Intimate Persuasions (15 page)

Derek snickered. “You think you’re pretty damn funny, don’t you asshole?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

If looks could kill and someone had invented a way to transmit those glares via the telephone wire, then Quinn would be one very dead brother. “Well, I don’t. Listen, I can’t go into the restaurant tonight.”

“What? Shit, Derek. I’ve got to be at the Roadhouse. You know how busy we are on Saturdays.”

“I know and stop yelling damn it. I can’t help it. Every time I move, I feel the need to throw up. And besides, I wasn’t asking for you to take care of the restaurant. I was wondering how Ann was feeling. Do you think she’s up to it?”

Quinn looked over at Ann. She had gotten up and cleared the table. She was now bent over and loading the dishwasher. Damn, she had a fine ass. What he wouldn’t give to be able to tell her what he really wanted to do to her. And he was pretty sure he would give his right arm if she told him that she wanted it, too. Just the idea of spreading the seam of her ass and sinking into the sweet oblivion of her forbidden hole was his deepest fantasy.

“Quinn? You listening to me or what? Can Ann handle it?”

Can Ann handle it? How did Derek know what he had been thinking about?
Oh wait, no, he means the restaurant.

“Hang on.” Quinn set the phone down and came up behind her. “Hey, hon. Derek wants to know if you feel up to taking care of the restaurant tonight.” Quinn yelled louder. “Because he’s a candy ass who can’t handle his liquor.”

“Go to Hell!” Derek yelled through the phone.

Ann rolled her eyes at the brothers loving attitude towards one another. But she smiled anyway. “Yeah. I can handle it. Except I’ve never been there when he first opens up. I don’t know the security code either. Could you come with me and show me what needs to be done?”

“Sure, babe. You should be sainted, you know that right?” Quinn placed a small kiss to her nose and walked back over to the phone.

“Yeah, she says she’ll do it. She’s saving your sorry ass is what she’s doing. But whatever, not everyman can be as great as me.” Quinn pointed out rather smugly.

“Whatever. Keep thinking that man. Because when I’m well I’m gonna kick your ass.”

“As if? You could try, but I promise you would not be successful.”

Derek groaned a little more in frustration and pain. “Fine. Geez, I don’t have the mental energy to spar with you right now. Just show her what to do, okay? I’m gonna go throw up right now.”

“Wait. Remember you wanna hit that white circular thing in the bathroom. The one with the little silver handle.” Quinn laughed. He loved to mock his brother.

“You probably can’t see it, but there’s a very big birdie aimed in your direction. I’m hanging up now.”

Quinn hung up the phone and turned to find Ann smiling at him. “What?”

She shook her head laughing. “Nothing. You two. You love each other like crazy but you give one another nothing but crap constantly.”

“First of all, let me just state for the record, I don’t love him
like crazy
.” He gave her a lazy half smile. “We’re brothers. It’s what we do. Didn’t you and your sister ever fight?”

She looked at him, surprised that he’d asked. They never really talked about her family. She knew that was because she usually changed the subject. The truth was she didn’t really like talking about her family. So, changing the subject always seemed like the logical thing to do.

They had talked in great deal about his family. He told her about the horrible time when they found out that his Aunt Connie, Derek’s mother, had an inoperable brain cancer. And how sad it was for them all to watch her suffer through the pain of her final weeks because the morphine the doctors gave her barely put a dent in the agony that she was suffering.

He told her how hard it was for him to watch his parents grieve for her, knowing that they were doing so in very different ways and for extremely different reasons. And Derek. Poor Derek had apparently had a pretty hard time of it. By Ann’s estimations, it would seem that he probably had met his ex-girlfriend, Sandi within a year of his mother’s passing.

“Ann? Where’d you go, hon?” He brushed the back of his hand down her cheek.

“Would you believe me if I said a land far, far away?” She smirked.

“Probably not.” But he grinned anyway. “What’s up? Does it bother you that I brought up your sister? I know we never talk about your family, I just thought that since we’re living together and we’re getting… I just didn’t think it’d be that big of a deal.”
Damn. Why won’t she open up to me?
Quinn wondered.

“No Quinn, it’s not that. It’s not really a big deal. It’s just that I don’t have the fondest childhood memories and even though my sister and I grew up together it was always pretty much survival of the fittest you know?”

Actually no
, he said silently.
Because you never tell me anything.
“Why don’t you tell me what you mean? Was it that bad?”

She had briefly told him one night when they were lying in bed that her father had been an alcoholic and her mother was never around much because she was always screwing around on her dad. She mentioned a sister that was a couple years older than her, but that was it. That was the extent of what he knew about her family life.

She shook her head at his question. “No. I mean it’s not like there was abuse or anything like that. It just sort of sucked. I can’t ever remember really having parents. I mean, I did. They were physically there, but emotionally they were pretty much nonexistent. Aside from trying to control my life, I hardly ever talked to my dad.” She shrugged. “Geez, I sound depressing huh.”

She walked away from Quinn, and he knew that she was attempting to change the subject. But he didn’t want her to. He wanted to know everything about her; everything that happened to her that brought her to who and what she was today.

 
“Ann?” He waited for her to turn back and face him. Once she did he noticed a barely visible shimmer in her eye. “What is it, honey? Talk to me.”

Ann looked up to the ceiling and maybe even the God’s above for the strength to deal with his concerned questions. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him enough to share her memories. They just kind of sucked. And she didn’t always like talking about them. It was just easier to forget.

Then of course there was the fact that every time he treated her so important, like he cared so much, she would just fall deeper in love with him. She tried not to laugh at herself when she sometimes wished he would be a jerk. An insensitive jerk that would be so easy to not love. But that was even more ludicrous. Because she couldn’t ever imagine herself not loving Quinn Travis.

“Annie, please. Trust me.” He delicately brushed his hands up and down her arms in a soothing fashion.

“Oh, Quinn. It’s not that I don’t trust you. I do. I just didn’t have the happy family upbringing that you did.”

Her statement made Quinn laugh. “Happy? Well, I don’t know about that. My Mom and Aunt Connie sure cried a lot. My Dad put a damper on the whole happy family image.”

“Yeah I know. But you guys all loved each other. I mean despite everything you knew that you were loved.”

Quinn was shocked by her comment. He knew that she didn’t have the happiest memories but he never realized it was so bad that she hadn’t felt loved.

“I’m so sorry, honey. I never knew that you felt that way.” He wrapped his arms around her and placed a kiss on top of her head.

“It’s okay. How could you know?”

He looked down at her. “You’re right. I couldn’t have known, because you won’t tell me.”

Ann stared up into his eyes. “Quinn, I—”

He quickly cut her off. “Tell me, Annie. Talk to me and tell me about your life.” He smirked. “We’ll call it the pre-Quinn era.”

Ann looked up at him and had to smile. He was so handsome and when he laid on the charm, there was no denying him anything he wanted.

“Okay. What would you like to know?”

Quinn was surprised by her sudden change of heart. He figured he’d have to really hound her for a while before she bent. “Come on, we’ll go sit in the living room.” He led her to the couch, turned his body to face hers and laced their fingers together.

“Tell me, honey. Start wherever you want. I just want to hear about your life.”
Because I love you so much that I need to feel connected to you, close to you.

Ann shrugged, “I don’t know where to begin. I mean, no actually I do know. I can tell you what changed it. What made everything go from good to really bad.”

Quinn quirked a brow up at what she said. For whatever reason he just assumed it was always bad. He wondered what could have happened to their family to cause such a change.

“See, it wasn’t always just me and my sister. We had a brother. He was three years older than me. One year older than Susan. That’s my sister.” She removed her hand from Quinn’s so that she could run her fingers through her hair. “See, when I was five, and my brother, Connor, was eight, he was riding his bike home from a friend’s house. It was just a block away. Really it was more like around the corner.”

Ann shook her head at the memory. “You could see his friend’s driveway from our side window. So, it wasn’t like it was really that far or anything. Sorry, I’m telling you this like you’re accusing us of something. It’s just that when it happened a lot of people gave my parents a hard time. People told them that their lax attitude toward their children’s safety had been the real cause of it. Not that drunk driver.”

Oh God. “Annie, honey, I’m so sorry. Your brother was killed by a drunk driver?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It was sad, because that day my brother wasn’t the only one that died. My parents did, too.” She looked at Quinn. “They were really great at one time. But when Connor died, a piece of them went too. Actually not just a piece, more like their soul. They just sort of fell apart. They didn’t know how to help each other.”

Ann took a big breath before she continued, “After a while they just stopped trying. Dad had already long since taken to the bottle for comfort and mom was so lonely that I think she slept with other men to feel some sort of affection. Dad never talked to her. He ignored us all really, except when he was telling us what we could or couldn’t do. I think it just got too much for mom. That’s why I think she killed herself. I mean—”

“Woah. What did you say, honey?”

She saw the stunned look on his face. She hadn’t even realized until that very moment that he’d had no idea that her mother was dead. “Sorry. I guess I forgot to mention that. Three weeks after my sixteenth birthday I came home and found mom lying in a pile of her own vomit. She was already dead. Had been for hours. She took about thirty of those over the counter sleeping pills.” A tear escaped from her eye as she remembered what she had walked in on that day.

Quinn reached for her and pulled her onto his lap. Holding her tight, he said, “Oh babe, I’m so sorry that you had to go through that.” And he was. The idea that Ann felt any pain at all tore at his heart.

She sniffled a little as she held her tears below the surface. “It’s okay. I mean I was kind of numb to everything by then. But do you want to know the really sad part though?”

There’s more?
“Sure, honey. Tell me.”

“I wasn’t surprised. I just got home from school. I walked in the house and I remember getting the strange feeling that something was off, but I ignored it. I was heading back to my bedroom when I saw her lying there in her bed. It still seems so clear to me, like it was yesterday. I can still remember my first reaction to when I saw her lying there. I thought, so today was the day. She finally decided to go through with it.”

Quinn closed his eyes on the cold and bitter sound of her voice. “She told you she was going to do it?”

“No, it’s just that I knew, you know. She was dead long before she ever actually took her own life.”

Quinn held her closer. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you, babe. What about your dad and your sister? How did they take the news?” He realized that it was a stupid question. Because how else would you handle a family member committing suicide?

Buried in the crook of his arm she muffled her reply. “Susan was like me. She sort of saw it coming.” She looked up at him. “But my dad. God, Quinn. I thought the worst pain I’d ever see him in was the day that Connor died. But it all came rushing back to me that day. The horrific sounds that tore from his throat.”

Ann sat up and ran her hands through her hair. “God. I haven’t thought about this in such a long time.”

Quinn rubbed a hand up and down her back. “I’m sorry, honey. I know I keep saying that, but I don’t know what else I can say.”

“It’s okay, Quinn. There’s nothing you can say. There’s nothing anyone can do or say. It just is.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I don’t know what was worse. When Connor died, when my mom killed herself, or when my dad realized much too late that he still loved his wife and his family.”

Quinn nodded, knowing that no words could possibly change how she was feeling at that moment. They were silent for a few minutes as Quinn continued to rub her back. He wanted to do something, anything for her. But he felt completely helpless.