One in a Million (15 page)

She would be, too, except she would miss Quinn a whole lot more than she was comfortable admitting.

“I
THINK WE SHOULD LOOK
into franchising your friend Sheila's meat loaf,” Quinn said, leaning back in his chair as he surveyed his empty plate. “We could all become very, very rich making people all over the country deliriously happy at mealtime.”

Daisy laughed. “You're already rich,” she said teasingly, before she could stop herself.

“Only on paper,” Quinn replied.

Daisy felt her cheeks turn hot and it wasn't because she had her hands in soapy dishwater. “I'm sorry, that was rude. Please forgive me.” She had spoken to him as if they were old friends who knew everything about each other and could poke fun at each other, instead of near strangers who had been thrown together by circumstance and necessity.

“It's okay, Daisy. I do have a lot of material assets but I'm not in the same league as my stepfather.”

“And my criteria for considering someone filthy rich are extremely low,” she quipped, trying to make light of her gaffe. “Right now I'd call three months rent in the bank and a paid-for car being on Easy Street. Still, your financial situation is none of my business. It was a little joke…a very little joke.”

“I can take a joke,” he said, setting his plate and silverware on the drain board. “You don't have to hang your head for bringing up the fact I have money.”

“Okay, I forgive myself.” She attempted a smile but she
thought it might have come off a little ragged around the edges. Now everything felt awkward again because she still felt guilty about keeping him chained to the cabin when he had more important things to do than fetch and carry for her and her daughter.

She turned back to washing Brianna's bottles with fierce concentration. She had allowed herself to be lulled into a false feeling of intimacy, of sharing, almost of family, these past days of near total isolation with Quinn. Sheila must have passed the word to her friends and the Tuesday Tarts because their vigilance had dwindled off into phone calls and text messages instead of daily visits.

It had been just the two of them and the baby for the past three days.

Quinn had declared he was taking the Labor Day weekend off to do just that—labor—at the farm. He had spent all of Friday and Saturday working to bring the junglelike yard under control. He'd rented a big, heavy-duty riding mower and scrounged around in the barn until he came up with rakes and hoes and a wheelbarrow that was in surprisingly good shape once the tire was pumped up. He'd trimmed and pruned and rooted out dead wood until he had a big pile of brush. After Brianna had fallen asleep in her lacy bassinette Daisy came outside on the porch to sit and watch the flames.

Quinn had joined her after fetching a beer from the kitchen, rocking in the chair beside hers as the embers glowed with shades of orange and red and overhead stars blinked into life. It was quiet in the clearing where they sat, but far away, out on the lake, the sound of fishing boats starting their engines to head back into shore for the night came very faintly to their ears. It had been like a little slice of heaven for Daisy, those quiet hours; the kind of life she had privately envisioned for herself when she was with Brendan,
although she had always known that a simple cabin in the woods was not his style.

If only she had met someone like Quinn first. She had been foolish to fall in love with Brendan. He was charming and outgoing, but she had learned to her sorrow there was little depth of character and maturity in the man behind the smiling facade. She would never give her heart that easily again. Daisy sighed and ran the bottle under a stream of hot water to rinse it before setting it upside down in the rack.

“Now what's wrong?” Quinn asked, leaning one hip against the counter, folding his arms across his chest while he studied her profile. She would never in a million years admit to her thoughts because she didn't want to hurt his feelings by speaking ill of his dead stepbrother, or admit that she also felt a sense of relief that she wouldn't have to share her daughter with a man she couldn't respect, and no longer loved.

“I wish you'd gone to Atlanta,” she said, bringing up another point that had been bothering her. “Brianna and I would have been fine here alone.”

“Is that why you've been so touchy the last day or two? Because I decided to let my partner wine and dine the Atlanta employees at the race track instead of going myself?”

“That's your job,” she said. “You told me he was the brains and you were the marketing. The people you'd be entertaining are your regional sales force, right? You should be there.”

“Look, that's true, but Zach's not some kind of pencil-necked geek who never leaves the lab. He's been running the family business since he got out of college. He can handle schmoozing with the salesmen as well as I can. Besides, he's a huge NASCAR fan so it's not exactly hardship duty for him.”

“Still—”

“How about ice cream?” he asked abruptly, routing the
conversation in a new direction. He grabbed the dish towel from her hand and spun her around, slowly, so she didn't stumble on her still weak ankle and untied the old-fashioned cotton apron she'd found in a kitchen drawer. It was the first time he'd touched her, actually laid hands on her, since he'd carried her into the cabin ten days ago. She shivered a little when she felt his grip on her waist. His hands were as warm and strong as she remembered and just as arousing.

Now where had that extraordinary thought come from? Arousing? She wasn't beginning to think of Quinn that way, in a sexual, man-woman way, was she? She couldn't. She wouldn't.

He tapped the tip of her nose with his finger. “Hey, are you okay? You went a little blank on me there for a moment.”

“What? No. I'm fine, just a little dizzy. I'm sorry, what did you say?” she stuttered, shocked to her core to realize that, yes, she was beginning to think of him as more than just a friend, a benefactor. She was beginning to think of him as a man, and a sexy desirable one at that.

“Ice cream. I asked you if you'd like to go for ice cream.”

“Ice cream sounds good.” It took a lot of willpower to get the words to come out just right but she managed.

“Soft serve in a waffle cone, or maybe a milkshake?” He grinned like a little boy. “Nope, I want a hot fudge sundae. I haven't had one of those in years.”

“I love hot fudge sundaes, but we just finished supper.”

His grin turned crafty. “It's dessert. If we hurry we can get down to Bubba's Bait & Ice Cream Shop and back before the race starts.”

Daisy laughed, her heartbeat settling back into something resembling a normal rhythm. “You're kidding. It's not Bubba's Bait Shop & Ice Cream Parlor for real?”

“Wanna' bet?” Quinn asked, raising one dark eyebrow as if daring her to question his honesty.

“Really?”

“I swear.” He held up one hand. “Get Brianna into her carrier and I'll show you.”

“Okay,” Daisy said, trying her best not to let him see how breathless she'd suddenly become just because he'd smiled at her. He didn't smile often but every time he did it set her heart to hammering in her chest or took her breath away, or sometimes both. “But I'm buying,” she said firmly.

“Deal,” he replied. “Let's get going. The race starts in less than an hour.” He didn't argue and she found it no longer surprised her that he wasn't intimidated by a woman taking the initiative now and then. The day Brianna was born and the days that followed he had been so forceful, so intimidating she had assumed, wrongly, it seemed, that despite his assertions to the contrary, August Carlyle must have been a bigger influence on him growing up than he would admit.

She was very glad she had been wrong about that.

“I'll be ready in a jiff,” she said. The Labor Day race was under the lights. If Eli Ward, Quinn's driver, finished in the top ten he would most likely move up enough in the points standings to make the Chase. Her favorite driver was Rafael O'Bryan, who was already locked into one of the top twelve spots for the final run to the championship, but today she was going to root for the No. 502 car with all her heart.

Q
UINN AWOKE FROM A LIGHT
doze. Was it the far-off rumble of thunder across the lake that had roused him? He looked around the darkened living room. Rain pattered on the roof and tapped against the windows as lightning flickered above the trees. He remembered nights like this when he had lived here with his grandparents. He had always enjoyed the sound of rain on the roof, but that wasn't what had wakened him.

He stretched, running his hands through his hair and listened to the silence. There it was again, the rustling of sound and the faint mewling cry of a newborn.

Brianna was awake.

He glanced over at the couch where Daisy was curled up under one of his grandmother's crocheted afghans sound asleep. He checked the luminous dial of his watch to find it was a few minutes shy of three o'clock. The race had ended just before midnight due to a lengthy red flag delay for a single-car crash that had taken out four other cars as collateral damage. Thankfully none of them had been the Rev Energy Drinks car. In fact Eli had taken the lead soon after the restart and cruised to an easy win. His first in a NASCAR Sprint Cup car. Quinn caught himself grinning again as he remembered the jolt of pride seeing the Rev car in Victory Lane had produced deep in his gut.

He just wished Daisy had been awake to share it with.

She had fallen asleep during the delay and he hadn't had the heart to wake her. It wasn't often that Brianna slept more
than three hours at a time, but she had tonight. Maybe it was the cereal Daisy had started feeding her after a lengthy phone conversation with her mother in Florida?

He hadn't realized that changing a newborn's diet was the equivalent to a major corporate marketing decision but he wouldn't make that mistake again. There had been calls to Daisy's mother in Florida, to friends and customers at the salon soliciting advice, a consultation with a nurse manning the New Mother hotline at the hospital, a conference call with Juliana and Patsy Grosso and Patsy's daughter, celebrity chef Grace Winters who had three children of her own, and he had no idea how many others that took place when he wasn't within earshot. The consensus had been to give the feedings a try and so yesterday they had made the trip to Mooresville to the grocery to buy a single box of rice cereal.

It had been quite a production what with diaper bags and an insulated carrier for bottles of formula, and a tote with changes of clothes for both Daisy and her daughter. She'd laughed, shaking her head. “I know, I know it looks as if we're preparing to go around the world and not just to the grocery.” Daisy giggled. “But I honestly don't know what I will and won't need yet. Bear with me. By next month I will have the hang of this motherhood thing.”

She would, too, Quinn thought indulgently, levering himself up from the chair. He had underestimated Daisy those first couple of days. He had thought she was weak and easily managed, but he had been wrong. She had agreed to his high-handed ordering of her life, was still agreeing to his insistence that she stay at the cabin instead of attempting to return to her third-floor walk-up for Brianna's sake if not her own, but it wasn't because she was weak or malleable.

It was because she was using her head and her common sense to make decisions concerning her baby's welfare and her own. When she was strong enough her innate self-
confidence would reassert itself; she would veto any further arguments he might put forward to keep her and Brianna here with him and return to her life and her job and her friends.

And he would be alone again, solitary, as he had always been and, if he was completely honest with himself, even lonelier than he'd been before.

He walked to the bassinette and leaned over to see if Brianna was awake or merely fussing in her sleep. Bright, dark eyes stared back at him from the shadowy interior. She was very definitely wide-awake. So much for hoping he could give her a few pats on the back and she would drop off again.

“Hello, little one,” he said very softly. “Are you hungry?” Her hands waved in the air in reply. After a couple of false starts she found her mouth and started sucking her thumb. She was getting good at that. Daisy was already taking suggestions on how to break her of the habit.

“Okay, I'll have to wake your mom, though.” He hadn't yet attempted to feed her. He glanced over at Daisy still sound asleep, her hand under her cheek. She looked comfortable and relaxed curled up in the corner of the couch and he hated to wake her. She still had faint shadows beneath her eyes and she needed a long stretch of unbroken rest. Maybe it was time for him to take another step as a surrogate father and feed Brianna himself.

He straightened up and prepared to head for the kitchen. Brianna was having none of that. Her thumb popped out of her mouth and she began to sniffle. He saw her take a big breath and knew she was getting ready to let loose with a real howl. Automatically he bent forward again and picked her up. She squirmed a little against his shoulder, rooting around until she was comfortable, then settled with her tiny face tucked against his neck, her fingers curled around the collar of his shirt.

Quinn stood quietly savoring the moment, dumbstruck by the depth of emotion the tiny, helpless infant stirred to life inside him. He wanted to protect her, to make everything perfect for her for the rest of her life, and not just because she was Brendan's daughter, but because he was falling in love with her himself.

And if he was falling in love with Brianna, what were his feelings for her mother? Was he falling in love with Daisy, too?

He had no idea. In all his thirty-three years he had never been in love, never felt so deeply for any of the women he'd been involved with that he couldn't imagine his life without them. It wasn't that way with Daisy. He had no problem at all imagining how bleak a future without her in it would be. No problem at all.

 

“O
H DEAR, WHAT TIME IS IT
?” Daisy sat up, disoriented to find herself still on the couch in the living room. She must have fallen asleep as the delay after the multicar pileup postponed the end of the race past midnight. One moment she had been listening to an on-track announcer interviewing Bart Branch as he sat in his car on the track and the next she had been dreaming of eating ice cream on a rickety dock by the lake, laughing at something funny Quinn had said while Brianna, all grown up, sat beside him eating an ice-cream cone of her own. The warm, fuzzy residue of that idyllic dream faded as time and place returned abruptly. “Brianna?” Her eyes flew to the bassinette. It was empty.

She swung her feet to the floor, wincing as her still-tender ankle bumped against the leg of the low pine table where she and Sheila and Mellie and Lily had held their impromptu inside picnic just a couple of days earlier. “Quinn?” She rose, still a little stiff, and threw the afghan Quinn must have covered her with over the back of the couch.

“Right here,” he spoke quietly from across the room.
Brianna was tucked against his shoulder, supported there by one big hand across her back. One of her bottles was stuck in his pants pocket drawing his jeans tight across his narrow hips. Her eyes lingered there for a moment longer than was necessary and she was glad it was dark enough in the big room, lit only by the embers of the small fire Quinn had kindled earlier to help take the dampness from the night air, so that he couldn't see her blush.

She had been noticing more and more of those sorts of sensual details as the days passed and she watched him work out of doors and around the house. He didn't do manual labor for a living but he wasn't a soft man, not by any means. His muscles were well defined. He had broad shoulders and a strong back and although his touch was gentle his hands were as hard and strong as the rest of him.

“I didn't hear her wake up,” she said, feeling alarmed she'd slept so deeply. A little arrow of uneasiness streaked through her heart. What if this happened when they were alone together, just the two of them? And what might happen when Brianna was older as she had been in her dream? What if she wandered out of the apartment and out in to traffic?

“You didn't hear her because she didn't make any noise,” Quinn assured her and she knew, he had read her thoughts as he seemed to be able to do now and then. “She was awake so I took her with me to warm her bottle. She was bored lying in the bassinette. She wanted to know how the race ended.” He settled into the chair at a right angle to where she sat on the couch and began feeding her daughter. It was the first time he'd attempted the task, but he looked as if he'd been doing it all his life.

“I've been taking notes,” he said with that devastatingly sexy smile he used so rarely. “I figured it was time I gave it a try.”

Daisy found the sight of Brianna in his arms every bit as appealing in real life as it had been in her dreams. Quinn
Parrish would make a wonderful father, a better father than his stepbrother would have been. She didn't berate herself for the thought. It was the truth and she would be less than honest if she pretended otherwise.

“You're doing great.” She curled her legs under her and wrapped her arms around a throw pillow, allowing the fantasy of the three of them as a family to play out a little longer.

“She's hungry,” he said, looking down at the baby, “but not starving like she always seemed to be before.”

Daisy glanced at the clock. “Is it really after three? I fed her at eleven. That's over four hours. Starting her on cereal was the right thing to do, I guess.”

“Yeah, it seems that way.” He grinned down at Brianna, who was wide-awake and listening to every word, it seemed. “Your momma's a smart lady, isn't she?”

Daisy's throat tightened with emotion. They looked so right together, the two of them. She stiffened, searching for a way to divert her thoughts from going further down a forbidden path. She owed Quinn so much she could never repay. She didn't dare start letting herself think that there could be more to their relationship than gratitude and friendship. That way promised nothing but heartbreak.

“Who won the race?” she asked. The race was a much safer topic of conversation.

“I recorded the finish.” Quinn nodded toward the remote as Brianna sucked hungrily on her bottle and grinned. “I think you'll like the way it turned out.”

Daisy wondered if she should remind him to burp Brianna now that her formula was half gone, but he glanced at the bottle as he spoke and gently tugged it out of her mouth, lifting her back to his shoulder. The baby squirmed a little, not wanting to stop eating, but after a dozen gentle pats she relaxed and turned her head to nuzzle his neck.

Daisy's heart turned over in her chest and tears stung her
eyes. She fumbled for the remote and switched on the TV to keep from staring at the two of them. She found the right button and began to fast forward through the race delay. The sound was muted. She continued to watch the screen as she talked so he wouldn't see how close she was to losing control of her emotions. “Have you always been a NASCAR fan?” she asked.

“Not when I was a kid,” he admitted. “Grandma and Granddad weren't all that much into racing, probably because of my dad's accident, but once my mom married Carlyle and I got old enough to be interested in cars I got hooked. What about you?”

“My dad and my uncle loved dirt track racing. When I was a kid my uncle crewed on a couple of teams but my dad worked two jobs to keep all of us in sneakers and jeans so he didn't have a lot of time or money left over for going to races.”

“Did he teach you to drive? You handled your car like a pro that first day I met you.”

“Until I pulled out in front of a truck, you mean?” she asked, giving him a quick, rueful glance before turning back to the screen.

“It was an accident, not bad driving.”

“The outcome was the same.” She shrugged not wanting to think about the accident and how much more serious it could have been for both her and her daughter. “My oldest brother taught me to drive. He always wanted to be a NASCAR driver. He had to settle for driving a big rig.”

“He lives near your parents in Florida?”

They had spoken briefly of her family now and then but very little of his. “Mom and Dad moved to Sarasota when Dad's plant closed. They're close by each other. Mom helps out with his kids. My other brother and my sister are in Georgia and Texas. We're scattered all over the place these days.” Tears pricked behind her eyelids again. She was still
way too emotional. “You're lucky to be near your mother,” she said before she could censor her tongue.

“Distance isn't always measured in miles.” Brianna emitted a loud unladylike burp and he gave a short bark of laughter. “Way to go, Bri, honey. That was a good one.” He settled her back into his arms and began feeding her again. Obviously there wasn't going to be any more discussion about his family.

Daisy pretended to watch the race as the cars fired their engines and took up position for the double-file restart. She hated to see people estranged from their loved ones. There were so many separations, like Brendan's death, that could never be altered or made right. To her way of thinking it was almost a sin to create them among the living. The estrangement between Quinn and his mother was none of her business even though she wished there was something she could do or say to help mend the relationship.

She turned her face away from the screen and looked at Quinn, at the hard, unyielding line of his jaw and knew she couldn't say what was in her heart. Not now, perhaps not ever. He glanced up and caught her watching him. “Don't worry about me, Daisy,” he said quietly, leaning forward to touch her cheek with the tips of his fingers. His touch was light and fleeting but its effect on Daisy's nerve endings was anything but. She held herself very still to keep from giving into the temptation to lean into his hand, snuggling against his palm just as Brianna was nestled against his shoulder. The caress seemed to take Quinn by surprise as much as it had her. He dropped his hand and sat back abruptly. Brianna squirmed against his shoulder disturbed by his sudden movement. Automatically he began to pat her back. “It's been this way between the two of us for a long time,” he said gruffly. “I'm used to it.”