One in a Million (11 page)

While he watched Daisy gunned the engine, rocketing through the tall, ornate wrought-iron gates. Quinn froze with his hand on the door handle. She was going too fast to make the stop sign at the end of the short turnoff from the busy four-lane highway beyond the gate. It was rush hour;
cars and trucks and delivery vans zoomed past heedless of the small car about to enter their midst.

“Stop!” He yelled as loud as he could. Daisy must have realized the danger at almost the same moment he did and braked. The driver of a big panel van swerved to avoid her but it was too late. The right front bumper caught the sedan on the left fender and sent it spinning back across the grass, broadside, into the stone wall.

Brakes squealed and horns blared as cars swerved into the other lane to avoid the accident. Quinn started running even before the panel van had braked to a halt. The driver's side of the sedan was crumpled in on itself. There was no sign of movement from inside the car.

No sign of life.

 

D
AISY'S HEAD WAS SPINNING
from where she'd contacted the window glass. She lifted her hand to her forehead but didn't feel any blood. She groaned. The pain in her elbow and ankle almost, but not quite, overwhelmed the fear in her heart. She'd been in an accident, she knew that much, sideswiped by a big white truck that she'd never seen coming until it was too late. What had she done letting herself be panicked by her unexpected meeting with Quinn Parrish? She clasped her shaking hands around her distended middle. Was her baby all right? She fumbled for the release on her seat belt, wanting nothing more desperately than to be out of her mangled car. The air bag hadn't deployed she realized belatedly. The impact couldn't have been all that bad, right? It was just that the truck had pushed her sideways into the wall and her left side had taken the brunt of the impact.

She struggled to open the door but couldn't manage. The pain in her elbow and ankle was spreading, moving across her body, centering itself in the middle of her back, radiating into her pelvis. “Oh, no,” she moaned. “No. Not yet. Not yet,
little one. You're not ready to be born yet.” She laid her head against the steering wheel and fought back tears.

“Daisy, are you all right?”

She lifted her head, responding to the tone of command in the voice, still a little dizzy with shock and the tightening pain in her abdomen. She found herself staring directly into Quinn Parrish's stark, white face, “Yes,” she said, “no.” The pain was worse, unrelenting now. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. This isn't how they'd described how her labor would progress in the birthing classes she'd taken at the hospital.

“I'm going to get you out of here.”

“Shouldn't we wait for the emergency crew?” It was another voice, a stranger's. She looked past Quinn and noticed a tall man with skin the color of coffee staring in at her with worried eyes. He was wearing a khaki shirt with his name and an auto parts company logo embroidered on the pocket. He must be the truck driver.

“Look at the way traffic's backed up,” Quinn growled, wrestling the door open with both hands. “They might not be here for fifteen or twenty minutes.” He hunkered down so that his line of sight was level with hers. She fixed her gaze on his face, all hard lines and angles. His expression was hard, too, but comforting all the same. He didn't look anything like Brendan, she thought distractedly, but of course he wouldn't. They weren't blood relation, just stepbrothers. He reached in the car and laid his hand on her arm. His touch was gentle. She shivered at the warmth of his touch, suddenly shaking with cold and reaction. “Daisy, are you okay? Did you hurt your back, your neck?”

“No. My elbow, and my ankle, that's all.” His hand left her arm and she felt his fingers probe gently along her lower leg.

“Where does it hurt? Here?”

She winced. “Yes. That's it.”

“Looks like a pretty bad sprain but I don't think it's broken. Your elbow's banged up, too. Hold tight and the ambulance will be here soon.”

“I can't wait,” she said, grasping his hand between her own. “I…I'm in labor. The baby's coming and it hurts so bad, way more than they said it would. I'm scared something's wrong, terribly wrong. Please, tell them to hurry.” She began to cry. She couldn't seem to control herself. She had never felt so alone and helpless in her life. Pain arced through her again taking her breath away. “Please, Quinn,” she said. “I need your help.”

Q
UINN GLANCED AT THE
waiting-room clock. Eight and a half hours since he'd looked up from his brother's gravestone and locked his gaze with Daisy Brookshire's warm, brown eyes. It seemed like a lifetime. What was taking so long? They had moved Daisy from the emergency room to the birthing center hours ago. She had been in a lot of pain even then, the bumps and bruises and sprained ankle from the accident adding to the misery of childbirth. He knew it wasn't politically correct to call labor contractions misery but it had sure looked that way to him.

He glanced across the small, cheerfully decorated room. The three women sitting side by side across from him stared back. Their expressions were friendly and polite but their body language was reserved and not one of them held his gaze for more than a moment or two. He wished he could ask them if eight hours was normal for a first baby but he had decided it was best not to show male ignorance in front of this crew. They would pounce on his weakness like lionesses at the kill.

Patsy and Juliana Grosso, and Sophia Grosso-Murphy. He had had no idea that Daisy had such powerful friends. He was looking at three generations of NASCAR royalty. Juliana Grosso's husband, Milo, old as dirt, almost the last of his breed, was still a force to be reckoned with in stock-car racing, as was his wife. Juliana was a legend in her own right. The middle-aged woman beside her was Patsy Grosso, wife
of former NASCAR Sprint Cup champion, Dean Grosso, Juliana's grandson. The couple were co-owners of Cargill-Grosso Racing. Although he was more than satisfied with his association with Double S Racing he'd have given almost any amount of money to have sponsored one of Dean and Patsy's cars. Any businessman worth his corner office and expense account would. The youngest of the trio was Sophia, Patsy's daughter, and wife of NASCAR driver Justin Murphy.

He stood up and walked to the closed doors leading to the birthing suites. He hadn't been allowed in the room since Daisy's labor coach, her boss, Rue Larrabee, had shown up at the Concord hospital where Daisy had been admitted. Quinn had underestimated the efficiency of the first responders and the Concord police department. Despite the snarled traffic in both directions they had arrived in less than ten minutes and extracted Daisy from the car with quick, practiced efficiency.

He had followed the ambulance to the hospital and managed to talk the admissions people into letting him deal with the paperwork by allowing them to think he was Daisy's brother-in-law. By the time the emergency room staff was ready to transfer her to the birthing suites she'd been in too much pain to object when he followed along. He'd even stayed by her side for the first hour until Rue Larrabee arrived.

The hospital staff hadn't been a match for him but Daisy's employer was. Five feet eight inches of fiery, redheaded single-mindedness, she gave him one minute to explain who he was and what he was doing there, and then pointed a red-tipped finger at the door and told him to vamoose. She would talk to him later. Completely out of his element in the hospital setting, thrown off balance by the inner turmoil Daisy's pain had caused him, Quinn had uncharacteristically obeyed. He'd been exiled to waiting room limbo ever since.

He glanced at the clock, his mind circling back to his original unanswered questions. Was this taking too long? Was Daisy all right? Was the baby okay?

“How long have you known Daisy?” Juliana Grosso asked suddenly.

“We met for the first time today. At the cemetery,” he said, roused from his musings by her demanding voice.

“You're August Carlyle's stepson, correct?” Her tone was accusatory.

“My mother is married to August Carlyle, yes,” he replied carefully. His relationship with his mother's husband was practically nonexistent these days. He'd suffered August's bullying during his teenage years because he'd had no other choice but once he was out on his own he'd never set foot under the old man's roof unless his mother begged him to.

“You're Fiona Carlyle's son.” Patsy's voice was softer than Juliana's but no less forceful.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“We've served on several committees together. She has been a very generous donor to our family's foundation for missing and exploited children.” The revelation a year before that celebrity chef Grace Clark was the long-lost daughter of Dean and Patsy Grosso had rocked NASCAR nation. He'd already made the decision that Rev Energy Drinks should sponsor a NASCAR Sprint Cup car so he had followed the drama carefully through Internet postings, even though he'd been out of the country at the time.

“My mother has many charitable interests,” he said noncommittally. August Carlyle would allow nothing less from his wife.

Juliana grew impatient with their small talk. “Did you frighten poor Daisy into pulling out into traffic like that?”

“Nana,” Sophia cautioned, tilting her blond head as she gave him a long, hard look that was only slightly less accusatory than her great-grandmother's.

“In some respects I am responsible,” he said.

“At least you admit it.”

“Why do you feel you're responsible, Mr. Parrish?” Patsy asked.

These women were Daisy's friends. It figured they would know what Brendan's father was up to and come down firmly on Daisy's side. “Finding me at Brendan's grave upset her,” he said candidly. “She jumped to the conclusion that I was in agreement with my mother and August that she should give them custody of her baby after it…she…is born.”

“August Carlyle is a jackass,” Juliana snorted. “It's medieval what he's attempting to do to that poor girl.”

Patsy laid her hand on her grandmother-in-law's arm. “Daisy is in a very difficult position financially,” she reminded the older woman.

“That gives him no right to terrorize her.”

“Daisy's had a rough time of it these last six months. You can understand why she doesn't want to have anything to do with your mother and stepfather,” Sophia said, rising from her chair and coming toward him, her eyes searching his face as though trying to determine if he was cut from the same bolt as his stepfather and his mother. “Are you on her side or theirs?” she asked bluntly.

She held his gaze, her stance and expression nearly an exact copy of her formidable great-grandmother's. Quinn didn't make the mistake of smiling at the comparison but he wanted to. “I seldom agree with my stepfather on any matter,” he replied. “I don't intend to start doing so now.”

Sophia remained silent a moment or two longer, not breaking eye contact. Then she turned to her grandmother. “I believe him,” she said.

Patsy nodded but Juliana opened her mouth as if to continue the argument. Quinn braced himself for another grilling but at the moment what sounded like music box chimes
poured from the loudspeaker in the corner of the room, filling the air with the notes of “Rock-a-bye Baby”.

“She's here,” Sophia said, clapping her hands. “The nurse told us Daisy's the only mother-to-be in labor right now so it must mean that her baby's been born. Oh, I can't wait to see her.”

The double doors of the birthing center swung open and Rue Larrabee sailed through. She was wearing sea-green scrubs and a surgical cap concealed her red hair but it was her blazing ear-to-ear smile that caught and held Quinn's attention. “We have our baby,” she announced with a flourish. “Brianna Grace Brookshire has arrived.”

I
T WAS ALL WORTH IT,
the worry about their future, the fear that she'd harmed her child when she wrecked her car, the hours of pain that had left her exhausted but exhilarated when she finally heard her baby's first cry. Daisy gazed down at the tiny, scrunched up face of her daughter and felt her heart constrict with a mixture of love and lingering sorrow. “She's beautiful, Brendan,” she whispered, “so beautiful. I know you would have fallen in love with her the moment you laid eyes on her.”

“I think so, too.”

Daisy looked up, startled to find she wasn't alone. “Oh, it's you,” she said. Quinn Parrish stood in the doorway of the birthing room, his hands in the pockets of what appeared to be a very old leather jacket. He was wearing dark gray slacks and a black T-shirt and he looked every inch the successful and ruthless businessman he was. Her heart rate had quickened in anxiety when his shadow fell across her bed. She took a deep breath to get it under control.
Remember,
her inner voice told her,
he was raised by August Carlyle. No matter what he did for you yesterday, be careful around him.
She shifted the sleeping baby in her arms, grimacing a little at the pain in her left elbow when she moved.

“Good morning,” he said advancing a few steps into the room. The door was propped open. He made no move to close it and Daisy relaxed a fraction. She hadn't wanted to
be alone with him, not when she was feeling so vulnerable and nearly as helpless as her infant.

“Good morning,” she echoed, wondering how he had gotten into the hospital so early in the day. Visiting hours for anyone but fathers and grandparents didn't start until one o'clock in the afternoon. It was only a little after nine.

“How are you feeling?”

“I'm fine. Just stiff and sore from the accident—and the baby,” she said.

“Mmm,” he responded noncommittally.

Daisy felt herself flush. She looked a fright, she knew she did. Sophia had gone to her apartment the evening before to bring the small suitcase she'd packed but hadn't intended to use until after Labor Day, so she was, at least, wearing her own nightgown, a soft apple-green one, and not one of those awful hospital things that opened down the back. But beyond brushing her hair and teeth an hour or so earlier she hadn't done anything to repair the ravages of the day before.

“I'd think you'd be more than just a little stiff and sore after everything you went through yesterday.” He was watching her closely, his movie star blue eyes fixed on her face with laser intensity. She wondered how many people were brave enough, or foolish enough, to try to lie to him when he looked at them like that.

“You're right. I'm a lot stiff and sore.” She glanced ruefully at her left ankle encased in a soft cast, a bootlike affair that allowed her to put enough weight on it to walk back and forth to the bathroom, but nothing more.

“How long do you have to be off your feet?” he asked. His hands were still in his pockets, as though he didn't know what to do with them, she thought suddenly. She liked the idea that he might not be as completely at ease as he appeared to be. Obviously he wasn't used to being around a woman who had just given birth, or a newborn, either, for that matter. The thought gave her courage.

“I don't know. I haven't spoken to the doctor yet this morning. Not long, I hope. I…I don't want to be in here any longer than necessary.” She bit her lip and dropped her gaze to Brianna's tiny pink fingers wrapped surprisingly tightly around her little finger. Her insurance was minimal. It wouldn't pay for an extended stay in the hospital. And then there were the repairs to her car to consider. She hadn't budgeted for that at all.

“Will you have help with the baby when you get home?” he asked, looking down at Brianna a little warily, reinforcing her observation that he seemed completely out of his depth around a baby.

“My mother was going to come and stay with me—my parents moved to Florida a couple of years ago—but she just got a new job. My dad's been out of work for over a year, Mom almost as long.”

“You haven't even told them the baby's here, have you?” he asked astutely.

She tensed and Brianna screwed up her tiny red face and frowned as though she sensed Daisy's uneasiness with his uncanny ability to almost read her mind. She shook her head. “I know she'll want to fly right up here and stay to help me. I can't ask her to do that when jobs are so hard to find.” Now, why had she told him that? Shown him another vulnerability; the fact that her parents wouldn't be able to help her and the baby financially. It was another weapon August Carlyle could use against her if he found out. She felt tears burn behind her eyes and hurriedly blinked the weakness away.

“You won't be able to take care of the baby alone,” he said, stating the obvious, “not for a few days at least.”

“I'll be fine,” she said stubbornly. “I have friends. They'll help me.”

“I'm sure they will but you'll need to stay off your feet for at least a week. I'm not an obstetrician but you don't have to
be a doctor to know you can't carry an infant around when you're using crutches and have a bum elbow, too.”

He was right. What should she do? She wished Rue or her friend, Mellie Donovan, or Sophia were here. They would help her figure something out. If only her little apartment wasn't a third-floor walk-up, then she wouldn't worry so much, but it was and there was nowhere else for her to go when she was released from the hospital.

“I think you should come home with me.”

“What?” She couldn't do that. Remember who he is, her inner voice warned. “No, that's impossible,” she blurted out before she could stop herself. Brianna began to frown harder in her sleep. Her tiny hand fumbled its way to her mouth. She began to suck her thumb. Daisy wanted nothing more than to watch this remarkable action take place but she kept her eyes firmly on Quinn Parrish's hard, handsome face.

“Why?” he asked reasonably.

“I…I barely know you,” she said, lifting Brianna to her shoulder, patting her back with agitated little taps, more soothing to her than to the baby.

“We're family.”

His mother had been Brendan's stepmother, that hardly made them family. She opened her mouth to refute that dubious claim but shut it again with a snap. Fiona and August Carlyle stood in the doorway of her room. How had they found out Brianna had been born? She had been adamant that no information about her be given out by the hospital staff. She turned accusing eyes on Quinn Parrish. He met her angry stare head-on and gave a little shake of his head.

“It wasn't me, Daisy,” he said so softly only she could hear. “Believe me, I never said a word.”

 

“Q
UINN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING
here?” There was genuine surprise in his mother's voice as her eyes met his across Daisy's bed. Behind her August Carlyle frowned, his thin
lips tightening into a disapproving and suspicious line. The hard look didn't faze Quinn—he was used to it.

“Hello, Mom. August,” he said.

“Answer your mother. What are you doing here?” August demanded, his tone clipped and as disapproving as his stare. Three hundred years of breeding and money had given him an aura of aristocratic hauteur that always grated on Quinn's nerves.

“I met Daisy by chance at the cemetery yesterday,” Quinn explained. “Luckily I was close by when she had her accident. I stopped by this morning to see how she and the baby are doing.”

“That's why we're here, too. Hello, Daisy.” His mother looked fabulous, just as she always did. Her silver-gray hair was styled to perfection, her manicure was flawless, her clothes designer, but he could see signs of strain around her eyes and the corners of her mouth beneath her expertly applied makeup.

“How did you know I was here?” Daisy demanded, ignoring the pleasantries just as August had. Quinn silently approved of her tactics.

“The police report of your accident said you'd been brought here. We…we didn't know about the baby until we asked for you at the main desk.” Fiona's explanation was too pat, too rehearsed sounding. His mother had never been a good liar. Quinn suspected August had been keeping Daisy under surveillance, probably ever since his brother had died.

“You've been spying on me.” Daisy continued patting the little one on the back but her movements were more agitated and the baby squirmed against her shoulder.

“May we come in?”

“I guess so since you're already here.” Quinn could see the tension in Daisy's neck and shoulders beneath the pale green cotton of her nightgown. He stayed where he was
beside her bed. She slid him a quick glance from the corner of her eye but continued to focus her attention on the older couple.

Fiona advanced to within a couple of feet of the bed, drawn to the baby as though the tiny being was reeling her in by the heartstrings. His mother had raised Brendan from the time he was four years old. She had loved him deeply. Emotionally she would consider Daisy's baby her grandchild. Quinn felt a quick stab of remorse. His mother was hurting and he had done little if anything to help lessen her pain.

Fiona noticed the cast on Daisy's ankle. “Is it broken?” she asked.

“Just sprained, that's all.” Daisy spoke warily.

“I'm so glad you are both all right.” She clasped her hands in front of her as though she was having trouble restraining herself from reaching out to touch Daisy's baby. “I really am.”

“I know,” Daisy said, her voice softening slightly as her eyes met his mother's. If there was any chance of reconciling Daisy and his parents it would have to come through Fiona's efforts, Quinn knew. But in twenty years of marriage he couldn't recall a single instance where she had gone against her autocratic and demanding husband's wishes.

“How long do you have to wear that thing?” August said, indicating the cast with a flick of his index finger.

“A…a couple of weeks.”

“How do you expect to take care of an infant on your own?”

“I'll manage.” Her voice didn't waver. “I don't want any help from you.”

“You might not have a choice, girl. If you're not able to take care of my grandchild properly then it's my duty to alert the authorities, have the child removed to a safer environment.”

“No.” Daisy's cry came from her heart.

“August,” his mother's voice was soft but surprisingly firm. “What my husband means is that we would like you to come home with us. We have lots of room. We have spoken to a woman with excellent child care references to be…what did you name her?” she asked, unable to contain her curiosity any longer.

“Brianna. Brianna Grace.”

“What a lovely name. How much does she weigh? How long is she?” It seemed that once she'd started asking questions about the baby she couldn't stop.

“She's twenty inches long and she weighs six pounds and three ounces.” Rue Larrabee had told Quinn those were good numbers for a baby who had arrived two weeks earlier than expected.

“Quinn weighed over eight pounds and his head was as big as a basketball—”

“Fiona,” August said reprovingly.

“I'm sorry, I'm rambling, aren't I.”

Quinn felt his hands curl into fists. He hated it when his stepfather belittled her in public that way.

“Please, excuse me.”

“Thank you for the offer, Mrs. Carlyle,” Daisy said with dignity. “But I'm not leaving here with you, nor do I intend to be beholden to you in any way.”

“No matter how my wife is trying to sugarcoat the matter, I meant what I said,” August interrupted with his usual lack of tact. “If you aren't physically able to care for the child I'll be forced to intercede with the authorities—”

“That won't be necessary,” Quinn said, unable to remain silent while his stepfather bullied Daisy the way he bullied everyone else. “Because she's moving in with me until her ankle is healed.”