He took a mouthful of beer. He was sitting on the back deck of his parents’ house. Had been ever since he bailed on Amy.
She probably thought he was a shameless opportunist. And if she didn’t, she should. She was his best friend. So what if she’d admitted to being curious about what it would be like to get naked with him? Since when did that signal a free-for-all? If her mother hadn’t arrived, he would have taken her right there on the bare boards of the balcony.
You have to apologize. You have to look her in the eye and apologize.
He checked his watch. He’d been gone a couple of hours. He should go back to the Grand right now. Talk to Amy. Say what needed to be said.
He didn’t move. Didn’t so much as flex a muscle.
He was thirty years old, and on the verge of divorce. Was it just him, or was it a really lousy time for him to start obsessing over his best friend?
He squinted his eyes against the weak winter sun, trying to sort things out in his mind.
Amy was his dearest and oldest friend.
He valued his relationship with her. Had even felt compelled to drop the L-word on her recently, despite both of them having left the sentiment unspoken for years.
And he wanted to sleep with her, and had almost done so, despite all of the above.
He had no idea what Amy wanted from him. Friendship, yes. Sex? A couple of hours ago, yes. But now that she’d had time to think things over? He had no idea.
Worse, he had no idea what
he
wanted, beyond the obvious. He’d been with Lisa for nearly fifteen years, married to her for six of them. There had been other girlfriends in high school when he and Lisa had broken up a couple of times. There had been a six-month break when they were at university when they’d both seen other people. But other than those few periods in his life, he had always been one half of a whole. Quinn and Lisa, Lisa and Quinn. Now, after nearly a year on his own, he was starting to understand that he’d lost himself in his marriage. Been subsumed by Lisa’s ambition and drive, allowed her needs and wants to swamp his own.
He’d lost track of the things he considered important. A career he could believe in, a family of his own, involvement in the community, personal fulfillment. He had no idea how to bring those things back into focus for himself again, where to start.
All of which meant he had no business fooling around with Amy. What did he have to offer her, after all? His life crisis? His confusion and frustration and bitterness? She deserved a hell of a lot more than that from him.
He smiled grimly at his own arrogance. He could almost hear Amy in his head:
Who says I want anything from you, buddy?
He was being hugely presumptuous, making assumptions about what he thought she might want.
He needed to talk to her. They were both adults, after all. They knew each other well, respected each other. Cared deeply for one another. There was no reason why they couldn’t sit down and discuss what had almost happened between them.
He pushed himself to his feet and dusted off the butt of his jeans. Then he drank the last of his beer and went to talk to Amy.
As if that was ever going to happen.
She took a moment to compose herself, then glanced over her shoulder. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
He was standing in the center of the cinema, hands in the back pockets of his jeans. He was trying to look casual, but she could see the tension in his shoulders.
Her stomach dipped in dismay. This was going to be bad.
“The scaffolding guys came,” she said, patting one of the uprights. Anything to hold off the conversation she knew was coming.
“Should make life a bit easier,” he said.
“Definitely.”
An awkward silence fell.
“We should probably talk,” she said at exactly the same moment he did.
They both laughed. Her gaze touched his briefly, but she was too nervous to hold it.
“Great minds think alike,” he said.
“Yeah.”
A heavy weight descended on her chest. She knew what he was about to say. It was in every line of his face and body.
Sorry, Ames. I have no idea what that was all about. Let’s chalk it up as a bold experiment and move on.
Or something like that. Whatever it was, however he phrased it, she knew it wasn’t going to be what she wanted to hear.
Quinn didn’t love her the way she loved him. She should get it tattooed on the inside of her eyelids, in case she was ever tempted to forget again.
“What happened earlier…I feel like I should…” Quinn laughed awkwardly and ran a hand through his hair. “This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Things kind of got out of control. And I’m sorry about that.”
He was sorry.
Of course he was.
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“I think I do. Even if we weren’t best friends, there are about a million other reasons why what happened was a bad idea. I’m still sorting through all this shit with Lisa, I’m only in town for a few weeks, I have no idea how my life is going to look in a few months’ time, let alone next year…” He shrugged. “I’m not exactly a great prospect right now.”
She should probably thank him for not voicing the most obvious reason why what happened was forever going to remain a freak one-off: he wasn’t interested in her in that way. She was filed firmly under the heading “friend” in his mind. Always had been, always would be.
“I value your friendship too much to screw it up with sex,” he said.
And there it was. The bottom line.
She straightened her spine. Time to come to the party. Help sweep this mess under the carpet and ignore it till it went away.
“I feel the same way,” she said. She tried to force more past the lump in her throat but couldn’t do it.
Quinn took a step toward her, his face creased with concern. “Ames.”
She held up a hand to keep him at bay. Dear God, if he touched her right now she really would fall apart.
“I’m fine. Really. Just relieved that we’re both on the same page. I was wigging out for a while there.”
“You and me both. Kind of caught me off guard.”
“Me, too,” she said. “But we’re both cool with it, so it’s all good. Right?”
“Absolutely.”
She gathered together the remnants of her pride and mustered yet another smile. “It’s past three. We might as well call it quits for the day, start fresh tomorrow.”
There was a short pause before Quinn responded. “Sure. I’ll see you at eight tomorrow morning, okay?”
“Great. See you then.”
She kept the smile on her mouth until his footsteps had faded. Then she sank onto one of the crossbars of the scaffolding.
Her chest ached. She rubbed the heel of her hand against her sternum and stared at the floor.
Could have been worse. You could have declared yourself.
Something to be grateful for. Not much, but something.
He snorted.
You’re so full of it, Whitfield.
It was unlikely he was going to forget those few hot minutes with Amy in his arms anytime soon.
But it wasn’t as though he had an alternative.
Denise looked up from the reception desk when he entered the council building.
“Quinn Whitfield. You look like you took on a football team.”
He fingered his jaw. The swelling had gone down overnight, but the bruise was still a lurid purple-gray.
“Hockey team, actually. Girls’ under fourteen.”
Denise smiled sympathetically. “I heard about what happened. I was going to call Ames tonight to see how she was holding up. What a pack of bastards.”
“You can say that again.”
“Do the cops have any idea who did it?”
“Ideas, but not much evidence. Listen, Denise, what can you tell me about Ulrich Construction’s relationship with council?”
Denise’s heavily mascaraed eyes went wide for a second as she joined the dots. Then she pushed her office chair toward the filing cabinet behind her desk.
“Tell me what you need,” she said. She opened the file drawer and looked at him expectantly.
He smiled faintly at her ready response. “Nothing that might get you in trouble.” He glanced toward the corridor leading to the inner offices.
“Don’t worry about Reg. He’s never here. He spends more time at the Daylesford golf course than the club pro.”
“In that case, I’ll take anything you’ve got on Ulrich Construction.”
Denise started pulling files. “If it was for anyone else, I’d tell you to take a hike, but Amy is a goddess. If it wasn’t for her, I’d still be lying around in my track pants, stuffing my face and feeling sorry for myself. After my divorce, she listened to me moan for a few months, then she put a rocket up me. She helped me pick a secretarial course, then convinced her dad to put me on at the hardware store so I could get some experience. A year later, I landed this job. Amy’s the best.”
“I know.”
She carried the files she’d pulled over to the photocopier then glanced across at him.
“Do you mind double-sided copies? We’re on an eco-friendly kick.”
“Double-sided is fine.”
He took the files home and went over them, making notes. Then he logged on to the Internet and did a bit of poking around.
He came up with an interesting picture: until five years ago, Ulrich had been very small potatoes, building only a handful of residential houses a year. Then the company suddenly landed a slew of contracts for commercial projects, many of them originating from council. A real Cinderella story.
If you were the kind of guy who believed in fairy tales.
He looked up the company’s street address and grabbed his car keys. Ten minutes later he pulled up out the front of an ugly new commercial development, a series of squat concrete cubes that was all about cheap construction and precious little else. Located on the outskirts of town, it was surrounded by lots of churned-up mud and staked-out plots of land that signaled more development was slated for the future. Quinn parked across the street and climbed out of his car.
Ulrich’s Mercedes was parked out the front of his offices. Quinn spared a glance for the lush leather interior as he walked past. An electronic buzzer announced his arrival as he entered a small reception area boasting a single couch, a coffee table full of building magazines and a desk with a computer and a pretty brunette.
She looked up from her keyboard and smiled. “Good afternoon. How can I help you?”
Quinn was tempted to ask if she minded handing over Ulrich’s financial records but she looked too young to appreciate the joke.
“I’d like to see Mr. Ulrich. I don’t have an appointment, but if you tell him I represent Amy Parker, I’m sure he’ll see me.”
He handed over one of his business cards. The receptionist’s smile faltered at the mention of Amy and he guessed Ulrich had been talking about her around the office.
Interesting.
“If you’ll just give me a moment,” she said.
She disappeared down the hallway. He propped his hip against her desk and studied the photographs of various developments on the walls. More examples of the concrete box school of architecture. It was a lucky day for Daylesford when Amy beat Ulrich to the Grand. Quinn could imagine the eyesore the developer had planned to inflict on the community.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Whitfield, but Mr. Ulrich is tied up right now. He suggests you make an appointment if you’d like to see him.”
To her credit, the receptionist couldn’t quite look him in the eye as she lied through her teeth. Quinn straightened. He’d half expected Ulrich to be this petty and stupid.
“Thanks,” he said.
He exited the building and crossed to Ulrich’s Mercedes. He propped his ass on the hood and leaned back to wait. It didn’t take long for the receptionist to register what he was doing. He watched through the glass-paneled door as she hustled away to inform her boss that the nasty lawyer hadn’t gone away. A few minutes later Ulrich barreled out the front door, his face already flushed with temper.
“Get off my car. If I find so much as a scratch on it, I’ll call the police. See how you like being arrested for damaging private property.”
Quinn didn’t budge.
“Last time I looked there wasn’t a law against sitting on a car. But go right ahead. I’m very interested to hear your views on respecting private property, and I’m sure the police are, too.”
Ulrich pulled his phone out but didn’t attempt to dial. “If you’ve come here to negotiate on that girl’s behalf, you need to talk to my lawyer.”
Quinn ran his eyes over Ulrich’s silk suit and shiny loafers. The guy clearly fancied himself a player. Amazing how a little bit of success could go to a person’s head.
Quinn stood, sliding his fingertips into his front pockets. “You and I both know what you’ve been trying to do to Amy Parker. It’s going to stop. And this stupid defamation suit is going to disappear. You got that?”
For a moment Ulrich looked shocked at Quinn’s directness. Then he smiled and rocked back on his heels. “You don’t scare me. I can hire guys like you by the truckload. The smartest thing you can do is convince your girlfriend to back out of the deal she made with council. Tell her if she does it within the next week, I’ll even think about letting her have her deposit back.”
“If that’s the way you want to play it. Just so you know, I’ll be representing Amy for free in all her dealings with you. I can stall and block and delay, file motions back and forth for years. Guys like me live for that shit. And it won’t cost Amy a cent. I hope you’ve got a big budget for legal expenses, Barry.”
“We’ll see.” Ulrich’s confident smile was still in place.
Smug prick.
Quinn had a childish urge to shove him backward, maybe swing a punch or two. But there were better ways to hurt a small man desperate to better himself in the world.
“I’ve been doing a bit of reading up on you,” he said. “You’re a lucky guy. Lots of growth over the past five years, lots of big, fat contracts coming your way.”
“If you’ve got a point, make it. I’ve got things to do.”
Quinn’s hand flexed.
Just one punch…
“Here’s my point. You make life uncomfortable for Amy and I’ll make things uncomfortable for you. A few phone calls to the right people and I can get the Australian Securities and Investment Commission to review your annual returns. I can make enough noise about the blatant favoritism inherent in your fast-tracked planning approvals to merit a full inquiry into your relationship with council by the state government. I can suggest the tax department take a look at your records for the past five years. I can hound you to hell and back again.”
Ulrich’s smile remained in place but a muscle flickered at the corner of his eye.
“Is your company up to that kind of scrutiny, Barry? Are all your business dealings squeaky-clean and above reproach?” Quinn pulled his keys from his pocket. “Because if they’re not, if you’ve slipped up even once, I’m going to nail you to the wall.”
Quinn clapped the other man on the shoulder a little too firmly and headed for his car. He could feel Ulrich glaring at him every step of the way. Good. He’d much rather Ulrich focus his enmity on him instead of Amy.
Quinn slid behind the wheel and started the engine. Ulrich was on his phone, his back turned. Calling his lawyer, no doubt.
Quinn shrugged. Ulrich was a bully, an impatient one. He was used to people rolling over for him but Quinn doubted he had the stomach for a long, drawn-out fight.
At least he hoped not. But if the other man did dig in, Quinn would make him hurt in as many ways possible.
Whatever it took to protect Amy.