A Convenient Ring to Claim Her, page 10
The boss’s grand-nephew? No doubt.
Zara struck Quinn as the type who liked to micromanage, though. She wasn’t entirely pleased that Micah was leaving her grandson to sink or swim, but she had to accept Micah’s action with a satisfied nod and a cool, “Thank you.”
“I’ve also told my property agent to touch base with yours, to review the assessment of the property you’ve recommended. You’ve never steered us wrong. I’m sure things will proceed in due course. Was there anything else?”
This was like a tennis match between greats, the undercurrents thick, statements served and volleyed with powerful returns.
“Someone I wanted you to meet.” Aunt Zara was not cowed by the flash of warning in Micah’s gaze. “You’ll need an escort for the award ceremony.”
“I never have before. Quinn will accompany me if she’s up to it.”
“Oh? How nice.” It was not nice. She was livid at the thought. “I won’t take up any more of your time. It was lovely to meet you, Ms. Harper.”
“And you, Mrs. Von Strauss,” Quinn lied.
“Will you walk me out?”
“Of course,” Micah said, ever the gentleman.
* * *
“Your sister recently married,” Aunt Zara said as they strode through the lounge toward the foyer. “We haven’t had a chance to discuss that.”
“There’s nothing to discuss. As you said, she’s married.”
Aunt Zara’s mouth pinched, but she knew the rules where Eden was concerned. That’s why Micah had invoked her outside, to warn her against insulting Quinn to her face or behind her back. He had made clear a long time ago that he would not stand for any criticism of his mother or sister.
It hit him that, at some point, he would have to reveal to Zara and the rest of his father’s family that Yasmine existed. They were going to have a collective stroke.
“It’s charitable of you to help your sister’s friend.” She never used Eden’s name. “I can’t fault your loyalty to family.” Her smile was chilly. “But you have responsibilities to all your family, Micah. Everything you do affects us. It reflects on us. Kindly remember that.”
“How could I forget when you’re so diligent about reminding me?”
“A young man may enjoy his amusements. A man your age needs to secure his dynasty,” she asserted. “You need an heir, Micah. And a wife who is an asset to the entire family.”
Oof. He wanted to take her arm and walk her out to hear what Quinn would say about a woman being an “asset.”
“Is she really accompanying you to the award ceremony? Like that? Please let me send my stylist, if so.”
“‘She’ has a name. I’ll take care of everything Quinn needs,” he assured her stiffly.
“Hmph.” She offered her cheek and said her farewell.
He stood there a moment after closing the door, recognizing that he’d always known he would have to marry and produce an heir one day. It had been made clear to him thousands of times, especially in the last few years, but he hadn’t seriously contemplated marriage because...
Truthfully? Because he’d been keeping himself available for Quinn. It hadn’t been a conscious decision. He simply hadn’t been interested in anyone else. Aside from setups like being seated next to someone eligible at his aunt’s table, he hadn’t even dated.
He couldn’t imagine spending his life with one of those socialites she pushed at him. They were always attractive and well-educated and eager to do “good work” for a charity, but he’d never met any who possessed a spark of real personality. None lit a fire in him the way Quinn did.
He’d never considered Quinn for the role of his wife because she’d always made it clear she wasn’t interested in marriage and babies.
What could you want from me besides sex?
That, he realized. Marriage. The babies were negotiable, but in terms of sharing his bed, waking next to her and bickering over breakfast, she was already his preferred partner.
He pondered that as he walked back outside, briefly alarmed that she wasn’t at the table, but she’d only wandered to the water’s edge where she was crouched, feeling the temperature.
She glanced up when he joined her.
“I wish I could swim, if only to wash my hair.”
“I’ll wash it.” For better or worse, he thought with irony. Was he really going down this road?
“Don’t be silly.” She tipped slightly, trying to stand.
He caught her good arm and steadied her under her elbow, helping her rise.
“I’m very serious.” He was talking about more than a hair wash, but marriage was a conversation that would have to be handled with care. She was in no shape to hear it now, still half-drugged with painkillers.
“What would Aunt Zara say to you playing ladies’ maid?” She widened her eyes in mock scandal.
“Aunt Zara is a snob. She drove my mother away, but she understands now what a mistake it is to attack people I care about. If she or any member of my family treats you in a way that is offside, you’ll tell me immediately.”
Quinn tucked her chin, smirking in a way that suggested he was overreacting, but her expression shifted as she realized he was not joking.
That seemed to disconcert her, being lumped in with “people I care about.” She rolled her lips together and looked to the water.
“I feel privileged to have met her.”
He choked slightly.
“Not like that.” Her grin flashed. “No, I asked Eden once what your relatives were like and she said she’d never met any of them. Now I have.”
“It’s true. For my mother’s sake, I’ve always kept a firewall around Eden, not letting any of my Gould relatives play their mind games on her. Zara just tried to bait me into criticizing Eden’s marriage. She still believes the story that Remy’s father stole from mine.”
“Oh.” Her brow pleated with empathy. “That’s going to be complicated, isn’t it?”
“Tell me about it,” he muttered, realizing he wanted this, too—her immediate comprehension of his problem. He liked that she understood his complex family dynamic without him having to show her all the skeletons and label them.
“I shouldn’t have said you were broken.” She looped her good arm around his and briefly hugged it. “You’re split in half. It’s different.”
“Torn and frayed.” Definitely losing his concentration. He could feel the soft give of her breast against his elbow. Impure thoughts bled through him.
He gave in to temptation and let his arm curve around her lower back, mostly because he’d been moved when she’d been so upset last night, so filled with despair that she couldn’t hug him. It was one of the reasons he’d wanted to sleep next to her, so she’d be comforted.
So he would.
His hand thought about wandering down to her ass, but he only aligned her a little closer, very gently, under his arm.
Marriage to her could work. He knew it could. He only had to make her see that.
She looked up at him, wary of this casual affection. Uncertain what it meant.
He wanted to kick himself for ever going along with keeping their affair a secret. For only coming together with her in passion, not basic companionship.
“This is good, you know. This injury of yours.” He nodded at her sling.
She choked. “Oh, yeah. That’s what I’ve been thinking this whole time. It’s great.”
“I mean that it’s good we can’t fall back on having sex to avoid talking about things that are hard.” He closed one eye in a wince. “I heard it as I said it.”
She chuckled, but stepped away. She always stepped away.
“Do you want sex?” She was looking at the water, not letting him see her eyes as she spoke with breezy but vague interest.
“With you? Always. I would think that was obvious.” A waver of uncertainty tipped into his chest. Everything he’d been thinking in the last few minutes slid down into a jumbled pile. Maybe he’d killed whatever she’d felt toward him when he’d quit on her so summarily in Gibraltar. “You?” he asked.
She drew a deep sigh and let it go, like a balloon deflating. “Yes.”
“You’re so good for my ego,” he muttered, but she was very grounding, never letting him take himself too seriously. “What I’m saying is, titillating as the clandestine hookups were, it’s good that it’s not an option right now. We’ll have to use our words.”
“Ew. No, thank you.” She cast him a grimace.
“Coward.”
“It’s my deepest, darkest secret. Now you know.”
She wasn’t a coward. That he knew. But she was afraid. Afraid of being alone, afraid of having no say over herself or her future, afraid of revealing her heart.
Looking at her was like looking at a cracked, distorted reflection of himself.
“Come.” He jerked his head. “Let’s go wash your hair. It will be fun. Like a team-building exercise.” Maybe they couldn’t make love, but he would still get to touch her.
“Are you saying hair washing is something you do with your executives at retreats?”
“Before the pillow fight and s’mores, yes. Let’s go.”
* * *
It took them longer to figure out the “how” than it would take to actually wash her hair, but eventually Quinn found herself propped on a padded bench pushed up against the edge of a claw-foot tub.
Rolled towels softened the curved lip of the cast iron so she was as comfortable as it was possible to be with her head hanging back into the tub and a shirtless Micah leaning over her, hairy chest inches from her face.
“Is that too hot?” He used the handheld spray nozzle to wet her hairline.
“It’s fine.” She closed her eyes, but she could smell traces of aftershave emanating from his jaw and discerned the heat of his skin radiating toward her.
He took his time dampening her hair, picking up the length and squeezing the water through it before he squirted some lime-and-sea-breeze-scented shampoo onto his palm.
What on earth was he doing? He smoothed the shampoo across her wet hair in little dabs, then gently began rubbing it into the tresses before piling it all together while he slowly worked up a lather. She was never this fussy. Soak, scrub, go. She used whatever was on sale when it was time to buy shampoo, combed it out and let it air-dry.
“Oh,” she murmured as he began a swirling massage with his fingertips against her scalp.
“Did that hurt? Did you bump your head yesterday?”
“No, it feels really good,” she murmured. “How do you know how to do this?”
“It’s what they do when I get my hair cut.” His thumbs worked against her temples.
“Your barber does this?”
“I’ve started seeing a woman in Berlin.”
She snapped her eyes open.
“She gets in here...” His strong fingers dug into the tension at the base of her skull while she stared at his Adam’s apple.
As tension released, she groaned, “Oh my God,” and let her eyes flutter closed again.
“You’re a train wreck, aren’t you?” He tenderly attacked the muscles in the back of her neck, using the soap like oil to lubricate the long strokes of his fingers against the tendons before he edged back toward her scalp and turned her whole body into melted wax.
She wallowed blissfully, finally compelled to tell him, “This is better than sex.”
“You’re making the same sounds.”
“Don’t make this weird.”
“You started it.”
She kept her eyes closed, but smiled. She liked when they were like this, when his hands were on her and their jabs at each other were playful and teasing.
When he began to rinse out the shampoo, he asked quietly, “Will you tell me something?”
She opened her eye, suspicious. “Is this still a pajama party? You’re supposed to say ‘truth or dare’ first.”
“I dare you to tell me the truth.”
“Cheater. What?”
“How many homes were you in?”
She clamped her eyes closed. “Why do you want to know?”
“I don’t know.” He began to work a tingling, brightly scented conditioner into her hair. “I’ve been thinking about how angry I was with Remy. I did blame him when I thought I was finally going to live with my mother and sister only to wind up back at boarding school, but the reality is, I didn’t hate boarding school. At least I wasn’t living with my father or my grandparents. I was in the same boat as the rest of the boys. They were mostly the same boys, year after year, so I knew what I was going back to. I imagine it’s harder to walk into someone’s home and be the only new person, to have to figure out what the rules and dynamics are. I’ve been wondering how many times you were put through that.”
“It’s not that hard once you’re used to it. Use your manners, do your chores, finish your homework. Probably all the same rules you had to abide by.” She kept her eyes firmly closed to hide that it had been a hellscape of anxiety, every single time.
“So you don’t want to tell me?”
“Eleven.” It’s just a number, she told herself, but it felt very damning, as though it marked her in some way. If someone had truly wanted her, she would have had a home for more than a year and two hundred and fourteen days, which was her record for her longest stay anywhere.
If she could have, she would have sat up, but she was stuck in this position, tied by his hands buried in her hair, unable to get away from his tender touch or relentless curiosity.
“From the time you were how old?”
“Four.”
His fingers stopped, then restarted.
“At least my mother lived with me until I was six. I still saw her a couple of times a year and talked to her often. What happened to your parents?”
“Boating accident. My grandmother was babysitting me when it happened.” She rushed through the details. “She couldn’t raise me. She was really old. I saw her sometimes, at first. Then she died.”
“There was no other family?”
“None that wanted me.”
He swore under his breath. “I’m sorry, Quinn. That’s really rough.”
“It is what it is.” She had had to accept that. “Sometimes my birthday wish was to stay in the house I was in, sometimes it was to leave. Eventually, I realized it didn’t matter what I wanted. Things happened the way they happened regardless.”
That’s why she was so obsessed with having her own say over her life. That’s why she wanted to fix systems that continued to push children around like objects rather than people.
Micah didn’t say anything as he rinsed her hair squeaky-clean. He dabbed the droplets of water from her cheeks and forehead, then wrapped her hair in a towel before he helped her sit up.
“Stay there,” he said when she started to stand. “I’ll comb it out.”
“You don’t have to.” She was feeling very weak and shaky despite only lying there, passive.
“I want to.”
She would struggle to do it herself, but she was feeling very exposed. No one had ever wanted her. That was her real, deep dark painful secret.
She made a joke to deflect from how raw she was. “You really do have fantasies about being at a girls’ pajama party, don’t you?”
“Every heterosexual male does, I assure you,” he drawled, settling behind her on the bench, splayed knees bracketing her hips.
As he set the comb against her hairline, she said, “Pro tip, start at the bottom. Otherwise, I’ll have a rat’s nest here.” She chopped into the back of her neck.
He did and she watched him in the mirror. His expression was intent as he carefully picked the tangles from the tails of her hair.
“Do you know what I keep thinking about?” he asked as the comb climbed higher.
“I think we’ve established it’s pajama parties.”
“Besides that.” His expression was very solemn. “I keep thinking about when you said yesterday that I was so rich I could afford to throw away one sister and get another.” His gaze crashed into hers in their reflection. “How much do you hate me for having two when you don’t have any?”
“I don’t.” She dropped her lashes, throat cinching tight. “I’m just jealous.”
“Don’t be.” He squeezed her good shoulder and set his forehead against the back of her damp hair, as though hiding from his own reflection. From his conscience. “I still don’t know what to think of it. Her. I think about you, wishing you had even one sister, and I know I should welcome this news, but I’m deeply ambivalent. And embarrassed that I feel this way.”
“Oh, Micah.” She cupped his jaw, urging him to lift his face as she turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “You’re allowed to have feelings. And they don’t all have to be neatly organized and pretty.”
His mouth twisted. “Are you sure? I thought it was our thing that we didn’t allow those messy, unpleasant things.”
“It’s my thing to refuse to do that. You can.”
“Mmm.” His mouth pulled to one side in dark humor. It was such a nice mouth. Vaguely wicked in the way the corners were so sharp while his bottom lip was full and carnal.
She licked her own lips, inviting...
“We’re not supposed to do that, either,” he chided softly.
His attention was on her mouth, though, she saw when she glanced into his black-coffee irises.
“It’s just a kiss.” She twisted a little more.
He met her halfway.
And yes, this was what they did so they didn’t have to suffer the agony of existence, but the agony was always right here, buzzing in her lips, filling her with yearning. It was in the groan that rumbled deep in his chest as he slanted his head and captured her lips more fully.
