In Too Deep

They reached the crest of the slope and she stopped walking so suddenly he nearly ran into her. She glanced at him, then away. “My husband died two years ago—”

“I’m sorry.” Something in her voice made him believe that she wasn’t beyond that. That put her in the do-not-touch category, which was too bad since he’d been thinking she was a woman he’d like to touch. All over.

“—and,” she rushed on, “I had a grant that ran out. So the timing to make a change was good. And I really did want to be closer to family again.”

He figured she was telling him the truth—just not the whole truth. He’d read her curriculum vitae and her papers. Her work was original, brilliant, and represented years of commitment.

“So you’re giving up research?”

“For now,” she said.

A shadow chased through her eyes, and he again wondered what she wasn’t telling him. Beneath her easy laugh and open smile, he sensed a flicker of sadness that he suspected she worked hard to hide. Deliberately teasing, he said, “Now that I know you can file…”

As hoped, she grinned. “I knew there was a down side to this job.”

“I have a theory about how the office got to be such a mess.” He waited a beat before adding, “In the dead of night, the files and papers get together, mate, reproduce and create new piles.”

“A topic for your next paper, hmm?” she returned. “Something you could publish in the Journal of Organizational Science, maybe?”

He laughed. “Maybe.”

Lily watched the kids coming up the trail behind them. She gazed at her daughter as though the child was more precious than life. Nobody had ever looked at Quinn like that, but until now he hadn’t thought it mattered.

The kids came over the crest.

“We made it!” Annmarie exclaimed, throwing her arms wide. “I’m king of the mountain.”

“You can’t be king,” Thad said. “’Cause you’re a girl.”

“I can be anything I want,” she informed him. “My mom said.”

“Okay if we go inside and look at the aquariums?” Thad asked Quinn.

“Sure.”

“Last one there has to eat raw fish eggs,” Annmarie taunted. They took off toward the building at a run.

Quinn grinned. “Now that’s one I’m going to remember.”

By the time the two children reached the door, they were neck and neck. Something had caught Annmarie’s attention, and she pointed.

“Mom!” she shouted, her voice full of fright. “Look out!”

Quinn’s gaze followed the line of her pointing finger. A dark-green vehicle was rolling down the slope, picking up speed…and headed directly toward him and Lily.

Chapter 2

Lily glanced over her shoulder, her first thought for her daughter. To her relief Annmarie stood on the stoop in front of the door.

“Move!” Quinn pushed Lily out of the vehicle’s path. Then he sprinted after the car.

“You stay there,” Lily shouted. When her daughter nodded that she understood, Lily started after Quinn. Dear heaven, he was a crazy man. Didn’t he realize he could get hurt?

The vehicle—her car, good God, her car—rolled across the shallow slope like some monstrous, lumbering beast, tipping when one of the wheels rolled over a small boulder. The vehicle veered in a new direction. Quinn caught up with it and pulled on the door handle. He stumbled back, swore, and made a second grab, this time at the back door. The vehicle picked up speed and jerked him along like a rag doll.

“Let go!” Lily’s heart rose to her throat. Any second he was sure to lose his balance and end up under the wheels. The car was headed directly toward the cliff between a huge pine and a flatbed trailer parked in the lower lot—a trailer she didn’t remember seeing earlier.

A tire rolled over another large rock and knocked Quinn to the ground. He disappeared from view and she screamed. A second later the car hit the trailer with a grinding crunch.

Lily came to a skidding halt by Quinn, who was already sitting up. She dropped to her knees next to him. He had a gash on his head that pumped blood. It ran down the side of his head and neck. His attention was focused completely on the car. She spared it only a fleeting glance while raw fear for him pulsed through her.

“Oh, God,” she panted. “You’re hurt.” She grabbed a packet of tissues from her pocket and pressed a wad against the gash. Instantly the blood soaked through.

“Damn it all to hell.” Rolling to his feet, he ignored her and the blood streaming from his head. He stalked toward the crash.

Shaking, Lily stood and trailed after him. Head wounds, even minor ones, bled like the devil. How hurt could the man be when he was swearing? Her attention shifted to the accident. One wheel of her car was in the air, still spinning. Her car, that she had just paid off, looked as though it was permanently attached to the trailer. She hadn’t taken fifteen steps when he turned around to glare at her.

“That’s not my car.” He waved up the hillside toward the parking lot. “That is.”

“It’s mine,” she said, following the line of his finger. His vehicle was nearly identical to her dark green SUV. Except hers was perched precariously against the open trailer. She finally gave the trailer a closer look. Sitting on its flatbed was a small robotic submarine—a huge white and silver ball with headlights—one of them broken—and mechanical arms—also one broken—that looked alive.

“And that—” he was beginning to sway as he gestured toward the trailer “—is a submersible that has been here for exactly—” He squinted at his watch as though he couldn’t read it. “Forty-three minutes. I parked it down here so nobody had a chance in hell of running into it. Do you have any idea what I went through to get it? Only sell my soul.”

Her legs rubbery, Lily’s gaze followed his accusing finger. The whole passenger side of her car was caved in, and the trailer was dented where the car had hit it. She wrapped her arms around herself, which did nothing to lessen her shaking or the fear that made her throat tighten.

Once again, Quinn tried to open one of the doors on her car, then leaned down to peer inside. Straightening, he swore again.

“You left the keys in the ignition,” he accused. Blood continued to pour down the side of his face, and he was looking more pale by the minute.

“We’ve got to get you to the clinic.” She laid a hand on his arm to steady him. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’ll get a Band-Aid later.” He shrugged off her support and looked back up the hillside. “How the hell did this happen?”

“I don’t know.” What she did know was that Quinn looked worse.

His knees buckled. Before Lily could reach him, he fell. She cried out and knelt beside him. Pounding footsteps made her look up. Max and the children were running toward them.

“Well, damn,” Quinn said, struggling to stand up.

“You stay put.” She pushed him back down.

“Damned if I will.” Somehow, though, Quinn found himself without the energy to stand. Which was ridiculous. The woman couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds sopping wet. He bench-pressed triple that. Of course she couldn’t hold him down.

Except that resting for a minute seemed like a better idea.

Through a haze of red he watched Max and the two children come to a halt next to him. Lily’s child threw her arms around her mother. Lily automatically hugged Annmarie with words of reassurance and a gentle admonishment to stay out of the way.

That didn’t keep the child from kneeling next to him and peering into his eyes. “You’re going to be okay,” she crooned, patting his hand, then said, “I don’t think he’s in there, Mom.”

Where else would he be? Especially since his head was beginning to feel like it would crack open if he so much as moved it.

“Got your car keys in your pocket?” Max asked, appearing in Quinn’s line of vision.

“Vest,” Quinn responded, his voice sounding thick to his own ears. Everything was growing more blurry by the second.

The next time he looked up, his car was parked right next to him and Max was getting out of it. Didn’t make sense since they’d just been talking.

Lily’s face appeared in front of him and Quinn tried to smile. Her hair framed her face in a golden halo. God, but she was pretty. Why had he been mad at her?

“Can you stand up?” she asked.

He nodded.

To his complete irritation, he felt as weak as a wet noodle, and it took both Lily and Max to hoist him up. Just moving…made him sure that any second his head would simply explode.

After an eternity of awkward moves to get in the car, he collapsed in the back seat with Lily. Max and the two kids were in the front seat. The ride down the hill to Lynx Point had never seemed longer, and Max didn’t miss a single pothole on the way down, Quinn was sure of it. He wanted to know where they were going, but didn’t have the energy to ask.

He slumped over, somehow found his head resting on Lily’s lap. He opened his eyes and looked at her. Her mouth was moving, but it took too much effort to figure out what she was saying, so he watched her. He didn’t think anyone had ever smelled better, and he turned his head toward her belly and inhaled. She smelled like comfort. Through the soft texture of her sweater against his cheek, her body was warm. He decided being right here like this would be about perfect if his head weren’t pounding.

“I’ll go get a gurney,” Max said sometime later.

Quinn managed to open an eye. Through the window he could see a weathered sign. Medical Clinic. A scant two months had passed since he was last here. No way was he being wheeled in.

“I can walk.” Straightening and opening the car door required a Herculean effort that made him break into a sweat.

This time he managed to stand with only Lily supporting him, her shoulder fitting under his arm like it was meant to be there. She wrapped an arm firmly around his waist. Somehow he managed to walk the eight or ten steps to the door of the clinic.

Thad opened the door, and Quinn made every effort to walk through in a straight line. He’d had to do that once for a cop after he’d celebrated getting a scholarship for college. It had been easier then.

At the jingling sound of the bell, Hilda Raven-in-Moonlight came out of one of the back rooms of the clinic. Remembering something about Thad being her son and being Lily’s childhood friend, Quinn studied her. As usual, she was dressed in jeans, a unisex sweater, and jangly earrings he’d never seen her without.

“You never told me you had a kid, Doc.” Quinn flashed her a smile, straightening to his full height, and hoping for her usual tart reply to being called “Doc.” The very first time he’d been to see her, she had informed him she was a physician’s assistant, not a doctor. In his book, she was better than an M.D. any day of the week. Hopefully she hadn’t noticed that he’d fall over if Lily wasn’t holding him up.

“I have four of them, and that gash on your head will get bigger if it involves any of them.” For all the gruffness in her tone, she was gentle when she put an arm around his other side and steered them toward an examining room. She settled him on the examining table, hoisting his feet up. “How did he manage to get you involved in one of his hare-brained schemes, girl?”

“No scheme.” Lily caught his bloody head as though she somehow knew it was killing him and gently eased it back until he was lying down. “A stupid accident. This happened when he tried to keep my car from running into a trailer.”

Quinn heard tears clog her voice. Realizing she was more affected than her casual words suggested, he reached for her hand and found it was trembling.

“You should have seen it,” Annmarie said, close enough that she could peer into his eyes. “Mommy’s car bumped along and then it crashed right into the other one with a big kaboom.”

“Everybody else okay?” Hilda asked.

“Fine,” Max said. He came through the doorway and dropped the keys to Quinn’s car in Lily’s hand. “I’m going to go and see what needs to be done to take care of things at the lab.”

“Do you need a ride?” Lily asked.

“Nah. It’s not that far.” With one of his quick smiles that always looked vaguely foreign on his face, he turned around without waiting for a goodbye.

“Me and Annmarie are gonna play video games,” Thad said.

“I want to watch Hilda sew Mr. Quinn up,” Annmarie said. “Okay, Mom?”

Lily shook her head. “Not okay. Go play with Thad and I’ll be along in a bit.”

“Mom.”

“Go.”

Quinn liked the way Lily was firm with her daughter—as though what she did really mattered. Mrs. Perkins had been like Lily in that way. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to remember, just for a moment.

He had been one of five foster children in her house. She had made sure they studied and did the chores and remembered to say “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am” when talking to grown-ups. Quinn had been pretty sure she was a mean old biddy until she died less than a year after he had gone to live with her. Kenny Jones had been in the car with her, and he died, too. Not the drunk who hit them, though.

As foster parents went, she hadn’t been so bad. She’d never taken a strap to him. She’d never treated him like she figured he’d steal whatever wasn’t tied down. She insisted that “sir” and “ma’am” be used when addressing adults and that he do his homework in the kitchen under her watchful eye. After she died, those two habits were key to his staying out of trouble.

His hand tightened around Lily’s and her fingers pressed reassuringly back. He sighed and opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling until the crack he remembered from his last visit came into focus.

“A mundane car accident?” Hilda said from the vicinity of the sink. “That’s a first. Last time it was pulling seaweed out of a propeller.”

When Lily glanced back down at him, he nodded toward his arm closest to her and tried to waggle his eyebrows. That hurt to much, but he smiled anyway. “Wanna see my scar?”

“Stop bragging. Not every woman is impressed with scars,” Hilda scolded, appearing in his line of vision. “Let’s see how big this hole in your head is.”

She pulled off a huge gauze bandage he had no recollection of anyone putting on him. When had that happened?

“Close encounters of the accidental kind—happens to this guy all the time.”

Lily cleared her throat. “This one is my fault.”

“No, it’s not.” Quinn’s gaze snapped to her. To his shock her eyes shimmered as though she was a breath away from tears.

Hilda patted his arm. “I get to sew you up again, big guy.”

“Okay.” His attention didn’t leave Lily, though. She had taken off the enveloping red sweater. The blouse underneath was cream-colored…and smeared with his blood. She still gripped his hand, but didn’t look at him.

“He’s going to be okay?” She glanced at Hilda.

“Fine,” Quinn said for himself. “This wasn’t your fault.”

“It was my car.” Finally she looked at him. “And like you said, the keys were in the ignition.”

“Little sting while I deaden this,” Hilda said, adding, “He’s got a concussion. Somebody needs to keep an eye on him, wake him up every couple of hours.”

Lily’s expression became even more guilt-ridden. “Do you have anyone who can do that?”

He searched her gaze. A man could drown in those dark, beautiful eyes. “Do what?”

“Be with you tonight?”

He managed a grin despite the needle pricks against his forehead. “Are you volunteering, darlin’?”

A blush swept up from her cheeks, then turned her fiery-red to her hairline. He couldn’t remember if a woman had ever blushed when he teased her.

“Last I knew, he lived alone.” Hilda wasn’t as gentle as Lily as she washed the blood away from his forehead, and he closed his eyes to keep his focus on something besides the pain.

“I still do,” he muttered.

Time blurred after that, and Quinn drifted in and out, absorbing bits of conversation between Hilda and Lily, who bantered like old friends. There was something about a house being built for Lily with somebody named Ian overseeing the project. And Rosie, who still had morning sickness.

Each time Quinn opened his eyes, he found Lily watching him. Each time, she squeezed his hand and gave him a soft smile as though his being hurt really mattered to her. Wasn’t that a hell of an idea.

When they began discussing him again, he forced himself to pay attention.

“He really does need to be checked on for the next twenty-four hours,” Hilda was saying. “Maybe the handyman…”

“Max?” Lily finally inserted.

“Yeah. Maybe he can look after Quinn tonight.”

“No,” Quinn said. “I don’t need a nursemaid.”

Lily looked at him as though she knew differently. “Ready?”

He nodded and sat up. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel nearly as bad as he had a few minutes earlier. “Take me home and let me down a couple of aspirin. By morning, I’ll be good as new.”

“And ready to kayak over to Foster Island,” Hilda said, her voice dry. She took off a pair of latex gloves and dropped them into a trash can. “Stay away from the aspirin. Do you have any Tylenol?” When he didn’t answer right away, she added, “I’ll give you some. And I want to see you back here in the morning.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Agreeable, now.” Hilda smiled. “Keep that up and you could tarnish your swashbuckling reputation.”

He stood and took step toward the door. “Like I said, tomorrow I’ll be back to normal.”

“I’ll get Annmarie and be ready in a minute.” Lily picked up the red sweater she had been wearing earlier and disappeared through the doorway.

He watched her walk down the hallway toward the door to Hilda’s apartment. Lily might be small, but the curve of her bottom was all woman, round and sexy despite the full cut of her slacks. The lady looked damn near as good walking away as she did coming toward him.

Hilda cleared her throat and he turned around. She handed him a small bottle. He glanced at the label and put the bottle in his pocket. When he looked up, he found her watching him.

“So that’s the way the wind blows,” she said.

“What?”

She folded her arms over her chest. “Don’t you ‘what’ me. I see how you look at her.”

“Last I heard, looking wasn’t a crime.” He didn’t add that Lily had been looking back. In fact she was the one who’d started it.

“She’s still getting over the death of her husband.”

“She told me.”

“She’s not the type to have a fling.”

Quinn pressed a hand against the bandage at his hairline. “Do you always fight her battles?”

Hilda grinned suddenly and the heat disappeared from her voice. “Since we were seven years old. She’d take in a stray and never check to see if he had rabies.”

“Talking about me behind my back again?” Lily asked, coming down the hallway from Hilda’s apartment, Annmarie holding her hand. “I haven’t picked up a stray since Sly Devious Beast.” She grinned at Quinn. “He turned out to be a great dog and quite without rabies.”

“I’m worried,” Annmarie said. “We’ve been gone a long time and Sweetie Pie is probably missing me.”

“Most likely.” Lily urged her daughter toward the outside door and gave Hilda a quick hug. “I promised Thad that I’d bring caramel corn when we come down for videos tomorrow night.”

“You’re spoiling my son rotten.”

“I know.”

Lily opened the exterior door and waited for Quinn. Annmarie ducked under her arm. He followed her outside where she said, “I’m driving.”

“Okay.”

She held open the car door for him, which made him feel like an old man, then waited until he was settled into the passenger seat before going around the vehicle to the driver’s side.

“I live up the hill from the dock. Second house from the end,” he said after she got in the car and was scooting the driver’s seat forward to accommodate her shorter frame. “You live with your sister, right?”

“That’s right.” Lily started the car.

“Then you should take the car after dropping me at home.”

She smiled at him. “Does your head still hurt?”

He nodded. “Like hell.”

“He said a bad word, Mommy,” Annmarie said.

“Sorry.” Now that they were moving again, his brief surge of feeling better had all but disappeared.

Lily drove right past the turnoff to his street.

“You missed the turn.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m not taking you home. Like Hilda said, you need someone to check on you tonight, and you yourself said there’s no one to do that.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure you will,” she agreed.

“But you’re not taking me home.” He really ought to be more upset about that, he decided. Instead the idea of being babied somehow appealed more than being one of the strays she took in bothered him.

Again she smiled. “I’m not.”

“Who would have thought you’re stubborn?”

As they headed south from Lynx Point, he figured his brain cells were still mostly intact. He didn’t have to be a genius to figure out they were on their way to Lily’s sister’s house. There were only a couple of places out this direction, and the nursery was at the end of the road.

On the drive to her aunt’s house, Annmarie maintained a running monologue, informing Quinn how impressed she was with his car, which was green like hers only much nicer and with lots of dials and stuff, pointing out the turnoff to the house where she and her mom were going to live only couldn’t right now because the house had no walls yet, and relating how her kitten tormented the dog.

He’d seen the house the last time he had been kayaking, the straight lines of new lumber standing out from the surrounding forest.

They came around a final bend and the road ended at a gate with a hand-painted sign above it that read Comin’ Up Rosie. Quinn had ridden his mountain bike out here a couple of times, but he’d never been through the gate, which framed a traditional Tlingit totem in the middle of the yard. Beyond the house was a gorgeous yacht anchored next to a pristine dock.

As Lily parked the car, a woman clad in jeans and a dark green apron came out of the greenhouse. She was followed by the ugliest dog he had ever seen.

“Do you have a totem pole in your yard?” Annmarie asked him.

“Nope.”

“In California, we didn’t have one, either.” Annmarie sat up straighter and waved. “That’s my aunt Rosie,” she informed him. “She’s going to have a baby real soon. Did you know that?”

“No.” Or maybe he did—something about her having morning sickness. She showed no sign of an advanced pregnancy despite her niece’s assertion.

The instant that Lily shut off the ignition, Annmarie scrambled over her and bounced out of the car. She skipped across the yard and threw herself into her aunt’s arms.

“Guess what happened? Mommy’s car was in a crash and Mr. Quinn, he got stitches from Hilda, and Thad and me, we found lots of stuff in the tide pools.”

Quinn’s impression was that anyone could tell Rosie, Lily and Annmarie were related. Rosie was taller than Lily, but not by much. All three had blond hair and dark eyes. Even without the similarities in their coloring, the family resemblance would have stood out.

“What’s all this?” Rosie removed her work gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of the canvas apron.

When Quinn walked toward them, the dog sniffed his hand, then ambled toward the wide porch that wrapped around the house.

Lily briefly related what had happened with the accident. At the end, she glanced toward Quinn and introduced him.

“I think we met once last spring when you moved your lab to the new place.” Rosie shook his hand. “You probably want to go sit down somewhere.”

“Yeah.” He remembered how surprised he had been when about forty people showed up to help him move. A job that he had anticipated would take a week had taken, instead, hours. It was his first experience with the neighbor-helping-neighbor support commonplace in Lynx Point. Given the independent nature of the people who lived here, their generosity and support had been a surprise and had proven to be an integral part of the character of these people.