Bringing Delaney Home (Cates Brothers #1) (8 page)

Turning her head away, she leaned up against the bridge, her elbows propped on the edge, and watched the water bubble and roil below. She dragged in a breath and turned her head back to him. “You know, I asked you for help once. You turned me down.”

“Oh,
now
you want to talk about that? Because you sure as hell didn’t when it happened.”

“Not really. I just had a point to make.”

“I helped you.”

“That is not the way I remember it.”

“I was there for you.”

“Except for the part where you rejected me.”

“No. No, I didn’t. I just said no to sex. And you have no idea how much it killed me to do that.”

“You know, I get it. Hell, I got it back then. Why would you need to slum when you had your pick of girls, Mr. Football Star. I knew who I was. I was Richard and Belinda Lyons’ girl.”

“That had nothing to do with it. You didn’t know what you were asking for.”

“I knew what I was asking for; you just didn’t care.”

“The hell you say. I cared too much. So, yes, I turned you down for sex, but I held you in my arms while you slept. We spent the whole night in the back seat of my car. And the next three nights after that too. I wasn’t the one who snuck off each morning while you were sleeping either, was I? I wasn’t the one who refused to talk about what happened.”

“There was nothing to talk about. Nothing happened.”

“You know that isn’t true.”

“The truth is Greer went away to cheerleading camp, and I lost the buffer between me and my dad. He behaved better when Greer was around. Without her, he let fly all the bitterness and hatred he’d been tucking away. You were my escape.”

“I get it. But can’t you see, Delaney? It was just like when you kissed me in front of the boys’ locker room three years earlier. You weren’t really kissing me. I was in your path when a part of your world was falling apart.”

“I needed you.”

“You needed a warm body.” Quinn’s blue gaze glittered with accusation, his voice carved through her defense.

“That is not true!”

“That’s exactly what happened. When you asked me to make love to you, you didn’t really want
me
, but your life was falling apart and you wanted someone to hold on to. I was in the way again. And I did give you someone to hold on to. Just not the way you thought you wanted.”

“Please don’t act like you knew what I needed better than I knew myself. You didn’t know me.”

“You’re right. I apologize. I’m willing to fix that. Hell, it was years ago. We’re both different people now anyway.” He held his hand out to her. “Hello. I’m Quinn Cates and I’d really like to get to know you.”

Delaney stared up at him, looking sharply in his eyes. Scenes from the last nine months of her life flashed through her head like a silent movie on speed. Her amputation, multiple surgeries, endless hours sitting in the hospital hallway in her wheelchair, her first ungainly steps with her temporary prosthesis. This was who she was now, and it was confusing and ugly even to her. There was no way someone like Quinn would understand her broken life. She turned back to gaze at the stream, its twisting, gurgling current matched the churning in her gut. “It’s probably better if we keep things the way they are.”

“You can’t deny the chemistry between us.”

Hell yes, she could
. After the last nine months she qualified for a black belt in denial. “Look, Quinn, it doesn’t make sense to—”

“Sense? Since when did attraction ever make sense?” Quinn leaned one elbow on the bridge, his body encroaching on her space. “Why don’t you try me on for size?”

“I’m not much of a shopper.”

“Come on, take a chance on me.”

“I’m not big on gambling either.” Her hands tightened their grip where they rested on the ledge of the hundred-year-old bridge, the red brick cool and scratchy under her clenching fingertips.

He leaned in closer trying to catch her eyes. “It’s not really a gamble. I’m pretty much a sure thing.”

“Mr. No Commitment? The Grapevine says you’re like a bull going from—”

“Whoa, since when did you put any stock in what the Grapevine gossips about?”

Quinn stepped behind her, placing his hands on the bridge wall next to hers, enclosing her within the circle of his arms. Her hands appeared small and pale next to his large, tanned ones.

“How’s this sound? I’ll reel you in with my constant presence and charisma. I’ll charm those sweatpants right off you.”

“It sounds like you’re going to be a big pain in the ass.”

He touched her, and the warmth was shocking to her chilled, stiff fingers. The stroke of his strong fingers had her white knuckling even more. His thumbs caressed her inner wrist, a slow-motion touch over her pulse. Once. Twice. Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she was unable to handle any other sensation beyond his touch.

Yeah, it was pretty impossible to deny the chemistry between them when her pulse raced like she’d injected a double-espresso Americano. Shutting her eyes had been a mistake, as her senses hyper-focused on his touch alone. She opened them again for her own protection, but that was a fail too.

Her gaze traced the muscles in his hands and forearms as they slid and tightened with each caress. Each stroke of his index fingers into the soft dips between her fingers sent electricity swirling deep in her abdomen before zinging up through her breasts and then on to scramble her thoughts. Like a mad hummingbird darting and fluttering up through her.

Such a delicious torture when his strong chest and wide shoulders moved even closer, surrounding her. His heat, a sinful temptation against her back. The hard muscles of his thighs like cut granite pressed against hers. Everything about him warm and firm, besieging her body to yield while he rocked her already unstable world.

“Did you tuck your weapon into the front of your pants?”

“No,” he choked out.

“I was afraid of that.”

His head dipped down next to hers. Her knees buckled when his tongue stroked along her neck, only to lock tight when he nibbled on her earlobe softly with his teeth. His deep voice rumbled in her ear and against her back. “What would happen if you let go and trusted me?”

Let go? Holding on tight had been the only way she’d managed. For as long as she could remember, her life had been constantly spinning out of control. She’d pulled Greer up close behind her and held on tight as she navigated through the minefield of her dysfunctional world. With parents like hers, the first thing she’d learned was never to trust anyone. Letting go wasn’t an option. The last nine months of her life had her holding on even tighter.

“Do you know what I wanted to do with you in the back seat of my car? I wanted to strip you out of your tank top and bra and worship your breasts in the moonlight. I wanted to strip us both and stay in that private shadow of the back seat, like we were the only two people in the world. I wanted to touch you so bad. Everywhere. I wanted to make you moan, and whimper, and pant. I wanted to make you lose your breath and then take you so high you’d scream with the descent. I wanted to be inside you. Deep. I wanted to hear you groan my name when you came and sigh like you’d seen heaven. And I wanted to kiss your sweet lips forever and never stop.”

Her heart skipped and stuttered. Could life be this cruel? Maybe . . . maybe if Quinn had said yes in the back seat of that car, if she’d had parents who loved her, if the explosion had never happened, if she wasn’t missing a chunk of her past . . . maybe then, in some alternate universe full of rainbows and unicorns, she could say yes to this beautiful, seemingly perfect man. But he wasn’t perfect, because he had no self-preservation instinct. Otherwise, he would know to run, not walk, in the opposite direction she was heading. Crazy fool man. Hadn’t he already admitted she was a walking, talking trouble magnet?

But standing wrapped in his strong arms, with his whiskey-dark voice whispering temptations she knew she couldn’t afford to want, felt so darn good. She took a breath and tried to capture this moment in her mind. She filed it away to pull out and savor like a guilty pleasure she hadn’t earned and didn’t deserve.

“Don’t you feel it too?” Quinn’s warm hands cupped her shoulders, and he spun her around in his arms, pulling her in tight against his sinewy body. He lifted her face up to his with one hand while the other stroked through her hair to cup the back of her head.

“Feel what?” Yep, she was the Bruce Lee of denial.

“This.” He kissed her. His firm lips and stroking tongue stole her every thought from her head. Her head must have exchanged oxygen for helium because it was about to float up into the clouds far, far above her.

He ended the kiss abruptly, pulling back a step, his breath uneven as it struggled in and out of his lungs. Just like hers.

She stiffened her spine and drew herself away and inward, a solitary island with a sole survivor.

“Fair warning, I aim to wear you down like the water shaped those rocks down below. I’ll keep flowing around you, smoothing out the sharp angles, and wear away your resistance. Now, no more fishing off the bridge, because I have a fantasy with you and a pair of handcuffs, but it’s not that.”

His gaze raked over her, leaving a trail of goose bumps and a serious case of oxygen deprivation. Then he walked to his police car and drove away as if he hadn’t just knocked a fissure in her well-constructed wall of defense.
How did he do that?
Quinn might think
she
was trouble, but she knew
he
was a sure heartache.

She couldn’t afford to open her heart to his words. She’d been broken for many years, but avoiding expectations and commitments kept some of the pain at bay. He was going to drive her crazy with his plan, but she had a plan too. She just had to stick to it, because her plan to get back to D.C. as fast as possible might just be the only way to save her sanity.

Chapter Eight

I
t was ten o’clock on a Friday night, which meant it was time to brew a fresh pot of coffee at the Climax Police Department. Quinn always tried to get the coffee started before Hawk, since Hawk liked his coffee so strong it tasted like it had been brewed by some process involving a nuclear meltdown. He dumped the scoops of coffee grounds in the basket and then poured the water quick since he heard Hawk’s whistle working its way down the hall. Once the switch was flipped, he stepped back and relaxed, knowing his stomach would live another night.

Hawk walked in the break room and strode immediately over to the coffee station. “All right, who made the coffee already? Y’all know I’ve got a special way of making it.” He turned, looking at the other cops in the room before turning accusing eyes on Quinn.

“Your coffee has a special way of eating through the lining of my stomach.”

“Well, maybe, but it keeps you awake, doesn’t it?”

“That I can’t deny. But it’s Friday night. We’ll be awake and busy long into the night.” Quinn pulled two Styrofoam cups off the stack. He poured a cup, handed it to Hawk, and cringed visibly at the four teaspoons of sugar and powdered creamer he dumped in. It wasn’t the best coffee to begin with, but the man managed to turn it into toxic sludge.

Hawk shook his head. “Yeah, awake, busy, and bored. They’re doing the same crap we did ten years ago. Hell, can’t teenagers think of anything new these days?”

“Apparently not. Because, like clockwork, one of poor old Mr. McClatchy’s cows will get tipped, and an illegal bonfire will burn in the woods next to Webster’s abandoned barn, where the moonshine and alcohol will flow like sweet tea on a hot day. Any teenager who evades us during all that will then converge up on Copper Lake for a mini-Woodstock love fest, only without the LSD and with a lot more pickup trucks.”

Hawk grinned at him. “Yup, same stuff we did, and your brothers before that. I’d just appreciate something different for a change.”

“I’ll grant you it can get boring, but I’ll take our small-town Friday night over the shootings, drug busts, and gang activity over in Greensboro and Raleigh.”

“Good point.” Hawk didn’t look any happier.

“The task forces we share with them twice a year are a kick-ass adrenaline rush, but I’m happy to come back to our sleepy little town.” He didn’t hate working Friday nights, but he had to admit Hawk was right about one thing: they’d become so predictable. “I saw rain in the forecast later. That might keep it a little quieter tonight.”

“I don’t need quieter. I would just like something different one Friday night.” Hawk chugged his coffee like it was his job before pouring another to go. “Okay, I’ll make the first round over to McClatchy’s farm, if you want to—”

“Excuse me, Cates. Rojas responded to a call for a drunk and disorderly over at Yadkin’s about thirty minutes ago.” Candy Nguyen, one of the department dispatchers, had poked her head around the doorjamb and into the room.

Quinn’s attention was focused on filling up his own coffee to go. “And?”

“Well, it apparently didn’t go so well, and he just called for backup. Specifically, you.”

“I can go,” Hawk said.

Candy shook her head. “Well, sure, but the D and D involves his girl.”

Quinn’s hand jerked, splashing coffee onto the back of his hand. Ouch.
His girl
? What? “My girl?”

“Delaney.”

Delaney. His girl. Damn, he liked the sound of that.

“Things sure are interesting around here ever since you brought her back,” Candy said, her forehead an accordion of worried wrinkles. “I haven’t seen the Grapevine this stirred up in ages.”

Delaney did seem to bring the funky cheese dip to the party. What had he said a few days ago?
A walking, talking trouble magnet.
He grabbed his coffee and headed out to his car in quick strides, because with Delaney, you never knew.

Yadkin’s Depot, originally a train station from the 1940s, had been refurbished with an industrial modern décor a few years ago into the only hot spot for the twenty to thirty-something crowd in town. During the day, the large glass windows allowed bright sunlight to stream in, but at night the lighting was dim, the drinks flowing and the waitresses busy.