amounts of wine and gripe to my best friend about the shitty state of affairs my love life happens to be in right now.”

Tilly laughed. “Let’s do it. I just wanted you to know that someone from CEP will be coming along as per John’s instructions, probably Boone, to keep us safe.

“Which one’s Boone?” Quinn asked.

“Boone Streeter. He’s the funny one.”

“Good. I could use a laugh or two,” Quinn replied. “Is he hot? Tell me he’s hot.”

“All the men at CEP are hot,” Tilly claimed. “But he won’t be eating with us. He’s just there to stand guard and make sure we’re safe.”

Quinn knew her friend was rolling her eyes right then because, like her, she thought that was ridiculous. “Stop rolling your eyes, Till.”

“How do you always know?”

“I’m just good that way,” Quinn answered. “Okay, I’m leaving now. Our reservation’s at six, and with traffic I’ll probably be there in forty-five minutes which will be perfect. Will that give our bodyguard enough notice?”

“It should. I’ll give Boone a call right now and let him know. See you soon!”

Quinn stepped out of the cab and went inside the restaurant checking with the hostess to see if Tilly had arrived yet. Upon being informed that she hadn’t and that their table wouldn’t be ready for another ten minutes, she went to the bar to wait.

Removing her charcoal gray suit jacket, she hung it on the back of her barstool which left her in a delicate satin, silver shell top with a lace insert at the V-neckline and the suit’s matching pencil skirt. She then stepped up onto the stool with her five-foot frame and sat, crossing her shapely legs which got her a few appreciative glances from various male patrons, all of which went unseen by her because she was only interested in what the bartender had to offer. When he appeared, Quinn ordered a glass of much needed Sauvignon Blanc because, God, it’d been a long week. She smoothed back a lock of her curly auburn hair that Tilly always said looked like Julia Roberts’s in
Pretty Woman
, and let out a sigh.

On Monday she’d acquired a new client, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a highly-acclaimed plastic surgeon in NYC. The girl had received as presents for her twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays a nose job, chin and cheek implants, liposuction and a boob job, respectively, from dear old dad, and now her parents were concerned as to why their child had body dysmorphic disorder. The girl, who closely resembled a real-life Barbie doll in her perfection, had cried the entire appointment because she’d been so upset that her thighs “looked like tree stumps” in the leggings she’d worn. What Quinn had wanted to do at that point was to have a separate session with the girl’s parents, chewing them out but good for doing that to their daughter, and she’d made a note to talk to them the next week. But one of the worst parts of the whole situation? The girl had a younger sister who was heading in the same direction. Jesus.

Tuesday, Quinn had been subpoenaed to produce the records of a former patient and that had pissed her off.

On Wednesday, her twenty-two-year-old baby sister Jodi, who’d been starring in a new and surprisingly successful off-Broadway play, had moved out of Quinn’s apartment so she could “spread her wings.” Yeah, Quinn had noted, moving in with your controlling casting director boyfriend allowed for so much wing spreading.

On Thursday Jodi had phoned crying to come home, and when Quinn had made arrangements for her sister’s things to be collected, Jodi had called back an hour later having changed her mind saying she loved her boyfriend and wasn’t leaving.

Then today had begun with fourteen-year-old Casey confessing that he wanted to rape his little brother’s sixty-year-old nanny and had been topped off with thirteen-year-old Jeremiah revealing how he wanted to stab his little sister to death.

So yeah, it’d been a shitty week and Quinn felt she definitely deserved her wine which she greedily reached for and partook of once the bartender delivered it.

As she rolled her head on her shoulders, trying to ease the tension in her neck, she suddenly felt a presence behind her. “I know just the thing for that, Ms. McDonnell,” a deeply seductive voice hummed in her left ear.

God. She melted as that smooth utterance rolled over her then closed her eyes as she experienced a full-body shiver. Moving her head a bit to the side, she answered in a sultry voice, “Oh? Are you going to hire a hot masseur to give me a neck massage, Mr. Murphy? And by the way, it’s
Dr.
McDonnell.”

She felt him pull away then turned a bit in her seat with a smirk to see Gunner Murphy, one of CEP’s finest—and, she thought, all-around best looking even though she hadn’t seen all of the guys who worked there, but whatever—standing at her side, all six-foot-four-hottest-body-she’d-ever-seen-sex-on-muscular-legs of him giving her a sexy half grin. His black hair in its fade cut looking groomed as ever and his vivid blue eyes that caught everything going on around him and that seemed to stand out even more against the navy button-down he wore under a charcoal gray sport coat, just took her breath. Literally made her breathless. And the fact that her body instantly reacted to him, her womb giving a dip and her nipples going erect at just the sight of him, actually didn’t throw her because it happened every damned time she encountered him. Holy fuck.

He raised an eyebrow at her, those startling blue eyes of his twinkling with amusement. “I think I can fill that role.”

“Oh, really?” she answered, biting her lip and watching as he nodded slowly, his smoldering look about to undo her right there. God, so alluring.  But in spite of the handsome figure he cut, she still couldn’t help playing coy with him as she brought her wine glass to her lips just after stating, “You’ll fill the role of finding me a hot masseur then?”

She saw the corners of his mouth twitch at her wordplay as his eyes burned into hers—damn, those eyes, so brilliantly blue—and couldn’t help the smile that now formed on her own face as she took a sip of wine, at the fact that nothing she said ever seemed to scare the man away.

Their verbal sparring had begun over a year before after they met when Tilly had been kidnapped by a murderous lunatic. Quinn hated even thinking about how she’d almost lost her best friend, but with all the bad that’d happened had come something she wasn’t quite yet sure she could deem as good—her introduction to Gunner. But he’d been so sweet to her when she’d broken down as they’d waited for news about Tilly, allowing her to cry in his arms then afterward calming her by talking quietly to her, keeping her mind off what had been going on. He’d been so gentle, so sweet to her and she’d appreciated him so much for it that she’d invited him to coffee a few days later but he’d turned her down saying he’d take a rain check, which to date he hadn’t “cashed in.” Ever since, whenever they ran into each other, they invariably engaged in a kind of elaborate, flirtatious dance in which it appeared neither was willing to take to the next level which pissed her off because she didn’t know what to do with that.

Oh, she knew Gunner would sleep with her if she so much as batted an eye at him, but that wasn’t what she was looking for anymore. It wasn’t that she was a prude since she was currently sleeping with Rod, fellow psychologist hot guy with whom she had an FWB gig going—and whom Tilly had no problem telling her every chance she got that she hated—but Quinn had no intention of getting serious with Rod. And it wasn’t like she hadn’t had one-night stands when she was younger. She’d most definitely had some fun. But she was now twenty-eight and the idea of just fucking someone for the thrill of it and never seeing him again had—and she’d had to chuckle humorlessly when this little realization had hit her—lost its appeal.

If she were to be really honest with herself, which made her grit her teeth and become a bit irritated, she knew exactly what her problem was when it came to Gunner Murphy: she knew that if she let him, Gunner could break her heart in fifty-million different ways, and she wasn’t about to let that happen.

So round and round they went, performing a careful tango with each other as they flirted like overly-hormonal teenagers.

“I’ll do whatever you want me to,” he answered suggestively, his hand resting on the back of her barstool, his thumb smoothing over the soft fabric of her shirt barely grazing against her skin and making goose bumps appear in its wake.

“Oh, but what I want, you couldn’t handle,” she retorted silkily, looking seductively at him from under her eyelashes.

“Baby, I can handle anything.” His eyes pierced hers hotly.

Of that, she had no doubt, damn it.

She took another drink looking at him over the top of the glass. “But would you respect me in the morning?” she asked pulling the glass away and setting it on the bar.

He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Not only that. I’d respect you all night long.”

She sucked in a breath. God, he was enticing.

“There you are! Our table’s ready!”

Quinn’s head shot around quickly to see Tilly walking toward them, and she couldn’t decide if she wanted to kiss her bestie for keeping her from making a huge mistake in taking Gunner home right then or if she wanted to punch her bestie for keeping her from making a huge mistake in taking Gunner home right then.

Huh.

Quinn’s eyes slid back to Gunner’s as she licked her lips then she sat up straighter trying to compose herself a bit. Gunner’s eyes flashed as he gazed at her mouth and any kind of composing she was attempting halted as she gasped at the look of pure lust on his face. Holy crap. The man was too attractive for his own damned good.

When he took her hand to help her down from her barstool, her heart skipped a beat. Good lord, he had it all—he was handsome, a gentleman, and fucking sexy.  When he handed her her glass then retrieved her suit jacket from the back of the stool draping it over his forearm before putting his other hand gently at the small of her back to lead her toward the dining area, she knew she had to be careful because any resistance she tried to employ when it came to Gunner Murphy was just a big fat joke.
 

Chapter 2

Gunner shook his head and wore a slight smirk as he walked with the women, his fingertips softly skimming over the satin blouse at the small of the petite redhead’s back in front of him.

Quinn McDonnell was one fucking sexy-as-hell spitfire all wrapped up in a killer body. Christ, it was all he could do right then to keep himself from snatching her hand, dragging her outside and throwing her ass into a cab—where he’d proceed to do very naughty things to her on the way to her apartment. Once there he’d fuck her six ways to Sunday until he got the smart-mouthed woman out of his goddamned system once and for all.

She’d been on his mind for over a year now which had somewhat screwed with his head. Enough so that he’d found himself seeking out redheads to take home when he went out with the guys, which was just fucked up. He’d never been particularly into redheads but since meeting her, they’d become his preference which was even more fucked up.

But he knew to stay away from Quinn because when he’d met her last year when Oz’s wife had been kidnapped, he’d felt in his gut that Quinn had been a threat. It wasn’t anything in particular that she’d done. It was just…her. He’d felt an immediate attraction to her, nothing like he’d ever experienced with any other woman before, which had him running in the other direction. Fast. And he knew he needed to keep running because he didn’t need that shit now or ever.

In the past two years, he’d watched both his brothers fall hard for their women. His baby brother Chase, who was four years younger, had gone after Julia with a vengeance that had had Gunner shaking his head. Then when Layton, who at thirty-two was two years older than Gunner, had proposed to Genevieve, a model Lay had met at some big Hollywood casting party for the movie script he’d written, Gunner’d had to laugh that it was he who remained the sole Murphy brother with a fucking brain left in his head. Why the hell they wanted that snafu in their lives was a mystery to him.