Men Like This. Roxanne Smith
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on the napkin and handed it back. To Madeline, for being my biggest fan of all time.
Jack folded the flimsy paper carefully and shoved it into his front pocket. He hadn’t been so proud of himself in a long time. “Thank you. I mean it.” He hoped he wasn’t coming across as too much of a mama’s boy, but it couldn’t be helped. He was, in fact, quite a mama’s boy.
Quinn traced the lip of her beer bottle with the tip of one finger and eyed him. “If you’re an actor, have you been in anything I might’ve seen?”
Jack shook his head. He wasn’t put off so easily. Distracted, yes. Forgetful? Never. “Oh, no, Quinnie, we’re not talking about me yet. We’ll get there, believe me. I do love to talk about myself. You’re still holding out on me, though. Why Clementine Hazel?”
“Why do you care? Really, curiosity only accounts for so much.” She was clearly exasperated.
Poor lamb. If only she knew how she encouraged him. “Curiosity accounts for everything, love. First, you’re this gorgeous, lonely creature wearing diamonds and silk in a Hollywood nightclub. Now, you’re Clementine Hazel, gorgeous and lonely, wearing diamonds and silk in a Hollywood nightclub. Who wouldn’t be curious? Besides, we’re practically best friends! I feel like I’ve known you all night.”
Jack waited for Quinn to tell him to mind his business. To shove off. To go suck eggs.
Instead, she smiled her shy smile and looked to the heavens as if some answer to this pushy Irishman was on the ceiling. “Clementine was my mother’s name. She passed away a few weeks before my first novel went to print.” Quinn settled her intent gaze on him. “Hazel is the color of my son’s eyes.”
A son. Was this the information she’d been afraid to depart? Jack hadn’t stopped to consider if she was married. No ring clung to her wedding finger. If she had a man at home, he was certainly doing a poor job of it. Jack set aside the notion of a Mr. Hazel.
Throwing propriety out the window and hoping it wouldn’t land him on his ass, he put a hand over hers. “See? Relatively painless. Now, what can I tell you about myself? Ask away, Quinnie. I’m all yours.”
* * * *
Hours passed, but it might as well have been days for all Jack had noticed. He’d lost track of which stories he’d shared and which ones he was saving to impress her later. There would definitely be a later.
Maybe not tonight, but soon.
Quinn offered a strong dose of serious for his tease, the perfect foible for his excitability. Like an anchor to a ship, or a pole to his flag flapping in the breeze.
Despite her air of reservation, she met him tit for tat in every verbal spar. They’d spent most of the evening simply attempting to outwit one another. He couldn’t fathom not seeing her again.
Flabbergasted, he gaped at Quinn. “That’s how your ex-husband justified carrying on with another woman for five years? Your career? Tell me you don’t buy it.”
Quinn drew a circle through the moisture left on the bar from beer number five. She seemed to have a hard time keeping up with the paper-napkin coaster. “Maybe at first. I needed a reason. Anything to make sense of what was happening. I readily accepted the easiest explanation for how my husband found the time to fall in love with Kira.”
“He fell in love? I see now. Makes sense.”
Her eyes went round, and she didn’t bother to try to hide her hurt. “Some best friend you are.”
“Aw, c’mon, Quinnie. Not the affair. Never the affair. Those never make sense. Love, however, is an elemental. It’s like snow or a tsunami. Remember the last time you were in love and imagine ignoring it. You can’t. It’s impossible.”
Quinn crossed her arms and pouted. Actually pouted.
He didn’t want to grin because she might mistake him for laughing at her. She embodied both the adorable and the regal, as much a conundrum now as she’d been when he introduced himself hours ago.
Laughing was the last thing going on in his head. Rather, he was on the cusp of holding something precious and had no clue how not to screw it up.
“Blake is still a rotten bastard. No excuses. I’m only saying he can’t have loved you if he loved her. What makes him such a twat is how he didn’t set you free five years ago when he set himself free.”
She cocked her head to one side and considered. Then she smiled. “Finally, we agree on something.”
Shouts of last call rang through the bar.
Forget never. It was now or the next day, or the day after that. Something of the inevitable shone from Quinn Buzzly. He had a sense of something new beginning right before his eyes.
He stood, dug into his pocket, and threw a wad of cash on the bar. “Nonsense. We agree on a lot, you and I.” He held out his arm and looked her in the eyes. The offer was clear.
She accepted them both without hesitation.
Chapter Three
“Let me see if I’ve got this right.” Emily Buzzly’s disapproval came clear as packing tape through the telephone receiver. “You slept with a strange Irish man claiming to be a famous actor because Richard took you to a nightclub and offered you champagne?”
Quinn stared at the ceiling over the standard-issue queen-size bed and counted to three. It didn’t take. She still had a vague urge to strangle her sister. She counted to ten with marginally more success.
She no longer recalled what insane notion had entered her mind and induced her to call Emily. She sighed.
That was a lie. She’d awoken with a mind-numbing hangover that had her desperately grasping for the memories of the night before. They were coming back to her like a half-remembered dream. She needed to talk about Jack for him to seem real. Emily was the only person guaranteed to be awake at this hour.
She was also the one person guaranteed to take a perfectly wonderful evening and make it sound like a plot for the next big made-for-TV movie.
“We’re both adults here. Shouldn’t I be able to tell you stuff like this and get spared the lecture? Do you realize how long it’s been for me? Do you? I’ll tell you, Em. A year. A flippin’ year. Sex wasn’t happening for me long before Blake got found out. Chew on that for a minute.”
Emily didn’t empathize. She wasn’t the empathetic type. “From where I’m standing, this appears to be the self-destructive behavior of a lonely and recently divorced woman who misses her son.”
The comment set Quinn’s teeth on edge. “I can’t believe you went there. This has nothing to do with Seth. Forget it. I’m too old to explain myself to anyone, let alone you. I called the wrong person for the conversation I wanted to have.”
“Don’t overreact.” Somehow, Emily managed to end up the offended party whenever they got into these spats. Quinn had long since given up trying to figure out how she did it. “I’m only trying to help. I don’t understand you sometimes, though. Richard is great. He’s handsome; he makes good money—”
“You don’t say.”
“He obviously likes you. Oh, and there’s the thing where he knows you. What’s so bad about Richard you’d prefer a total stranger?”
Wrong with Richard? Quinn tapped her chin thoughtfully. Where to start….
Instead of answering her sister’s question directly, she opted for painting a larger picture. “For the sake of your peace of mind allow me to explain last night through my eyes.”
Emily huffed, but relented. “Fine. I’m listening.”
Quinn stood from the bed and smoothed a hand over her bare knee where her cotton nightshirt had ridden up her thigh. She took a deep breath