Men Like This. Roxanne Smith
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a good time?”
“Not exactly.” Quinn explained in painful detail how her night had gone so topsy-turvy.
She waited in silence for Angie’s reply. She imagined her friend working through the scenario in her mind.
Finally, a response. “Well, okay. I guess my question is why you’re still there.”
Quinn loved easy questions. She sucked the last drop of beer from the long-neck bottle and smacked her lips for emphasis. “To get drunk. Why does anyone sit at a bar and order booze?”
“Nice. Tomorrow you’ll wake up not only divorced and homeless but with a hangover cherry on top. Way to take your power back, honey.”
“I’m not homeless. I’m staying at a hotel.”
“Homeless isn’t synonymous with cardboard box. You don’t have a home. You’re homeless.”
Quinn waved to the bartender. Time for another drink. “Shut up and tell me what I’m supposed to do. Am I overreacting?”
Angie clucked her tongue. “Had he taken you out for kung pao chicken, I’d say yes, but this is kind of a big deal. He dragged you to some shady Hollywood club wearing a thousand-dollar ball gown and million-dollar diamonds. Not just ignorant, mind you. Potentially dangerous. This is L.A., not Friendly, Texas. Letting him leave you there was even dumber, by the way.”
“Probably.” Quinn tried for a deep breath. It escaped as a depressed groan. “What do I do? Fire him?”
The mere suggestion made her stomach pitch. She mustered up a weak smile for Busty the Barkeep, who promptly deposited Quinn’s second beer in front of her.
“There’s only one thing you can do.” Angie sounded apologetic but remained firm. “You have to kill him.”
Quinn pressed the phone closer to her ear. The spectacle had ceased, and people were back to their regularly scheduled partying. “Like it’s ever that easy.”
Angie scoffed. “You have no problem scalping a sweet, vulnerable, and ruggedly handsome pediatrician with a chainsaw, but you can’t kill Richard? You even murdered the poor doctor on the very same night he finally worked up the courage to ask that cute barista out on a date. It took a lot of courage for him to step out of his comfort zone. The guy had issues.”
Quinn rested one elbow on the bar and said what she always said. “You’re taking it too personally, Ang. You’ve got to quit falling in love with my subjects.”
“What in the hell is a barista doing with a chainsaw in the first place, huh? Does she moonlight as a lumberjack?”
Quinn wanted to roll her eyes at Angie’s protest but couldn’t. She was too pleased with herself. Her life’s work revolved around inspiring heartfelt emotion in others. More’s the better if the emotions were dark ones like grief and loss.
They were sort of her calling card. “Look, if I wrote Richard into a story to give him a grisly death, I’m afraid he’d notice. He is my agent. And you’d understand why the barista had a chainsaw if you’d bother to finish the book.”
“I can’t, Quinn, I just can’t.” Her best friend sniffed. “You kill everyone I love.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll write you a happy ending one day. Promise.”
Angie went from sniveling to haughty in the space of a single sentence. “The only happy endings these days are in massage parlors.”
Quinn was still laughing when she ended the call and returned the slim black cell phone to the hidden confines of her ball gown.
Her silk strapless Carolina Herrera ball gown.
Every bit of good humor conjured disappeared. Quinn remembered where she sat and how she got there.
Richard, Richard, Richard. He’d really screwed up tonight. Angie’s solution, while amusing, wasn’t pragmatic and wouldn’t solve anything. Quinn nervously rolled the beer bottle between her hands.
The idea of confronting Richard in his office made her queasy. He’d downplay the entire scene and make her out to be a dramatic prude. The smoothness she counted on for publishing negotiations would come back to bite her when she found herself looking down the barrel of it rather than grinning smugly from behind it, but what were her choices?
She had to make a stand. She needed to put him in his place, be the iron fist of the feminine movement.
Then again, there wasn’t much determined avoidance couldn’t patch up. Key West was fabulous this time of year. Cabanas, boat drinks, palm trees, and pool boys.
When had she last gone on vacation? Disneyland three years ago. With Blake. Quinn didn’t want to think about that. She wanted to daydream about pool boys. For research, of course. She was far too old for a pool boy.
She’d need a pool man.
“You don’t match.”
For an instant, the deep voice coming from behind stunned her. Since she sat virtually alone on her side of the L-shaped bar, she had no choice but to accept the man—a pool man if her luck had improved any—intended the words for her. Some drunken fool trying to succeed where Richard failed. What had she been thinking staying here? She should’ve picked up a bottle of tequila and moved this pity party to the privacy of her hotel room.
He had an accent, although she couldn’t place the dialect. Definitely European. Rather than turn around right away to face her new visitor, she took a long, hard look at the beer bottle in her hand. Too soon to order her third? She wanted fuzzy, not pickled.
She’d put it off long enough. Quinn swung around on the tail end of an eye roll to greet Bachelor Number Two. The smart reply she had ready died on her lips.
Chapter Two
An overly polite, “I’m sorry?” squeaked out from Quinn’s mouth before she could stop it.
She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Short, fat, and balding? Someone more low-grade Hollywood with thick gold rings and a bad comb-over leering at her through a pair of oversized shades?
None of those described this man. He stood tall, even by her standards. At least a few inches over six feet. His dark brown hair flirted with the collar of his T-shirt. His five-o’clock shadow had gone rogue. It looked more like a three-day affair. Lean, narrow hips, led to broad shoulders and toned arms; muscular but not steroidal.
Best and most intriguing were those eyes. They gleamed green like the Caribbean and directed oodles of amusement and mutual attraction right at her.
Quinn hated men like this.
Men like this were one-night stands and Vegas weddings complete with next-day annulments. She studied him. He studied her right back.
Did he like what he saw?
Did she care?
He was a perfect stranger. Handsome but probably not so smart. That’s usually how it worked out. Richard had proven the theory for her less than an hour ago.
The mysterious man grinned at her. “I said you don’t match.”
Peachy. Here stood the most dangerous kind of man. Hot and charming. Blake had been charming once.
Quinn narrowed her eyes and set her beer bottle down deliberately. “Care to elaborate?”
“May I?” The man indicated the seat next to hers but didn’t wait for permission to sit. “Seems to me your drink doesn’t match the dress you’re wearing.” His tone told her he believed this an obvious observation. “You ought to have a glass of bubbly or expensive Bordeaux with a dress like yours.”
He was flirting with her, and she was sadly out of practice. No clever comebacks leapt to mind.
She used words for