“A change?”
“Yeah, you know, maybe a move to the country or something.” My eyes focused out the window and my reflection taunted me.
“The country? You want to move to what—west bumblefuck? David won’t find you where you are. You’re not leaving.” Her voice was firm but I could hear the panic in her voice.
“It’s just an option,” I hedged.
“Option, schmoption. Who do you think you are—Daniel Boone?”
“Who’s Daniel Boone?”
Lucy glanced over her shoulder before cutting across three lanes in quick succession. “Never mind who he is, just…don’t do anything or go anywhere without talking to me first. Promise me.”
My eyes fell on the best friend I’d ever had—the one person who had seen me at my worst, walked me through it, and came out the other side holding my hand—and I lied. “Promise.”
“Quinn, what are you doing?”
Flustered, I minimised my internet search engine window of country maps and called up the diary. “Working.”
I smiled up at Mac from my desk to put her off the scent and heard her indrawn breath. “What happened to your face?”
At the reminder, the pain on my forehead throbbed dully. My hand came up to cover it, and I forced a sheepish chuckle. “Oh. That? I uh, scraped it on the um, driveway.”
Her lips pressed flat, suppressing a smile. “Did it leap out at you and smack you in the face?” She went a little pale. “Oh shit. I didn’t mean—”
I cut her off. “Pretty much.”
“Right. Coffee. Then you can tell me about your date last night.”
She left and I rubbed at my eyes. I hadn’t slept—at all. My mind had raced over every possible scenario but the problem was, there were no scenarios. The simple fact was that if I left, Lucy and Travis, or anyone else for that matter, wouldn’t get hurt. I’d move somewhere cold. They wouldn’t expect that. Fleeing people in the movies always made the mistake of disappearing to some warm tropical island. Newsflash—that was always the first place the bad guys looked.
“Quinn?”
“Huh?”
I blinked back into focus and found Travis in the doorway. My heart lifted at the sight of him. “Travis?”
“You’ve been staring at the wall for over a minute.” He frowned. “What happened to your face?”
“I fell,” I told the desk after averting my eyes.
Travis came and stood in my space. He crouched down and cupped my face, examining the injury. “When?”
“Is that important?” I could feel his breath on my face, and I wanted him so much. Sheer agony speared through me, and I closed my eyes against the force. His touch on my forehead was gentle, and I jerked my head back. “It’s just a graze. What are you doing here?”
Travis sighed, and it was weighted with so many unsaid words that I knew he didn’t know where to start. “You know why I’m here.”
Of course I knew.
“Don’t stand so close,” I said firmly but he must have heard something else coming out of my mouth because he didn’t move.
“Quinn,” he breathed, and the depth of emotion in that single word tugged at my heart. “I can’t let you do this.”
Travis held my eyes, but I couldn’t reply because suddenly his lips were on mine. My mouth opened underneath the onslaught, moaning at the taste of him. He lifted me off the chair, and I hung on as he spun me around and pushed me up against the desk.
“Stop,” I choked out when his mouth left mine to nibble on my ear.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I moaned as his teeth bit into my skin. “No.”
God help me, but I couldn’t push him away. I wasn’t strong enough and he was relentless. His hands were all over me, pushing under clothes and grabbing at bare skin. I slid my own underneath his shirt, tugging on the waistband of his jeans to drag him closer. His mouth returned to mine and my hand came around his neck, holding him there so he wouldn’t take it away.
“Oh that shit is not cool. So not cool.” Mac’s voice registered through the fog, and I pulled back, rubbing my lips together.
Travis took a step back, his hair mussed, and cleared his throat. “We were just ah…sorting the security detail for the Melbourne trip.”
I sat up, straightening my shirt, my entire body heating with embarrassment when I saw Jared smirking at both of us from over Mac’s shoulder.
“That’s Jared’s department, yet here you are, all over it like a rash. I’m not fooled. I can bet by the way you had Quinn spread out all over that desk she isn’t fooled either.”
Jared folded his arms and raised a brow. “Nice one, Trav.”
Mac spun around with wide eyes and pointed in his face. “One word, Jared. Bedroom. Not the pantry, not the couch, not the shower. Bedroom.”
He held up his hands. “No idea what you’re talking about,” he muttered and disappeared.
“Hurry up and finish your fumigating because I’m tired of you and your shitty food in my house!” she yelled after him.
“It’s Sunday,” she growled and slammed the coffee in her hand on the desk as she sat down, “but you’re here so let’s get this shit done, and then you both can get down to other business.” She pursed her lips but I could see the curve in them as though satisfied that whatever happened last night was now over.
I swallowed and looked at Travis. Soon it would be.
He took a seat in the spare chair by the desk, and I faced the computer, discreetly shutting down the maps on the internet tab. I called up the detailed outline of the Melbourne trip and did what I could to focus on the words.
“Mac,” I said, reviewing the accommodation. “Why is my name on here?”
“Because you’re coming, asshead,” she replied as she tapped at the computer opposite me.
“I can’t,” I blurted out.
My deadline was two weeks. I needed to be gone by then. The Melbourne trip was the perfect opportunity for me to quietly slip away to the countryside without any interference.
Mac stopped tapping and I felt all eyes on me. “Quinn, this is what you were hired to do. Why can’t you?”
“Well,” I drawled. I scratched at my head. “Rufus,” I said and paused. “I can’t leave him here alone.”
The excuse was utter rubbish. Rufus would quite happily visit with Lucy for a couple of days.
“Rubbish,” Mac said, verifying my own thoughts. “Lucy can take him. You’re already booked in so I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
My fingers gripped the edge of the desk with both hands to hide the tremors. Travis frowned, his eyes moving from my hands to my eyes. I turned my back and called up the map of the festival area and clicked print while Mac distracted Travis with talk about the accommodation and travel detail.
I passed Travis the sheet and start collating the contact information of all involved. “Mac, I can’t locate the contact info for the roadies driving the truck down to Melbourne.”
“Hang on,” she muttered and with a few taps, the contact zinged into my email. My fingers tapped efficiently, my mind working hard to block everything else out as I pulled the entire contact and run sheet together for Travis.
When the Jamieson line rang, Mac picked it up for me.
“Jamieson. Mac speaking.”
The printer whirred in the background, blocking out Mac’s words. My chair spun and I collected the printed sheets from the tray.
“Quinn, it’s your ahh…mother on the phone for you.”
The colour drained from my face as I spun back around. “I’m not here,” I hissed.
In a panic I stood, yanking papers off our joined desks. The frantic movement tipped over Mac’s coffee mug. My hands made a grab for it, but I missed. “Shit,” I muttered, not even registering the mug was empty.
I took a step back to flee.
“Quinn.” Breathless, I focused on Travis. “Maybe you should talk to her?”
That was not something I’d been planning to do for the rest of my natural life.
“David owes us money…that now makes his debt yours…”
The words came back to haunt me. Maybe talking to her might give me some answers about what was going on.
“Wait!” I called to Mac when she opened her mouth to speak. My chin lifted as my hand reached out for the phone. “I’ll talk to her.”
She handed it over wordlessly.
“Beth,” I answered.
“Quinn.” Her voice sounded tired, nothing like how I remembered. “We need to talk.”
“Yes, because we do that so well.” I heard her sigh as though already fed up with the conversation before we’d even started. “How did you find me?”
“You were in the paper. Something to do with that rock band you appear to be working with.”
My knuckles whitened as my hand held tight to the phone. “I was?”
Ten minutes later and I was in the passenger seat while Travis drove us to my childhood home. Dread coiled within me as Travis peppered me with questions the entire way there.
“How long since you saw or spoke to your mother last?”
“Almost four years,” I answered automatically.
“I imagine you had good reason for that.”
I stared out the window. “Yes.”
I felt him glance at me while he drove. “Tell me?”
“Why?”
Hadn’t he heard enough?
“Because it’s part of who you are.”
“I wish it wasn’t, Travis.”
I felt him glance at me as he drove. “Me too, Quinn, but I care about you. All of you. I can’t pick and choose which pieces of you to care for and which pieces not to. That’s not how it works.”
“I have a lot of crappy pieces,” I informed him.
“Some people do, but the pieces you try to hide aren’t pieces you asked for. They were given to you without a choice. Does that mean you deserve less than the next person?”
“Some of those choices I made myself,” I pointed out.
“Choices you were too young to make don’t count.”
“Just like that?”
He nodded. “Just like that.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
I waved a hand in frustration. “You seem to have an answer for everything.”
His eyes remained on the road, but I caught his grin. “That’s because I’m a know-it-all.”
“Are you saying you’re not as perfect as everyone thinks you to be?”
The smile slid quickly from his face and brows drawn, he offered me a pained glance. “No. I’m not. Don’t ever think that of me, Quinn.”
Something uncomfortable rolled in my belly, and I didn’t like it because I’d never had that feeling with Travis before. His tone sounded a little off.
“Um…okay.”
Travis accelerated as I directed him where to turn.
“The good memories of Beth aren’t good, and the bad ones are worse,” I began. “They don’t stem from what she did either, but what she didn’t do.”