“He should have seen this coming when you started the permit process on Tidewaters.” Tess bit into one of the cookies. “He should have known he might have trouble finding enough tenants to fill his building.”
“He thought he could stop me.” Geneva’s lips twisted in a tiny smile. “He should have known better about that, too.”
She stirred a bit of cream into the coffee she’d poured for herself. Quinn stood utterly still at the window, his back to the rest of the room. A quiet, curious man. Steady and resolute, in spite of his past shortcomings-or perhaps because of them. Geneva suspected his brooding appearance sometimes masked an impatience with the dramas swirling around him.
Time to draw him into this one. “I am concerned, however,” she said, “about the points Mr. Gregorio made about the curious history of problems Quinn has had on his construction sites. I wouldn’t want those problems tainting Tidewaters’ reputation before it’s completed.”
“That’s not fair.” Tess dropped her cookie on her plate. “Anything that happened before has nothing to do with this. The first ‘problem’ Gregorio mentioned at Tidewaters was a random act of vandalism. And Quinn told me the second problem wasn’t an accident at all-that board had been cut.”
Geneva gave her a long, bland look. “And do you believe everything that Quinn tells you?”
“Of course I do.” Tess’s plate clattered as she set it on the tea table. The second cookie-one of Tess’s favorites-was still untouched. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because of the specific types of problems he’s had before on his job sites.” Geneva sipped her coffee. “Because he has an alleged history of negligence.”
“That’s…that’s ridiculous.” Tess spun toward Quinn, who continued to stare out the window. “Isn’t it? Quinn?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors, too,” Geneva said quietly.
“Gossip.” Tess resumed her pacing. “He hasn’t been negligent, not one bit. Hell, I haven’t been able to find five minutes to enjoy that site for myself since-”
She turned slowly, suspicion evident in her expression. “You wouldn’t have hired him if you’d had any doubts.”
“It was your doubts that most concerned me.” Geneva finished her coffee and set her cup aside. “I’m relieved to see you seem to have resolved them.”
“Don’t you have anything to say?” Tess strode across the room toward the spot where Quinn remained, silent and impassive. “Are you just going to stand there and not say a word about any of this?”
“You were doing enough talking for both of us.”
He turned his head, and his features seemed to soften as he gazed at Tess. A quick, shadowy creasing around his eyes, a momentary twist of his lips. But his expression hardened as he moved to face Geneva. “The only thing I want to know,” he said, “is whether you think Cobb had anything to do with the vandalism. Or with the scaffolding-with hurting Ned.”
“I’d like to say that I’m certain Howard would never arrange anything so stupid. Or dangerous.” Geneva looked up at them both. “But I can’t. He’s a clever man, and an ambitious one, but he’s done some incredibly foolish things.”
“How can we find out?” Tess added several cookies to her plate and sank back into her seat on the sofa. Crisis averted; appetite back in place. “If he’s behind this, I want to nail his ass to the wall.”
“Please, Tess. That statement is disturbing on so many levels.” Geneva sighed and ran her fingers along the fold of the napkin still in her lap. “I suppose I could hire an investigator.”
Quinn’s frown deepened. “Isn’t this police business?”
“The city police won’t want to look in Howard’s direction.” Geneva leaned her head against the chair cushion, suddenly weary of the twists and turns this project had taken. She’d hoped that once construction had started, opposition to Tidewaters would fade. “An investigator will act on our suspicions,” she added.
“And what if we’re wrong?” asked Tess. “We might send him off on a wild-goose chase-an expensive one-while the real culprit gets away with it.”
“There’s something else an investigator could do.” Quinn set his cup on the table. “He could keep an eye on the site. I can’t be there twenty-four hours a day.”
“And I’m not about to hire a bodyguard for a city block.” Geneva laid her napkin on the tray. “I think we’ve exhausted this topic for the evening. I’m sure that after we’ve all had time to rest and consider matters from different perspectives, we’ll be much better equipped to put a plan in motion.”
She rose from her chair. “Is there anything else we need to discuss tonight?”
“Just one thing.” Tess stood and brushed cookie crumbs from her dress skirt. “J. J. Quinn?”
The corners of Quinn’s mouth lifted in the semblance of a grin. “Yeah. Stands for John Jameson.”
“I never knew,” Tess said.
“You never asked.”
Tess gave him one of her sly, catlike smiles. “Guess it’s time to start filling in the blanks.”
Geneva hid a smile of her own at their teasing, feeling much less weary than she’d felt a short while ago.
CHAPTER TEN
TESS PASSED THROUGH the side porte cochere door Quinn opened for her and stepped onto a landing enveloped in ocean-scented fog. The damp air brushed over her skin, leaving a trail of goose bumps behind. She shivered as she thrust her arms through her sweater and pulled it tightly across her middle. “I am
He didn’t respond, and she knew he was simply standing there, staring at her in that intense, motionless way of his. Wishing he’d quit the unsettling habit or telling herself to ignore those gorgeous, black-lashed, deep-set blue eyes of his wouldn’t reduce their effect on her nerves.
She glanced over her shoulder to find his tall, lean form framed by the massive door and backlit in the amber glow of twin carriage-house sconces. His gaze was as piercing as ever, but there was something new in his somber expression tonight. Something searching, something uncertain. It might have been the feeble lighting or the mist, but she thought she detected something…softer.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Did you forget something?”
“No.”
She paused, expecting some kind of explanation, but he continued to study her, as if by merely looking he could penetrate her pores and strip bare all her secrets. She shrugged off her fanciful thoughts and walked down the steps, headed toward her car.
“You could have had me fired,” he said.
“Maybe.” She reached for the handle and then turned to face him. She wanted to push back, to knock him off balance and make him feel as uneasy as he made her. “Probably.”
He stepped down to the drive. “Why didn’t you?”
“You’re not worth the trouble.”
He shifted closer, shaking his head. “I’m going to be more trouble if you keep me on the job.”
“Is that a threat?”
His gaze roamed over her face, lingering on her mouth before raising to her eyes. His pupils expanded in the semidarkness until his eyes seemed as black as the pavement beyond the porch lights. “It wasn’t intended as one.”
“Well, then.” She let out the breath she’d been holding and sucked in chilled air, but the tiny tremor that followed wasn’t caused by the cold.
“It was a statement of fact,” he said.
He’d moved again, and he was standing much closer. Too close. The arches of the porte cochere cast sharp shadows over his features, outlining his angular cheeks and lining the deep grooves around his mouth.
She tossed her head back, shaking her bangs out of her eyes before angling her face toward his. “I like a man who’s honest about his bad intentions.”
One side of his mouth tugged to the side in something that wasn’t quite a grin. Something dangerous, something potent. “If I ever have any of those, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“It’s a deal.”
He lifted a hand to her sweater and ran his fingertips from button to button, along the opening. His knuckles skimmed over her breast, and her nipples tightened and tingled.
“All right then,” he said. And then he grew very still, as only he could do, and looked at her in that way that made everything in her aware of everything about him. Of his height, and his breadth, and his strength, and his ridiculous, impossible appeal.
His thumb moved over the soft sweater wool, back and forth, in a soft caress, and her pulse pounded in her ears.
His lashes lowered again, and her lips parted on a silent gasp.
“Good night,” he said.
“Right.” She reached behind her, grabbing for the car’s handle with trembling fingers. “See you around.”
He disappeared beyond the bend, and she collapsed in her seat and pulled her door closed. A minute later, the deep vibrations of a big truck’s engine rumbled through the dark, and then the ghostly glare of headlights swept through the fog.
“Damn, that was a close call.” She turned her key in the ignition and pressed the heat and fan buttons. Warm air flooded the compartment, and she closed her eyes and slumped in her seat to wait for her sanity to return. “Too close.”
Too bad it hadn’t been closer. Closer would have been damn good.
QUINN COASTED down the winding bluff road, braking around the tight, shadowed corners, keeping his eyes on the road and his thoughts on the week ahead. He could do without Ned for a few days, but he’d need to take on more help before the end of the month. He’d check on the fencing around the site and ask Reed about the possibility of having a patrol car pass by a couple of times a night.
Payroll was coming up again. And his call to the city inspector to visit the site and sign off on the rough plumbing had gone unanswered-time to step up the pressure on the building department. Better phone the mill yard while he was at it, double-check the delivery schedule for the framing material. And find some time to talk with Tess about the specs for those glue-lam beams.
Tess. His fingers tightened on the wheel as his thoughts detoured into forbidden paths and blurred with the mist around him. Bits of the conversation beneath Geneva’s porch, that distorted slice of time before he’d made his escape. Those pulsing, electrifying moments when Tess’s head had tilted back, her lids drifting low over her whiskey eyes, her lips moist and begging, her breath a warm zephyr on his face, her flower-garden scent battering his self-control.
Control. The one thing he wouldn’t let her wrest from him, no matter how hard she tried. No matter how much he was tempted to surrender. If he took her up on her offer, it would be on his terms, not hers.
He’d been fighting this craving for weeks. Watching her, testing himself. Reasoning things through. She wasn’t a chemical; she wasn’t a drug. She wasn’t anything addictive-she wasn’t as insidious or dangerous as that. She wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle if he chose to try. He could walk away if he decided to. He’d done it before several times. The choice was up to him.
And he’d decided, by the time he’d descended from the bluff and reached level ground, that he was tired of fighting something that wasn’t a real threat, something that was bound to feel better than booze and more satisfying than tobacco. Why should he deprive himself-and Tess-of something that good? Sure, adding another layer to a complicated relationship might not be the best idea in the world. But she wanted this, too.
