Predicament
Days passing only intensified the dread building in Quinn’s stomach.
She snapped her laptop shut on the patio table and switched her cell phone to her opposite ear. “Chase, you can’t let me walk into an ambush at the cookout today. You know how Mom and Aunt Loraine are. You have to be there as a buffer for me.”
“I can’t just hop on a plane. I’m in the middle of a job. And from what I hear, you’re not going alone.”
Perfect. The news had already traveled across three states. Why was she not surprised? “Kill the singsong tone. It’s not what you think.”
“Littleton’s prodigal child coming home with an eligible beau at her side? Oh yeah, it’s exactly what I think—Mom’s dream come true.”
Cringing, Quinn dragged her cool orange juice glass along her forehead. “At least help me come up with an excuse to get out of going.”
Her brother’s obnoxious laugh cut right through her flimsy plea. They both knew good and well there was no getting out of this. “It won’t be that bad. I’m sure Gramps will limit his inappropriate commentary to only half the day.” A string of laughter rolled through the line.
“I hate you right now, you know that?” She set her glass aside, hoisted her leg up in the patio chair, and dropped her head onto her knee. “Why am I even talking to you about this?”
“I’ve been asking myself that same question since you woke me up first thing this morning.”
“You’re impossible.”
“And you’re overreacting.” His tone shifted with the breeze fanning Quinn’s bangs across her lashes. “Relax. Mom’s just glad you’re home. It’s been too long, Quinn.”
He was right. Months had turned into years, just like the space she’d needed had turned into an excuse to hide. “I know.” But that didn’t make it any easier.
“Then live it up at the cookout for me, will ya? Never know, you might actually end up having fun.”
Or a coronary. “I’m hanging up now.” Man, he was almost as bad as Ava. Though, at least he’d answered his phone this morning. Quinn checked her cell for any missed messages. Still no returned call. Knowing Ava, she was still asleep after a lively evening last night. Like another someone she knew.
She glanced at the closed blinds on Cooper’s room. He’d gotten home long after she’d gone to bed, probably out on a real date—unlike the fake one she was dragging him on today.
Wait, this whole predicament was his fault. Well, sort of. Okay, fine, so she’d spun her own mess, but he didn’t have to go pouring gasoline on it by romping around as her pretend boyfriend.
Quinn reopened her laptop, stared at the single paragraph it’d taken almost an hour to write, and slumped in the chair. Who was she kidding? She was just as much of a fake.
Cruella wanted a briefing every day, but even after being here a week, Quinn still didn’t have anything substantial. She could only write so much fluff before her boss nailed her for not being able to cut it as a journalist. How was she supposed to prove she was equipped for the executive editor position if she couldn’t even master the tasks of the people she’d be overseeing?
She should probably stick to basic editing. She’d obviously lost her writing skills. Maybe she never even had any.
A skinny black cat jumped into her lap out of nowhere. Quinn froze with her arms hovering above her keyboard. If the cat sensed surprise, she didn’t let on. The little thing pawed around Quinn’s legs, rubbing her head up under her arms as she circled.
“Um, hi there. Where’d you come from?” Cooper owned a cat? She ran a cautious stroke along its back. But when the little purr box walked her two front paws up Quinn’s stomach and went to nuzzle her adorable wet nose under her chin, Quinn melted.
“Aren’t you just the cutest thing ever.” Bright green eyes, tuxedo markings, the tip of her right ear missing—she liked this cat already. “Scrappy, too, huh?”
Still purring, the cat made bread against Quinn’s stomach, which tightened without warning. If she was honest, she could use a friend here.
Not that Cooper was hard to live with. He was surprisingly kind of sweet, and his coffee wasn’t exactly terrible after all. Maybe this pretend relationship thing was a blessing in disguise.
“Couples talk, right?” she said aloud. “They share secrets and stuff.” Rubbing the cat’s head, she reclined against the chair back. “What do you think? Should we give it a shot?”
The cat launched off her lap onto the deck and scampered through the railing slats.
“Too much talking?” Quinn called after her. That was probably a bad sign. Stupid. It’d never work. What made her think she could do this?
Ava’s ringtone lit up her cell on the table. Quinn bumped into her laptop, stretching for it. “Finally,” Quinn said, skipping hellos. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”
“Really? I had no idea. Your fifteen texts didn’t clue me in at all.”
“Yeah, well, this is an emergency. Cooper and I ran into my mom yesterday.”
Ava took a sip of something. Probably a caramel macchiato—the same cup of deliciousness she would be drinking right now if she weren’t in the sticks.
“Just tell her he’s Gil. She gets to put a face to your imaginary boyfriend. You get to keep her off your back for a little while longer. Problem solved.”
“No, you don’t understand. She’s having us over today. My mom, Ava. As in, the woman who’s at home right now, already planning our wedding. How am I supposed to keep Cooper from finding out I work for News First when she’s going to pounce on him with my entire life story the minute we walk through the door?”
“Here’s a thought. Why don’t you tell him the truth. Just lead with an Anderson Cooper joke. It’ll be awesome.”
A joke. Right. Her coffee obviously hadn’t kicked in yet. “I’m sorry, you do know our boss, right? The woman itching for an excuse to fire me? I can’t ruin this.”
Ava’s lack of response from the other end of the line pulsed with something she wasn’t saying.
“What now?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Ava.”
“Fine.” Her best friend sighed. “Remember Chad? That guy from Corporate I went on a few dates with? You’re not going to believe what he told me last night.” In classic Ava style, she stretched the dramatic pause.
Quinn’s grasp tightened around the phone. “If you don’t just spit it out, I’m gonna—”
“Cruella’s job is on the line this quarter!”
“What?”
“It’s about time, isn’t it? The woman can only strut around on her power trip for so long before someone puts her in her place.”
Quinn swirled her orange juice in the glass, a jumble of thoughts circling into each other. “You think she knows?”
“Doubt it. If she did, she might be thinking twice about letting people go just ’cause they have a single hair out of place.” Voice sobering, Ava sounded like she was tapping a fingernail to a desk. “This could be good for you, Quinn. Her plan in sending you out there could totally backfire on her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The feature on Cooper. You don’t think Corporate’s going to take notice of you after this? And if Cruella’s position ends up being open . . .”
Editor-in-chief? She’d be lying if she didn’t admit she’d had her eye on that job since day one. The creative changes she could make, the chance to lead and honor the whole team—it was what she’d always hoped for.
Pressure expanded in her gut. What if she wasn’t ready for Corporate to look at her? What if failing to come through on this piece only proved that Cruella should stay and Quinn should be demoted, fired even? How could she face her family if that happened?
Her eyelids caved shut. She had to make this work. “I need more time.” She draped an arm over the top of her laptop. “Maybe if I tell Cooper—”
“Tell me what?” he asked while opening the sliding screen door.
Quinn swung her laptop shut so fast, two birds on the rail tore into the trees like a gunshot went off. “Gotta go,” she whispered into the phone before hanging up. Deep breath. She could handle the pressure. Just had to play it cool.
Carrying a plate of the breakfast she’d left in the kitchen, Cooper pushed Brayden’s umbrella stroller on his way across the deck in his pajama pants. Thankfully, he had a T-shirt on this time.
He parked the stroller beside the monitor Quinn had brought out with her and dropped into the opposite seat.
“You found the breakfast I left you,” she said.
“I saw the sticky note.” The corner of his mouth lifted in obvious amusement. But the minute he took a bite of his omelet, his warm smile sprawled across her with the morning’s sunshine. “You keep cooking like this, and I might not let you go.”
She looked from his playful eyes toward Brayden instead. “Going for a walk this morning?”
When a question arched his brow, she pointed to the stroller.
“Oh, nah. I just figured it’d be easier to bring him out here in that. Plus, he seems content in his car seat or stroller most of the time, so I thought it might keep him happy.”
Quinn scanned over Cooper’s messy bedhead, bulky arms, and aggravatingly cute dimples that dipped the slightest bit each time he chewed. Player turned father. Who would’ve pictured it? “Looks like you’re getting this parenting thing down pretty well.”
He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, eyes dimming. “It takes more than a random observation to make a good parent.”
Setting his fork to his plate, Cooper seemed to ward off whatever was bothering him. “What is it you need to tell me?”
So much for sidetracking him. She pulled her leg up again and tucked her ankle under her thigh, but Ava’s nudge to tell him the truth kept weaseling in. “Uh, yeah, so, funny story. I’m actually kind of a writer.” There, she’d gotten it out. That was good enough, right?
Cooper looked at her like she’d just confessed something already written in blinking billboard lights. “Uh-huh.”
“You already knew?”
“Normal people don’t go around correcting people’s grammar.”
She stifled a laugh. “Writers aren’t normal?”
“They’re . . .” He looked from the acorns covering the deck to the moss-covered tree branches above them as though hoping the right adjective would drop into his lap. “Creative,” he finally said.
“Sounds like you’ve known a few.”
“Creatives? Wait till you meet my sister-in-law.” He linked his hands together over his head and stretched from side to side.
Quinn darted a glance from his flexed muscles back to Brayden, already drifting off to sleep, and took a sip of her orange juice.
“So, you’re writing a story about me?”
Juice sprayed down her chin. In a scramble to wipe it off without looking like a lunatic, she tapped her chest and coughed. “Sorry, I think a gnat got in my drink or something.”
“If I didn’t know any better, QT, I’d think you were blushing.” He crossed an ankle over his knee.
Darn slanted grin. She downed the rest of her OJ. “I’ve always been a little uncomfortable talking about my writing, that’s all.” True enough.
“What do you write about?”
Clearly, he missed the uncomfortable part. Or maybe he didn’t. Punk. She shrugged. “Oh, you know. Stories, news.” Things far more interesting than her own life. She ran a fingertip along the perimeter of her laptop. “I don’t want to bore you.”
Eyes not leaving hers, his gaze somehow deepened. “There’s nothing boring about you, Quinn Mary Beth Thompson.”
What good was chugging OJ when her mouth went completely dry two seconds later? She shielded her face with her hair. They needed a subject change.
Of course, she wouldn’t be that lucky.
“In all fairness, it was more than just your grammar skills that tipped me off. Your mom mentioned you used to write a blog.”
Right. Why couldn’t he have missed that part?
“That was forever ago, and it was stupid.”
“I doubt that.” He took another bite of his breakfast, still looking at her as if what she had to say couldn’t be anything less than fascinating.
Little did he know how easily she could prove him wrong. “Oh, no, I assure you it was. It was called Biscuits and Gravy and All Things Crazy.”
When he struggled to swallow through a laugh, she jutted her glass at him. “See! I told you. Trust me, you can’t even classify it as real writing. It was just a silly blog about family stories and recipes. No one read it.” Thankfully. Just the thought of it still lurking around the internet mortified her. Not that her writing had improved since then. If it had, she’d have more than a single paragraph written for this feature by now.
“You know,” he said, his tone shifting. “About yesterday . . . I gotta admit, I thought your mom wanting to marry you off was kinda cute, but I really wasn’t trying to make things worse for you. I was trying to help.”
“I know.” She dropped her gaze to the puddle of condensation her glass had left on the table. “I’m sorry for how crazy they were acting. I honestly don’t have an excuse for my mom, but my aunt’s been through a lot. She’s the youngest of my mom’s siblings and ended up with some health problems.”
Biting her lip, Quinn fingered a string of moss that’d fallen onto the table. “She and Uncle Carter tried for years to have kids, but eventually he gave up and left her.”
“What?” The disgust in the single word echoed the feelings Quinn kept to herself.
“Ironic thing was, he left the same month she found out about Ginny. On one hand, it was a miracle. She’d finally conceived.” She flicked the moss onto the deck. “On the other, her marriage was already ruined.”
Looking back, Quinn shouldn’t have been surprised to see prayers get only partway answered. Like a tease, the hope they spurred never left a shadow of disappointment too far behind.
Her chair screeched against the grains of wood beneath it when she moved too quickly. “Anyway, I don’t mean to unload a bunch of family baggage on you. Just wanted you to know why she might come off a little man hungry.”
Her laugh fell flat, especially when Cooper’s tender eyes burned a hole of compassion into her chest like he could read the hidden meaning no one else could see.
“I know there’s a lot I don’t know or understand about your past.” He lowered his foot from his knee and dipped his head to catch her gaze again. “But I didn’t miss the way your ex looked at you yesterday.”
She almost snorted. “Like he was trying to figure out why in the world he was ever with me?”
“More like why he’d ever let you go.” Cooper’s sincerity gripped her. “Some guys don’t realize what they have until they lose it.” His brow furrowed with the kind of regret gained from experience, and the stereotype she’d boxed him into crumbled a little more.
A pair of jet skis soared by the end of his property, rousing Brayden awake. He squirmed in his stroller and rubbed tiny fists into his eyes.
Grateful for the distraction, Quinn brought the monitor to her lap and checked the volume. “I didn’t hear him crying earlier.”
“He wasn’t. When I checked in on him, he was just laying there, awake in his crib.”
Lying there. Quinn tamped down the urge to correct his grammar and smiled while wiggling Brayden’s toes. “Was he sucking on his blanket?”
“He did not get that from me.”
“So, he is your son.” The words spouted out on their own like water from a hose. She stiffened, not wanting to meet whatever reactive expression might be on Cooper’s face.
“So I’m told.”
Her head shot up. “You didn’t know?”
He peeled the lining off one of her banana wheat muffins and balled it into a tight wad.
It all registered then. “His mom?”
Cooper left the muffin on his plate and peered down toward the lake. “Car wreck,” he said faintly.
Her heart sank. “I’m so sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am.” He cleared his throat and turned toward her again, his confident aura back in place. “But we’ll make it.”
“I thought you said Brayden wasn’t going with you.”
He tore a piece of muffin off. “He’s not.”
Quinn’s gaze bounced from him to Brayden’s precious cheeks and back. “I don’t understand. How could his not going with you be right? He just lost his mom. He needs his dad.”
Cooper shoved his chair away from the table and bolted to his feet. “He needs a family who can raise him.”
“What makes you think you can’t?”
His usual charming smile turned piercing. “Based on all your assumptions about me, I’m sure you can answer that.” He strode to the rail facing the lake and clutched the wooden edge.
Brayden started to fuss, and Quinn moved into Cooper’s abandoned seat to try to soothe him.
Cooper threaded both sets of fingers through his hair and then let his arms drift to his sides. “I’m sorry,” he said before turning around.
“No, you’re right. It’s not my place to say anything.”
He wandered back over to the table with his head down in an image of vulnerability she guessed most people rarely ever saw. “I guess we both have things we’d rather not talk about.”
A quick glance at her laptop sent her stomach churning. Her cell went off with an impersonalized ringtone. She grabbed the phone, silenced the call without looking at the screen, and rose beside Cooper. Whoever it was could wait. She rested a hand to his arm. “For what it’s worth, Cooper, I think you might surprise us both.”
His hazel eyes found hers, and her grip around his arm tightened more than she meant it to. Mama used to say windows were the eyes to the soul. Quinn’d had hers boarded up for so long, a guy she hardly knew shouldn’t be able to peer inside without a single word.
Her pulse blended into the growing chirping from nearby grasshoppers.
Neither of them moved until his cell broke the silence. Clearing his throat again, Cooper backed up a step and withdrew his phone from his pajama bottoms’ pocket. “My lawyer.”
She nodded, still searching for her voice.
“I have some business to take care of this morning, but I’ll be ready in time for the cookout.”
“Sure you don’t want to do something else today? Maybe go drown ourselves in the lake?” Reread the entire Lord of the Rings boxed set? Anything?
Cooper laughed while backing up toward the sliding door, phone still ringing. “You just have those cobblers ready, QT. I’ll take care of the rest.” He raised his cell to his ear and stepped inside. “Jim, what’s the word today?”
As he wandered out of sight, Quinn turned toward Brayden, blanket in his mouth. She cracked up. “You learned that from your daddy, didn’t you? I know.”
His face scrunched, on the verge of a restless cry.
She unbuckled him, hoisted him onto her hip, and walked along the deck’s warm boards under her bare feet. When he still seemed fussy, she dug around his stroller for the plastic keys Cooper had promptly bought him the first day she was here.
Instead of the keys, Brayden’s attention stayed glued to the glass door Cooper had just closed behind him.
Quinn’s stomach pinched.
Another glance at her laptop sank the blow even deeper. Trying to dislodge it, she kept bouncing Brayden as she walked. “How about we see who called Ms. Quinn, huh?”
She held her cell in place with her shoulder while waiting for the voice message to play.
“Quinn, hi, it’s Brian.”
Her feet stumbled to a stop.
“I’m sorry for how awkward things were at Wakeboard Willie’s yesterday. You caught me a little off guard.” One of his self-conscious laughs trickled over her and blended into the same steady voice she’d curled into so many times. “I was hoping we could get together and talk. Just you and me. This is my new number, so, give me a call when you can. Please. It . . . it’d mean a lot.”
Her pulse ticked in his pause.
“It was good to see you, Quinn. I hope you’ll call.”
Her arm slid to her side, a clear view to the lake grabbing hold of her.
Brayden’s keys clattered onto the deck and elicited a round of cries, but she simply stood there. Staring. Remembering. A flag whipped in the wind along the edge of the dock as written-off emotions blew through her.
Brayden rubbed his face back and forth against her shoulder.
She blinked toward him then. “Shh. It’s okay,” she whispered, maybe more to herself than to him. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Swaying, she fell into a natural rhythm she’d long given up on feeling. When he cuddled his head under her chin, she gripped the railing and breathed in.
Cooper stood in his office, wielding his commanding presence on the phone. One glance from him to Brayden, and Quinn’s insides constricted. Could she really keep doing this?
She smoothed Brayden’s hair across his forehead and forced herself to turn back to the lake she’d left four years ago.