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“Go away. I’m wallowing.”
“No,” she said. “People are coming off the elevator. Let me in.”
Her words were low, terse, and he could sense she was getting angry at him. Angry Quinn he could handle. A fight might be good. He didn’t want to deal with Caring Quinn. The woman who looked at him and saw past the façade of confidence and arrogance to the man beneath.
He opened the door and glanced down the hall to the area by the elevator, which was empty.
“Where’d they go?”
“Must have decided not to get off on this floor,” she said, pushing past him. She had on a silk bomber-style jacket and a tank top with a pair of skintight black jeans. She had headphones around her neck and her smartphone in her hand.
“Are you supposed to be working?”
“I am working. We’re taking a ten-minute break before I do an interview with Adler and Nick,” she said. “I was worried about you. Are you drinking?”
“I am.”
“Stop,” she said. “That’s going to make you feel worse.”
She walked into the suite, opened the minibar, took out a bottle of Diet Coke and then turned to face him. He’d followed her, plopped back down on the couch and poured himself another glass of whiskey. “Tomorrow.”
“Tonight. You shouldn’t be drinking alone. Zac’s got his own issues to deal with but surely you can call Dare and Leo.”
“No, I can’t, Ace. I don’t want them to know that I’m...” He stopped. Any word that he could use to describe what he was feeling right now, he didn’t want to say and he definitely didn’t want either of his brothers to see him that way.
“Logan.”
“Quinn.”
He knew she was trying to help, and in a way she was. She was distracting him from the dark spiral his mind was all too willing to take him down. Never in his entire life had he been unsure of himself like this. There were times when he had used bravado to convince himself that he was okay. But he’d always been confident. Very certain about his place in the world.
And now he wasn’t.
“Please don’t do this. I have to go back and finish filming and I don’t want to leave you this way.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m an adult, remember?”
She smiled. “I do. I seem to recall you saying if you have to tell someone that fact then maybe you’re not as mature as you think you are.”
“A very wise man,” he said, recalling the conversation they’d had back in college. “Or just a guy trying to sound clever so he could score.”
“You failed,” she reminded him.
“That was just my opening salvo,” he said. “I got there in the end.”
“You did,” she said. Her phone started vibrating in her hand and she glanced at the screen. Her brow furrowed and she tapped out a message before looking back at him.
The look on her face made him put down the whiskey. She was worried, and not just a little bit. She had that nervous look that he’d often seen on other’s faces when he walked into a boardroom during a corporate takeover.
He stood and faked a smile the way his mom—Juliette—had taught him. “I’m fine. Go work.”
He walked her to the door of his suite, kissed her and then opened the door and nudged her on her way. He’d be fine because he never wanted anyone to look at him that way again.
Quinn’s team was all back by the time she walked into one of the small breakout rooms where they would be filming the interview with Adler and Nick. When they were done, she and her team were going to review the footage. They’d set up a small editing suite in a hotel room on the same floor for that purpose. Since the wedding would be broadcast live, all of the stuff they’d shot so far was going to be used as an intro and B-roll stuff.
“I like what we have. For now it almost seems as if the scandal isn’t an issue, which I think you want us to keep that way, right?” Joe the editor said. “The network said to keep it classy. I think they are worried that we’ll seem too tabloid-y.”
“I got the same sort of warning from my boss,” Quinn replied. “Let’s send them the interview once we’re done filming it and I’ve approved the cut—so they can see what we’re doing. That it’s tasteful and all that. Our viewers are mostly tuning in to get ideas for the own weddings.”
