Killing Her Softly (19 page)

"Yes, I did. We were having dinner when he got the call about Ms. Wells."

Quinn laughed the sound harsh. Anguished.

"Why do you automatically assume that it was Chad I was trying to protect?" she asked.

He cut his eyes in her direction, his gaze puzzled.

"Maybe I came to your rescue. Did you ever think of that?" she asked. "If you'd hit a police officer, you'd have been in a great deal of trouble. Don't you think you have enough problems as it is?"

"Are you saying you whisked me away from there to save me, not to protect Chad George?"

"Would you believe me if I told you that I felt I needed to save you from yourself?"

Chapter 13

Jace
Morgan met her at the door. "Where the hell have you been?"

"What's it to you?" Marcy knocked into him as she shoved him aside to enter the house.

"I came home a few minutes ago and nobody was here,"
Jace
said. "Aaron's home now and he said he'd gone to the store because you forgot to pick him up some Cokes. I wish y'all had at least left a note so I wouldn't have been—-"

"What's the problem,
Jace
—afraid of the dark?"

"What's wrong with you all of a sudden? You're acting like you're mad at me. As a matter of fact, lately you've been acting like you're mad at the whole world."

"Just leave me alone, will you? I've got a headache, I've had a rotten day and all of you are pissed at me because I ratted on Aaron." She stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned around to face
Jace
. "You'd have thought Quinn would be at least a little upset with Aaron, wouldn't you? The guy slept with Quinn's girlfriend and Quinn acted like it was no big deal."

"It wasn't a big deal to Quinn. You know how he is with women. None of them mean anything to him."

Marcy heaved a deep sigh. Yeah,
Jace
was right. In the ten years she'd worked for Quinn, women had come in and out of his life and he'd never been serious about any of them. She had fantasized that she'd be the woman who'd finally capture his heart, that one day he'd look at her and realize she was the only woman for him. But that hadn't happened and it never would. She'd been fooling herself to think she'd ever be more to Quinn than a friend and an employee. He'd told her numerous times how much he valued her as his assistant and as his friend. There had been a couple of times when, if she'd taken advantage of the moment, they might have become lovers, but she wanted to be more than Quinn's lover. She wanted to be the love of his life.

But why should he want her, even as a temporary lover, when practically every woman he met fell at his feet? She hated all those other women, especially the ones who kept coming back into Quinn's life—ones like Lulu
Vanderley
and Kendall Wells. She had despised Lulu. The woman had treated her as if she were nothing more than a servant, someone she could order around and then dismiss with a wave of her hand.

"Earth to Marcy."
Jace
wiggled his fingers in front of her face.

"Huh?"

"Where'd you go?"

"What? Where I've been is none of your business."

"Jeez, you're really out of it. I wasn't asking where you'd been tonight. Why should I care? I just meant where'd your mind go. You were off in la-la land somewhere."

Before she could thoroughly process
Jace's
question, Aaron came out of the kitchen, a Coke in one hand. "Don't you know that any time Marcy's daydreaming, she's thinking about the boss?"

Whirling around, she shot Aaron with a deadly look. "Shut up. You don't know anything."

"I know you've had the
hots
for Quinn as long as I've been working for him." Aaron put the canned cola to his mouth and downed a hefty swig.

"I said shut up!"
Get hold of yourself. Stop overreacting. Aaron knows how to push all your buttons. He likes getting a reaction out of you.

"Ah, leave her alone, will you? The boss wants us to lay off her."
Jace
frowned at Aaron. "Besides, it's not like she can help herself. What woman could resist Quinn?"

"You know,
Jace
, old buddy, this hero-worship act of yours is wearing a little thin," Aaron said. "We all like Quinn. We're all grateful to him for helping us, for being a great boss and a real friend. But he doesn't expect you to bow and scrape and he's the last one who'd want you putting him up on a pedestal."

Behind his wire-framed lenses,
Jace's
eyes widened with concern. "Has Quinn said something to you about—"

"Nah, man, that's just me talking." Aaron swigged on his cola as he headed toward the living room. After sitting on the sofa and picking up the TV remote, he said "Where have you two been? I was going to order pizza, but I waited for y'all to get back."

"I just rode around"
Jace
said. "Kind of took in Memphis. I drove downtown, checked out Beale Street."

Think fast, Marcy,
she told herself.
It's none of their business where you've been or what you've done. It's not as if Aaron actually cares. He's just making conversation. You can tell him a half-truth. That should satisfy him.

"I called the car rental place and had them pick me up so I could rent an SUV for myself," she said. "That way we don't have to share a vehicle and Quinn did give me the okay to do it."

"Want me to order that pizza?"
Jace
asked apparently hoping his question would diffuse the tension in the air.

"Sure, kid go ahead" Aaron said. "Order enough for Quinn, too, just in case he comes home tonight. Remember, he likes extra pepperoni."

"I can finish up the sauce and boil some pasta if y'all would rather have spaghetti instead." Marcy glanced from
Jace
to Aaron.

"Don't bother," Aaron said. "Save it for tomorrow. We'd rather have pizza."

Grinning,
Jace
nodded and headed for the kitchen. The minute they were alone in the living room, Marcy walked over and blocked Aaron's view of the TV He had the sound muted but his gaze was focused on the screen.

Aaron glanced up at her. "Want something?"

"I want you to stop ribbing
Jace
. He's just a kid not even twenty. He looks up to Quinn, sees him as a role model."

"
Jace
knows I don't mean anything by what I say, but if you really think my kidding is getting to him, I can cool it."

"I'd appreciate that."

When she kept standing in front of him, Aaron hardened his gaze. "Is there something else?"

"You do realize that
Jace
isn't the only one who sees Quinn as a role model, don't you? In your own way, you admire him as much as
Jace
does. You'd like to be just like Quinn and that's the reason you slept with Lulu
Vanderley
."

Aaron shrugged. "Are you psychoanalyzing me? You think you've got me all figured out. Is that it?"

Aaron surprised her by shooting up off the sofa and getting right in her face, which meant him looking down at her since he was so much taller. Marcy's heartbeat accelerated as Aaron reached out and grabbed her shoulders. Gasping at his unexpected move, her gaze clashed with his.

"Have you ever thought maybe there's only one of Quinn's women I really want? The one he's never had?"

Marcy couldn't breathe. Aaron was too close. And he was confusing her by the way he acted and by what he said. Surely he didn't mean he wanted her. They'd been buddies, of a sort, ever since Aaron came to work for Quinn nearly six years ago, but there had never been any sexual chemistry between them. At least not on her part. But then again, she'd been so nuts about Quinn for such a long time she barely noticed other men.

Marcy gulped. "I—I don't know what to say."

Loosening his tight grip on her shoulders, Aaron eased one hand down to clasp her waist and the other up to cup the back of her neck. "Say that you suddenly realized you'd rather have me than Quinn."

Marcy's heart fluttered maddeningly. "I'm confused. You've never acted like . . . sometimes you treat me as if I irritate the hell out of you."

"You do irritate the hell out of me, especially when you're mooning over Quinn."

Aaron looked at her as if she was the most important thing in the world to him. All she had to do was stand on tiptoe and lift her face to him and he'd kiss her. But did she want that? Did she want Aaron to—?

"Pizza's ordered. Be here in twenty-five minutes,"
Jace
called just before he came out of the kitchen.

Marcy and Aaron jumped apart as if they'd been caught on the verge of committing a crime. Heat rose up from inside Marcy, flushing her face, creating moisture on her upper lip and between her breasts. When
Jace
walked into the living room, she forced a casual smile.

"Why don't you see if you can find us something to watch on TY" Marcy said. "I'm going to change into my sweats. Be right back."

She practically ran out of the room, but not before she caught a quick glimpse of Aaron, who had the oddest expression on his face. Whatever he was thinking, however he was feeling had to be a jumble of thoughts and emotions as crazy as hers. He had to know that things would never be the same between them. Not after he'd all but come out and said he wanted her. Wanted her the way a man wants a woman. At twenty-eight, she should be sexually experienced; but she wasn't. Of course, she wasn't a virgin either. Her own father had sexually abused her from the time she was eleven until she ran away from home at sixteen. She hadn't seen either of her parents since and a part of her hoped they were both dead. She blamed her mother as much as her father for those years of abuse because her mother had known and done nothing to stop it. And although she'd been halfway in love with Quinn since he'd rescued her and helped her turn her life around there had never been anything of a sexual nature between them.

Once inside her bedroom, she went straight into the connecting three-quarter bath, turned on the faucets and filled her cupped hands with cold water. After splashing her face several times, she yanked a hand towel from the rack and patted her skin dry. Lifting her gaze, she stared at herself in the mirror.

"How do you feel about Aaron?" she asked herself aloud.

You quivered inside when he touched you. Got butterflies in your tummy and your heart beat ninety to nothing. And when you thought he was going to kiss you, you didn't try to turn away from him. Did you want him to kiss you?

"Yes," she told the image staring at her from the mirror. "Yes, I wanted him to kiss me."

Quinn hadn't spoken a word to her since they drove away from Kendall
Wells's
house and headed away from South Bluff. His big hands gripped the Porsche's steering wheel forcefully. With his jaw taut and his eyes glued to the road ahead Annabelle more than sensed his anxiety—she actually felt the edgy unease radiating from him. Alone with him in the semi-dark confinement of his car, she wondered what had possessed her to come to his rescue, to whisk him away from what she perceived as harm's way. Yes, it was in her nature to be a protector, a caretaker, to soothe and nurture. But why Quinn Cortez of all people?

Have you forgotten that he's a suspect in Lulu's murder?

No, she hadn't forgotten. And for all she knew, he might wind up being a suspect in Kendall
Wells's
death, also. But every instinct within her told her that this man was no murderer.

Was she a fool to trust her own instincts when everything feminine within her was drawn to all that was masculine in Quinn? She had never been so physically captivated by a man, so sexually enticed, so emotionally connected. These odd yet powerful feelings confused her. How could she be so strongly attracted to a man who was not only a stranger, but possibly a dangerous stranger? A wise woman would steer clear of him or at the very least learn everything she could about him before she disregarded common sense. If she asked Griffin Powell for a condensed report on Quinn, enough to give her some insight into who the man really was, would he share that information with her?

When Annabelle realized how close they were to her hotel, she felt a strange urgency to keep Quinn with her.
Do something,
she told herself.
Don't let him drop you off and drive away.

She said the first thing that popped into her mind. "You don't suppose Griffin might have a report for us by now, do you?"

Quinn let out a long, deep breath as if her breaking the silence eased some kind of ache trapped inside him. "I doubt it. Nothing that would actually help us."

"We could call him," Annabelle said. "Or just drop by his suite."

Quinn pulled the Porsche up to the front entrance of the Peabody. "If you don't want me to leave, just say so." Turning to face her, he draped his arm over the passenger seat and leaned toward her.