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Fia was the one who’d sat her down and lectured her after Quinn’d punched a kid at school, who had then in turn punched her back and left her with a split lip that Fia’d had to treat. As she’d dabbed the wound with a medicine-soaked cotton ball, she’d lectured her.
You’re so smart, Quinn. But I don’t know what happened to the sweet, sensitive kid who used to cry when a robin fell out of its nest. Now you’re just acting like you can punish Dad by being awful to the people around you, and you won’t get anywhere doing that.
Fia had been right. At that point their mom had been there, but not really. She’d been emotionally wholly checked out. And maybe that had contributed to Quinn being even angrier. She’d had this strong need to prove she wasn’t her mother by not dissolving.
She’d needed to put mileage between herself and the kid who’d chased her dad barefoot down the driveway with tears streaming down her face as she’d begged him not to leave.
Anger had felt safer than that.
But she didn’t want all of her goals to implode because of her dad. She’d remembered who she’d wanted to be. She’d pulled herself back.
Quinn had replaced anger with logic. And with drive. When she found herself being powered by the drive to succeed, all of that energy became productive.
It was so much better than being angry.
“Soooo... I take it he didn’t say yes,” said Fia.
“No. He didn’t. Yet.”
She tried not to think of the derisive way that he had looked at her. The dismissal on his face. He was just... He was so obnoxious.
He hadn’t listened to a single thing she said, and she had training, she knew what she was talking about. He was just so...
He was a man.
That was the problem.
Men, in her experience, were inherently self-centered and prone to thinking they had thought of absolutely every eventuality, when in reality they just wanted their way.
And he was a whole, particular thing that she couldn’t put her finger on. He had refused to move with her rhythm. Usually her energy invigorated other people.
It was like he was a black hole where her enthusiasm went to die.
Or worse, where it went to turn into electricity that rocketed through her body like lightning and couldn’t be contained or controlled.
She had persevered, though, and she would be back, stronger than ever.
“I told him that I would be back tomorrow with a binder, so tonight I need to make a binder. I need to go point by point on what he could be doing differently at his operation, which I grant is going to be difficult because I don’t know very much about his operation, so I have to make sure that I cover all my bases.”
“And your bases will be...laminated?” Fia asked.
Fia was making fun of her. But Quinn didn’t care. Fia wasn’t the one who was trying to conquer the black hole.
“Yes, Fia. It’s called making a professional impression. I’m trying to convince him he needs input from me, so I have to look like someone he can take seriously.”
“Have you ever been told that you’re a bit intense?” said Rory.
“Have you ever been told that you have the intensity of a feather pillow?”
Rory smiled. “No. But I like that.”
“He is impossible,” said Quinn.
He’d been so dismissive and so rude. And there he was, chopping wood in front of what was essentially a shanty, and given what she knew of his ranch, he should be living a lot better than that.
He was the only supplier of Wagyu beef in the immediate area, and the product sold for an absolute premium. Unless he was severely mismanaging things, he should be doing quite well, and yet she’d seen the house.
“Well, maybe you should enlist Alaina,” Fia said. “Impossible men have become her specialty.”
