When Empires Fall (28 page)

“What advice you thought I could give you, I have no idea.” Grant chuckled, admiring a picture of the refinished kitchen cabinets. “You’ve always been the ladies’ man, not me.”

“That’s only because all those pretty girls who pined after you were disappointed when you ignored them, so they came to the next best thing. Me.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m serious!” Linc pulled his phone away so Grant would look him in the eye. “You know how many girls I used to see watching you? You were this tall, dark and handsome, strong and silent type, with enough mystery to incite countless tall tales of you ravaging girls in the bathroom and the janitor’s closet.”

“Excuse me?” Grant managed, startled. “They said I did what?”

“Rumor amongst the girls, at least from what they told me after I finally swooped in and cured them of Vasser fever, was that you were highly selective, but that the lucky girls who did manage to catch your attention did not leave unsatisfied. Quite the opposite, actually.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die, Grant. I’m dead serious.” Linc shook his head and laughed again, amused at how flabbergasted his older brother was. “Are you telling me you never ravaged any girls in the bathroom or janitor’s closet?”

“Not a single one.”

“Well, you easily could have with the reputation you had.”

“This information would have been nice to know back then, Linc,” Grant told him, even as his thoughts drifted from beyond school years and into the here and now. Did he still have that kind of appeal?

Just then, Madison and Marshall knocked and came into the office, looking harried and upset. Settling back to what was important, Grant turned to his family and got down to business.

Quinn found him
an hour later, standing before the wide windows of his office, the only light coming from the lamp on his desk. His hands were clasped at his back and he didn’t turn when she came in. Instead he simply stood there, solitary and regal in his quietly expensive dark gray suit, engrossed in his own thoughts.

“Do you need anything before I go?” She asked softly, chewing her bottom lip as she watched him. She saw him take a deep, steadying breath before responding to her.

“No. Have a good night.”

She hovered in the doorway for a moment, then instantly made up her mind and shut the door at her back, closing herself in the office with him. When she began to walk forward, he tilted his head to look at her, his expression impossible to read.

“I’m sorry about the tabloid,” she began, feeling foolish when he only continued to look at her. “If it makes you feel any better, Ma personally went around our neighborhood and made sure everyone knew it was made up. It’s only like forty people, but at least they’re on your side. Like I am.”

Oddly moved, Grant nodded curtly, turning to look out at the city lights again. If only he could confide in her about what the detective had said, and how some small part of him actually believed his father. It just couldn’t be a coincidence that the detective would hint that Rosalie had named Cyrus as the killer, just as his father had. But he still found the allegation so hard to believe in his own heart, because he thought he knew his grandfather so well and had been raised respecting the man with all of his being. How could someone he loved so deeply be a murderer?

“This will blow over, in time,” he said, as much for himself as for her.

“Yes, I’m sure it will.” She smiled, standing beside him now and looking down at the city streets below. Cars and people drifted by, their sounds muted by the thick glass of the window. Only the glare of lights managed to reach them, and in its luminance she could see his face, just out of the corner of her eye. He looked, for lack of a better word, haunted. “I’m glad to see you and Linc talking again. I can see that he loves you and that he looks up to you.”

Grant frowned, wondering if she could even understand how it had usually been him looking up to Linc, wanting to be charismatic and easygoing and friends with everyone. It seemed as though life was easier when lived that way.

“I know I said it before, but I worry about you sometimes,” Quinn said then, keeping her eyes on the view outside the window. “And maybe I just take my job a little too seriously, but I really want to help you. I want you to know that I’m here for you.”

“Why?” Grant asked, unable to look at her. “Why do you care so much? This is just a job for you; this isn’t your life the way it is mine.”

She turned to him then, knowing he probably thought she was ridiculous. Part of her didn’t care. “I give everything in my life all that I have, and that includes you. I’ve never been the kind of person to consider work over just because I’ve punched out. If you asked me to pick you up at the airport at one in the morning, I’d do it. If you called me on a Sunday to get your dry cleaning so you can have a fresh suit come Monday, I’d do it. No questions asked.”

“That’s not required of you.”

“You’re missing the point.” She sighed, trying to figure out how best to explain it to him. “The thing is, I don’t only think about you when we’re both in the same room. You’re on my mind, all of the time.”

He glanced down at her, his eyes haunted with feelings and words he knew he didn’t have the capacity to express to her. But that didn’t make them any less real, or any less troubling.

“I don’t know how to react to you,” he murmured quietly, his brow creasing with confusion and frustration. “I’m not like my brother. It’s not easy for me the way it is for him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve seen how you are with him. It’s…easy, friendly.” He shook his head, his dark eyes filled with both envy and regret. “I don’t know how to be that for you.”

“But you want to be?”

“Yes.” He turned to fully face her, the urge to reach out and touch her consuming him. “More than I could ever express to you.”

She said nothing for a moment, at a complete and utter loss for words.

“Wow. I’m tongue tied,” she managed with a disbelieving laugh, smiling up at him. “That never happens.”

“Now you know how it feels.” His eyes seemed to darken as he reached out for her, one hand brushing a curled ebony strand of hair away from her face, coming to rest just below her jaw line and cupping around the smooth skin of her neck. She shivered once from his touch, her smile fading. He continued to stare at her, the slow, deliberate curve of his lips taking on that arrogance she had seen only that one time before. “I like knowing I make you speechless, Quinn.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip as he leaned towards her, his mouth brushing over her cheek, then hovering just over her ear.

“Does it worry you to know that I want you?” He asked softly, his free hand cupping her elbow gently, his other still touching her neck.

“It floors me…Grant.” She reached up to run her hands up his chest, cruising over the smooth fabric of his suit jacket, quite simply staggered by his words, by the sound of his voice saying her name.

He pulled away from her so he could meet her eyes, his expression sharp and intense. He warred with his own propriety and his desires, alarmed to find that for once, his needs were winning. And when he watched her lips curve slowly to one side and her eyes spark with some deep and incredible warmth, there was little he could do to focus on being professional.

“Damnit, Quinn.” He pulled her against him and crushed her mouth with his, sending them both reeling, breathless and lost. He marveled in the shape of her pressed against him, the smooth and incredible curves, and thrilled at the feel of her practical hands fisting in his jacket, keeping him close. How long? How long had it been that he had wanted her like this, wanted her here, abandoning any and all caution? Since he’d first seen her, he realized. Since the first time he’d seen her smile.

She melted into him, withholding nothing as she gave him everything she had, every last ounce of devotion and compassion she had in her. How could he possibly understand just how much she had to give and how desperately she wanted to give it to him, and him alone? He, who had the weight of the world on his shoulders, but bore it with this capable strength. He, who stood alone at the top, silent and courageous in his dedication to the legacy he had inherited. And lastly, he, who so clearly needed someone, anyone, to understand him. Surely there had been other women who had filled those shoes, but she wanted so badly to be the one to do so now.

She gasped then as he fisted his hand in her hair and pulled her head back so he could see her face. He needed to see the desire in her eyes, to know it was he who had put it there and not his brother or some other man. What he saw did not disappoint him.

He thought briefly of spreading her out on his desk, of pushing his papers and books to the floor so he could have her, unrestrictedly. But the sudden realization that he had never once had such a thought before about a woman had him hesitating, wondering what was happening to him. Sex for him had always been straightforward, planned, routine, it had never been impulsive or so intense. Even with Erin. His heart faltered at the thought, at the memory of her face, wondering if even after three years if it was too soon to feel so much about another woman.

He was losing who he was, who he had always been, failing suddenly to live up to the rules he himself resolutely chose to live by. All for what? His secretary, who had completely undone him with little more than a sunny smile and warm gypsy eyes?

Lord, this woman…what was she doing to him?

Suddenly, his cell phone went off from where it was sitting on his desk, and he retreated back from her, straightening his suit jacket and clearing his throat.

“I should answer that, it could be important,” he told her, wincing at the unfeeling frost he heard in his own voice.

Quinn stayed where she was for a moment as he skirted the desk to grab his phone, her arms defensively wrapping around her torso to ward off the sudden chill she felt. When she heard him address his mother, she shut her eyes tight against the hurt and the disappointment.

Just before his phone had gone off, he had stared at her as though she were a stranger, as if he couldn’t understand what he was doing there, with her. How could he go from desperate passion to icy distance in the blink of an eye? What had been going through his mind at that moment and what had she done wrong?

Fixing her disheveled clothing, she left the room, needing distance and time to collect herself. As she shut the office door at her back, she leaned against it, her hand pressed wearily against her fiercely beating heart, tears brimming hotly in her eyes.

H
e tapped his hands on the steering wheel of his sleek, black Porsche Boxster to the beat of The Rolling Stones as he breezed through the last stint of his run to New York City. It’d been quite the drive, but Wyatt didn’t mind. The end goal was most certainly worth any and all hazards he faced along the way.

Snow drifted in and began to fall as he neared the city, but he paid no attention to it. He was used to the cold, even if it had been much nicer back in Maine. He’d get back to it soon enough, he knew. But first he had business to see to.

He wondered what her reaction had been to the flowers he’d sent her. Knowing her, she likely threw them in the face of the poor messenger, but maybe she’d kept them just long enough to curse his memory. He liked to think that she still did, in fact, remember him, and that she had, even for the shortest of moments, thought of his face and ached.