Intimate Persuasions (17 page)

Fucking Derek!
He could kill him right now. They were brothers. They knew all too well from their upbringing what sharing someone could do to a family. He almost had to laugh at the similarities of their current situation and that with which they were raised in.

He was forced to stop thinking about it when he heard a phone ringing. It wasn’t his though, it was Ann’s. He reached down in the console and found it. She must have left it in his truck yesterday. He looked at the screen and cringed when he saw it was Derek calling. He answered.

“You fucking dick! Is it not enough you stole her from me? You have to call her? And right after you tell me, no less?” Quinn slammed the phone shut, effectively disconnecting the call.

“Quinn—” That was the only word Derek was able to get out before Quinn hung up. Could things possibly get any worse? As if Murphy himself, the infamous law man, had swooped down and cast his shadow over Derek’s truck, he heard the sirens as they started to wail. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw none other than Deputy O’Reily. The same asshole that had had it in for him since freaking high school ever since Mary Sue Gallagher gave him her virginity instead of O’Reily. Granted he dated Mary Sue for two years, so it should have been his place to take her, but she wanted Derek.
What was he supposed to do, say no?
Well, I guess that answers that question,
Derek muttered to himself. Things just got a lot worse.

Ann was washing dishes and loading them into the dishwasher when she heard the screeching tires in the driveway. She instantly dried her hands and raced to the front door. But it opened before she got there and in stomped Quinn. Full of raging fury.

“Quinn, hi…what are you doing home? I thought you had to—”

“Shut up!” He shouted at her.

Ann’s mouth flew open in surprise. He had never spoken to her so rudely before. “What’s wrong? Are you upset?”

He let out a guttural laugh then looked at her. “Upset? No. God, no. Why would I be upset? I mean hell, it’s not like you and my brother have been keeping fucking secrets from me or anything.”
There! Stew over that!

“Secrets? Quinn what are you—” She was confused by his accusation.

This time Quinn really did laugh. “Oh, so he didn’t tell you he was going to tell me. Well, I guess the jokes on you now, because I know.” When she looked down he stalked over to her and raised her chin to meet his steely gaze. “I know everything!”

No!
Derek swore he wouldn’t say anything.
Why didn’t he believe her?
She had known that if Quinn knew about her true feelings she would lose him. And now he knew. He knew she was in love with him and her worst fears were coming true. They hadn’t talked about commitment. And it was more than obvious from his reaction to the news that he didn’t want one either.

Ann blinked back the tears. “Quinn, please. I’m…wait, no. I’m not going to say I’m sorry, because I’m not.”

If she had hit him with a two by four, Quinn couldn’t have been knocked more off balance as he was at that moment. He figured she would cry. He even figured she would try to deny it. Maybe even beg him for another chance. But to hear her stand there and say that she wasn’t even sorry.
How dare she!
He had given her everything that was his, including his soul. He loved her more than anything. He silently thanked himself for never giving into his need to tell her his true feelings.

“Quinn, don’t just look at me like that. Say something.”

“Say something? What in the fuck do you propose that I say?”

This time the tears did come. “I don’t know. I just…Quinn, everything that Derek said was true. And I can’t change how I feel. When you love someone, it just is. You can’t turn it off.”

His shock had intensified. She was in love with Derek? “You bitch! Get out of my house! Now!”

Ann felt his fury. The anger in his voice reverberated with every word that he spoke. “Quinn…please.” She was down-right sobbing now and she didn’t care. She loved him. She actually let herself believe that he cared for her and that maybe one day he might even love her as much as she loved him. How could she have been so wrong? Did the thought of her loving him disgust him so much?

Quinn had started to walk away when he heard her plea. “You stupid, ignorant bitch. You expect me to be okay with this? You disgust me!” And with that he slammed the bedroom door.

Ann fell to the floor. She was crying so hard her entire body was shaking. Eight weeks. She had had eight weeks with him. It wasn’t enough. She knew it. She knew he could never love her. He was too handsome, too smart and too damn sexy. There were plenty of women out there that could probably offer him much more than she ever could. She was a hostess in a restaurant for Christ sakes. She was nothing.

Quinn listened to her tears on the other side of the door.
What right did she have to cry,
he thought?
What right did she have to feel any amount of pain?
He was the one that was hurting, he was in pain. He stayed there, leaning against the door and listened to her sobs.
Why was she still crying?
He couldn’t stand it any longer. When he blinked, a tear escaped and trailed down his face.
Stop crying
, he silently told her. It was killing him to hear her cry.

Quinn squeezed his eyes shut to stop the flow of tears. “Baby, please don’t cry,” he whispered. But she didn’t hear him and she didn’t stop. Quinn fought everything inside of him to keep from going to her. He shouldn’t care. He should hate her, despise her. But he didn’t. He loved her.
God damn it. He loved her so damn much.

Finally, Ann had stopped. Quinn looked at his watch. Forty five minutes. She had cried for forty five minutes and he had stood there and did nothing. He could hear her moving around. What was she doing? Then he heard her keys. She was leaving.
No, don’t go,
he wanted to shout to her. But he knew he couldn’t. She was quiet again; then he almost jumped out of his skin at the sound of her voice on the other side of the door.

“Quinn.” Her voice was barely audible. She sounded hoarse and sickly. “I’m leaving. I’ll come back tonight to…get my things.” She sniffled.

Was she crying again?
Annie, please don’t cry
.

“I just wanted you to know that, well I…I meant what I said, about how I felt. I love—” She was interrupted by the sound of more tires screeching in the driveway. She ran to the door and opened it. Derek.

“Ann, thank God. You didn’t have your phone with you. I’ve been trying to call you.” He had been so frantic while he dealt with that dick O’Reily, who set the world record on how long it takes to write a damn speeding ticket. “I talked to Quinn and—”

Whap
! Ann slapped him with every amount of pain that she felt. His stupid meddling had caused this. “I hate you! How could you tell him? You swore to me you’d never tell.” She didn’t wait for an answer. She just ran to her car and sped away.

Derek rubbed his cheek.
Fuck. Shit. Damn.
They weren’t the most creative words. But they adequately described the clusterfuck that this afternoon had turned into. He could have gone after her, but he knew that it would make no difference. Until he cleared things up with Quinn, nothing was going to get fixed.

So he took a deep breath and walked in the house. He closed the door and looked up to see his brother standing there, tears streaked down his face. “Oh shit. You’ve been crying.”

Quinn wanted to rage at his brother, he wanted to tear him to shreds. But he knew it would do no good. If Ann had really cared for him, she wouldn’t have cheated on him. He turned from his brother and went to the kitchen.

Derek followed him, “Quinn, you need to listen to me.”

Quinn ignored him, reaching for his bottle of Jack Daniels and a shot glass. “Go to hell.”

“Quinn, you’re wrong. I never slept with her.” There. If he wouldn’t let him explain he would just have to let little pieces of the truth spill out into the conversation.

Quinn turned and looked at him. It helped a little to hear it, but it didn’t much matter. Because while he was in love with her, she was in love with Derek.

“I guess I should thank you, but I’m not feeling too cordial right now. Seeing as how she’s in love with you and all.”

This time it was Derek’s turn to be shocked. “What?”

“You gonna make me repeat that?” Quinn screamed the question.

“Wait. This doesn’t make any sense. Why on earth do you think she’s in love with me?”
What in the hell was going on?

Quinn turned to face his brother. With new tears escaping his eyes he said, “She told me.”

Derek shook his head in bewilderment. “What?” He knew for a fact that Ann was desperately and hopelessly in love with Quinn. Why on earth would she have told Quinn that she was in love with him? But within that question was his answer. She wouldn’t have. No way would Ann have told him that.

“What exactly did she say?” Derek demanded.

Quinn looked at his brother, seriously reconsidering his position on murder. “I can’t believe you’re going to make me go over this again.”

Derek reached into Quinn’s refrigerator and pulled out two beers, handing one to his brother he said, “Yeah, well I am gonna. Because I might have screwed up today, but I have a feeling you did too. So sit down, drink your beer and tell me everything she said.”

Quinn sat in the chair opposite his brother and popped off the lid. Taking a big swig, he glared at his brother. “She said she couldn’t turn her feelings of love off. She said that when you love someone it just is. Or something like that. Fuck, I hate you!”

Derek took the verbal attack in stride. Because in a matter of minutes he knew that Quinn would be looking at himself in the mirror and uttering those same words. “She said when you love ‘someone’?”

“Yeah.”
Why was he even sitting here talking to his asshole of a brother?

“So, at what point in your educational background did you start mixing up the word ‘someone’ with ‘Derek’? Just wondering, because the ‘someone’ she’s in love with is you.”
There. Put that in your pipe and smoke it you hot-headed jerk.

Quinn set down his beer and stared at his brother. “What?”

Derek nodded. “That’s what I went there to tell you. She and I have become good friends working at the restaurant together.” Derek held up his hand to shut him up. “She confided in me. She’s been in love with you almost since the beginning. But she always had this paranoid delusion that you would get tired of her. She lived everyday in fear that you were going to dump her for someone else.”

“What?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“I know. Look, you know she’s only had two boyfriends. Not a lot of experience for someone her age. She’s still young, at heart I mean. She assumed that if she cared about you too much, or showed you how she felt, that you would go running for the hills. After you kicked her out, of course.”

“But, I…I told her you came to see me. I told her that I knew everything. She didn’t deny it, she accepted that I knew.” This didn’t make any sense.

“Right. She thinks I told you that she was in love with you. And that she was afraid to lose you.” Derek watched the horror creep across his brother’s face when realization had hit.

“No! Oh shit! Derek, I was horrible to her. I called her a bitch. Oh fuck. What have I done? Where did she go? Do you know where she might have gone? I have to find her.” Quinn was already getting up from the table.

“Hang on. There’s something else you have to know.”

Quinn stopped in his tracks. “What?”

Derek took a breath, knowing that this might be more shocking than everything else. “I think Ann’s pregnant.”

Quinn dropped into the chair in disbelief. He shook his head for several minutes with his mouth hanging open, and then slowly turned to his brother.

“So, if I understand you right, the woman that I love, the only woman that I’ve ever loved, is pregnant with my child. She loves me, so much that she is riddled with anxiety over whether I’ll leave her.” Quinn took a breath. “And to help her through these things that she’s going through I scream at her, call her a bitch and tell her to get out.”

Derek shook his head. “Yeah man, that pretty much covers it.”

“Holy hell. What in the hell is wrong with me?” Quinn dropped his forehead to the table. Too much shocking information all at once was not good for the soul.

Chapter Fourteen

Ann didn’t know where she was. She just drove and drove until she was lost. She kept replaying everything that happened when Quinn had gotten home. She couldn’t believe the cruel words he had used when he found out she loved him. He called her a bitch. He knew how much she hated when men called women that. Did the idea of her loving him make him so angry that he would want nothing but to hurt her?

She saw a small hotel on the side of the road and pulled off to see if they had any vacancies. She knew she had told Quinn she would be back tonight for her things, but there was no way she could go back there tonight. She was tired, her head hurt and the pain she felt in her chest was unbearable. Maybe she would go back tomorrow night.

She got out of her car and headed for the front office. There was an old man behind the counter and he turned away from his television to face her when she entered. He gave her a concerned smile. She knew she probably looked like hell.