Crazy for You Read online

  “Talk to you for a minute, Nick?” Bill called out, and Nick straightened from over Pete Cantor’s Jeep and said, “Sure. What’s up?”

  “It’s about Quinn,” Bill said, and Nick thought, Oh, hell, I never touched her.

  “I know you’ve been helping her,” Bill said, “and I appreciate it, but I don’t think that this move is good for her.”

  Nick let go of his guilt gratefully and regrouped. “What?”

  “That house,” Bill said, looking like a wise but regretful Viking. “It’s a bad idea. She’s there all alone, and the place is going to fall down around her ears any minute.”

  “Meggy says it’s sound.” Nick turned back to work. “I really wouldn’t worry.”

  “What does Meggy know?” Bill shook his head. “We really have to get her out of there.”

  Nick stopped. “Bill, she likes it there. I think she’s staying.”

  “If you hadn’t helped her move—” Bill began, and his voice sounded tight, almost angry.

  “Of course I helped her move.” Nick frowned at him. “We all did.”

  “Well, stop,” Bill said. “It’s bad for her. And people are going to start talking. People who don’t know you two are like brother and sister. You want to ruin her reputation?”

  Nick tried to think of something to say, but all he could come up with was “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You helping her move. People are going to start thinking she’s just one of your…” Bill’s voice trailed off as he searched for a word.

  “One of my what?” Nick said dangerously.

  “Girlfriends,” Bill said. “You know, the kind of girl you date.”

  Nick controlled his temper. “Bill, I don’t give a damn what people think, and if Quinn does, she’ll tell me to butt out. I haven’t seen her since we moved her in, and I’m not planning on going over there any time soon, so if that’s what you’re worried about, you can forget it.”

  Bill’s face cleared. “Thanks, Nick. I knew you’d understand.”

  Then you know more than I do, Nick thought, but he watched Bill leave without saying it. He’d had enough conversation with Bill Hilliard for one afternoon. In fact, considering the conversation, that was probably enough for a lifetime.

  Ten minutes later, when somebody pounded on the back door, he thought, Oh, Christ, not again, but when he opened it, Quinn was standing there, her face pale in the cold, and in spite of all his rationalizations and promises to Bill, he was so glad to see her he almost reached for her.

  “What’s up?” he said, deliberately keeping things light and distant—reaching would be bad—and she pushed past him into the garage. She had on a blue down parka that made her look huge, jeans, and black rubber boots with buckles. She looked like a clown, and he should have been grateful, but his first thought was to wonder what she was wearing under all of it. Then he saw her face and he stopped thinking obscene thoughts.

  “Katie’s in the pound,” she said, her voice on the edge of panic. “I called to report her missing, and they said they had her but I couldn’t have her back because I wasn’t the licensee and that she’d bitten somebody and they’re going to destroy her—”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Nick said, wanting to put his arm around her and knowing better. “Start over. How did she get in the pound?”

  “I don’t know,” Quinn said. “The gate was shut, but she got out anyway, and now they’re going to kill her.”

  The fear on her face made him sick. “Tonight?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure. I went over there, but they said the licensee has to come in, and Bill had told them to go ahead because if she’d bitten somebody she was dangerous. They won’t give her back to me because the license is in Bill’s name, and he won’t answer the phone when I call, so he might already be out there signing to have her killed because he hates her—”

  “Who’d she bite?” Nick said, trying to make some sense of it. Katie wasn’t a biter.

  “I don’t know. They said somebody called in and said he’d been bitten by a dog that was running loose, and when they went to check, they found Katie.” Quinn swallowed in a pathetic attempt to get calm. “And now they have her—”

  “Oh, hell,” Nick said. “Let’s go talk to them.” He picked up his jacket, knowing he was making a huge mistake and glad anyway because he was going to be with her again.

  “They said no,” Quinn said, her voice quavering. “I went there already and they said no. I couldn’t even see her.”

  “Well, we’ll talk at them until they say yes,” Nick told her, not having any idea of what he was going to do. It sounded good though, and Quinn tried to smile.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I know I’m a hassle but I really need you on this.”

  “You’re not a hassle,” he lied. “Come on, let’s rescue a dog.”

  The truck took the miles to the pound without any problem, and Nick had plenty of time to think about Quinn next to him. It was a real turn-on being alone with her in the dusk, but then he’d known it would be a turn-on being alone with Quinn anywhere, which was why he’d taken so much care not to be alone with her. Of course, the thoughts he’d been having lately weren’t helping, filled as they were with bright underwear that was filled with Quinn until he stripped it off her and bounced her on that huge bed—

  Stop it, he told himself. The woman’s dog was in danger, for Christ’s sake. She was upset. What kind of a creep would think about doing her at a time like this?

  His kind of creep.

  Beside him, Quinn scrubbed at the window with her sleeve, and he tried to see her the old way, the way she’d used to be before she’d come to occupy his thoughts permanently. This is Quinn, he kept telling himself, but as a warning it was losing power. It was Quinn he wanted.

  “There’s the drive-in, it’s right after that,” Quinn said, and he felt her soft, urgent voice in his solar plexus. This is Quinn, he told himself again, and his solar plexus said, Sure is. Go for it.

  “The turn is right up here—there it is!”

  Quinn grabbed his arm and he tried not to think about her so close as he pulled in and parked in front of the shelter. The place was deserted, not a car in sight, and he had a bad feeling that there wasn’t going to be anyone to talk to. He glanced at the clock on the dash. Six-fifteen. Not good. “You stay here.”

  “No,” Quinn said, and when he knocked on the door, he could feel her close behind him and it took everything he had to resist the urge to lean back into her. “Hello?” he called and pounded on the door this time.

  “They’ve gone, they’re closed,” Quinn said in his ear, and he flinched at the warmth of her breath.

  He tried the door but it was shut tight. “It’s no go,” he said, and she said, “Break it down. They have my dog.”

  He turned to her and said, “Quinn, I am not going to break a door down, especially a door to government property. Get a grip,” but she looked up at him, her hazel eyes huge in the dusk, and he had to do something soon or he was going to grab her.

  “My dog’s in there,” Quinn said, and he said, “Oh, hell,” and turned and walked around to the back of the shelter where the pens were. At least a dozen dogs came out to see what they were doing, barking their heads off, and the last one in the last pen was Katie.

  “Oh, no.” Quinn ran to the pen and fell to her knees. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  The little rat did look pathetic, shivering in the cold, its wiry little body pressed desperately against the mesh in a futile attempt to get to Quinn.

  “Okay,” Nick said, “we’ll get here first thing in the morning and—”

  “They’ll kill her,” Quinn said.

  “So we’ll get here really early—”

  “No,” Quinn said. “I’m not leaving her.”

  “Quinn, be reasonable—” Nick began, but she jerked her head up and said, “That’s what Bill would say. This is not about being reasonable