Broken (41 page)

WHILE she was busy watching the scene play out between Morgan and the cops, Quinn was busy staring at her. He’d listened while the cops read Morgan his rights, mentally filing away the details so he could go through them later. Tax evasion. Corporate espionage.

Sam had something to do with this.

This was why she’d come back. What she’d been counting on.

Hell, he’d shown up to rescue her, but she’d already taken care of it herself.

Most of the crimes he was suspected of were white-collar stuff. Was it enough to lock him up? Quinn didn’t know.

He would find out—he’d have to. He needed to make sure Samantha—no, she went by Sam—he had to make sure she was safe. But he’d worry about that later. Right now, he was having a hard time thinking about much of anything other than the fact that she was just a few feet away.

The cops hustled Morgan out, and through the glass walls, Quinn could see a whole slew of people watching with avid interest. The female lawyer lingered as the doors swung shut, stopping by the blonde. Morgan had called her Alison.

“You weren’t supposed to be here, Ms. Mather,” the lawyer said.

Alison lifted one shoulder in a shrug, the movement smooth and graceful. “Now, Natalie, my presence really makes no difference one way or the other and we both know it.”

The lawyer just shook her head and turned away, striding out of the room on ice-pick heels.

“You had something to do with this,” Sam said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what, but you did.”

Alison gave her a friendly, familiar smile and then looked at Don. “Not so much really. Just passed on some information here and there.”

“I bet.” Sam glanced at Don and saw that he was blushing, staring at his feet with a studious expression. “I wonder where that information came from. Hell, Don, you could have clued me in you were
this
close.”

“I did try,” he said, smoothing his tie down. “But when you finally called, you were off the phone in under thirty seconds.”

“I had a bus to catch,” she said, evasively. With a restless shrug, she looked away from Don, found her gaze drawn to Quinn, but she didn’t look
at
him. Not yet.

Quinn scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t going any damn where. Not just yet.

Dragging her attention back to Alison, she hooked her thumbs in her pockets and asked, “So is the case against him solid?”

“I don’t know. That’s a little out of my league, and trust me, Natalie isn’t going to be overly enthusiastic about sharing details. Dad might have some luck, but that just depends on if Natalie is in a cooperative mood or not.” Alison frowned, flicking an invisible piece of lint from her sleeve.

“He’s in trouble, though, right?”

Alison smiled. It was a wide, delighted smile, one that lit up her entire face. “Oh, yes.” She slid Quinn a look and then focused a bright smile on Don. “You know, Don, I think you owe me lunch, after all of this.”

Another steamroller, Sam knew, watching as Alison politely dragged Don out of the office. The door closed behind them and finally, she was alone with Quinn.

Well, not entirely alone. They were being watched. Gathered out in the lobby area were a good fifteen people, and most of them weren’t even bothering to hide their interest—including Don and Alison.

Sam ignored them, turning to study him. She went to slide her sunglasses down over her eyes and Quinn strode across the room, snatched them away. He wasn’t about to have this conversation with her hiding from him. Not in any way.

“You’ve got a bad habit of taking my belongings, Quinn.” She scowled at him.

He tossed the sunglasses in the direction of Morgan’s desk, not looking away from her face. Damn it, how could he have made the mistake he’d made? The face might technically
look
the same, but there was a strength in Sam’s that the woman in the wedding picture hadn’t had. Strength. Pride. Determination . . . everything that made her Sam.

Everything that made her the woman he’d fallen so hard for.

He swallowed the knot in his throat and forced the apology out. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, really?” She cocked her head and rocked back on her heels as she studied him. “What exactly are you sorry for?”

“For what I did. For what I was going to do. For not trusting you.” He wanted to touch her, so bad. Wanted to brush that hair back from her face, look into those amazing eyes. Hold her against him. He didn’t, though. He needed to get this done, and if he touched her, she was likely to belt him one. And if by some slim chance she didn’t lay into him, he didn’t know if he’d get the apology out because he was likely to be all over her—glass walls or not. “I don’t trust people. I don’t like trusting people. But that’s my problem—not yours—and you shouldn’t have to deal with my problems.”

“Did you want to trust me?”

“What in the hell do you think?” he snapped. That cool, disconnected tone of hers was really starting to piss him off.

She shrugged and turned away from him to restlessly pace the carpeted floor. “Frankly, Quinn, I don’t know what to think.” She sighed and pushed a hand through her hair. She paced as far as she could and pivoted, started back up the floor.

She didn’t look at him—stared straight ahead, but Quinn suspected she wasn’t looking at anything outside the expanse of windows. She was seeing things within her own mind. Whatever she was thinking about left her face looking grim, resigned.

Quinn found himself remembering the way she always paced before she’d go on one of her runs, bracing herself.
Mental pep talks
—

“What was the deal with the running?” he asked.

Sam jerked her shoulder in a shrug. “Sarah and I are twins—technically, we’re identical, but we haven’t looked much alike since eighth grade. Sarah was the golden girl, cheerleader, ran track. When we hit puberty . . .” Her voice trailed off and she blushed. Spinning around to face him, she stared at a point over his shoulder. “I ended up having some issues and had to go on the pill, put on weight.”

She paused but Quinn didn’t need her to fill in any more blanks. He’d already suspected it. “You were doing it so you could pass yourself off as your sister. Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked, her voice dry. “I had to face him, Quinn. I had to. I had to try to make him stop, try to make him let my sister go.”

“He abused her.”

“On a regular basis. Not at first, and he was good at hiding it, and Sarah was so ashamed. He was very good at isolating her—I should have known—”

“How?” Quinn’s heart clenched. That shattered, angry look on her face was going to haunt him. Just one more ghost to keep him company late at night. “You’re not a mind reader.”

She scowled. “You don’t have sisters, do you?”

“No. But I’ve got a brother.” He rubbed the heel of his hand over the ache in his chest as he started to pace. Unaware of Sarah’s intense gaze, he continued, “There’s been a time or two when he’s had things going on in his life—bad things. Things I felt like I should have been able to stop, or at least control. Times when he’s had problems going on and he kept quiet about them. I know what it’s like to feel like there’s something you can do to make things better, but it isn’t always possible. Besides, in the long run, you did help her, right?”

“Not enough,” she said, her voice cold and hard.

“Why not? You got her away, right? This taking off thing, was it her idea or yours?”

Sam just stared at him.

He wanted to make it better for her . . . and he knew he couldn’t. “She’s safe. She’s alive. She’s away from him. That’s going to have to be enough for you.”

Those eyes of his were somber, intense. Sam tore her gaze away from him and braced against the pain in her heart, a pain that slowly, insidiously crept through her body. Looking at him, she ached to touch him. She couldn’t. There was too much going on inside her head, too many thoughts to process, too many emotions to understand.

She needed to get away from him, get herself under control. But she had a question first. Looking at him over her shoulder, she asked, “How did you find out?”

Thick lashes lowered, shielding his gaze from her. A dull, ruddy flush crept up his neck, until it had stained his cheeks. “I saw your picture.”

Sam stared at him, confused. “You saw a picture?” she parroted back.

“Yeah. And I figured out there were things going on that I didn’t know jack about. I just knew that the woman I saw in that picture wasn’t the same woman I saw in the wedding picture.”

“I can only imagine what picture you saw that clued you in there.” Sam smirked and stroked a hand down her hip. “Let me guess . . . in the picture, I was a little bit rounder, maybe a little bit dumpy. My hair was anything but blonde or brown—”

She stopped in midsentence as he crossed the carpet to stand in front of her. He wasn’t avoiding her eyes now. No, he was staring at her with eyes that glittered and burned. He caught her chin in his hand, angled her head back. “It was your eyes,” he said gruffly, pressing his thumb to her lips. “You have the eyes of a fighter and your sister doesn’t. I should have seen it right away.”

Now Sam was the one blushing. The heat of him scorched her. All along her front, she could feel the warmth of his body, reaching out to hers, warming everything that had gone cold and tight the minute she realized why he’d tracked her down at the train station in St. Louis. She wanted to melt against him, feel his arms come around her and then she wanted to cry.

She didn’t know if the mess with James Morgan was over. She didn’t know if her sister could come home. She didn’t know if Sarah would ever be safe. But for the first time, it seemed like maybe she could get her life back. Hell, maybe her sister could even find a life.

But Sam didn’t know where to go from here.

Too much emotion, too many fears, all trapped inside her, struggling to break free with tears. But she couldn’t give in. Not with him. Too much had happened between them, and she didn’t know if they could get back to where they had been.

Or if he even wanted to.

The thought of that chilled her.

She pulled free of his grasp, letting her hair fall down to shield her face. Calling on the stubbornness that had gotten her through the past two years, she composed her features and when she looked at Quinn, she had locked down. “I’m not much of a fighter, Quinn.”

Edging around him, she started across the carpet but then stopped. There was still a whole hell of a lot of people out in the lobby, staring in through the glass walls with avid interest. Don was out there, playing the peacekeeper and from what she could tell, he was running interference, too, trying to keep some of the others from barging into the office.

She really wasn’t in the mood for an audience.

“If you’re not a fighter, then why did you come here to face him?”

“Because of my sister,” Sam snapped, turning around and glaring at him.

“Because she wouldn’t stand up to him?”

“She
couldn’t
. She was terrified of him. The one time she tried to leave him, he came after her and threatened—” She snapped her mouth shut. The ice in Quinn’s eyes was sharp, blade-sharp.

“Threatened what?”

Glaring at him, she said, “Why does any of this matter?”

He ignored the question, his eyes narrowing down on her face. “You. He threatened you. That’s why she finally left him.”

Sam crossed her arms over her chest and averted her gaze.

“She left him because she wanted to protect you,” Quinn murmured. “And you came back here to face him. To protect her. To fight for her because she was too afraid of him hurting you.”

“I don’t need protecting, Quinn. And I came back because I was sick and tired of letting him run our lives.” Swallowing the knot in her throat, she added, “I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.”

“I noticed.” She looked so pissed off. So angry. And somehow, vulnerable. Quinn hated seeing that broken, confused look in her eyes. Hated knowing she was still worrying, still scared.

He shoved his hands in his pants pockets. It was that, or reach for her. Haul her close. Maybe go to his knees and tell her he was sorry—so fucking sorry. Sorry and desperate—he needed her. With him. Always.

Pride kept him from begging, though. Pride and uncertainty. He felt something for her.

Something—
shit, man, you really are a coward
.
You’re in love with her. Deal with it
.

What if she didn’t feel anything?

What if . . .
stop
.
No what ifs, not right now.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can say it enough times to make you believe me, but I am sorry. You are a fighter,” he said, quietly.

“I should have remembered that.”

Sam glanced at him. “You know something, Quinn? If we get right down to it, neither of us really knows the other.”

“Bullshit.” He scowled at her.

Once more, that cool, composed mask settled over her features and she cocked a brow at him. “We
don’t
know each other. You know as much about me as I know about you. Hell, less. You only know what I’ve
let
you know. And now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a million things I need to take care of.”

It’s the truth
, Sam insisted. She started for the door and as her heart cried out in agony, she tried to bury the pain under a layer of ice. She had a life and she wanted to get back to it. It was way past time.

“I know you well enough,” Quinn said from behind her.

She ignored him and reached out for the doorknob. Some of the people had finally drifted out of the lobby, but she wasn’t going to be able to slip away unnoticed. That was pretty obvious.

Quinn came up behind her, silent. He reached up and braced a hand over the door, keeping her from opening it. Sam refused to look at him, refused to turn around. “I know what I need to know,” he said gruffly.