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THERE WAS THAT odd pounding again. Molly paused to listen, the silver-plated trumpet poised at her lips. The noise from downstairs stopped. She shrugged and resumed her playing, improvising around her favorite New Orleans jazz riffs.
There it was again. What was Quinn doing down there, heavy construction? The living room floor quaked under her feet.
Molly moved to the top of the stairs and called down, “Quinn!” Belatedly remembering he’d locked his door, she smiled. You could take the boy out of the city...
Horn in hand, she descended the stairs and knocked on his door. She heard movement, sensed him hesitating on the other side. Finally the lock turned and the door eased open a scant few inches. A heavenly aroma drifted out, something spicy with a base of sautéed onions and garlic.
She looked up into those gray-green, heavy-lidded eyes, framed by lush black lashes—and felt the same giddy jolt that had struck her earlier that day when they’d first met. These were the voluptuous eyes of a practiced gigolo, or an imperious sheik with carnal intent and his choice of slave girls. Not some uptight ad exec on holiday.
She chalked it up to one of Mother Nature’s little practical jokes.
“Quinn, what’re you doing to the ceiling? Exterminating termites with a baseball bat?” Through the narrow opening she saw he held something in his hand. A broom. He was pounding on the ceiling! “Oh, wait. Is that about this?” She held up the trumpet.
The door opened fractionally wider and she saw he was barefoot and bare chested, wearing only thin gray sweatpants. His expression was tightly shuttered, revealing the barest whiff of annoyance. He said, “It’s after midnight.”
She leaned on the doorframe. “Yeah, but I heard you moving around down here, so I knew you hadn’t gone to bed. What, was my playing bothering you?”
“It’s a little late to be blasting away on a trumpet, don’t you think?”
“No. Since you ask.” She grinned. “That pounding on the ceiling—that’s such a city thing. Why didn’t you just come up and ask me to stop? If it was bothering you.”
“I didn’t say it was...” He looked away. Pushed his fingers through his short black hair. “You play quite well, actually.”
“Thanks. But if you want me to stop...”
“No. This is stupid.” He glanced at the broom in his hand, clearly chagrined. “I guess it was just...”
“Force of habit?” She smiled.
His mouth quirked. “I guess so.”
“What’re you cooking? It smells outrageous.” She stuck her head in the door, pushing it wider.
“Chili con queso. Hot cheese dip.”
“No kidding!” She squeezed past him and headed into the kitchen, where the concoction—orange melted cheese with specks of red tomato, green jalapeño, and golden onions—bubbled in a cast-iron frying pan. “A sense of humor and he cooks. Marry me, Quinn.”
He said, “I guess there’s enough for two. Can I, uh, get you something to drink?”
“Oh, I’m terrible, aren’t I, barging in here and making myself at home. Beer if you have it.” She opened the refrigerator and perused the contents. “Quinn, I thought you went shopping today.” He’d gone for a drive and returned with sacks from the supermarket.
“I have beer.” He crossed the room, opened a couple of high cupboards, and pulled down a bag of tortilla chips and a heavy stoneware bowl. Molly enjoyed watching him move, with an easy masculine grace she doubted he was aware of.
She’d known Quinn had a nice body even before seeing him half-naked like this. Despite that loose polo shirt he’d worn earlier, her eagle eye had detected firm pecs, a flat belly, and world-class shoulders that she now struggled not to ogle too blatantly. Molly liked shoulders.
“But that’s about all you have,” she said. “Beer. Soda. Bottled water. A quart of milk. What, are you on a liquids-only diet?”
“Look in the freezer.” As he carried the food into the living room, she just made out his muttered “Since you’re taking inventory.”
“Frozen dinners? Quinn, you’ve got a barbecue grill out there on the deck. Didn’t you see it?”
“There’s also a microwave. It’s easier. You gonna come eat this or not?”
“It’s not about easy. It’s about summer. It’s about the Cape. Gosh, it’s not like you don’t know how to cook.”
She opened her beer and joined him in the living room, where she carefully placed her trumpet on the sideboard before flopping onto the end of the sofa and stretching her legs out on the cushions.
She, too, was barefoot, dressed in a white, spaghetti-strap top with a huge sunflower design on the front, and denim cutoffs short enough for the bottoms of the pockets to peek out under the frayed hem. Quinn sat on one of the well-worn easy chairs, his slightly stiff posture at odds with his state of dishabille.
Leaning toward the wooden coffee table, she reached for a chip and scooped up a gob of dip.
“Careful,” he said. “That’s hot.”
She blew on it and popped it in—and applied a therapeutic mouthful of cold beer as the melted cheese scalded the roof of her mouth. When she could speak again, she said, “I’m impatient. Is that a sign of immaturity, do you think? Being unable to delay gratification?”
Quinn appeared to give that some thought as he loosened the cap on his bottle of spring water. “I don’t know you well enough to say. Do you think it’s a sign of immaturity?”
Gosh, she’d been kidding, just trying to make conversation. Sense of humor or no, this was one serious guy.
He continued, “As far as immaturity goes, there are more clear-cut indicators. Like irresponsibility. Failure to live up to one’s commitments.”
He left that hanging there, those gigolo eyes peering at her from under thick, dark brows as he reached for a chip. Then she got it.
Phil. The wedding.
“I know what you must’ve heard,” she said. “What Phil must be saying about me.”
“He didn’t have to say anything. I was there.”
“Where? At the church, you mean?”
He nodded.
“That looked bad, I know,” she said.
“Leaving your groom standing at the altar? What do you think?”
“He wasn’t actually standing at the altar.”
“Close enough. The wedding march was playing, Molly. You never showed.”
“I showed. Is that what he told everyone? That I never even made it to the church?” Molly sat up crossed-legged, all ears, fascinated to learn what Phil was saying about her.
Quinn paused in the act of dipping a chip, as if her eager attentiveness confounded him. “Well, that was the impression. Phil didn’t make the announcement himself, of course. His brother Ron—he was the best man—”
“Nice guy, Ron,” she said. “Heck of a poker player. Tried to teach me to bluff, but I’m not very good at it.”
“Ron stopped the organ music and told all the guests that the wedding was canceled. That the bride had backed out.”
Molly lifted her beer. “Well, that’s true. I did.”
He stared at her. “How can you be so blasé about it?”
“It was four months ago, Quinn. I’m over it.”
“You’re over it!” He sat forward, his face darkening. “What about Phil? The grief you caused him. The humiliation.”
“Do you want to hear my side?”
He sat back. “No.”
“I didn’t think so,” she said pleasantly. “People are comfortable with what they know, you know? Or what they think they know. Why did Phil fire you?”
The abrupt question rendered him momentarily speechless. Gosh, she hadn’t meant to embarrass him. Her and her big mouth!
“I mean, you’re obviously still on good terms with him,” she said. “That’s so important, not to hold a grudge. Too many people, they can’t get past their ego, you know? Especially guys. This queso is fabulous. You’ve got to teach me how to make it.”
“It was purely a business decision,” Quinn said tightly. “It’s not like I was let go for cause or anything. You must know about the merger with Glacken and Ross. Massive reorganization. Unfortunately, I was one of the casualties. Phil felt rotten about it, but it’s not like he had a choice.”
“How long did you work there?”
“Four months.”
“You must’ve joined just after I left. I took off the last couple of weeks before the wedding to get ready, do all the last-minute preparations. It was going to be, like, this huge fairy-tale production. You should’ve seen my gown—I felt like Cinderella at the ball.”
Until she’d dragged her train through dirt and gravel, crammed the voluminous ivory silk into the driver’s seat of her sister Toni’s battered, two-tone Honda hatchback, and burned rubber out of the church parking lot. Tears had smeared her vision until she’d finally pulled off the highway and brought up her breakfast in a stand of winter-brown forsythia.
Quinn was looking at her with a strange intensity that made Molly wonder if he sensed the direction of her thoughts. She willed the memory back into its dark little cave. Nothing good came of dwelling on the hurt.
“So,” she said. “You must still be tight with Phil to rent part of his beach house for the month.”
Quinn opened his mouth as if to amend her statement, and hesitated. “Like you said, no point in holding a grudge. You, on the other hand—I must admit, I’m surprised you’d want to stay here, all things considered. And frankly, just as surprised Phil agreed to it.”
“Well, he knows how much I love this house and the Cape. We spent so much time here, so many long weekends. I just knew this was where I had to come to collect my thoughts, to find myself, you know? It’s like this house was calling to me. It’s worth every penny.”
Quinn looked as if he wanted to ask her something but knew he shouldn’t. He did it anyway. “How much is he charging you?”
“Nine hundred fifty bucks.”
His eyebrows rose. “Sweet deal. He must still have a soft spot for you somewhere, Molly. This place is pretty rundown, but he could get a lot more than nine fifty a month.”
“Oh, that’s per week.” The queso was congealing fast. She troweled a glob onto a chip.
“Wait a minute. Phil’s charging you nine-fifty a week? That’s—that’s thirty-eight hundred for the month!”
“Well, more, really. The month is four and a half weeks. But it’s still a bargain. He usually gets well over a thousand a week.”
“That’s what he told you?”
“Uh-huh. Why? What’s he charging you?”
Quinn lifted his bottle of spring water. Took a long swallow. Set it back down. “No offense, but I don’t like discussing my finances.”
“Just other people’s.” At his sharp look she laughed and hurled a throw pillow at him. “Just kidding! You gotta loosen up, Quinn. You’re on vacation.”
He said, “You were a copy editor for Phil’s firm, right?”
She grunted, “Mm-hmm” around a mouthful of food.
“I take it you haven’t found another position?”
“Job market’s tough. I figure if nothing full-time opens up when I get back, I can always do freelance.” She ran a chip along the inside of the bowl, scraping off the last of the queso.
“But don’t you have expenses, an apartment to pay for?”
“You’re so sweet to be concerned about me. I don’t have anything left in the bank, but thank heaven for plastic. Without that cash advance, I wouldn’t be here this summer.”
“You financed this vacation with a credit card?”
“So?” She drained the last of her beer.
“So with, what, something like twenty-one percent interest added to your costs—”
“You’re very analytical, you know that? Sometimes you have to just put aside all the day-to-day stuff that grinds you down and open yourself up to, well, this.” She spread her arms wide, indicating the beach, the bay, the whole darn gorgeous, curvaceous Cape, from Falmouth to Provincetown.
“Even when you’ll be paying off this for months or years to come, with no money in the bank and no job prospects?”
“I didn’t mean to give you something else to worry about.” She waved off his concerns. “I’ll be fine. Things have a way of working out.”
“What do you mean, something else to worry about? I’m not worried about anything.” Quinn settled deeper into his chair, crossed his ankle over his knee, and sighed gustily. He looked about as relaxed as a novice snake handler.
“Well, you’re out of work, too, right?” she asked.
“Not for long. If I’d stayed home, I’d have the whole job thing wrapped up this week. This wasn’t my idea, coming up here to chill out and all that.” His fingers drummed on his leg.
“Well, whoever’s idea it was, it was a good one. Just you wait and see. The thing is, you have to embrace it, Quinn. Which it doesn’t look like you’re doing. I mean, I thought you were going to watch the sunset with everyone this evening.”
“I did.”
“For, like, a whole two seconds.”
Quinn shrugged. “It’s a sunset. How long can you stand there and watch a thing like that?”
She wagged her finger, smiling. “You’ll get it. One of these days before you go home, it’ll sneak up on you and you’ll just get it.” She stood up. “Meanwhile it’s late and you’re out of queso.”
She planted her palms on the small of her back and arched her spine, stretching, groaning lustily as she felt her muscles unkink. Quinn’s fingers stopped drumming. He became very still, though his expression never changed. As she watched him watching her, the tips of Molly’s breasts buzzed, springing to attention under her thin little shirt. He noticed, and for a few breathless moments she felt like one of those slave girls presented for the sheik’s inspection. Turn around. Take this off. Dance for me.
Gosh! Both her big mouth and her imagination were getting a healthy workout tonight.
“Thanks for the queso,” she said, breaking the spell. “And the beer.” She started collecting the remains of their repast.
He leaped out of his chair and grabbed the chip bowl out of her hands. “Leave this. I’ll take care of it.”
“Listen, maybe we could barbecue together tomorrow. I have dogs and chicken, potato salad, the works. Bring a couple of those—” she nodded toward the beer bottle “—and we’re set.”
His features settled into a polite mask. “Thanks for the offer, but I really do prefer to eat alone.”
“Oh.”
“I’m kind of, uh, looking forward to a few weeks of just being on my own,” he said.
“Oh. Right.”
“No obligations. No... distractions.”
Embarrassment prickled like a rash. Here she’d barged her way into this guy’s personal space, eaten his food, drunk his beer—criticized his whole outlook on life, for heaven’s sake!—when all the poor man wanted was to be left alone.
“No problem,” she said, backing toward the door. “Good night.”
“Don’t forget your trumpet.” He handed it to her.
Slowly Molly climbed the stairs, trudged into her living room, and flung herself on the sofa, hugging her horn to her chest.
Thirty-one days. How was she supposed to avoid her uptight housemate with the gigolo eyes and the yummy shoulders for a whole damn month?