Quinn (The Waite Family) (3 page)

Quinn left too. She simply grabbed up her purse and jacket and fled out the door and the driveway.

~~~

“Howard Corporation, Quinn Waite speaking.”

Quinn had been at work for nearly two hours.
She hadn’t left her plush office nor had she gone to the meeting that was an hour ago. Her secretary had come in to remind her, but Quinn had begged off.
She just couldn’t face anyone after last night.

She still couldn’t believe she’d hit Drew.
She’d been mad, of course, but hitting someone was just…she didn’t do things like that.
She was becoming unhinged like her ex-husband.
Then she realized the person on the phone was talking.

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that, please? I must have hit the volume button and didn’t catch all that.”

“I said that I’m looking to find someone to take my money.
I have a bit of it and was wondering how one went about donating some of it to some of them causes that the Howard Foundation is working with.”

Quinn got excited then froze.
She didn’t know why this person asking about the Howard Foundation made her nervous, but he did. All she could think about was the way Alyssa’s mother and uncle had threatened to get Alyssa that morning.

It was an ongoing battle to have Alyssa’s mother come into the building yelling and screaming.
Shannon was what Quinn had always thought a harpy would be like.
And also a woman who put her needs well above those of her children and anyone else. Alyssa simply hated her mother.
Why she didn’t ban her from coming in was beyond everyone who worked there. But Quinn understood. No matter what, she was still her mother.
And a person just wanted their mother to love them. But the man on the phone was speaking again.

“May I have your name, please?
I find I can work better when I have a—”

“I don’t think you need my name to ask for information, do you, girly? I just want you to tell me how I go about donating money. Maybe you can tell me how to get in touch with Alyssa too.” His voice had hardened and gotten meaner with each word.

Quinn looked up when her door opened. Drew stood there.
She wasn’t sure what he saw, but he was across the room in a second and standing next to her desk.
He picked up her discarded pen and wrote her a note.

Tell me what they are saying.

Quinn shook her head and turned her back to him only to be jerked around in her chair and facing him. He pulled the phone slightly away from her ear and leaned close.
She closed her eyes.
Now how the hell did he expect her to concentrate?

“Are you there? Damn it.
I want that information and you’re going to…damn it, I lost the connection. What do I do now?”

There was mumbling in the background, but nothing she could understand.
She watched Drew pull out his cell phone and start texting someone. She didn’t care, not when he was this close to her.
Trying to regain some control over the situation, Quinn rolled her chair back from him.

“I’m here.
I don’t understand what you would need to speak to Mrs…” At Drew’s sharp look, she stopped.
“What do you need Alyssa for?
I can handle any donations you want to give, Mr.…?”

The phone went dead.
Quinn put the receiver back in its cradle and then looked at the man in front of her. He didn’t say anything, but when her phone rang again, he snatched it up before the second ring.
She stood up and went to the little bathroom just behind the desk and closed the door. She leaned back against the hard, cool wood and closed her eyes.
Damn it, she didn’t need this today.
Or any other day for that matter.

She could hear Drew talking, not what he was saying, but the deep rumble of his voice as he spoke.
Lifting the sleeve of her dress, she sniffed and could smell the expensive aftershave he wore.
Lowering her arm, she walked over to the toilet and sat down hard on the lid.
There was something profoundly wrong with her, she decided.

There was a possible threat to her sister and friend and she was in the bathroom mooning over a man who hated her. Okay, maybe hate was a strong word, she thought again, but he most assuredly didn’t like her.
She leaned back against the toilet and let out a sigh. She could be honest with herself here. She was nearly in love with the jerk.
The tears welling in her eyes didn’t do much to improve her mood about it either. When he knocked, she glared at the door.

“Busy in here. Go away.”
Her voice sounded watery and she hated that and cleared her throat to try again.
But Drew spoke first.

“Get out here. I need to ask you what that person said. And I have a trace on your phone too, so don’t be calling in porn call lines.”

That had her up and jerking the door open before she could think.
The nerve of the man.
Porn lines indeed.
She rounded on him the second the door cleared the jamb.

“You bastard. Get out of my office right fucking now. I’ve had more than…” She stopped when she realized what he was doing.
“Why are you laughing?
I don’t find any of this…you know, I don’t care. Get out before I call security, or better yet, Alyssa. She’ll side with me.” Quinn stomped her foot.

The second her foot touched the floor she knew she’d made a tactical error. It was the perfect girly thing to do and he’d witnessed it.
Moving past him and toward the door, she was nearly out it when he grabbed her arm and turned her so that her back was against the wall.
The door snapped shut.

“What did he…you’ve been crying. What did he say to you? Did he threaten you too? Damn it, Quinn, tell me.”

He was close. Closer to her than he’d ever been, and she couldn’t stand it anymore. She would blame it on the stress, she thought, and cupped the back of his head and pulled him to her mouth.

Drew stiffened for all of a second then leaned his body into hers. Quinn felt good where she was, her body pressed under his.
When her hand moved up to his hair and her fingers touched his scalp, Drew wrapped his arm around her shoulder, tilting her head with his chin, and his free hand pulled her hip closer to his.
Need coiled in his gut and fought for freedom as their bodies lined up perfectly.

Drew felt her heavy sigh, the heat of her body, and the warmth of her mouth. All these sensations hit his system as she curled her fingers around his neck.
He had a second to think about the woman touching him and then nothing, only the feel of her and her body.

Nipping at her lips, she opened for him and he slid his tongue inside of her.
She tasted of the cherry turnover that was half eaten on her desk and sweet tea. She was warm and delicious at the same time, and soft and muscled beneath his hand.
When he trailed his fingers along her ribs and cupped the weight of her breast in his palm, her answering moan had him press his cock deeper into her softness, rocking against her over and over until he thought he would explode. Things went from the desire to touch her to needing to feel her body beneath his, her wrapped around him, silky sheets tangled about them.

He jerked back from her suddenly, wrenching his mouth and body from hers.
He started to reach for her again when she stumbled, but drew back when she flinched from him.
What the fuck was he doing?

She was panting and her eyes were dark with passion.
Drew wanted to step forward again, only this time to take up where he’d stopped.
But he couldn’t, not with Quinn, not with the boss’s sister.
Not with someone he worked with, especially not one that he could barely stand most of the time.
He watched her face, waiting for something, anything that would tell him she thought it was a mistake too.

Fire and anger blazed on her face to replace the dreamy look of unfulfilled passion and need.
Had he not witnessed it, he would not have believed that a woman could go from one extreme to another so quickly. He started to tell her…he didn’t know what he would say when she spoke first.

“Get out,” she told him in a husky voice, whether from passion or anger he wasn’t sure.
“I want you to get out of my office right now.” She moved toward the door again and opened it.

“I have to…you can’t be pissed at me, Quinn. You kissed me first.
A man does not, cannot pass up kissing a beautiful woman. I’m not—”

“My mistake. You can count on it never happening again. Think of it as a moment of stupidity.
I want you to leave right now.”

He didn’t like that she sounded so…well, dejected came to mind, but he was more concerned by her thinking it would never happen again. And that brought him up short. It wouldn’t, would it? No, of course not.
He started toward the door and was nearly out it when he remembered what had brought him in here in the first place.
He wanted to go to his office and think
,
to try and sort this out, but knew he couldn’t. Not yet at any rate.

“You missed the meeting. There are things we need to go over and I have a list of things I need to make you aware of.”
He looked back at her desk.
“Then we have to talk about that call you just received.”

Quinn looked at her desk as if she’d never seen it before and Drew had a moment of panic.
She wasn’t all right and he knew it. This time when she spoke her voice was stronger and had a bit more bite in it. He was sure he liked it a lot better than the hurt one.

“I don’t want to talk to you. Not now, maybe never again.
Send one of your flunkies in or better yet, I’ll go and talk to Alyssa.
I should…I apologize for kissing you. As I said, it won’t happen again.”

Pushing the door at him, he could either leave with it closing or be hit by it.
He was on the other side of it before he could manage to say anything else. He turned to look at the empty desk of her secretary and thought about waiting for her to come back.
Knowing that he had to do something, Drew pulled out his phone and started for his office.

“Hello, May I speak to Doctor Waite, please? Tell him it’s Andrew Miller and I just need a word with him.

~~~

Cain hung up the phone and sat back in his chair.
Drew and Quinn had had a fight. Not that it was anything new, but this time, Cain knew it was different.

Cain knew that his sister had feelings for Drew Miller.
But he didn’t know how deep.
And if he’d been asked, he would have said they were feelings of distaste. But he’d have been wrong. When Drew had told him that they had gone beyond mere workmates and he was sorry, Cain wondered for the first time what kind of feelings Drew had for Quinn.
The man hadn’t said what had happened, only that Quinn and he were having an issue, then he explained about the phone call.

That concerned him, but not as much as it did Drew. Cain knew that Alyssa had a constant guard on her at work and at home. The state of the art security system they’d had put in while on their honeymoon was manned twenty-four-seven.
When she was at work, he also knew that getting into the Howard building was harder than getting into Fort Knox.

He grinned when he thought about her and him getting caught with their pants literally down when she screamed out her climax a couple of weeks ago. That had been both exciting and embarrassing.
She still blushed when he came to see her.

He had dropped by to see if she could have lunch with him.
She was sleeping in that oversized chair her father had left her. Her head was back on the rest, her feet up on the desk, and her skirt was just above those sexy thigh-highs she wore.
Moving quietly to the side of the desk where she was he removed her heels and began to massage her feet.