Start Me Up

Quinn threw off any thoughts of visitors and began sketching furiously, capturing his new vision for the entry of the house. Losing track of the world around him was a high price to pay, but it always got Quinn just what he wanted. At work, anyway. And if he concentrated hard enough, he never had to think about the rest of his life, or lack thereof.

CHAPTER TWO

The man—she didn’t know his name and didn’t want to—roughly tugged her pants to her knees and pushed her facedown over the table.

“Don’t say a word.”

She nodded and bit her lip in desperate anticipation. When his calloused, unfamiliar hands touched her hip, she jumped and gasped. The tension was already winding tight within her, a serpent looking for release.

Holding her steady with one hand, the man pushed the head of himself against her opening.

No stroking, no preparation. He just guided himself close and shoved hard and deep. It didn’t matter. She was already wet.

Marguerite screamed.

L ORI SET THE BOOK DOWN with a guilty glance around her. Joe hadn’t returned from his towing run yet, but she still felt bad because she was sitting in Love’s Garage, surrounded by her father’s tools, and totally aroused from reading a dirty book. Sure, it was a Saturday, but this wasn’t even borderline professional behavior. She should’ve at least retreated to her house. Maybe to the bedroom. She eyed the clock. Three hours more to go. Although she was the boss….

The phone rang, cutting off any chance she could slip off to her bedroom for some personal time. “Hello?” She tossed the compilation of erotic stories onto the worktable.

“Lori, it’s Ben.”

“Hey, Ben.” He was calling to tell her he’d been wrong. He must be.

“I know I must have shocked you the other day. Are you doing all right?”

“Sure, I’m fine.” Just tense and irritable and restless.

“Good. I’m still waiting on more information. Old cases take a backseat in the state system, of course. But in the meantime, I wondered if you could answer a few questions.”

Lori blinked. “Um, sure. But I wasn’t here when the acci—when he was hurt.”

“I just mean some general thoughts. Did your dad have any enemies? I don’t mean Capulet-Montague kind of stuff. Just some guy he never got along with. Maybe a garage owner in Grand Valley he was stealing business from. A customer accusing him of fraud or theft.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“A woman? Was he dating someone, or maybe a few someones?”

She blinked again, struck by how strange the idea was. “Not that I know of.”

“Okay. That’s fine. It’s nothing urgent. I just want you to keep these questions simmering in the back of your mind. Write down anything you think of. Any reason at all someone could’ve been after your father. Money and passion are the two most common denominators in these situations.”

“Yeah, but…” Lori closed her eyes and rubbed her free hand over her face. “Ben, I’m sure it was just some stupid barroom brawl. Nobody wanted anything from him. He didn’t have anything.”

“You’re probably right, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t consider every angle. I don’t mean to upset you—”

“No, I’m sorry. I can’t say I’m happy about this, but it means a lot that you’re looking into it. I’ll help any way I can.”

“Thanks, Lori. Call me if you think of anything, or if you just need to talk, all right?”

Just after she hung up, Joe roared into the lot with a suddenness that made Lori jump. Dust floated up in his wake while she rubbed her eyes.

“Nothing serious?” she called hoarsely when he descended from the cab.

“Flat tire. Nobody can change a flat tire anymore, you ever notice that?”

Yes, of course she’d noticed, and had said as much the first thousand times they’d had this conversation. Still, the auto clubs paid them thirty dollars a pop to fix a flat, so the decline of manly civilization was just fine with Lori. Joe inclined his head toward the phone.

“Another run?”

“No, just a personal call.” She eyed him as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped sweat from the nape of his neck. He looked old, suddenly. He’d been older than her father by a few years, but they’d been as close as brothers. And Joe had been like a second father to her.

He’d worked in the garage since before Lori was born. But he’d been more than an employee.

Joe had picked her up from school countless times, applauded her achievements, lectured her about boys and drinking. She wouldn’t have been able to care for her father if Joe hadn’t been there to pick up the slack in the garage. She hadn’t been able to pay him enough for essentially running the garage for those first few years, but Joe had never complained. Not once.

And he’d known her dad better than anyone.

“Joe, can I ask you something?”

He shrugged and dropped into a chair. “You know you can ask me anything. Shoot.”

“I’ve been thinking about my dad lately. I wasn’t here those last few months before his accident. What was his life like after I left?”

Joe shrugged. “Same as always, really. Work. Fish. Grab a beer.”

“Was he dating anyone?”

She must have surprised him. Joe tucked his chin in. “Dating? Nothing serious that he ever mentioned. There was a waitress over in Grand Valley he stepped out with sometimes, even when you were still here. A woman over in Eagle he saw once or twice. But he was a loner. After your mom left…” He squinted up at her. “He wasn’t much on relationships after that.”

Lori cringed. Her mother had run off when Lori was five. She’d left both of them behind and never looked back. She’d died about eight years ago from liver failure. Hepatitis C. So Lori was officially an orphan.

“She wrote me once,” Joe said, shocking Lori so much that she gasped.

“What?”

“Your mom. She wrote to me. You were probably fifteen by then. She wanted to know how you were doing.”

“But…why did she write to you? ”

Leaning forward, he rested his forearms on his knees and stared at the floor. “She was too ashamed to write to your dad, maybe. I wrote back to tell her how amazing you were. Smart and hardworking. I never heard nothing after that.”

Lori cleared her throat. “You don’t think she ever got in touch with my dad?”

His eyes rose quickly to meet hers. He held her gaze for a long moment. “He never said anything about it.”

“Yeah.” Nodding, she kicked the cement with her boot. “I guess she never did. Thanks for telling me, Joe.”

“You bet, darlin’. Anything else you want to know?”

“No. I’m gonna head up to Quinn Jennings’s place. If there aren’t any calls in the next thirty minutes, you can go. Just forward the phone to my cell.” She grabbed her book to head for the door, but Joe cleared his throat and stopped her.

“Say, before you go…Have you thought anymore about selling your dad’s lot?”

Lori managed not to groan. What was it with that piece of land? Sure, it bordered a good stretch of the river, but it didn’t hide access to an old silver mine. Or maybe it did. “Joe, I’m sorry. I’m just not ready. I know it’s been a year now, but my dad was so happy when he bought it. You know what I mean.”

Joe held up his hands and offered a sad smile, the sympathy in his eyes a familiar comfort. He’d made an offer on the land soon after the accident when he’d realized she was having financial problems, and if she was going to sell to anyone, it would be to Joe. He loved that place and fished there all the time, even though his fishing buddy was gone.

She joined him sometimes, and it was as if her father was there with them, too. Just like the old days. Her two favorite people in the world.

Joe’s scarred fingers closed over her elbow. “No pressure, Lori. You just say the word when you’re ready to discuss it. Say, whatcha reading there?” He stood, starting to reach for the book, but Lori danced out of his way.

“I’ll see you Monday!” she called, grabbing her keys to head for Quinn’s cabin.

After rolling down the window and speeding out of the lot, Lori shoved a CD into the player and turned it up way too loud. The wind wreaked havoc on her hair, but for once, Lori didn’t care. The loud music and the beautiful day chased away her ghosts, mostly because she wanted them to.

Whatever had happened in her life, whoever she was, she needed to be free of it, just for a moment. Her hair, the one thing she loved about her looks, bounced and writhed in the wind. The music thrummed a sexy beat through her body. And the cool air made her cheeks glow pink.

She was twenty-nine years old. An orphan, sure. A single woman with no prospects. But she was hardly dried up and done. What she needed was a distraction.

Ben had stirred up dusty memories, and if she didn’t distract herself, she’d find herself living with ghosts. It wouldn’t be a long trip for her. She was living in her dad’s house, driving her dad’s trucks, doing her dad’s work. If she wasn’t careful, she’d turn into a fifty-nine-year-old man with a salt-and-pepper beard and hairy arms.

She needed a distraction. She needed to be a girl. No, not a girl. A woman. A fling would offer that much at least, and give her something pleasant to think about while Ben screwed with her life.

Or would it? She’d had casual sex before, and fireworks hadn’t exactly exploded behind her eyes. Firecrackers, maybe, down a little lower. Pop! And that was it. Night of adventure over. What the hell kind of distraction would that be? She needed… more.

In all honesty, Lori had never been as aroused in a man’s arms as she was reading the erotica that Molly had her hooked on. And despite the rumors around town, she wasn’t the least bit interested in women. So what did that mean? Did she need more…kink? Did she want a stranger to treat her with rough force like that last story she’d read?

“God, I don’t think so,” she muttered to her steering wheel.

Did she want to be tied up, spanked, or passed around a werewolf pack? Because she’d liked all those stories, too. Laughter bubbled up and made her snort. That werewolf fantasy would be a hard one to pull off. She’d have to troll through the forest in high heels, just praying one of the scruffy campers was actually a raving beast.

Her truck roared as it strained up the steep climb to the summit, but Lori barely noticed the impressive view. She was too busy analyzing her sexual needs.

No werewolves then, but what about all the other stuff?

She hadn’t been at college long enough to go out with more than one boy, no time for experimentation, and since then she was just…dating. Barely. Her frustrated groan broke in two when she hit a rut in the road. Dating. She’d only met a few men she’d even wanted to sleep with and couldn’t imagine asking any one of those guys to spank her.

Though Jean-Paul probably knew how to spank a girl. He’d probably done it dozens of times. Maybe she should call him. Maybe—

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lori growled. She didn’t even want to be spanked. She just wanted to have a spectacular orgasm or two. She wanted spark and sizzle and a whole damn conflagration.

Her life was about to speed past thirty, but a real relationship was out of the question. She might not have a plan to escape her life, but she wasn’t ready to surrender to it completely. Someday she would leave Tumble Creek, find a way to move on. But for right now she wanted…more. Any excuse not to think about her problems.

Instead of worrying, she wanted to be glowing, moaning, panting. Wet. Just like the women in those books.

New shoes definitely wouldn’t do that for her, but it would be a start. A signal that she was ready and willing. And maybe, just maybe, the perfect stranger would come along and coax her to slip those shoes off. Or, better yet…order her to keep them on.

Lori gunned the engine and climbed toward the sky.

“H I , Q UINN ,” a voice said from right beside him. Much as he wanted to keep taking notes for his latest idea, Quinn resolutely put the pencil down and turned toward his visitor. When he saw her familiar curly brown hair and green eyes, he smiled.

“Lori!” He pulled her into a hug.

“Oh…Hi!” she squeaked, and Quinn quickly let her go.

“How’ve you been?”

“Good. You know…the same.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her gray coveralls as a gust of wind blew up from behind her. Her curls bounced, tugged by the breeze, and her cheeks turned pinker as he watched.

“Well, you look great. Want a cup of coffee?”

“Um, no, I don’t think so. I’d better just get to work. I got those parts in last night.”

“Come on. Have coffee with me. I feel bad about last time.”

“What about last time?” she asked, though she walked into the cabin when he waved her on. With her hands in the pockets, Quinn noticed the way the baggy coveralls pulled tight across her ass. He was pretty sure he hadn’t seen her in anything but coveralls in the last five years. Maybe ten.

He edged past her to start up the small coffee machine he’d plugged into the generator line. When he spun back toward Lori, she was turning in a slow circle.

“Are you actually living here?”

He glanced toward the bed. “Sometimes.”

Her boots clomped against the scarred wood floor. Quinn looked from the steel-toed leather up to the delicate shape of her face and shook his head.

Lori frowned. “Why are you shaking your head at me?”

“Nothing. Yeah, I’ve been staying up here most of the summer.”

She cast another doubtful look around the tiny one-room cabin. “Where do you keep your suits?”

“Back at my place in Aspen. I head there every morning to shower and dress. The solar water heater isn’t particularly effective after a cold night up here.”

“I guess not! I can’t believe it’s so cold up here in the middle of August. It was nice in Tumble Creek.” She shuddered, eyeing the coffeemaker.

Quinn laughed and grabbed a mug to pour her the first cup.

She glanced out the window. “You must get a lot of bears up here.”

“Bears? I don’t know…”

She waved a hand. “They’re all around here, Quinn. So…what did you mean about being sorry for last time?”

“When you came by to look at the backhoe I was a bit absorbed in my work.”

“A bit,” she said with a grin.

“I didn’t even realize you were here until you were gone, then I felt like a complete idiot.”

Lori waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve known you long enough not to be offended. You’ve always been that way. What did your dad used to call you? Doctor Distraction?”

“Yeah.” Quinn grinned.

“But I am glad you emerged from your daze long enough to offer me coffee this time.” She raised her cup in thanks and then gulped half of it. “Nice. I’m almost warm enough to go back out in that wind.”

“Hold on.” Quinn knelt down to rummage through the wooden box he kept next to the counter and dug out a knit cap. He tugged it over her hair. “This will help,” he murmured, as he concentrated on tucking a dozen stray curls under the cap.

“Stop!” She tried to duck away. “I don’t like hats.”

“It’s cold.”

“The coffee is enough.” She finally evaded his hands and yanked the stocking cap off, then stood, straightening out her hair and glaring at him.

“And I’ve always thought you such a simple woman. Who knew you were quirky and irritable?”

Lori rolled her eyes and tossed back the last of the coffee. “I should be done in about forty-five minutes.”

“Wait. Don’t storm out.” He pasted on a mock serious look. “This is turning out even worse than last time. I’m sorry I tried to put a hat on you. I apologize. That was inappropriate and horrible. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Amusement immediately replaced the annoyance on her face, and Lori laughed. “I just don’t like hats, okay? Drop it.”

She’d always had a great smile. In the rare moments on the school bus when both of them hadn’t had their heads stuck in books, Quinn would sometimes hear her laugh and turn to see her brilliant, wide smile. Not often, but that only made the smiles seem more important. And now? Now she was just a mystery. Unknowable and completely self-contained.

But she still had that smile.

He realized just how glad he was to see her. “Thanks for coming up to fix my machine, Lori.”

“You’re welcome, Quinn,” she called sweetly as she stomped toward the door in her big boots. “Give me an hour. Then we can discuss my bonus.”

L ORI PULLED a few more curls back into sproinginess as she stared at the backhoe’s engine. She made very sure that she appeared irritated instead of slightly excited. Those hands she’d wondered about had stroked over her forehead, her cheeks. Elegant as they looked, Quinn’s fingers were slightly rough, raspy from the work he’d done here on the mountain.

But it had been a fraternal sort of touch. As it should have been. Quinn was her best friend’s brother. He thought of her as a little sister or possibly not at all.

“More likely the latter,” she muttered, and forced herself to get to work.

“You say something?”

She jumped and banged an elbow on the angled hood. But Quinn didn’t notice. He was already back to staring down at his drafting table. “What are you working on?” Lori couldn’t help but ask.

He looked up, blinking as he always did when he surfaced for air.

She repeated the question.

“Oh, plans for the house.”

“But you’ve already started building.” She glanced toward the gray lines of concrete she could just make out at the edge of the meadow. “The foundation looks set.”

“Yeah, I’ve completed all the floor plans. Actually, I had everything done, but now I’m stumbling over the design details. I keep changing them.” He smiled in a self-deprecating way. “I do this every day for other people, but it’s much harder working on a house I plan to live in for decades. A brilliant new idea will come to me, then the next morning it’s clearly crap. I think I have a new sympathy for clients and their ever-evolving ideas.”

“That’s probably a good thing.” Lori looked around at the meadow and the trees and the blank expanse of sky suspended above the cliff. “You come here for inspiration then?”

His eyes lit up. “Exactly! The light, the color…shades and hues that change from minute to minute. I need to get the windows just right, the height and shape of them. The texture of the walls against the light. I need to know what the views will be in morning and afternoon and evening.” His hands gestured, and Lori greedily watched every arc, every twitch.

“That evening you were here,” he continued, “right after you left, the sun burst through the aspen, and I finally realized just the type of window I should place above the front door. The exact grade of stone to use on the fireplace where it rises up to the second floor…Shit, I’m sorry.”

Lori shook off the spell he’d cast with his bright eyes and deep voice. “What?”

“Sorry. I know I tend to go way past the boredom mark for most people. Not just computer engineers are nerds, I’m afraid.”

“No, I think it’s amazing! You look like you’re in love.”

“Oh.” He actually blushed. This tall, successful man standing in front of a log cabin in a flannel shirt. He blushed.

“It’s sweet!” Lori assured him.

“Yeah, great. Sweet. The ultimate nerd compliment.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. When he scowled, she laughed harder. “Give it up, Quinn. I’m not going to feel sorry for you. Even if you could convince me you’re a nerd, you’re still hot and rich and successful. Poor baby.”

Shaking her head, she set to work on removing the old starter. Maybe he was nerdy in the strictest sense of the word, but she knew plenty of girls in her junior high class who’d thought him tantalizingly mysterious before he’d gone off to college. Bookish and distracted took on a whole different meaning when the boy in question was also gorgeous and kind.

“Hot?” she heard him ask, and looked up to see him leaning against the porch rail watching her.

“Huh?”

“Hot. You said I was hot.” He kept his mouth serious, but his hazel eyes danced with laughter.

This time Lori’s face heated. She waved her wrench in his general direction. “I was just stroking your ego.”

“Well, nice work. It felt good, your stroking.”

She growled in frustration. “Go away. I can’t work with you staring at me.”

“You mentioned a bonus earlier. What did you mean?”

Something playful and husky had entered his voice, confusing her. And the word stroking was still echoing through her limbs. “Nothing,” she blurted out. “I just hoped you’d let me borrow the backhoe sometime. When you’re done with it.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes. Now could you please leave me alone?”

“But you’re in my office.” The aspens shook in the face of a gust, as if confirming his words.

“Fine. Look at your trees then. Not me.”

“I don’t want to be inhospitable.” She thought his gaze flicked down her body in a quick caress, which was silly since she was in her standard gray coveralls.

Suddenly, she really hated what she was wearing. It was Saturday. Maybe she should have arrived in a tank top and cutoff shorts with a plan to find many reasons to bend over while working. Of course, that would be before the frostbite set in.

Lori turned her back. “Fine then. Work and talk.”

“About what?”

Shrugging, she made sure to sound casual. “Where was the first place you went in Europe? You studied there, didn’t you? Tell me about it.”

After a long moment of silence, he did. His voice softened after a time, as if he were talking to himself, but Lori absorbed every word and stored it away for later.

CHAPTER THREE

T HE BRIGHT RUBY PUSHPINS were reserved for special occasions. Shaped like faceted jewels, they made Lori smile each time she used one. She rolled the pin back and forth between her thumb and finger, then pushed it carefully into the word Córdoba.

Quinn’s story deserved a ruby pin. He’d described the buildings of Córdoba with passion, eyes sparkling, hands shaping the arches and doorways of the ancient city. He’d spoken of domes and spires and mosaics like an artist speaking of love or sex. And Lori had gotten turned on listening to him, embarrassingly enough. Maybe her fetish was architecture.

Once the pin was perfectly even with all the others, Lori stepped back to take it in. Pins covered most of Europe and spread out from there. Blue and black and yellow and green. Each pin representing a story someone had told her or she’d read in a book. Each color a measure of her desire to visit that place. The ruby pins…Those cities would be her first stops.

Someday.

She’d planned her escape from the first day of sixth grade, when the new teacher had shown pictures of her summer trip: sixty days of backpacking through Europe. Lori had felt her heart swell with lust. That passion had grown, building upon itself with every book she checked out from the library, every documentary she watched on PBS. It had filled her up all the way through high school, leaving no room for interest in boys. All her concentration had gone into saving and studying to get into Boston College.

And she’d done it. She’d gotten into the international business program, and even scored a coveted scholarship to spend a semester at a university in the Netherlands for her sophomore year.

Lori’s heart spasmed, throwing sparks of pain against the walls of her chest.

Her dad had been so proud, refusing to even admit to a hint of loneliness during the four months she’d been at college. And then—

“Jesus,” Lori cursed. Skulking down memory lane was one of her least favorite activities. She spun away from the map and hit the light switch, plunging her old bedroom into darkness. Before she’d made her way down to the first floor, the doorbell rang, and Lori sprinted the last few steps.