“Right, and let’s talk about that. Dressing up. It was a nice suit, Jack, but that dress, Nadia? Hell, that was a dress. Didn’t leave much to the imagination.”
“Stop,” Jack said.
“That’s the kind of dress you normally wear for dinner with your mentor, isn’t it, Nadia? It must be, because you sure as hell never wore one for me. Tight little black dress barely long enough to cover your—”
“Stop.”
“No, Jack, I won’t stop. But you can. In fact, you can get the hell right out of this conversation because it doesn’t concern you. This is exactly what I expected from you. So we don’t have anything to discuss. But Nadia? I expected a little more from her. A little more—”
“Stop right there.” Jack moved forward, his voice lowering, gaze fixed on Quinn.
“Why? Because I’m overreacting? Hell, it’s not a big deal. I just found out my girlfriend is screwing—”
“She is not your girlfriend,” Jack enunciated carefully. “She has not been your girlfriend for a month. She has told you that it’s over. Told you again and again. You won’t accept it. So she’s supposed to wait until you do?”
“No, she’s supposed to wait a goddamned decent amount of time before she jumps the first lowlife in sight, like a bitch in heat—”
Jack hit him. I didn’t see it coming. I was frozen there, unable to believe what Quinn was saying, when I heard the thwack of Jack’s fist hitting his jaw and saw Quinn stagger back. Quinn started to take a swing, but Jack hit him again, hard enough to send him to the floor. Then he grabbed Quinn by the shirtfront and hauled him up.
“Leave now,” he said.
“You don’t like that, Jack? You don’t like being called a—”
“Don’t give a fuck what you call me. But you don’t call her that. Ever.”
“I’ll call her whatever—”
“No, you won’t. You’ll leave. If I thought you meant it? You wouldn’t be walking out. But you don’t. You blow up. Say things you don’t mean. Regret it later. Doesn’t make it right. Just too fucking immature—”
“Immature? Oh, that’s it. Obviously. I’m immature to be pissed that my girlfriend—”
“She is not your girlfriend, you thickheaded ass. You fucked up and yet somehow, that’s her fault, and you’re gonna make her suffer because she didn’t want to stay in whatever fucking little box you wanted to stuff her in. You lost her, and now you’re pissed because you’re willing to let her come back, and she doesn’t want to. She’s moved on—”
Quinn took a swing. Jack managed to duck fast enough to avoid more than a glancing blow, and he tried to back off, but Quinn kept coming at him. Two more dodged blows, and then Jack stopped trying to back him off. He hit Quinn, and the fight began in earnest. And me? I walked away.
They weren’t fighting about me. Too much had built up over the past year for it to be just that. And even if it was partly about me, I sure as hell wasn’t going to watch them fight, like a princess at a joust. I wasn’t going to stop them, either. They were big boys—they’d work it out. So I walked into the bedroom and closed the door.
The fight didn’t last long. I heard a few blows. I heard a few words, mostly from Quinn. Jack was right. Quinn didn’t mean what he was saying now. He was hurt, and he had a right to be. But that didn’t make it okay.
The hotel door slammed. The bedroom door clicked open.
“I’m so sorry.”
I glanced over to see Jack. His lip was bleeding. There was more blood spattered on his shirt. He stood there, one hand on the doorframe.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No. No, it’s not.” He dropped his gaze and let out a shuddering sigh. “Fuck.”
I got to my feet. He took a step but didn’t release the doorframe, arm tightening as he stopped himself there.
His gaze lifted. “Shouldn’t have happened. Any of it.”
“If you’re saying what happened between us was a mistake—”
“No. Fuck, no.” A growl in his throat. “Didn’t mean that. Just . . .”
He started forward again and stopped again, and I realized he was holding himself there, in the doorway, as if he didn’t dare come past, as if I’d retreated to my own space and he’d lost the right to enter it.
“Meant the rest,” he said. “Making you keep it a secret. Lying to him. You’re pissed. Got a right to be.”
“I’m not pissed, Jack.” I walked over. “If I’m upset, it’s not with anything you did. I’m upset because Quinn had to find out that way, and I wish I’d handled it better, so you didn’t have to.”
“You shouldn’t have had to handle it. He was so far out of line—” Jack bit off the sentence with an angry shake of his head. “I shouldn’t have hit him.”
“Mmm, not going to blame you for that. If I’d been less shocked, I think I’d have done it myself. He deserved hitting, and not just for what he called me.”
Jack shrugged. “Under the circumstances? Don’t expect him to call me anything nice.”
“I guess not.” I stopped in front of him. “Are you okay?”
“Hell, yeah. Just a fight.” He glanced down. “Might need a new shirt.”
“I think so. But otherwise you’re okay?”
“I am.”
I moved until we were almost touching. “That lip looks sore.”
“It’s not.”
“Are you sure? Because it seems to be split and if it is, this is going to hurt.”
He leaned forward, closing the gap between us. “Don’t care.”
“And the door . . . ?”
“Locked and bolted.”
I put my arms around his neck and kissed him.
CHAPTER 45
Yesterday afternoon I’d been lying on the sofa, staring blissfully out the window, waiting for Jack to run an errand. Now, just a day later, I was back there again. Under the circumstances, it wasn’t quite the same level of blissful oblivion. But it was still sweet enough.
I was feeling reflective, thinking of what had happened, wishing Quinn hadn’t found out that way, but the guilt and recriminations had passed. For now. I enjoyed the mental peace and quiet. Then my cell phone rang.
For a second, I froze, thinking it was Quinn calling to tell me what he thought of me in greater detail. Then I recognized the number.
“Jack stepped out,” I said in greeting.
“Yes, I know,” Evelyn said. “He just called me. So we’ve lost Quinn.”
I exhaled. “Yes.”
“Well, I suppose that’s to be expected,” she said. “Eventually he was going to find out about you two, and when he did, he wasn’t sticking around. It’s just inconvenient timing.”
I hesitated.
“Did I say I just spoke to Jack, Dee? He told me everything.”
“Right. Sorry. Yes, we should have seen it coming, but we were careful.”
“I’m sure you were.”
She didn’t say anything else, but there was a note in her voice that started me cursing.
“Jack didn’t tell you about us, did he?” I said.
“He said only that you and Quinn had a falling out. Not the actual cause.”
I cursed some more.
“Oh, stop, Dee. If you two were really trying to keep things a secret, you were doing a damn poor job of it. I could tell the minute I walked in on you two giggling on the sofa.”
“We hadn’t actually—”
“But you were heading there. At warp speed. Until I brought Quinn along. Which I will admit was a mistake. I was trying to goose Jack into making a move by applying a little competitive pressure, only to discover he was already on that path and instead had to throw on the brakes. Which, as I’ve told him, I will not apologize for. You two have been circling each other so long I was getting dizzy watching.”