Crazy for You Read online

  So she just signed it Quinn and left to go downstairs to Nick and Katie, a little guilty but mostly relieved because that part of her life was ended completely.

  Nick helped Quinn unload her furniture into the McKenzies’ garage, and then against his better judgment stayed for a beer to keep her company until her parents got home. “They’ll be home any minute now,” Quinn had said when she asked him to stay. “I can’t wait to explain this one to them.”

  “They going to be upset?” He followed her into the kitchen, trying not to look at her rear end. Her jeans were too tight. He’d never noticed it before, but her jeans were definitely too tight. It was a miracle she didn’t have guys baying at her on the street.

  “Well, they got used to seeing Bill and me together.” Quinn dropped the last garbage bag of clothes on her mother’s kitchen floor where Katie could sniff it the way she’d sniffed the other eight, evidently suspicious something threatening lurked within. “I’m not sure they can see me without him. After two years with him, I don’t think anybody sees me anymore, not the way I really am. I mean, look at you.”

  Nick froze for a moment in the act of taking a beer out of the fridge. “Leave me out of it.” He twisted off the cap and nudged the door closed with his shoulder.

  Quinn leaned against the counter, folding her arms so her pink sweater pulled tighter against her breasts as she scowled her exasperation at him. “I bet your whole life you’ve thought of me as either Zoë’s sister or somebody’s girlfriend.”

  Nick shook his head. “You know better than that.” He knew better than that, even if he didn’t want to think about it.

  “It was different when Zoë was around.” Quinn went past him to the fridge. “I could understand that when Zoë was around, nobody saw me.”

  A gentleman would have told her that wasn’t true, but it was. Zoë had been perfect, exotic, her little vixen face capped with wild naturally kinky hair that fell past her shoulders, the red of it so dark it was almost black out of the sunlight.

  “I got used to it.” Quinn got a beer from the fridge. “But you’d think somebody would notice me standing next to a guy.”

  She screwed the cap off her own bottle and drank, and he watched the curve of her neck as she leaned back and the movement of the muscles in her throat, willing his eyes not to drop farther down that curve to that damn pink sweater. Her hair fell back in the same smooth bell cut she’d worn since she was fifteen. No kink to Quinn at all, he thought, keeping his mind off curves. Just all that smooth silky red-gold hair, the kind that looked like it would fall like water through his fingers.

  “I saw you.” Nick put his beer down. “Listen, I have to go.”

  “You haven’t finished your beer,” Quinn said. “But I can take a hint. I’ll stop whining.”

  She walked out of the kitchen through the wide archway into the dark little living room, Katie stepping nervously beside her, and detoured around the big red couch that had been in front of the arch for as long as he could remember. “Do you believe this?” Zoë had said when they were seniors. “My mother bought a Carnal-Red couch. Don’t you just want to fuck every time you look at it?” Since he’d been eighteen and wanted to fuck anybody any time he looked at anything, the question was moot, but it came back to haunt him now because Quinn had plopped herself down in the center of it. Pink sweater, copper hair, orange-red couch: he could feel the heat from where he stood.

  Get out of here, he told himself, but Quinn rolled her head to smile at him over the back of the couch. “Really, I’ll stop whining. I truly am grateful you helped me move, and I’m sorry I’ve been such a grouch.”

  The light from the kitchen gleamed on her hair.

  “Your mother should redecorate,” he said and walked around the couch to sit beside her.

  “There’s a lot of things my mother should do.” Quinn moved over to give him room while Katie sat anxiously at her feet. “Like get a life. I think that’s one of the reasons I decided I had to have Katie.” Quinn smiled down at the little dog. Then her smile faded. “And leave Bill. I don’t want to end up settling like my mother, hitting the garage sales with my best friend while my husband watches TV instead of me, and that’s the way I was heading with Bill. I want it all. Excitement. Passion.”

  Nick leaned against the cushions, his arm stretched along the back of the couch but not touching her—that would be bad, touching her, don’t go there—and watched her soft lips part and close while she spoke, and felt his breath come a fraction faster. This is dumb, get out, he told himself, and yanked his mind away from her mouth in time to hear her say, “I want to be new, different, exciting. I want to be Zoë.”

  “You can skip that part if you want,” he said.

  “I think maybe Katie was a sign. You know, like my destiny telling me to get a life.” Quinn smiled at him and said, “You can’t ignore your destiny,” and he lost his place in the conversation again. Everything about Quinn was warm, he’d always known that, but for twenty years he’d been telling himself it was a puppy kind of warmth, cute and safe. But there was her mouth now, lush and smiling—

  “Nick?” Quinn leaned forward a little and her hair spilled on the couch back. “Are you okay?”

  Her voice came from far away. He only had to lift one finger to touch her hair. Just one finger. It was so easy, and the strands slid like silk, the way he’d thought they would, cool and slippery, and his breath snagged in his throat.

  Her eyes widened, and he was caught, both of them caught, staring into each other’s eyes for long seconds, too long, way too long, hours too long, frozen in each other’s gaze, and the longer he looked the more he saw Quinn, her eyes huge and startled, Quinn, her soft lips parted, Quinn, hotter than he could have imagined, Quinn. He began to lean forward, sucked into her warmth, a little dizzy because he wanted her mouth so much. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, too, close and possible, too possible, don’t go there, but he leaned anyway to take all of her heat, and then a car door slammed outside and Katie barked, and Nick jerked back.

  “Oh, hell.” He stood up, pulling away from her so that she fell forward a little, and Katie went under an end table in terror.

  You have lost your fucking mind, he told himself. “Okay,” he said to her briskly, betrayed only by how husky his voice came out. “Nothing happened. This is not you. You don’t do this. I’m sorry. It’s the couch. I have to go.”

  Quinn took a deep breath, and he tried not to watch her sweater rise and fall. Manicure scissors, he told himself. Sister-in-law. Best friend. Bill’s girl.

  None of it was helpful.

  “Maybe it is me,” Quinn said faintly. “Maybe I do this. I’ve changed some today.” She swallowed and the movement of her throat made him nuts again.

  “No, you haven’t,” Nick said. “I’m going now.” He backed around the couch just as Quinn’s mother came in the back door and screamed.

  Four

  It took a couple of minutes to sort things out, especially since Nick’s guilt made him babble. “Nothing happened,” he said, while Quinn straightened and said, “Mama, it’s okay, it’s just us.”

  “Us?” her mother said and Nick said, “No, there is no us, it’s just Quinn. And me. Not together.”

  Then Quinn’s father came in from the garage, and said, “What the hell?” and Nick thought, Good question.

  “What are you doing here?” Meggy McKenzie looked at them and then at her garbage bag-strewn kitchen, the overhead light making her short curly auburn hair an improbably red-gold halo around her pretty, perplexed face. “What is this stuff? Why aren’t the lights on?”

  “Hello, Nick,” her husband said, squinting into the dark living room, his voice a little slow with suspicion. Joe was a big guy, a little balding, a little paunch, but mostly solid blue-collar electrician bulk, all of it radiating disapproval of Nick.

  Nick could relate. He wasn’t any too pleased with himself at the moment. “Hey, Joe. Well, I got to go. Have a good night. Quinn