Quinn
I focused on taking deep breaths as I walked into my dad’s office. I’d put on makeup and chugged a large bottle of water like it was going out of style during the Uber ride, but I knew it wasn’t doing much to hide my feelings.
The hangover headache was finally fading, but my flustered red face? Not even my $300 foundation could hide that.
I pulled my top away from my skin and tried to mentally will myself to stop sweating as I breezed past my dad’s secretary and into his large office, which had walls made of floor-to-ceiling windows.
“How is my beautiful daughter today?” My dad smiled and held his arms open for a hug, which I stepped into.
“Not well.” I grimaced.
“Long night last night?” His smile disappeared, and guilt flooded through me. I’d always hated letting him down, and it seemed like I always did.
“Not for the reasons you think.” He knew I’d gotten into partying, and I knew he disapproved. “We have a big problem.”
“What happened?” My dad took a seat at his desk, and I sat down in the chair in front of it.
“A man showed up at my door last night.” He didn’t need to know the whole story, right?
My dad’s upper body went rigid, and more guilt filled me. Was it okay to pin everything on my mountain man? It wasn’t like he’d chosen me for his soulmate, but he was a shifter. Who else was there to blame? God?
“He’s a shifter, a wolf shifter, and well…” I hesitated. Not only did the truth sound crazy, but I also kind of wanted to keep my mountain man to myself. I didn’t want to have to share him.
Or deal with my dad’s disapproval more than I already did.
“He says we’re soulmates. I think it’s true.” I pulled my hair to the side and tilted my head to the right, showing my dad my neck.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?”
My face flushed when he asked, and I reached up to the left side of my neck, which I’d showed him.
“Sorry, um,” I pulled my hair to the other side, feeling like the biggest idiot in the world. How had I forgotten which side the shifter mate marking was on twice?
This time, my dad didn’t say anything.
When I dropped my hair and looked at him, his face was pale.
“Are you sure that’s not just a tattoo?”
Was I sure?
When he asked me that, confidence filled me. I was more than sure that the mate mark was real, I would’ve bet everything I had that it was. My mountain man was my soulmate.
“I’m positive.”
My dad didn’t move.
“What’s his name?”
Well. That was a good question, actually. One I didn’t know how to answer.
I bit my lip.
“I didn’t ask.” I admitted. “I was kind of panicking.”
My dad closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. As he often reminded me, every gray hair on his head was because of me and my “antics”. Not asking for my soulmate’s name was just another nail in the coffin of my shame.
“You’re soulmates with a shifter and you didn’t think to ask his name? How am I supposed to get rid of him if I don’t know his name, Quintessa?”
When he used my full name, the entire ugly thing, I knew he was upset.
“I’m sorry. I can go back to my apartment and ask.”
Exactly what he had said hit me as I finished offering to go after him.
“Wait, you want to get rid of him?” For some reason, the idea of me losing my mountain man terrified me. “He’s my soulmate.”
“And you’re going to be engaged to Travis Childers by the end of the year.” My dad’s voice was hard. I’d known about the political marriage for months, but I’d figured my being soulmates with my mountain man would put more than just a dent in that plan.
“You can’t marry someone else when you’re soulmates with a shifter, it’s against the-”
“I’m a lawyer, Quinn. You don’t have to remind me what the law is.” He dared me to disagree with his eyes. “I’ll find a way around the animal.”
“How are you going to get rid of the magical tattoo?” I gestured to the right side of my head.
“Put a non-magical one over it.”
“And the fact that he can find me wherever I go?” I folded my arms.
“Why does it seem like you’re okay with this, Quintessa Armelle?”
There it was, the entire ugly thing along with the entire ugly middle name. Maybe the name would sound good on someone else, but it had never fit me.
“I’m not okay with it, dad, but there’s nothing I can do. I’m trying to wrap my mind around it.” I protested. I didn’t want him to think I was betraying him or something, but well, I was starting to accept that I had a soulmate.
“There’s always something you can do. I’ve taught you that since you were three years old, and you’d do well to remember it now.” He stood from his thousand-dollar desk chair and folded his arms. “You’re a Longhorn, Quinn. Seven generations of Longhorns have fought hard to keep our name untarnished by the filth of this world. Do you think sleeping with an animal is worth throwing all of that history away?”
Once again, guilt filled me. I may as well have been a big old guilt balloon, I was so full of it.
“No, sir.” I tucked my hair behind my ear and fought to stop my body from shaking. I’d spent my entire life trying to make the man in front of me proud, and I wasn’t about to stop. Not even for my mountain man.
“I’m going to figure out a way to separate you two legally, but while I do it, I expect you to figure out how to make sure he doesn’t come after you when it’s all said and done.” My dad looked at me with his graying hair—that I’d caused—and his steely blue eyes, and I said exactly what he wanted to hear.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to get rid of him.”
I might have been a disappointment of a daughter and a failed pre-Olympic gymnast and a college dropout, but if there was one thing I had never been, it was a liar.
“Good. Now, you’d better go fill in your mother. She needs to be prepared for when the press finds out.”
“Alright.” I stood up as my dad sat back down. “I’m sorry, dad.”
He met my eyes with a frustrated stare, and I knew I wasn’t going to get any tiny bit of compassion or understanding from him. As far as my dad was concerned, me being soulmates with my mountain man was my fault.
Just like everything else.
“I’ll fix this, I swear.” I vowed, and then hurried out of the room.
It was time for me to start brainstorming ways to get that sexy shifter to walk away from me after spending his entire life waiting to meet me. I was going to need a very detailed plan, along with a truckload of backups.