First Time, Forever. Cara Colter
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It was the exhaustion, she thought. It was the fact that she hadn’t had a normal night’s sleep for weeks, and that for days now she’d been living on her nerves, waiting for the next incident. She had no more resources left to draw upon, no more strength. Tonight had utterly defeated her.
She’d pinned all her hopes on this encounter, and the man had shown up drunk.
“My name’s Quinn. Sit down.” There was a harsh edge to his tone, but she’d had enough. The look she gave him was steadily assessing and at it, something flickered at the back of those gray eyes.
For a moment she’d thought she’d seen contrition, Jane thought. More likely it had been relief.
“I’ll never know you well enough to be on a first-name basis with you, Mr. McGuire. I doubt that many people are.” With an effort, she fought back the telltale trembling that had started up again. “I also doubt that you care. Goodbye, Mr. Mc—”
“Stop calling me that.” Like a snake striking, one large hand shot out and wrapped itself around her wrist. His grip was firm but even as she reflexively pulled away from him he let her go. His gaze met hers opaquely. “It’s a bad night to be stirring up old memories. Call me Quinn. And please—sit down.”
She didn’t move. She wouldn’t let herself look down at the wrist he’d grasped and released so swiftly, for fear of letting him see how badly he’d rattled her. “Quinn, then. But the rest still stands. I asked you here because I was told that you might be able to help me, and you seem to have slotted me in between bouts of partying.” Even to her own ears her voice sounded thin and high, and she took a deep breath, willing her tone down to a more normal register. “You made it clear earlier that you weren’t really interested in this meeting, so don’t feel you have to go through the motions now just to oblige me. You don’t owe me anything.”
She smiled tightly at him, holding on to the last of her composure, and turned to leave. Behind her she heard him speak.
“Dammit, Sister. You’ve got absolutely no intention of letting me go to hell in my own way, have you?” His words were quietly bitter and Jane looked back at him, startled. She almost expected to see someone else at the table with him, his voice had been pitched so low, but it was her eyes that Quinn McGuire met. “You’re wrong, lady. I owe you, all right. I’m guessing one of my old debts just got transferred.”
“I don’t understand.” She hesitated. For the first time, he seemed to be looking at her as if he was really seeing her, and his scrutiny caught her off-balance. She flushed a little, wishing suddenly that she presented a more pre-possessing sight—and that desire itself was totally unlike her.
She knew she wasn’t the type to turn heads. There just wasn’t anything so special about her, which made what had been happening to her that much harder to understand. Her hair was about as ordinary a brown as it could get. Her eyes were standard-issue blue. She weighed less than she had a few weeks ago, but she had an average figure for her average height. Her skin, a warm ivory tone, was her best feature, and her mouth was a little wider than she thought attractive.
Men didn’t usually look twice at her. She wanted to keep it that way.
“The Star of the County Down,” Quinn murmured, confusing her further. “Irishmen write songs about women like you.” The pewter eyes darkened and then cleared. “I wasn’t at a party tonight. I was holding a private wake for a friend.”
An explanation was the last thing she’d expected from him, and that particular explanation disarmed her completely. Jane caught her breath in swift compassion. “I’m sorry.” She fumbled with the strap of her purse awkwardly, knowing how inadequate her response sounded. “I—I had no idea. You must want to be alone—”
“I want you to sit down, but I’m damned if I know how to get you to do it.” Under the T-shirt the massive shoulders lifted slightly, as if he was attempting to shrug off the burden of his earlier mood. One corner of his mouth lifted wryly. “Why don’t we start all over again?”
Maybe she was projecting her own feelings onto him, Jane thought slowly, but behind the easy manner she could have sworn there was an edge of desolation in that incongruously soft voice. Still holding his gaze and clutching the strap of her purse, she lowered herself cautiously back onto the chair, her posture rigid as she tried to keep as much distance between them as possible.
“I called Sullivan after I spoke with you this afternoon,” Quinn said, frowning slightly. “He said you think someone’s watching you. He told me there’ve been some incidents—and that these incidents have been escalating.”
“Escalating?” A jagged little bubble of laughter escaped her. “That’s one way to put it. Except when I told the police about this, they said the situation hadn’t escalated to the point where they could justify an investigation. When they can spare the manpower they send a patrol car cruising by my apartment, but I’m still walking around alive and unharmed, which means that my case isn’t high priority—yet.”
“So whoever’s targeting you is still at the skirmishing stage,” Quinn continued. “He hasn’t officially declared all-out war. He must have some kind of battle plan that he intends to follow.”
Her head jerked up, her features pinched “Skirmishing? Battle plan? We’re not playing soldiers here.”
He stared at her impassively, seemingly unfazed by her outburst. Smoke-filtered light from the bar beside them gleamed palely on his hair, and his eyes, silvery and reflective, betrayed no hint of his inner thoughts.
“What exactly have you been told about me?” he asked.
“Just that you were a friend of Terrence Sullivan,” she answered, taken aback. “I went to Sullivan Investigations to hire someone to find out why I’m being stalked—and to keep me alive in the meantime. I—I assumed that’s what you did.” Her voice trailed off. “I’m wrong, aren’t I? Just what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a professional soldier,” he said shortly.
She frowned. “You’re in the military? Are you on leave right now?”
“I put in my time for Uncle Sam.” In the first extraneous gesture she’d seen him make, Quinn raked back a short strand of sun-bleached hair. “Now I choose my own wars, Ms. Smith.”
“You’re a—a mercenary?”
Dear God, she thought. She’d expected an ex-cop, or maybe a private eye who could hold his own in a physical confrontation, and instead she’d gotten some kind of hired gun. He was a soldier of fortune, for heaven’s sake!
“I told you—I’m a professional soldier. It’s what I was trained for.” He picked up his glass and drained most of it, setting it back down on the table with a little more force than necessary. “I don’t work for just anyone, and I never take on an assignment that could conflict with my loyalties as a citizen of this country. But there’s always trouble somewhere in the world. Right now it appears that someone’s waging war against you.”
She stared at him, her thoughts chaotic. Quinn had just voiced the feeling she’d had for weeks now. She had felt like some unknown person had declared war on her—a very private, very personal war, but war nonetheless. And from the start she’d had the conviction that her enemy wasn’t interested in taking prisoners.
With Quinn McGuire on her side there was a possibility that she might be able to turn the tide of this one-sided battle, Jane thought slowly. But before they came to any definite arrangement he had to know just what she was up against.
As a soldier, he would want as much information as he could about both his enemy—and his ally. How was she supposed to tell him that her adversary wasn’t the only participant in this war whom she knew nothing about?
“You said earlier that tonight was a bad night for stirring up old memories, McGuire.” Her voice was barely above a murmur, but his eyes narrowed in response. She went on, knowing that she was picking her way through a minefield.