Quinn (The Waite Family) (6 page)

Drew sat in his office staring at the wall. He hadn’t started out doing that, it was just what he kept finding himself doing.
He picked up the stress ball off his desk and began tossing it into the air and catching it.

Quinn had kissed him.
Not just kissed him, but really, really kissed him. He moaned again.
With a quick swipe of his tongue he imagined that he could still taste her.
He couldn’t, he knew. They’d kissed…she’d kissed him yesterday.
He frowned at that thought again.

He’d kissed her as well, though he wasn’t about to admit how much he’d enjoyed it, and her.
The way her body felt pressed against his, her breast, heavy and full, filling his hand.
Drew threw the ball across the room and it hit the wall with a resounding crash. When it came back at him with a velocity that startled him he had to duck or be hit with it.
Picking up the ball, he dropped it in his desk drawer.
The knock at the door had him grimace.
His secretary had heard it, he just knew.
When Alyssa walked in he wasn’t sure if he was annoyed or happy to see her.

“Dickhead Peabody is going to drive me nuts before this merger is over. He has more demands.
Can’t he just graciously leave me alone and let me purchase that heap of brick and be done with it?”

Drew grinned.
“I hope you didn’t call him dickhead when you asked.
What does he want now, more time or more money?”

Arnold Peabody owned seven buildings in the downtown area. Four of which needed to be torn down before they fell on someone, one that had a nice location but needed extensive work, and the last two were what they really wanted.

They were old warehouses that sat on the same street across from each other.
The Peabody Building, aptly named for the company that had started there making pottery of all things. It was three floors of hard maple and birch.
The windows, long since broken out, were huge and would require a great deal of money to replace, but once finished, the rooms would shine with light.
Alyssa was going to turn it into luxury studio apartments on the top two floors and shops and restaurants on the lower levels.

The March Building, a huge, sprawling building that covered an entire three square city blocks was just as beautiful and needed minimal work done to get it moving in the direction Alyssa had planned for it.
The six-story building was going to be another office location for Howard Enterprises.
Workers were going to convert the top level into Alyssa’s office suite.
She had already picked out the architect to do the work.

The lower level was going to be off street parking. Drew liked this idea in that it was difficult to find parking downtown where he lived on the best of days.
Alyssa had already told him that he could use the garage if he needed to.
He needed to.

The second and third floors were slated to become the law and accounting offices.
With all the extra projects that the Howard Company was involved in it made sense to have departments dedicated to each area of expertise.
Drew would be the head of this department.

The fifth floor was going to house the Howard Foundation.
It had become too much for one person to manage and Alyssa had agreed with him in expanding it along with the area they needed to work in.
At last count there were over three hundred people working in that department alone.

“He wants a piece of the pie, he said. What pie?
It’s going to cost millions to get the buildings up to code and then there are the ones that will have to be torn down. I wonder if he has any idea how much that’s going to cost.
Doubtful.”
She flopped down in the chair across from his desk.

She was barefooted again, he noticed.
Usually, she would have a pair of shoes in his office in the event that someone needed her and she was unshod again.
He grinned when he thought about the cost she must be saving on shoes.

“I’ll give him a call.” He glanced at the list he’d made before he’d gotten side tracked thinking about the kiss.
“It’s on my list of things to do anyway.
Any word from that idiot in North Dakota yet?”

“No, and it’s South, not North. He is supposed to be here next month.
And he’s not an idiot.
He happens to be the world’s best…” Stopping, she looked at him sharply.
“What is the matter with you?
You look…I don’t know, like maybe you’ve been kicked in the balls.”

Leave it to Alyssa to say what she thought.
“I do not, I’m pensive.
Big difference.
And it’s personal. I know you find it hard to believe that I have anything remotely resembling a personal life what with the hours you make me put in, but I do.”

Her snort made him smile.
There was something about working for the richest woman, no, the richest person in the world and knowing that she snorted that made a man’s day.
He vowed to make her do it more often.

“What is it this time? Is it the City Council, or is it the Mayor’s office? I know, it’s Quinn again.”

He looked up at her and as soon as he did, he knew that he’d given himself away.
Her eyes narrowed at him before she spoke.

“What is it about you two that makes you go at each other like cats and dogs?
Maybe you should just get l—”

“Don’t go there.”
He knew there was a bite to his words, but he couldn’t stop it.
“Let it go, Alyssa. It’s just something she and I have to work out.”

Alyssa was quiet for a few minutes and in that time, Drew shifted in his seat twice. She got up, walked to his fridge, and knelt down to it. He was more nervous now than if he was facing a room full of angry citizens like he had last week over the proposed closing of the Book Nook.

“Alyssa, say something.”
He wasn’t sure what he wanted her to say, but knew that if she didn’t, he’d never be able to think straight.

“She’s had a hard life.
Not just with her father, though that man was a peach.
No, she was married once, and he was…he hit her.”

“I would never hit her, you have to know that.”
Drew was hurt and insulted that she would even say that.

“I know that, dumbass.
I’m telling you why she might be putting you off if you have feelings for her.
His name was Wicket, Carl Wicket.
I don’t know that much about him, only what she and the others have said, but he wasn’t a man.
No man would do that to a woman and be expected to be one.”

“She isn’t the problem.
She…aw fuck, Alyssa, she kissed me.” He got up and started pacing behind her. “And not anything brotherly either.
I don’t know what to do about it, or her. She threw me out of her office right after.
I might have…I did piss her off.”

He’d already told Cain and figured the man would tell his wife. He had told him not to and was surprised that he hadn’t.
His respect for the man just raised a few more notches.

“We were fighting. Again. And she just reached out and pulled me to her. I was as surprised as you look right now.
But then it changed.
The kiss, I mean.
And I got greedy.
I didn’t mean to, but…then I realized who she was and what she was to me.” Alyssa didn’t say anything for a while and he looked over to her. She was laughing. Not just laughing, but tears streaming down her face laughing. Drew failed to see the humor in his situation. “What the fuck, Alyssa? I’m pouring out my misery to you and you’re hysterical.
Thanks a whole fucking lot.”

It took her several more minutes to stop long enough to talk to him and in that time, Drew felt angrier.
He was about to leave her to her fun when she finally regained control.

“You’re not related to her, are you?”
Drew shook his head.
“Then what’s the problem?
Go for it.
She’s beautiful, single, and obviously likes you.
Unless of course you’re gay.
Not that it matters, I suppose, but you know—”

“No, I’m not gay. Damn it, you’re supposed to be pissed because I’m dating the family.
Not tell me to ‘go for it.’
This isn’t a pair of shoes, this is…this is…I don’t know what the fuck it is, but it is.” He glared at her again.
“Damn it, stop laughing.”

That stopped her. She stood up and walked to him. He was sure she was going to slug him. She’d hit a man before in a board meeting a few weeks ago.
Drew felt he deserved it more than the moron who had tried to grope her under the table.
She put her hands on his shoulders and smiled. He was in deeper than he thought.

“You are just as much family to us as Quinn.
And I’m sort of insulted that you would think I’d give two shits about you dating one of the ‘family.’
Your grandda is like a father to me…well, a grandfather, and you mean a great deal to me as well. Date her, marry her, I don’t care, but stop making yourself miserable over something that means nothing to anyone but you.”

Without thought, he kissed her.
He might have gotten away with it except Quinn chose that moment to walk in on them.
No one moved for several seconds. Then Quinn backed out without a word and closed the door behind her.

Alyssa looked up at him.
“Well, go after her, you big idiot.”
And he did.

~~~

Quinn heard him say her name, but she ignored it. As well as she could with him nearly at her heels.
She tried to speed up, but her shoes were slowing her down.
Kicking them off, she took off at a run and was feeling like she’d make it when he closed his hand over her elbow and followed her into her office.

“Get out, I don’t think I want to—”

“No,” he said as he shut the door behind them.
“It’s not what you think.
Actually, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it’s not as nefarious as you seem to think it is. I was just kissing her.”

“I’m well aware of what you were doing.
You were kissing my brother’s wife.
How could you?
You work for…you’ll kiss Alyssa and not—”

Whatever else she might have been going to say was cut off by his mouth.
The bite of it, the hard pressure made her groan. At least that’s what she tried to tell herself.
But he felt so good, so right.
When he changed the angle of his head and wrapped his arm around her to pull her closer, Quinn couldn’t think at all.

His body was hard against hers. His muscles bunched and moved under her fingers when she moved them up and over his shoulders.
When Drew nipped at her lower lip, seemingly asking for permission to enter her mouth, she let him.
The taste of him exploded in her mouth and her senses.

She wanted to touch him, to feel if his skin felt anywhere near what she thought it should.
Moving her fingers to the buttons down the front of his shirt, she was nearly ready to rip it from him when he pulled back.
She whimpered slightly before she could stop it.

“I’m not going anywhere.
I want you to unbutton my shirt, Quinn.
Please, baby, undress me.”