Eleven
Quinn was hurt and pissed at herself for thinking there could be some kind of special spark between them. He’d said it himself. She broke his heart. He felt sorry for her. She should have known better. Children didn’t keep the same friends or the same heroes forever. It was blatantly obvious their lifestyles were vastly different, and the best thing she could do for herself was step back and let that brief dream of happy-ever-after die.
But as the day wore on, it was obvious Nick wasn’t on the same page. He was being too nice. Ignoring her angry outburst as if it never happened. Was he just being a congenial host, or was there more? Used to keeping her feelings to herself, the whole thing was confusing to her, while on the flip side, Nick Saldano was completely comfortable with emotion and man enough not to give a shit what anyone thought about it. She wanted to be like him, but she didn’t know how.
And, despite the headache Nick had yet to get rid of from the gunshot wound, he hadn’t slowed down. She’d been watching him cleaning the pool for over an hour, admiring his lean muscular body and the warm cast to his olive complexion. The blue tank top he wore clung to his chest in the heat, as did the white swim trunks he was wearing. His wet hair gleamed coal black in the sunshine. He could have been a model. But he was a cop, trying to keep her safe.
The water looked so inviting, but she had the bandage on her shoulder, and he had already explained that keeping her out of sight was the safest thing for her until Anton Baba was arrested. She couldn’t argue with that.
While she was daydreaming about his body, he had finished and was heading back inside. Embarrassed that he would catch her watching him, she jumped away from the window and headed for the kitchen counter and grabbed a glass from the cabinet.
But she missed the ultimate denouement, because as soon as Nick finished, he hung up the pool strainer, turned on the pump and then dived headfirst into the pool.
The cool water was a welcome blast against the heat of his skin, and he swam a couple of lengths of the pool for the heck of it before heading indoors, dripping water with every step.
Quinn was putting ice in a glass when he walked in.
“Hey, honey, would you make me one of whatever you’re having? Oh, and... I forgot a towel, so if you don’t want to be flashed, close your eyes until I get through the kitchen. I’m coming out of these wet clothes so I don’t drip all through the house.”
She froze, then immediately shut her eyes. The door to the freezer was still open because she could feel the cold air on her face, which was just as well because her cheeks were getting hot as she imagined what was going on behind her.
Then she heard his footsteps on the kitchen tile, and as he passed behind her he flicked the backs of her legs with the wet tank top and then laughed out loud when it popped.
She yelped and turned around before she realized what she was doing, catching the brief sight of a tight bare butt and long legs before he disappeared. He was still laughing.
She sighed.
Wow.
Now what was it she’d been doing? Oh yes, making something cold to drink. After that little show, she needed something stiffer, but pain pills denied her anything stronger than a cold soda.
She tossed a few ice cubes in a second glass and filled both of them with Pepsi, then put their glasses on the table and was digging through the pantry for a snack when Nick came back and saw her poking about.
“Cookies at your ten o’clock,” he said.
She found them and carried the whole container to the table.
“I hope you don’t mind that I made myself at home,” she said as she took out a couple of oatmeal and raisin cookies.
“I don’t mind a bit,” Nick said.
There was something in the tone of his voice that made her look up, and then she didn’t know what to do about what she saw on his face.
It was like watching a lit fuse and wondering how much longer it would burn before something detonated.
And then there was a knock at the door.
Nick grimaced.
“Damn it to hell,” he muttered.
Her heart was pounding. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or feel regret that the moment was passing.
Curious, she followed a distance behind and watched Nick open the door. She couldn’t hear what was being said, but it was obviously someone he knew because the first thing they did was punch each other on the arm.
Quinn stifled a laugh. Men had the strangest ways of showing their affection for each other. And then the man came in, saw her standing in the doorway to the kitchen and grinned.
“So, Nick, introduce me to your girl,” he said.
Nick looked over his shoulder, smiling at Quinn as she moved toward them, hand extended.
“I’m Quinn O’Meara.”
He shook her hand and smiled sincerely. “Santino Chavez, Nick’s cousin. It’s very nice to meet you, Miss O’Meara. I’ve never met a real heroine before.” He pointed at her shoulder. “Are you going to be okay?”
She was a little startled by the heroine tag, but let it slide.
“Yes, I’ll be fine, and just call me Quinn, okay?”
Nick thumped Santino on the shoulder again and pointed at the laptop he was carrying.
“So, cousin...did you bring that laptop over here for a reason or just taking it for the ride?”
“Oh. Right. There’s a virus on it that I can’t get off. Would you fix it for me?”
“If you’d stay off those porn sites this wouldn’t keep happening,” Nick muttered.
“I do not look at dirty pictures and you know it!” Santino snapped.
“Only because Lara would break your neck if you did,” Nick said, laughing. “Let’s go to the kitchen table and I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’ll get out of your way,” Quinn said.
“You will never be in my way,” Nick said softly.
Quinn’s heart skipped, and when he held out his hand, she took it and followed them into the kitchen.
Santino saw the cookies and drinks on the table and clapped his hands.
“I’ll make myself a drink and join you, but I’m going for chips and dip,” he said and headed for the pantry.
Nick rolled his eyes.
“This is what he does. He screws up his laptop, brings it over here for me to fix and makes a party out of it for himself.”
Quinn knew Nick wasn’t really angry. In fact, he looked happy. She needed to clear the air between them while Santino was distracted, so she leaned a little closer.
“I’m sorry I flipped out earlier,” she whispered.
Nick looked at her then. His voice was soft, keeping the conversation between them.
“About that. What did I say that upset you?” he asked.
She shrugged. “It was nothing. I’m blaming it on the pain meds—they make me an emotional wreck.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Nick said. He wasn’t upset, but she could tell he needed more from her than a weak brush-off.
Quinn shoved a shaky hand through her hair, blinking rapidly to keep away the tears.
“I just... I don’t want you to pity me,” she whispered, then looked away.
“Look at me,” he said.
She sighed and then turned her head toward him.
“You don’t want my pity, but what do you want from me?” he asked.
“Hey, Nick! You don’t have any ranch dip.”
Nick frowned as Quinn quickly looked away. Santino’s timing sucked.
“Because I don’t like ranch dip and this is my house,” Nick said. “There’s French onion dip on the top shelf.”
He ran a finger down the side of Quinn’s face.
“I will ask you that question again, when we don’t have anyone to interrupt us, so you better be thinking of an answer.”
Unaware of the ongoing conversation between them, Santino set a bag of potato chips in the middle of the table and popped the top off a carton of French onion dip, then went back for his drink.
“He’s really turning this into a party?” Quinn asked.
“Every time,” Nick said. “So, let’s see what crap he’s picked up this go-round.”
Quinn watched Nick’s fingers flying over the keyboard, clicking on one program, then another, and another, his gaze narrowed and fixed on the screen.
Santino set his drink as far away from the laptop as he could get and then smiled at Quinn.
“I spilled a whole beer on the laptop I had before this one,” he said. “Fried it royally. I’m addicted to YouTube. There’s some awesome stuff on there if you know where to look.”
“If you stuck to YouTube, you’d be safe, but you don’t. That’s why you get viruses,” Nick muttered. “You’re clicking on every weird link known to man.”
Santino shrugged and went for a chip, dragged it through the dip and popped it in his mouth.
Quinn was happy just listening and seeing another facet of what Nick was all about. Besides being a cop and having this wonderful, loving family, he appeared to be really tech smart. She couldn’t help but think of what he’d accomplished in his life, while all she’d been doing was living from hand to mouth, day by day.
However, Santino’s arrival brought her out of the doldrums. He was funny and adorable, and his presence took the tension away from the two of them being alone.
It took Nick a little over two hours to locate and scrub the virus from the laptop.
“Finally,” Nick said, as he logged off the computer and shoved it across the table. “It’s clean again, so don’t click on any more sites that have anything to do with women with big boobs.”
Quinn laughed out loud at the look on Santino’s face.
“Are you serious? I was not looking at such sites,” Santino said.
Nick grinned.
“No, I’m not serious about that. The virus was actually attached to an innocent site, and it wasn’t a malicious one.”
Santino shrugged.
“Anything that messes me up with the worldwide web is malicious to me, and thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome,” Nick said, as he got up from the table and stretched, then gave Quinn a hand up and a quick hug before seeing Santino out.
Quinn was cleaning up the party mess when Nick came back. He loaded the dirty dishes into the dishwasher after she carried them from the table to the counter.
“Your cousin is funny,” Quinn said, wiping off the table.
“He thinks so,” Nick said.
She paused on the far side of the table, watching the play of muscles beneath Nick’s T-shirt as he worked. She couldn’t get over the way fate had played into their lives. She would not have recognized him if she’d passed him on a street, and yet here they were, under the same roof again. Even if this was only temporary, she would be forever grateful that life had put them together again.
* * *
Dinner was Chinese delivery.
The whole time they were eating, Quinn kept expecting him to bring up their earlier conversation, but he didn’t. She was beginning to think that he’d forgotten it, and by the time they got to the fortune cookies she had completely relaxed.
“Here’s your cookie,” Nick said, as he dug them from the bottom of the sack. “You have to read it aloud. It’s a rule.”
She broke it open and put a piece of the cookie in her mouth, chewing as she unfolded her fortune. As she read, a flush was rising up her neck that she knew from experience would be clearly visible.
Then she took a deep breath, laid it facedown on the table and put the rest of her cookie in her mouth.
“You didn’t read it aloud,” Nick said.
“You go first,” she said.
He grinned.
“Chicken.”
He watched her eyebrows arch and her nostrils flare as she wadded it up and dropped it in front of him.
“Then you read it,” she snapped.
He was still grinning when he picked it up and smoothed it out, but then the smile died on his face. He looked up, then reached across the table and took her hand.
“Yes.”
Quinn felt the skin tightening across her face. She didn’t know whether she should laugh or cry as she looked down at the words on the tiny scrap of paper.
A second chance at love awaits. Say yes.
Her heart was pounding. He’d said yes.
“Read yours,” she said.
He let go of her hand and opened and read his, then looked up.
“I think we might be onto something here,” he said and pushed the paper toward her.
Again, she looked down and saw the words.
Trust your heart. Your luck is changing.
Her voice was shaking.
“I don’t believe in luck.”
“Neither do I,” Nick said. “But I believe in fate.” He paused. “Now, that’s enough of that. Do you want to go to the pool for a while? I know you can’t get your bandage wet, but you can stay in the shallow end, and it’s dark enough outside that I think it’s safe.”
The abrupt change of conversation was unexpected, but not unwelcome. It had gotten too serious, too fast.
“Sure.”
“Do you have a swimsuit?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Then you go ahead and change. I’m going to clean up here first, but wait for me. Don’t go outside alone.”
“Okay,” she said.
He started carrying the take-out containers to the trash as Quinn stood. When he wasn’t looking, she picked up the fortunes and took them with her as she left.
When Nick came back to wipe off the table he realized they were gone and smiled. Maybe, just maybe, that wall she’d been hiding behind was finally coming down.
* * *
Quinn laid the fortunes in the drawer and pulled out her one and only swimsuit. It had seen better days, but so had she. She tossed it on the bed and began to undress.
The first thing to come off was the sling, and letting the muscles bear all of her weight was a little painful as she laid it on the bed. Her mind was spinning...her thoughts in free fall as she kicked off her shoes.
This time last year she’d been in Denver working at a bar. The year before that it was Miami, working in a greenhouse. She couldn’t even remember the year before that, but looking back, it was painfully obvious she’d been wandering without an agenda. She’d never thought about it before all this. Before she’d nearly died—before she’d fainted in Nick Saldano’s arms.
That bullet in the back had been her wake-up call. Every little-girl dream she’d ever had came back in a rush. Even the princess she’d wanted to be... She’d lost that dream when she lost her knight in shining armor so many years ago. Finding him again in this way seemed too improbable to believe, and yet here they were.
Her clothes came off far easier than they went on, and she reached for the bottom half of her suit. With a little tugging, she got it on, wincing again from the pull of sore muscles in her shoulder. But when it came to the top, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t fasten it, so she put it on, then sat down on the side of the bed to wait for help.
* * *
It didn’t take Nick long to come out of his clothes, but since he’d cleaned the pool earlier in his white swim trunks, the only other one he had was his Speedo. He put it on without thought and headed across the hall to get Quinn.
He knocked once.
“Are you decent?” he yelled.
“More or less,” she answered.
He pushed the door inward and strode toward the bed.
Quinn stood and then stifled a gasp, too tongue-tied to speak. Nick was completely naked but for the tiny black Speedo stuck tight to his narrow hips.
He was admiring the alabaster beauty of all that bare skin when he noticed she was holding the bra part of her swimsuit against her with both hands.
She lifted her chin, refusing to be intimidated.
“I can’t fasten it.”
He leaned forward, reached around her back with both hands and grabbed both ends of the swimsuit top, then hooked them together in one smooth motion.
“That was fast,” she muttered.
“You should see how quick I can unhook one,” he drawled. “Are you ready?”
She nodded.
“Then let’s go,” he said and led the way as he strode out of the room toward the kitchen. He turned off the lights inside before they exited his house so that they wouldn’t be silhouetted against the light, then paused outside for a moment, letting his eyesight adjust. Once he was satisfied all was well, he took her by the hand and led her out.
The moment Quinn walked out into the dark, she took a slow, deep breath. It was the smell of freedom. Spending so much of her life outdoors and riding from state to state on her Harley, she didn’t realize how much she’d missed it until she was no longer surrounded by walls.
“Okay?” Nick asked.
She looked up at him then. The kindness in the tone of his voice and the concern on his face touched her.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“The shallow end is four feet. You can walk out to deeper water from there until it is up past your waist. I’ll try not to splash water on your bandage, and we should be good to go.”
Again, she let him lead her to the shallow end of the pool, then down the steps into the water.
Surprised, Quinn’s voice lightened.
“Ooh, it feels like silk against my skin.”
“Your skin is beautiful. You’re beautiful,” Nick said.
Quinn sighed as she moved a little deeper into the pool. When the water was just below her breasts, she stopped.
“I think this is far enough,” she said.
“Agreed. Do you want to stay out here in the middle of the pool or move closer to the edge?”
“The edge, so I’ll have something to lean against.”
So he walked her to the side of the pool, and as soon as she was safe, he dipped his hand in the pool and made the sign of the cross on her face, first touching her forehead, then her chin, then a touch to each cheek before ending with a touch on her nose.
“My queen! You are now officially baptized in the waters of Saldano. The magic is strongest here in the dark, m’lady. It is my honor to be hosting such a royal beauty.”
Quinn grinned.
“You always were fun to play with when we were kids.”
“I’m still fun to play with,” he said, then brushed a quick kiss across her lips before she could object and swam off into the pool before he got them both in trouble.
Quinn shuddered with longing as she watched him swim away. The warm ebb and flow of water against her mostly bare body was a sensual caress. She leaned back, resting her elbows against the side of the pool, and looked up.
Streetlights and the security lights of Nick’s neighbors took away the density of the night. The stars above were scattered across heaven like diamonds, and the pool lights below the water gave the pool a strange, otherworldly glow. The air was still warm, and the slight splash of water as Nick swam to the other end of the pool made her wish she could get in and race him.
Water splashed. She looked up. Nick had turned around and was already swimming back in the other direction. He continued to lap the pool for several minutes. Once, he got out at the deep end of the pool and went toward the pump. She watched him squat down to adjust some kind of setting and then dive back into the pool, cutting the water with very little sound or splash. He lapped the pool one more time, and when he started back again, she realized he was coming toward her.
When he stopped in front of her and stood, they were nearly at eye level. Then he leaned forward, grabbing on to the rim of the pool and encircling her with his arms.
Even though their lips were only inches apart, Quinn lifted her chin to meet his gaze.
“Sweet, fiery, unpredictable redhead that you are... I don’t fully understand what I did to piss you off, but I will clarify one thing for you right now. I have all kinds of emotions regarding you and your presence in my home and not a damn one of them involves pity. It feels like my whole life has been about waiting for this moment...waiting for you.”
Then he leaned in and brushed a kiss across her lips.
“And so, Your Majesty...there you have it. I laid my heart on the line. You know what I want from you. So what do you want from me?”
Quinn was blindsided, scared and ready to risk every kind of heartbreak. She didn’t hesitate.
“I want you. No matter what tomorrow brings, I want you now.”
“Your wish is my command,” he said, then took her by the hand and led her out of the pool.
Quinn’s heart was pounding, but she’d never been so sure of anything in her life as she was of making love with this man. Risk nothing, gain nothing.
Risk your heart, gain the world.
He stripped in the dark outside the sliding glass doors, leaving the scrap of a suit in a puddle beneath his feet, then stripped her, as well.
“You’re shaking,” he said softly. “Are you cold?”
“Not cold, just ready.”
The words were a punch in the gut. Now he couldn’t get her inside fast enough.
The air-conditioning was a shock against their skin as they stepped inside. He locked the sliding doors and set the alarm, then picked her up as if she weighed nothing and carried her through the house.
He set her on her feet beside his bed and then pulled back the covers.
“We’ll get the sheets wet,” she said.
“Yes, we will,” Nick said.
She eased down onto the bed, but when she reached for him she winced in pain.
“Don’t! Let me,” he said and crawled into bed beside her. He rested on one elbow to gaze at the beauty beside him.
“Truly a queen,” he whispered and rubbed the edge of his thumb along the sensuous curve of her lower lip.
She cupped the back of his head and pulled him closer. He watched her eyes closing and heard her breathing quicken as he rose up to straddle her body. Bracing himself above her, he stole the first kiss as she was taking a breath, and swallowed the moan that came up her throat. He moved down from there, to the hollow at the base of her throat, then her breasts, circling first one hard pink tip with his tongue and then the other. By the time he got down to her belly she was moaning. As he began to push his knee between her legs, she moved instinctively to let him in.
She was whispering something over and over as he settled within the valley between her thighs. When he realized she was saying “hurry,” he thrust his hard aching erection into her waiting warmth as deep as he could go.
She arched up beneath him with a groan and met the first few thrusts with timed precision. Before he knew it, she was coming so hard and fast that the tremors inside her body rolled around him in a quick, wet heat.
Her climax rocked him so hard he feared for a few moments that he would lose it, but finally gained control. Even as the aftershocks pulsed through her in waves, he was still moving inside her in slow, deep strokes.
Quinn didn’t want to open her eyes for fear she’d see herself floating above her body, convinced no one could have experienced that kind of rush and lived through it.
It took her a few moments to realize that not only was she still alive, but Nick was still inside her, still hard as a rock and still stroking, determined to take her back to her point of ignition all over again.
She’d never had this feeling with another man. Nothing had ever felt this good or this right. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him deeper, holding him tighter until she felt that coil of muscles deep in her body beginning to tighten all over again. She fell into his rhythm, riding the ripples of that feeling. She was hanging on the edge of a second climax when he began to go faster—deeper. Then he broke rhythm between one stroke and the next and let out a deep groan of release as the climax rolled through him.
It was the warmth of his seed spilling deep inside her that sent her over the edge. She cried out as wave after wave of the climax shot through her.
Nick collapsed and rolled so that she was stretched full out on top of him.
No one moved.
Sleep caught them in the afterglow and exhaustion pulled them under.