Catching Serenity (Serenity #4) (11 page)

The smallest shift of his gaze in my direction and Quinn nods, focusing on the cross eyes he draws on the masks.

“Full of surprise, aren’t you?” I say to Quinn when he hands me the masks. And I sit there with the verbal lashing of a lifetime pulsing on the tip of my tongue, slipping the masks over my eyes, earning a laugh first from Rhea and then from Autumn and Declan as they stand in the doorway.

When Carol announces that it’s time for Rhea’s nap, and I follow Autumn and Declan out of the hospital, with Quinn trailing behind, I glance over my shoulder, wondering what game he’s playing. He catches my look, his face hard, his expression blank before he looks away from me.

O’Malley is a strange one. Entitled, absolutely. Arrogant? Definitely. So why am I not as uncomfortable as I should be that my little cousin likes him? A better question is how is Quinn able to be so nice and sweet to a kid when he has no evidence of an actual heart beating beneath his chest? As I drive away from the hospital, I promise myself that was a question I intend to find out for myself.

FIVE DAYS.

It’s been that long since Quinn O’Malley decided to replace me. At least, when he’s not being forced to help Joe with repairs to his house and Autumn and Declan with gathering supplies and commitments from the local businesses to donate to the fundraiser. When Quinn threatened to throw Sam, my ex and the night manager at McKinney’s, through the front window for not giving him an immediate yes or no about donating soda for the fundraiser, Autumn relegated Quinn’s chores to inventory and securing the folding tables.

But that asshole still thinks he can cut into my reading time with Rhea. A fact I plan on having words about with him the next time I see him. I purposefully arrive at the hospital a half an hour before his allotted time with my cousin was up. The idea of a schedule, ridiculous as it sounds, hadn’t come from either of us. But when Aunt Carol saw us arguing, yet again, over time spent with Rhea, she decided a schedule would be in everyone’s best interests.

“Quinn, it’s only fair that Sayo get more time.”

“That’s bollocks.”

“She’s family. You’re…”

“She can’t do the voices like I can, can she, and she’s crap at drawing. The sprog told me herself. ‘Sayo sucks at the drawing.’ Really I’m only trying to save you the embarrassment.” Carol hadn’t appreciated my flipping him off or either of us raising our voices twenty feet from a room full of pediatric patients getting chemo.

So I got three hours in the morning and Quinn got an hour and a half in the afternoon. Only, today I was cutting into his time so I could speak to him. He wasn’t keeping to the schedule, anyway, coming in earlier and earlier for a week and it was starting to piss me off.

“Sayo, hey,” Rhea says as I step into the room, passing my little cousin some comics that I had picked up that afternoon. “Quinn went to Marty’s this morning while you were here with me. And look what we did!” My cousin pointed to the crumpled bag from Marty’s that had been used as a page for her to doodle on. There were three fairies drawn across the backside of the paper and along the top.

“How sweet.” Rhea doesn’t notice that my voice is less than enthusiastic. If Quinn’s eyes could have shot fire, half my face would have been melted. “I knew you were running low on paper, so I got you this.” I handed her a new sketch pad, pleased by the small squeal she let out as she reached for it.

“Oh thank you! Thank you both!” Rhea says, pulling open a fresh box of colored pencils that I had not bought for her. One glance at Quinn’s smug grin and I knew he’d beat me to the punch with that as well.

“No problem, kiddo,” I tell her, taking the paper bag off her mattress.

It is ridiculous for either of us to act so possessively. Logically, I know that. But Quinn has crossed a line, infiltrating my family, wiggling his way into my little cousin’s life, seemingly out of boredom. Autumn had mentioned that Declan had encouraged Quinn to volunteer at the hospital, thinking that his half-brother could use a lesson in perspective, not realizing that Quinn would use that as an excuse to show up at Rhea’s room, and to keep her company when Carol was off with the doctors and my Uncle Clay was working or, wherever it was that kept him away from the hospital.

“That’s fine,” I’d said to my best friend, returning the smile she’d given me when she told me, and glaring at Quinn as he and Declan argued in Joe’s backyard while stacking bricks for a new fire pit Joe wanted to build.

“It might humble him,” Autumn had offered, nudging my elbow when I stared a bit too long at Quinn’s shirtless chest.

“Maybe,” I’d said, sipping from my beer. That day I’d been unable to keep my gaze from Quinn’s body and had spoken the smallest prayer of relief when he turned his back on me. But the smug asshole that he is, he’d noticed my attention, throwing me a wink over his shoulder. “But I doubt Quinn has ever heard the word ‘humility.’”

It was a notion I still held firm to, especially now as I caught Quinn’s frown, and his barely-contained glare as Rhea flipped to a new page in her sketchbook and leaned against my shoulder. Her smile was infectious, but I couldn’t enjoy it, not with the glare that Irish asshole shot my way.

“Sayo,” Quinn starts, his voice even, calm. I answer with a shift of my eyebrow, distrustful of how polite he sounds. That asshat knows he sounds like a twit. In fact, he’s likely getting a kick out of being sweet to Rhea, by the thick levels of metaphorical bullshit he piles into the room. “Give us a chat, yeah?”

“Of course,” I say, stretching my lips in an overdone smile, not blinking once or letting that smile waver in the slightest until I am out of the room with Quinn trailing behind me. I don’t, in fact, relax my mouth until we are nearly to the nurses’ station and down the empty corridor on the far side of the desk. Then I drop all pretenses. “What the hell do you want?” I ask him, my voice like a hiss.

“What the bleeding hell do you think I want? You’re well early, aren’t you? Who the feck do you think you are, creeping in on my time?”

“Who am I?” He doesn’t move when I step close to him, having to cross my arms to keep from smacking him. “You’ve got a lot damn nerve.” When he only glares at me, the hiss turns into a snarl. “She’s my damn cousin, Quinn. Besides, creeping on my time hasn’t bothered you for a solid week.”

None of that warrants his sympathy. Quinn simply rolls his eyes, grunting as though what he and Rhea do together is far more important than anything I choose to do to entertain her. “We’re working on something. What we do whilst I’m here is a feck of a lot more important to her than reading bloody Potter books yet a-bloody-gain.”

The grit in his tone and the contempt on his face has me stepping back, more wounded than I’d ever admit to him. “Did she… did she say that?”

Quinn’s frown doesn’t leave his face and he keeps his mouth and eyes tight. “She didn’t have to. I’ve seen the way she carries on with you. I see how she is with me. She likes the drawing bit.”

“That doesn’t mean anything other than the fact that she has a crush on you.”

“Does she now?” I hate the look he gives me. It’s all amused and almost hopeful. It makes me hate him even more than I already do. “What’s wrong love, you don’t like me giving my attention to another girl?”

“Would you get over yourself, you asshole?” Quinn’s attitude remains. He finds my upset funny, as though I’m beneath him and no insult I fling at him will even register. I don’t care if it does. But I do know he’s up to something, a fact he should know I’m onto. “And anyway I thought you were reading to her too! What project are you talking about?” When he doesn’t answer, I step back, frustrated, worked up over the secrets Quinn keeps from me.. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, Quinn O’Malley but I swear to Christ if you fuck her over even once, one damn time, that’s it. You’re gone. You won’t put a toe into that room. I can promise you that much.”

His laugh is quick, a small sound that tells me he’s insulted but pretends he isn’t. “You think I’m plotting something?”

“Why else would you be here?”

Quinn moves his jaw, grinding his teeth as he stares down at me and I can’t help but get the impression that I’ve somehow insulted him. But his attitude has always been biting and cruel. There is nothing I can do or say that would hurt his feelings. So why does he look a little off? Why isn’t his glare quite so severe?

“Why indeed,” he finally says, walking away, back toward Rhea’s room. I catch up to him, intending to follow, but Quinn stops me, holding up his palm to keep me back. “I don’t think so. I’ve another twenty minutes before you’re due to start in with your boring books. Don’t creep on my time and I’ll stay clear of yours.”

JOE PLAYS POKER
with his friends in the campus square every Wednesday afternoon at two. It was perfect timing really. He’d would be out, Declan had class and Quinn would be visiting with Rhea. This afternoon was the only time I could investigate Quinn and the things I know he keeps hidden.

But I’d need a thief to get me inside.

At least, the daughter of a criminal.

Mollie jimmies the back lock with little effort. A credit card, a jiggle of the doorknob and the lock releases and no sound emits from the alarm. Mollie had bypassed that too.

“All in the wrist and the intimate knowledge of the mark,” she’d told me as we leaned against the side of Joe’s house, trying to figure out the code he’d use to secure his alarm.

Mollie had waited a full minute, thinking to herself, likely wondering what Joe would use as a password and then, a calculating, dangerous smile—one that reminded me a bit too much of Mojo, her former biker father—inched across her face as she punched in six numbers. The system disarmed and the back gate opened, letting us onto the property with little problem.

“Autumn’s birthday,” she’d said, opening the back gate for us to jimmy the lock on the back door. “Remind me to have a casual convo with Joe about passwords.”

With Mollie’s stealth and skill we are in the house in under five minutes.

It is Wednesday, a work day and even if Autumn wasn’t in the thick of teaching class or holding office hours, the place would still be empty. We walk through the back door, past the kitchen and the clutter of dishes on the counter, thinking idly that the fundraiser and Quinn’s invasive presence has kept Joe and Declan off their cleaning. With another glance into the kitchen, at the empty beer bottles and the disgusting smoked butts floating inside them, I’d guess that Quinn is at fault for the additional mess.

“He’s a slob,” Autumn had told me just two weeks after Declan and Quinn had returned from Ireland. Between her boyfriend and her father, Autumn had heard her fair share of complaining. “He smokes in the house when Dad or Declan’s not there and leaves all his empties and old butts around the house.

“Joe needs a maid,” I offered, understanding that Joe and Declan hadn’t had to pick up much after themselves since Autumn’s OCD prevented her from letting her father and boyfriend live in squalor. But with Quinn joining the fray, even Autumn’s clean freak ways had been squashed.

“No,” she’s told me, frowning hard, “they need to teach Quinn how to clean up after himself.”

“Teach him? You act as if he’s a third grader.”

“He may as well be. Declan said he doesn’t even know how to work the washer or load the dishwasher. Until he came here, he’d never even seen a washer.”

By the state of the place, I guess that Declan and Joe hadn’t given Quinn the first lesson and my suggested maid service had yet to be obtained.

But it was the spare room, the one near the front porch where I knew Quinn slept, that had me covering my nose.

“Oh my God, this dude is nasty,” Mollie says, pulling her t-shirt over her nose.

“Tell me about it.”

The room was both foul and putrid with dirty socks and boxers crowded around the door. Leftover food, stained clothing, or other, um, mysterious items were strewn on every surface, both floor and mattress. Mollie kicks off a load of laundry from the bed, using her foot.

“I hope he doesn’t bring girls back here.”