Her lungs emptied. What was he doing? Saying? Why was he looking at her like this? She felt maddening tears prickling, her shoulders starting to blaze. And why was he even asking when his tone said it all, that he knew it wasn’t the reason? He was poking her deliberately.
Why? When they’d been getting on so well, having fun, for goodness’ sake! Was it a trust thing, some kind of bizarre honesty test? Did he want to hear her say: No, I came last night so I didn’t have to sit with you on the plane, wondering what the hell to say to you, wondering what Anthony put in your letter? Was that it?
She swallowed, paddling hard. Well, if he wanted to know, then she could say that, minus the letter part. Getting into that... She baulked. Too many unknowns! Besides, she couldn’t risk him asking her about her own letter, all that leading him to the light business...
She inhaled carefully. But the rest was fine, maybe even desirable, because what was the point of trying to be friends with him if she couldn’t be honest with him about herself? Fears. Feelings. Steering clear of Anthony, and Anthony’s letter, was one thing, but his question—however barbed, however oblique, concerned the two of them, and it was true there was now, somehow, such a thing as the ‘two of them’, however new, however fragile, and this new, fragile thing would never grow, never flourish if she sidestepped this, let it wither her. So...
She set her glass down, then fastened her eyes on his. ‘No, that wasn’t the reason, Will...’ breathe ‘...I just thought it would be easier on both of us if we met at the building, given that the last time we saw each other was at the reading of the will.’
His lips parted, and then something seemed to shift behind his gaze, absorbing his attention. Was he going back, replaying it in his mind? Ranting at Edward. Glaring at her through the glass. Trying to unhook her from the project, getting slapped down for it by Edward. Talking about piecemeal and dovetailing for speed. Then softening. Chuckling over her dumb site visit question. Praising her for her voluntary work. Her heart caught. And then it had been the letters, the soft rasp of those envelopes sliding over the table, the colour draining from Will’s face...
She shook herself. ‘I thought if we had the building to focus on, and Julia with us, then it would give us a chance to acclimatise, to start afresh.’
‘Right.’ His gaze held her distant for a long, unsmiling second, and then he was draining his glass, putting it down again with an air of finality. ‘We should go. We don’t want to miss our flight.’
Just like that! Without comment, without feeling! Cutting her off—effectively.! She felt a knife twisting somewhere. It was the funeral all over again, the same hot prickle playing with her spine, bothering her eyes, same stupid hand left grasping at air. Was this how it was going to be with him? Hot. Cold. Up. Down.
She reached for her things, swallowing a sob. To think she’d been enjoying his company. Relishing the sweet surprise of him, the way his eyes could twinkle all warm, the stupid things they had in common: a passion for thin crust pizza and a vague unease about the grey, neo-gothic structure that was the Elevador de Santa Justa! Relishing him, tingling inside because of him when, all this time, he’d been saving his biggest surprise for last, this cruel trick up his sleeve, this talent for turning light to dark in a heartbeat, fire to ice.
She bit into her lip hard. Well, she’d learned her lesson. No more opening up so he could shut her down. No more flying her hopes high for him to just cut loose. She stared into the depths of her tote, breathing through.
For Anthony’s sake, she couldn’t give up on him, but she wasn’t setting herself up for another fall either. She’d done it with Liam, helping him, getting nothing of worth back. And no, Will wasn’t her boyfriend and she definitely didn’t love him, but for some reason he had the power to hurt her, and she hadn’t signed up for being trampled on, dissed, put through the mill. She wasn’t standing for it, and he was going to know all about it!
‘Quinn...’
She looked up. He was on his feet now, gesturing for her to come, a slight, polite smile fixed on his face.
She felt a knot yanking tight in her chest, a furious surge of rippling energy. She pushed up from her chair, switching on the brightest, widest smile she could muster just for the sheer pleasure of knocking his paltry effort clean off the wicket.
‘Chillax, Will. I’m coming.’
CHAPTER SIX
‘HEY, WILL THACKER...’ Catherine’s voice slid into his ear from behind and then she appeared beside him, her long blonde hair swinging. ‘What are you doing after?’
Code for: do you want to invite me back to your place and take my clothes off? A month ago, he might have called a cab, taken her home, but now he could feel his stomach turning at the thought. Not that she wasn’t attractive. He just wasn’t interested, couldn’t imagine being so ever again.
He shucked the ice in his glass. ‘I’m going home.’
‘Aww, darling.’ She flicked a glance at the tables. ‘Did you have a bad night with Mr Blackjack?’ Her fingers connected with his nape, stroking. ‘I could take your mind off it.’
He reached up, removing her hand, smiling to soften whatever level of blow it might be to her. ‘No thanks, I’m good.’
‘Aww, Will...’
She was leaning away now, pouting, contriving to look hurt, but she was way off the mark because hurt didn’t look like that. Real hurt, jugular deep hurt, was what he had seen welling in Quinn’s eyes, what he had inflicted on her, all because he’d lost the plot. And now he couldn’t stop seeing her eyes, feeling her pain, feeling it twisting inside him with all the crushing guilt and remorse. And he couldn’t stop replaying the way she had left him at the airport—that scant goodbye then striding off through the barriers without a backward glance—because replaying it hurt and he deserved to hurt, deserved to feel that knife twisting over and over again.
‘Why don’t you have a drink with me, Will?’
Catherine! Still looking at him, still flirting. Why? Couldn’t she read him at all?
He shrugged. ‘Because I don’t want to.’ He downed the last of his drink and got up, battling a sudden hot swell of emotion. ‘I’m sorry, but can’t you see? I’m done here.’
He drew in a steadying breath. So that didn’t work, didn’t take his mind off anything. He couldn’t focus on the cards long enough to count them, and Catherine wasn’t Quinn.
Not even close...
He flicked up his collar, aimed a nod at the doorman and set off walking. Quinn... Hanging on the edge of a smile, waiting for him to be funny. Looking at him the way Pete used to, drawing the clown out of him like Pete used to, putting little pieces of his old self back. The happy pieces. The light-as-air pieces. Making him feel how he used to feel before the mirror cracked. And more besides. Feeling her warmth flowing, that sweet, tingling connection. Losing himself in her smile, in her gaze, in the way her lips sipped wine from a glass...
And then he’d caught himself, hadn’t he? Caught himself on the way to saying that he wished he’d been with her walking through the city that morning, and in the blink of an eye, it had all come rushing back, that she was the one who had pushed him out of the nest, the one who’d filled Dad’s bandwidth—Dad, who was all he had left because Mum had chosen Gabe over him, deserted him when he’d been trying so hard to fill the hole in her heart Pete had left! Crashing over him like a wave that Quinn knew stuff about Lisbon because she was firmly, eternally, in Dad’s fricking camp! God help him, in that split second it had exploded to the surface, all the animosity he’d pushed down, all the hurt and anger.
Oh, the chagrin! To have caught himself flowing towards her—the enemy!—flowing towards that place with her that he had sworn off going to with any woman ever again. When she would only hurt him too, reject him as Mum had. As Louise had, at uni, after he had risked his heart with her, trusted her with his story, poured out all his pain, all his venom over Dad and Quinn’s precious little party for two. She’d wrapped him up, loved him, only to cut him loose six months later. Too intense, she’d said. Too messed up!
Too much for Louise. Not enough, not important enough for Mum. He’d made up his mind then: no strings, no pain. Hook-ups only. Easy enough to come by at uni and at the casino. Added bonus—Dad disapproved. Oh, the pure joy of payback, of shoving Dad’s nose right in it, watching it wrinkle every time he brought a woman home and led her upstairs. Not as often as Dad made out when he was bending his ear about it. Not a ‘constant stream’. Just more than Dad himself who, as far as he could tell, wasn’t getting any action at all!
All of it exploding, hitting the fan in that nanosecond in Lisbon, making him want to lash out at Quinn, sting her. So he’d grabbed a spanner to throw in the works, the question he was ninety-nine percent sure he already knew the answer to, just to watch her squirm. Oh, but she had come back at him with such honesty, talking such sense, that it was he who was left squirming, teetering on the edge. And he couldn’t find a foothold, a way out of the mess he’d made, so he’d shut down, closed himself off, hurting her more. Evidence of it in her eyes, all over her beautiful face. But she’d remodelled it into a shield to hold against him all the way home, then split without a backwards glance the second her feet hit the ground.
And now he was wretched to the marrow. Aching. He couldn’t hold focus at work, at the blackjack table, anywhere. All he could think about was Quinn: the way she’d made him feel before the ugly stuff had twisted him up. Lighter of heart. Freer of spirit. Like his old self. As if anything was possible. Tenderness. Intimacy. Love...
He flagged a cab and got in, turning his gaze through the window. All the things he’d put at the bottom of his list. At the top was making it in Dad’s world, making Dad proud of him, but he had smashed through that barrier years ago, ceased to think about it, because he had found his niche in the business, was happy in it. His heart caught. It was the rest of his life that didn’t make sense now. And maybe that was because Dad wasn’t here any more to provoke, or maybe it was because of Quinn.
He drilled his fingertips into his temples. If he could turn back time he would, undo the hurt, because maybe she was the enemy in his messed-up head, but in his messed-up heart she was golden, the thrill he couldn’t stop feeling, and he wanted to see her, say sorry, fix things. But every time he went to call her, he lost his nerve because fixing things would mean untangling threads that might ignite another bitter fuse inside him, cause another conflagration.
He dropped his hands to his lap. But he had to do something. Three and a half weeks since he’d broken their wheel. The longer he left it, the harder it would be to fix. Like Dad’s blasted hotel.
Three and a half weeks...
He felt a tingle. A reasonable enough period, surely, to make another site visit feel appropriate. Sensible, even.
