Across town at the Upper Cut, Darla backcombed Susan Bridges and tried to talk herself out of being angry. There was no reason to be angry. Max had been right the night before. Having sex while all of Tibbett watched would probably have been bad for business. And anyway, she’d had all the payback she needed when she’d turned Max down at eleven. He’d put his arms around her in the empty kitchen after Mark and Mitch had finally gone off to bed, and she’d said, “Out of the mood.” Max had dropped his arms and said, “Ooooh-kay,” and wandered off to bed himself without another word to her. Not another word.
“Ouch,” Susan said, and Darla apologized and put her mind back on Susan’s hair.
“Did you ever think of changing your style?” she asked Susan, looking over her shoulder into the gray and scarlet-framed mirror. “You’ve been doing it this way for…a while now.” Thirty years about, was Darla’s guess. “You’d look good in one of those wedge cuts. Bring out your cheekbones.”
Susan sucked in her cheeks and studied herself in the mirror. “Darryl wouldn’t even know me.”
“Well, that could be good,” Darla said. “Give him something different. Make him look at you again. Make him think he was sleeping with a brand-new woman.”
“I don’t notice you changing your hair,” Susan said.
Darla checked her light brown French twist in the mirror. “Max likes it long and this is the only way I can stand it during the day.”
“Well, cut it off,” Susan said. “Make him think he’s cheating on you.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Darla said. Actually, cutting her hair short was tempting. Except Max liked it long. It would be a crummy way to pay Max back for something he didn’t even know he’d done, that she couldn’t even explain to him. I want something different, she wanted to say to him. I want us to be new again. And there poor old Max would be, clueless as to how to give her what she wanted. Not his fault. “I couldn’t do that to Max.”
“Well, see,” Susan said.
As Susan left, Darla’s sister Debbie came back from the break room and plopped herself down on the scarlet seat at the next station.
“Mama said you haven’t called her.” Debbie checked her impossibly blonde hair in the mirror. “She said she raised you better than that and what are you thinking. Do you think I look like Princess Di with my hair this way? I thought it might be too long, but Ronnie says no. Was that Susan Bridges who just left? That woman hasn’t changed her do since the Doobie Brothers broke up.”
“Hi, Deb.” Darla swept the last of Susan’s trimmings from the scarlet and gray—tiled floor around her station and fought back the impulse to point out that since Princess Diana was no longer setting fashion, there was something slightly icky about trying to look like her.
Debbie straightened her Upper Cut smock in the mirror as she babbled on. “Do you know what I heard?” She craned her head to see if anybody at the other stations could overhear, but the only three people at work besides them were across the room. “Barbara Niedemeyer broke up with Matthew Ferguson. Dumped his butt good.” Debbie nodded her head, a good-riddance nod.
Old news, Deb, Darla thought, but kept her mouth shut as she tidied her station. Let Debbie enjoy herself. She’d probably never wanted anything different in her life, just Ronnie, the Upper Cut, and the chance to be the first with good gossip.
“And do you know what that means? She’s gonna be in here to get a new hairdo one of these days. And when she does, we’ll know who the next one is.”
Darla stopped tidying. “What are you talking about?”
“Well.” Debbie leaned forward, waiting for Darla to join her.
Darla checked her watch. It was four o’clock. “I’ve got Marty Jacobsen now.”
Debbie waved her hand. “Marty’s always late. Probably out collecting gossip again. Some people.”
“Right,” Darla said and sat down. “Okay, I’m listening.”
“Well, remember right before Barbara went after Matthew? She came in here and she had me do a henna rinse and put it all up on top of her head, only she said, ‘Make it tasteful, Debbie, and soft, like Ivana’s.’ And I thought that was funny at the time, but then when Ronnie told me she’d dumped Matthew, I thought, ‘I wonder if she’d come in for a new hairdo again,’ and that’s when it hit me.”
“Hit me, too,” Darla said. “I’m lost.”
Debbie leaned closer, letting the arm of the chair dig into her soft middle. “She was trying to look like Lois.”
Darla frowned at Debbie. “Barbara was?”
Debbie leaned back, satisfied. “Yep. Because I remembered that when she was after Janice’s Gil, she wore that ponytail, just like Janice except she fluffed it out some and had me French-braid the top so she looked classy. And then with Bea’s Louis, it was a knot on top of her head, except she had those wisps at the side that make it look so sexy, remember? Poor old Bea just looked like she had a bagel on her head, but Barbara looked great. And then she went strawberry-blonde Ivana for Matthew, and there’s Lois with that orange beehive she will not give up even though she runs a beauty salon for heaven’s sake, so”—Debbie leaned forward again—“I figure sometime this month she’ll be in for something different. And then we’ll know who she’s after, whoever’s wife matches the new do. Isn’t that the wildest?”
“She’s after Nick,” Darla said. “She brought the car in yesterday and it didn’t have anything wrong with it.”
“Nick.” Debbie sat back, not frowning because that made wrinkles but clearly puzzled just the same. “Jeez. That could be anybody. Who’s he seeing now? That Lisa girl?”
“No.” Darla got up and began to tidy her station again. “That’s been over a while. She wanted a ring for Christmas, and he got her the Dusty Springfield Anthology. She didn’t even know who Dusty Springfield was. I don’t think he’s dating anybody.”
“Well, it’s not like any of them last long. A year, tops.” Debbie shook her head. “There’s something wrong with a man who isn’t over his divorce twenty years after it’s over him.”
“He was over that divorce twenty minutes after it was final,” Darla said, trying to keep the tartness out of her voice. Nick might not be steady with women, but he was a damn good brother-in-law, a damn fine man. And he wasn’t stuck in a rut a mile deep, either, not like some people. “He just doesn’t like being tied down.”
“A man should be married.”
“Why?”
They stared at each other, annoyed at being crossed, the same stare they’d been giving each other since Darla had first looked over the edge of her newborn sister’s bassinet and not been impressed by what she saw. There was no reason every man had to be married. Or every woman. No matter how contented Debbie was in her marriage to that fool Ronnie.
Or how contented she was with old stick-in-the-mud Max, damn it.
Something was going wrong with her train of thought. She shouldn’t be this upset. She particularly shouldn’t be this upset with Max, who hadn’t done anything wrong, who was worth twenty of that knucklehead Ronnie. She shouldn’t be bored with him, she was ashamed to feel that way, it was wrong.
But she still felt that way.
“Why are you so touchy all of a sudden?” Debbie said, and Darla felt guilty again. Debbie wasn’t a rocket scientist, but she was a good sister. Darla could have been stuck with Zoë the Exciting who left Quinn feeling gray and flat. Deb was just being Deb.
“Never mind,” she said, and Debbie said, “You mark my words, Barbara’ll be in here any day now. And if she wants to look like Lisa, she’s going to have to grow some hair because it was clear down past that girl’s butt last time I saw her.”
“He’s not dating Lisa.” Darla stood up as Marty Jacobsen breezed in late. “Maybe Barbara’s wised up and is going after unattached guys.”
“That’ll be the day,” Debbie said. “People don’t change. She’s gonna be dating married guys forever. And I’m telling you now, she ever starts hanging around the hardware store and Ronnie, she’s not going to have any hair to do, ’cause I’ll pull it out for her.”
“People change,” Darla said. “If they have good enough reason, they—”
Marty plunked herself down in Darla’s chair and said, “Hi. I’m not late am I? Are you talking about Barbara? Because she’s definitely through with Matthew. I heard—”
By four, Bill had had a long day, made even longer by the BP’s insistence on helping the boys lift, even though they knew more than he ever would. “Hey, Coach, you think Corey needs more weight?” Bobby called to him now, while Corey Mossert, Bill’s thickest athlete in more ways than one, rolled his eyes.
“He’s fine,” Bill said, and moved on to the next lifter with Bobby close behind.
“That Greta is driving me crazy. She’s old, you know.” Bobby shook his head, and Bill almost said, “She’s fifty, that’s not old,” but since the BP had just cracked twenty-eight, it was probably useless to point out the relative youth of his secretary.
“She thinks everything should be done the way that Harvey did it,” Bobby went on. “Can you imagine?”
“Actually, the way Harvey did it was the way she did it,” Bill said as he checked the form on the next lifter. “She’s always pretty much run the school.” She’d had to since Harvey had been mentally dead for the past twenty years, refusing to retire until he’d keeled over from a heart attack at the Pumpkin Festival four months earlier, finally really dead, although as Quinn had said, it was hard to tell since he’d looked a lot like he always had at the assemblies.
“Well, there, see?” Bobby said. “That’s why the school’s been going downhill; no leadership. Until now.”
Bill checked Jason Barnes’s weight stack, which was exactly the weight it was supposed to be. He could count on Jason. He nodded at the big blond senior Quinn called “Bill, the Next Generation.” Their sons would grow up to be like Jason, tall and strong and dependable.
“You know what Carl Brookner told me?” Bobby was saying.
“What?” he said, mainly to humor Bobby.
“He said he thought the levy was a go for this year.” Bobby’s eyes glittered as he stared off into the distance. “He said he’d noticed the murals and he thought a new weight room wasn’t really enough reward for what you were doing with the boys.”
“Well, we’ve needed that levy for a while,” Bill said mildly. “New textbooks, teacher raises—we’re overdue.” The murals were a touchy issue since he’d asked Quinn and the art department to do them, and she’d been against it. “Tell me again why the art kids should shill for the athletic department?” she’d said, but he’d been patient and she’d given in.
“Yeah, but here’s the thing,” Bobby said. “He said we shouldn’t aim low. He said there should be a bond issue in the fall for new buildings.” Bobby’s voice hushed a little as he remembered. “A stadium and a new fieldhouse.”
Bill straightened at that. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” Bobby shook his head, staring into his future. “Bill Hilliard Stadium.” He didn’t add “Robert Gloam Fieldhouse,” but Bill knew it was there.
“I don’t care what they call it,” Bill said. “But we need a stadium.”
“I know, I know, Big Guy,” the BP said, eager to bond again. “And we can get it. You get that tenth trophy, and it’s ours.”
He’d get the tenth trophy. He’d spent five years building a hell of a baseball team, and he’d get that trophy.
And then the stadium. Bill smiled at the thought.
“It’s a beautiful future we’re looking at,” the BP said.
Before Bill could answer, he heard the door to the parking lot slam and Quinn’s voice came from behind him. “I need to talk to you.”
He swung around to see her breathing heavily, glaring at him. Some of the boys stopped lifting to watch until he frowned and they all went back to work except for Jason Barnes, who let his weight stack come to rest.
“Jason,” Bill said, and waited until Jason gave up and the clink of his weight stack was rhythmic again. Then he turned to the BP, now glowering at Quinn, and said, “Take over, Robert.”
Quinn stomped back toward the door, and Bill followed her, figuring she was just a little upset about the dog. Nothing he couldn’t reason her out of.
“Where is she?” Quinn demanded as soon as they were outside standing next to her car. Her hazel eyes snapped at him and color flooded her cheeks. She looked great.
“It’s safe and warm.” Bill patted her arm. “It’s fine. Calm down.”
Quinn shrugged his hand from her arm and took a step closer. “No, it is not fine. I want that dog back. Wherever you took her, we’re going there now to get her back. And it better not be the pound, or I’m never speaking to you again.”
“You’re overreacting.” Bill spoke calmly, but he was puzzled. Things weren’t going right. She shouldn’t be this mad. “The dog is fine. I told them not to put it to sleep. I told them to call us if nobody—”
“You took her to the pound.” Quinn’s voice shook. “You take me there right now.”
“Quinn, be reasonable—”
“I am being reasonable.” Quinn’s voice was flat, deadly serious, her round face even paler than usual. “But I’m about this far away from throwing a fit you’re not going to believe. Now you take me to get my goddamned dog!”
He handed her into the passenger seat of her car and got in the driver’s seat, thinking that he really should get her new seat covers because hers were a mess. Once he had her calmed down, they could stop by Target and pick up some. “I’m sorry if you’re upset.”
“If?” Quinn’s voice rose to a shriek. “You’re listening to me and you’re not sure? Well, count on it! I’m upset!”
“But we can’t keep the dog anyway,” Bill went on, flooding his voice with calm as he started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. “I checked with the apartment manager, and she said absolutely not.”
“Then I’ll move.” Quinn folded her arms across her chest.
Bill took a deep breath. She was upset, but she’d calm down. “We can’t leave the apartment. It’s a great deal. And it’s close to school. It’s—”
“I said, I’ll move,” Quinn said. “You can stay there.”
“Quinn—”
“It wasn’t working out for us anyway,” she said flatly, all emotion gone from her voice, only tightness there. “And now that you’ve stolen my dog, it never will.”
Bill wanted to shout at her, but he didn’t. No point in them both behaving badly. “Don’t be ridiculous. You are not going to move out.”
She looked at him then, and Bill wished she hadn’t. “You just watch me,” she said evenly. “You just watch me go.”
Bill stopped arguing. It was futile with Quinn in this irrational state. She’d calm down and then she’d see reason. He switched over to thinking about the weight room—who was slacking, who was going to have to add weight, who was bulking up too much for agility—and he was so caught in his own plans that he almost missed the turnoff to Animal Control.
Once inside, Quinn was worse, practically leaping over the counter to grab the poor woman in the brown uniform by the throat. She was a nice woman, too, a real Tiger fan, she’d told him when he’d brought the dog in. “You’re doing such a fine job, Coach,” she’d said, and he’d thanked her because community support was vital to a good athletic program. Her name was Betty, he remembered now. He felt a little embarrassed when she led them back to the pens and Quinn sank to her knees on the concrete and reached her hand through the bars and called “Katie” as if she’d been parted from the mutt for centuries instead of just hours. The dog came tiptoeing up to her, shaking all over. It was acting, Bill knew. Dogs were manipulative like that, always looking at you with those calculating eyes, especially this sneaky, sly little rat. The pen was huge and the place was warm and there was a bowl of food and a water dispenser right there; clearly this dog was not suffering.
“Get her out of here,” Quinn said without looking at him. She was stroking the dog through the bars, giving it all of her attention. “Get her out of here now.”
Something in her voice, something strange and a little frightening, made Bill decide this was not the time to argue. “I brought the dog in this morning,” he told Betty. “I’d like her back.”
“Sorry, Coach, but that’ll be thirty dollars plus the license fee.” Betty was clearly apologetic. “That’s the law.”
Bill wanted to protest that since he was the one who’d brought the dog in, surely he should be able to take it back for free, but it was easier to pay the money. No point in annoying a Tiger fan, and besides, the sooner he got Quinn out of there, the sooner he could talk some sense into her and get rid of the dog for good. He’d have to find it a home, though. Animal Control was obviously not going to satisfy Quinn.
It was unlike her to be this unreasonable. Maybe it was PMS.
Out in the car, Quinn cuddled the dog to her, not speaking, while it looked over her shoulder at Bill and smirked. Bill ignored it. He might be stuck with the damn thing for a while, but not for long. He and Quinn had a future, and it didn’t have a dog in it, no matter how mad she was right now.
“So what are your plans for this afternoon?” he said heartily, trying to get them back to normal.
“I’m moving out,” Quinn said in the same voice she might have used to say, “I’m having pizza with Darla.”
“Oh, come on, Quinn.” Bill took the turn to the road to the school a little too sharply in his annoyance. “Stop being childish. You are not moving out. We’ll talk about this when I get home.”
When she didn’t say anything, he knew he’d made his point, and he let his mind go back to the wrestlers. Some bad attitudes there, Corey Mossert’s among them. Too bad Corey wasn’t more like Jason Barnes. Corey and Jason were best friends, though. Maybe a word to Jason.
Beside him, Quinn rode in silence while the dog watched him over her shoulder.
“Okay, just for the hell of it, let’s try to be calm,” Nick said from the other side of a Blazer, wondering why it was his day to deal with weirded-out women.
Quinn glared across at him as if she knew what he was thinking. “This is not the time to be calm.”
She clutched Katie in her arms, and the dog rested its chin on Quinn’s arm and stared at him reproachfully. They made quite a picture, and Nick decided not to let himself get sucked into pictures. “I can’t help you till I know what’s going on, and I won’t know what’s going on until you tell me.”
Quinn took a deep breath. “I just need you to help me move my stuff out of the apartment and back to Mom’s while Bill is finishing up at school. That’s all.”
That’s all. Nick leaned against the car and wished he were someplace else. He liked Bill. He played poker with Bill. “Maybe if you talked to Bill—”
“He took my dog out to the pound and left her there in that cold cell all day. She could have died.” Quinn clutched Katie closer, looking ill as she spoke. “They kill the ones they think are sick, and she shakes all the time. They could have killed her.”
Nick shook his head. “Bill’s a good guy. Maybe—”
“Did you hear a word I just said?” Quinn demanded. “He took Katie to the pound.”
“Yeah, I know.” Nick tried to think of the right thing to say, the thing that would make Quinn calm down and get him out of the middle of this mess. “But he’s not a mean guy, Quinn. You know that. Before you do something you’ll regret, you have to calm down.”
“No.” Quinn began to pace up and down the garage bay, still clutching Katie in her arms. “I’m never going to calm down again. That’s been my problem all along. Zoë got to break rules, and my mother got to pretend everything was fine, and my dad got to watch TV until the mess was over, and Darla got to insult people, and you got to be uninvolved, but I was always the calm one, the one who fixed things.”
“Well, you’re good at that,” Nick said, wishing she’d stop pacing.
“But I’m not calm. It’s all a lie.” Quinn held Katie closer, breathing faster. “It’s just that when everybody else is screaming, somebody has to be mature and unemotional, so I have these brain-dead moments where I don’t react the way any sane human being would. I stay completely calm and ignore my feelings and compromise and make everything work again. And I’m not going to do that anymore. From now on, I’m going to be Zoë. Screw calm. Somebody else is going to have to do mature because I’m going to be selfish and get what I want.”
Nick watched her while she talked, making no sense, scaring him a little because of the look in her eye. Quinn saying she wasn’t going to be calm anymore was like Quinn saying she was going to stop breathing. When her mother had missed the turn down by the root beer stand and hit the big oak, Quinn had been the one who’d used her gym sock to stop Meggy’s bleeding while Zoë yelled her head off. When Zoë had freaked halfway down the aisle at their wedding, Quinn had been the one who talked her into going back into the church. When Max had screwed up his history final, Quinn was the one who’d coached him through the retake she’d talked the teacher into giving him so he could graduate. Nick had known Quinn for twenty years, and in all that time, she’d been the one who fixed things, who never got upset, who made everything all right.
Now that he thought about it, that had to be getting old.
All she wanted was a dog.
And Quinn deserved to have anything she wanted.
Quinn stopped her harangue to take a breath, and Nick said, “Okay.”
She blinked. “That’s it? Okay?”
“What are we moving?”
“You’re going to do it?”
The disbelief in her voice ticked him off. “When have I ever not done what you needed?”
“Never.” She answered so promptly he wasn’t mad anymore.
“I just wanted to make sure this was what you really wanted.”
Quinn nodded. “It’s what I really want.”
“I don’t mean the dog. I mean leaving Bill.”
“It’s what I really want,” Quinn repeated, and her voice was firm.
“Okay.” Nick moved around the car to the coatrack. “You want to tell me why we have to do this while Bill is at school?”
“I don’t want to see him again,” Quinn said. “I told him in the car I was leaving, and he just smiled.”
Nick stopped as he reached for his coat. “He what?”
“He just smiled.” Quinn shook her head. “He wants to talk about it when he gets home, but he won’t listen, and I don’t want to talk to a brick wall anymore.”
“He just smiled? Are you sure you told him?”
“I said, ‘I’m leaving.’ I said, ‘You just watch me leave.’”
“And he smiled.” Nick took down his coat. “You have a problem.”
“Which is why I’m moving out.” Quinn shifted on her feet, impatient, like a little kid. “Could you hurry? He’s going to be late tonight because there’s a baseball meeting, but that won’t last forever.”
“I’m coming. What are we moving?”
Quinn stopped shifting to think. “The pie safe and Grandpa’s washstand and Grandma’s silverware. And my books and my quilts and my pictures and my clothes. This is really great of you, Nick.”
“You got boxes for the books?”
“No.” Quinn’s voice wavered.
“Okay, I’ll round up some boxes tomorrow.” Nick turned his back to get his gloves out of his pockets so he wouldn’t have to watch her chin quiver. “In the meantime, we can get the furniture and the rest of the stuff so you can feel you’ve moved out. And then later we’ll go back for the books and whatever else you’ve missed.”
“Thank you,” Quinn said from behind him.
“It’s no big deal.” He turned to see Quinn clutching that dog, her eyes huge and hazel and grateful and alive, more intense than he’d ever seen her before.
“It is a big deal,” she said. “I know what you’re doing, I know how hard it is for you to get involved with people. I know how much you hate it, and how you’re going to hate facing Bill.”
“It’s okay,” he said, and then to his horror, she came closer and hugged him, squashing the dog between them, her hair soft and smooth against his jaw. She was warm against him, and she smelled like soap, and his heart beat a lot faster, and he was suddenly conscious of every curve she had, of every breath she took, and he did not put his arms around her.
“It’s not just okay,” she whispered into his neck. “It’s what I really need and what you hate doing. You’re the best.” Then, after a couple thousand years at least, she let him go and went to the door.
He breathed again. “Good. Remember that.” He followed her out, a little confused from her heat, calling to Max to watch the pumps, determined not to do anything that would bring her that close again.
The short ride to Quinn’s apartment seemed longer than usual and the cab of the truck smaller. Nick felt lousy that she was so upset, and guilty about betraying Bill, but mostly he just felt tense in general. She sat next to him, cuddling that damn dog, and the insane need to be close to all her warmth again grew stronger. This was why it was better when Quinn was involved with somebody. As long as Quinn was off limits, she was just Quinn, and he didn’t think about her much. It was these times between her guys that made him uneasy, which didn’t happen often, thank God, because Quinn wasn’t flighty but—
“Why are you so quiet?” Quinn said. “It’s because you don’t want to do this, isn’t it?”
“I want you to be happy,” he said truthfully. “I don’t want you to be alone.”
“I won’t be alone.” Her voice sounded surprised, still a little shaky with emotion. “I’m never alone. I have a ton of people in my life.”
“I mean a guy.”
“I don’t need a guy.” Quinn turned away from him to look out the window. “Especially a guy who steals my dog.”
“Right.”
Nick pulled into the driveway to Quinn’s apartment. “The dog stays in the truck,” he said, and Quinn hugged the mutt one last time and then helped him lock it in the cab. Its eyes were accusing as they walked away. What about me? it seemed to say. Who’s taking care of me?
Nick ignored it.
When they got upstairs, he found that Quinn was right, there wasn’t much there that she wanted, and they loaded everything but her clothes into the truck in half an hour. “That’s it?” Nick asked her. “You’re not taking anything else?”
“I feel guilty enough about leaving him,” Quinn said. “I mean, he stole my dog, so I can’t stay, but I’m not going to leave him without furniture. This is the stuff that’s important to my family. The rest was just garage sale stuff or stuff he bought new that I hated anyway. I’ll put my clothes in garbage bags, and we’ll be done. Is she warm enough?”
Nick looked at Katie watching them anxiously through the back window of the truck, her paws pressed against the glass. For a rat, she was kind of cute. Kind of. “She’s fine. Let’s get your clothes.”
“I really appreciate this, Nick.”
Nick kept his focus on Katie. “Let’s get your clothes.”
He followed her upstairs to help, which was a mistake. Watching her fold dresses into garbage bags wasn’t a problem, but then she opened drawers and started tossing fistfuls of silky underwear into a bag, all of it in the weirdest colors like electric blue and hot pink and metallic gold, and in patterns like plaid and polka dots and leopard and zebra, and he couldn’t help but imagine what it must look like on her—all that color next to her pale honey skin, all that silk filled out round and warm the way she’d felt with her arms around him.
“I’ll carry this down,” he said, grabbing the two nearest bags when she started pulling out nightgowns. “Be right back.” He ran down the steps and threw the bags in the back of the truck, and then stood out in the cold trying to get his mind back so he could figure out what the hell was wrong with him while Katie stared at him reproachfully through the window.
Quinn was a friend, that’s all.
Okay, so she was the best friend he had next to Max and he loved her, a friendship kind of love, but that was all. He was not having hot thoughts about Quinn. That would be crazy.
It isn’t the first time, he told himself, and thought of nineteen years before, of the August he and Zoë had come home because things were going so wrong for them. In the three months since their wedding, they’d found out that all they had in common were bad tempers. But in the same three months, Quinn had changed. When he’d left, she’d been a perplexed sixteen-year-old drink of water in a blue chiffon bridesmaid dress, trying to put his wedding back together when her sister had balked halfway down the aisle. “I can fix this,” she’d told him, and she had, while he’d sat and fumed and wondered if he really wanted to marry Zoë after all. But when he’d come back three months later, Quinn had run out to the car in her cutoffs and tank top to hug her sister—Zoë grabbing onto Quinn with more emotion than she’d ever grabbed onto him—and he’d gaped in surprise and guilty lust as Quinn laughed and rocked Zoë back and forth, confident and round and happy and suddenly sexy. Shit, I got the wrong sister, he’d thought then, with all the depth of a nineteen-year-old.
And that was when Zoë had looked over and caught him and glared at him so that he’d turned back to the car to get their things before she could say anything out loud. Later that night, she’d backed him up against her mother’s white metal kitchen cabinet with a paring knife under his chin and said, “She’s sixteen, you sonofabitch.”
He winced at the memory now. Christ, sixteen and he’d been scoping her out. Of course, he’d only been nineteen, so it wasn’t as if he were doing it now.
He thought of Quinn in that gold leopard bra she’d thrown in one of the bags. Yeah, he’d matured.
“If you ever cheat on me, Nick Ziegler,” Zoë had said, “I’ll just leave you flat. But if you ever touch my sister, I’ll cut your liver out with my manicure scissors and then I’ll leave you flat.” Since Zoë never made idle threats, he’d pretty much stopped looking at Quinn entirely. His marriage had been in enough trouble at that point without Quinn and the manicure scissors. Zoë had bolted about three months later to his surprised but great relief, and he’d forgotten her and Quinn and all of Tibbett while he’d finished his four years with Uncle Sam and then used the GI Bill to collect a business degree with a minor in English poetry. The poetry was dynamite for seducing girls, the girls who had contributed to the ease with which he’d pushed the McKenzie sisters to the back of his mind. By the time he’d come back home, Quinn was teaching art and involved with Greg somebody, a good guy, and that was enough to make her safe again while he quoted Donne and Marvell to surprised but impressed Tibbett women, and the manicure scissors faded to a vague memory.
His mind went back to Quinn in that leopard bra. Somehow he didn’t think Bill was going to feel the same relief about Quinn bolting that he’d felt about Zoë’s leaving.
He sure wouldn’t.
Upstairs, Quinn took notepaper out of the desk and sat down at the stripped pine dining-room table.
Dear Bill, she wrote.
Now what? All right, she was furious with him about the dog, but he deserved a note. After two years, he really deserved a note.
I’m moving out.
Well, that was good. To the point.
It’s not just because of Katie
But a lot of it was. He’d just taken her dog, as if what she wanted didn’t matter. He thought she’d get over it. He didn’t know her at all.
but what happened with Katie has made me realize that we don’t know each other at all.
Of course, that was probably her fault. She’d never really made him look at her, never said, “I don’t agree,” never said, “I really want a dog,” while she was giving up all the ones she’d found. It really was her fault. She couldn’t stay with him, she absolutely couldn’t stay with him after the pound thing, but she didn’t need to be nasty about it, create hard feelings, make things difficult for everybody.
This is all my fault for not being honest with you, but I know now we’re too different and it would never have worked out for us.
That sounded good, reasonable. She really didn’t have much more to say, so she just scribbled the end to her letter—I’m moving in with Mom and Dad until I can find my own place. I’ll be back to pick up my books later, and I’ll leave the key then. She almost signed it Love, Quinn from habit, but she stopped. She didn’t love him. She’d never loved him. She’d liked him enough to stay with him because she hadn’t disliked him enough to leave. How sad.
So she just signed it Quinn and left to go downstairs to Nick and Katie, a little guilty but mostly relieved because that part of her life was ended completely.
Nick helped Quinn unload her furniture into the McKenzies’ garage, and then against his better judgment stayed for a beer to keep her company until her parents got home. “They’ll be home any minute now,” Quinn had said when she asked him to stay. “I can’t wait to explain this one to them.”
“They going to be upset?” He followed her into the kitchen, trying not to look at her rear end. Her jeans were too tight. He’d never noticed it before, but her jeans were definitely too tight. It was a miracle she didn’t have guys baying at her on the street.
“Well, they got used to seeing Bill and me together.” Quinn dropped the last garbage bag of clothes on her mother’s kitchen floor where Katie could sniff it the way she’d sniffed the other eight, evidently suspicious something threatening lurked within. “I’m not sure they can see me without him. After two years with him, I don’t think anybody sees me anymore, not the way I really am. I mean, look at you.”
Nick froze for a moment in the act of taking a beer out of the fridge. “Leave me out of it.” He twisted off the cap and nudged the door closed with his shoulder.
Quinn leaned against the counter, folding her arms so her pink sweater pulled tighter against her breasts as she scowled her exasperation at him. “I bet your whole life you’ve thought of me as either Zoë’s sister or somebody’s girlfriend.”
Nick shook his head. “You know better than that.” He knew better than that, even if he didn’t want to think about it.
“It was different when Zoë was around.” Quinn went past him to the fridge. “I could understand that when Zoë was around, nobody saw me.”
A gentleman would have told her that wasn’t true, but it was. Zoë had been perfect, exotic, her little vixen face capped with wild naturally kinky hair that fell past her shoulders, the red of it so dark it was almost black out of the sunlight.
“I got used to it.” Quinn got a beer from the fridge. “But you’d think somebody would notice me standing next to a guy.”
She screwed the cap off her own bottle and drank, and he watched the curve of her neck as she leaned back and the movement of the muscles in her throat, willing his eyes not to drop farther down that curve to that damn pink sweater. Her hair fell back in the same smooth bell cut she’d worn since she was fifteen. No kink to Quinn at all, he thought, keeping his mind off curves. Just all that smooth silky red-gold hair, the kind that looked like it would fall like water through his fingers.
“I saw you.” Nick put his beer down. “Listen, I have to go.”
“You haven’t finished your beer,” Quinn said. “But I can take a hint. I’ll stop whining.”
She walked out of the kitchen through the wide archway into the dark little living room, Katie stepping nervously beside her, and detoured around the big red couch that had been in front of the arch for as long as he could remember. “Do you believe this?” Zoë had said when they were seniors. “My mother bought a Carnal-Red couch. Don’t you just want to fuck every time you look at it?” Since he’d been eighteen and wanted to fuck anybody any time he looked at anything, the question was moot, but it came back to haunt him now because Quinn had plopped herself down in the center of it. Pink sweater, copper hair, orange-red couch: he could feel the heat from where he stood.
Get out of here, he told himself, but Quinn rolled her head to smile at him over the back of the couch. “Really, I’ll stop whining. I truly am grateful you helped me move, and I’m sorry I’ve been such a grouch.”
The light from the kitchen gleamed on her hair.
“Your mother should redecorate,” he said and walked around the couch to sit beside her.
“There’s a lot of things my mother should do.” Quinn moved over to give him room while Katie sat anxiously at her feet. “Like get a life. I think that’s one of the reasons I decided I had to have Katie.” Quinn smiled down at the little dog. Then her smile faded. “And leave Bill. I don’t want to end up settling like my mother, hitting the garage sales with my best friend while my husband watches TV instead of me, and that’s the way I was heading with Bill. I want it all. Excitement. Passion.”
Nick leaned against the cushions, his arm stretched along the back of the couch but not touching her—that would be bad, touching her, don’t go there—and watched her soft lips part and close while she spoke, and felt his breath come a fraction faster. This is dumb, get out, he told himself, and yanked his mind away from her mouth in time to hear her say, “I want to be new, different, exciting. I want to be Zoë.”
“You can skip that part if you want,” he said.
“I think maybe Katie was a sign. You know, like my destiny telling me to get a life.” Quinn smiled at him and said, “You can’t ignore your destiny,” and he lost his place in the conversation again. Everything about Quinn was warm, he’d always known that, but for twenty years he’d been telling himself it was a puppy kind of warmth, cute and safe. But there was her mouth now, lush and smiling—
“Nick?” Quinn leaned forward a little and her hair spilled on the couch back. “Are you okay?”
Her voice came from far away. He only had to lift one finger to touch her hair. Just one finger. It was so easy, and the strands slid like silk, the way he’d thought they would, cool and slippery, and his breath snagged in his throat.
Her eyes widened, and he was caught, both of them caught, staring into each other’s eyes for long seconds, too long, way too long, hours too long, frozen in each other’s gaze, and the longer he looked the more he saw Quinn, her eyes huge and startled, Quinn, her soft lips parted, Quinn, hotter than he could have imagined, Quinn. He began to lean forward, sucked into her warmth, a little dizzy because he wanted her mouth so much. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, too, close and possible, too possible, don’t go there, but he leaned anyway to take all of her heat, and then a car door slammed outside and Katie barked, and Nick jerked back.
“Oh, hell.” He stood up, pulling away from her so that she fell forward a little, and Katie went under an end table in terror.
You have lost your fucking mind, he told himself. “Okay,” he said to her briskly, betrayed only by how husky his voice came out. “Nothing happened. This is not you. You don’t do this. I’m sorry. It’s the couch. I have to go.”
Quinn took a deep breath, and he tried not to watch her sweater rise and fall. Manicure scissors, he told himself. Sister-in-law. Best friend. Bill’s girl.
None of it was helpful.
“Maybe it is me,” Quinn said faintly. “Maybe I do this. I’ve changed some today.” She swallowed and the movement of her throat made him nuts again.
“No, you haven’t,” Nick said. “I’m going now.” He backed around the couch just as Quinn’s mother came in the back door and screamed.