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Whatwasholding me back? Everything and nothing. “It’s hard to explain,” I said finally. “She’s not just a woman from a dating website. She’s my sister’s best friend.”
Marshall leaned back and stretched his arms out in front of him. His elbows popped like gunfire before he let them rest back at his side. “That’s understandable,” he said after a long minute. I got the feeling he’d been looking for a way around this fact and hadn’t found one.
I nodded and stood up. This conversation had been illuminating but I was ready for it to be over.
“I just want you to be happy, son,” Marshall said as I started toward the door.
I turned around. I couldn’t just walk away from generosity like that. “Thank you, sir,” I said, aware of how inadequate it was.
Marshall’s eyes–Emma’s eyes–glistened for only a moment, and then he was looking back at his computer and waving an impatient hand at me. “Go to work. I’m not paying you to admire me.”
I sent the contract to Jason Cain. I had a feeling that whether or not he agreed to it would just depend on his mood. Whether the people he owed money to had given him a good scare recently. Any number of factors that were completely out of my control. I thought nothing would surprise me. If he faxed it back, signed, within the hour, or if he ignored it completely.
But I was wrong. Jason surprised the hell out of me by showing up in the lobby of Harding & Associates. When I got down there, the receptionist looked equal parts fascinated and nervous. He was lounging against her desk wearing dark jeans and a black leather jacket. He smiled widely when he saw me, but the dark glasses he still wore kept me from seeing his eyes.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.
Jason knocked me off balance when he said, “I came to take you to lunch, counselor.”
I was way too fucking busy for lunch. I had to leave the office on time today. Renee had parent-teacher conferences at school, so there was no way she could pick up Noah. My parents werefinallydoing something with their Waterford Village neighbors, and I wasn’t going to mess that up.
But I couldn’t blow Jason off. Something told me he’d take that rejection personally, and that would ruin my chances of easilygetting Quinn out of this situation. So I patted my pocket to make sure my wallet was there and said, “Great. I like steak.”
In a slick black car that hugged the road so closely I felt every bump, Jason drove us to a member’s only club that he practically owned. Everyone from the valet to the manager to the starry clientele greeted him like a long-lost friend. I was looking at their eyes though. It didn’t matter how effusive they were, there was wariness lurking in their pupils, a tightness in their jaws.
We sat out on the patio that overlooked the city from nearly the same height as Harding’s office. If I looked west, I could almost see it. I ordered the most expensive steak on the menu and waited to see what Jason had to say.
He didn’t waste time beating around the bush.
“I got the contract.”
“I suspected as much.”
“I don’t like it.” He looked off into the distance. He was still wearing those infernal sunglasses, but I got the sense he was trying to put off an air of injured nobility. “I can’t sign anything that cuts me out of her life completely. I need closure.”
Closure. I wanted to reach across the table and smack the sunglasses off his face. “You don’t have to,” I said evenly. “But if you don’t, I’ll find another way to cut you out of her life completely. And I promise you that way won’t be as profitable.”
“It’s not just about money.” He turned, and I got the prickling feeling up my spine that told me he was looking directly at me. “It’s about Quinn.”
I thought he was bluffing, but I couldn’t tell. Was he pulling this bullshit because he had intuited that Quinn was importantto me? Or was it true? Even if Jason was a sociopath, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. Quinn was magnetic. She made magic. And it didn’t hurt that she was beautiful.
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. “So what do you want exactly? A phone call?”
“Not a phone call. I want to see her.”
The idea of this asshole anywhere near her made my skin crawl. “She won’t agree to that.”
“She won’t, or you won’t?”
The thoughtI won’tflashed through my head, so decisive and visceral I felt it in my gut. But I knew I couldn’t let Jason see that. If he knew how important she was to me, he would use it as leverage. “It’s her decision. Like I told you before, I don’t own people.”
“How civilized.” Jason fell silent as the waiter delivered his bourbon on the rocks and my water. “Compromise,” he said when we were alone again. “A phone call in which she decides whether to see me one last time.”
He sounded supremely confident that she would agree. Not for the first time, I wondered what their relationship had been exactly. I knew that by the end, Quinn hadn’t wanted him. She’d run from him. But Jason seemed to think there was more there. It made me question what had come before.
Then I realized it didn’t matter. Whatever had come before, it was in the past. He’d fucked it up.
If I ever had a chance with her–arealchance–I wouldn’t make the same mistake.
