In Too Deep (13 page)

Her fingers closed around the keys and she tried to remember. Had she been so anxious to be on her way with Quinn that she had forgotten to lock the door? She didn't think so, but if Cal had found the door unlocked, what other explanation could there be?

“M
r. Quinn, are you a husband?” asked Annmarie nearly two weeks later.

“No, I'm not.” The innocent question brought Quinn's head sharply up from the clipboard on which he was making notations. Sure as he was standing here in the lab, she was going to lead him into her quagmire about babies. Just once he'd like the simple questions, like how to determine the subunit molecular weight of a protein.

She had been to work a few times with Lily this week, here this morning because Mama Sarah wasn't able to watch her until the afternoon. His time alone with Lily had been far less than either of them wanted, though they had made love again—in the back seat of his SUV.

How they got from their discussion of the pricey equipment required to maintain the barophiles—to having their hands all over each other, Quinn wasn't too sure. All he knew positively was that each time he made love with her the sex was just as hot as the first time and left him wanting more.

Since then, he reminded himself a dozen times a day not
to touch her on the back or squeeze her shoulder or wink at her or any of the other dozen proprietary gestures that would have announced to everyone that she was his woman.

His house was five minutes from the lab. He'd thought about taking her there over lunch all week. Walking her through a living room filled with weight-lifting equipment, two kayaks and a rowing machine on the way to his bedroom, however, sounded anything but seductive. A closer truth he reluctantly admitted. He didn't want her to see how sterile his house really was. She already knew too much about him.

Forcing his attention back to the work at hand, he came to halt in front of the tank of bay ghost shrimp that one of the graduate students had collected a couple of days ago.

Annmarie stopped a few feet away in front of the crab habitats. “What's the name of this purple one?”

He grinned. Maybe he'd have a reprieve, after all. “Purple shore crab.”

“Not that name. The other name, you know, the science one that you and Mom always use.”

“Hemigrapsus nudus.”

Annmarie giggled. “Grape soup. And that's purple, huh?”

“If you say so. Personally, I've never had grape soup.”

“But you could. Sometimes you have tomato juice and sometimes tomato soup. I bet that's how it works.”

Quinn laughed. Another example of her free associations that expanded his world. Grape soup. It sounded terrible, like something a wizard might serve an unsuspecting apprentice. Except where Annmarie was concerned, he was often on the learning end of things, especially where her family was concerned.

A couple of days ago she had explained to him with matter-of-fact acceptance how her aunt Rosie had given birth to her and how her mommy was still her mommy and what a lucky girl that arrangement made her. Personally, he couldn't make the whole situation jibe with his own experiences. His mother had never wanted him, which she had proven in spades the day she'd left him at a park and never
returned for him. Instead a cop had picked Quinn up, and the next few days had worried him to death.

Years later he had read the reports. Learned that his mother had been found near the apartment passed out drunk, and that his father had been in prison for car theft since Quinn was a toddler. He'd never heard from the man, had long since given up the fantasy that someday his dad would come looking for him.

In the beginning, there'd been supervised visits with his mother that she missed more often than not. Quinn had coped with being shuffled through a system he didn't like and didn't understand the only way he knew how—by acting like he didn't give a damn and keeping to himself. If he had ever been as secure and as open as Annmarie, he didn't remember it.

At the next display case, yet another variety of crabs inside, these brick-red, she paused and he dutifully said,
“Cancer productus.”

“I like the grape ones better.” She followed Quinn across the room to where he checked the gauges for the pressurized tanks that held specimens collected from the vent site. “I asked my aunt Rosie what a munchkin is.”

“Yeah.”

“She says it's a special little girl. That's right, huh?”

Though Quinn felt her looking at him, he kept his gaze safely on the notations he was making from each tank. “Yep.”

“And you like my mommy, too, huh?”

Like? Oh, yeah. “I do.”

“I've been thinking,” Annmarie said.

He had the feeling that spelled trouble, so he didn't ask what about. If she ran true to form, she'd tell him and there he'd be—flopping around like a fish caught on the beach after the tide went out.

“Uncle Ian says husbands are forever and ever, but I don't think that's right.”

Husbands again. He had been a husband once—a long
time ago—and he'd been so bad at it that he didn't care to repeat the experience. Husbands weren't forever—in fact, just the opposite, at least in his world.

“And Aunt Rosie says that for mommies to have a baby—not dogs and cats, of course, just people—you have to have a husband to be the daddy.”

Quinn stared hard at the numbers on the clipboard. His stomach sank toward the floor. He wanted to run right now. Kayaking over to Foster Island during a storm would be easier than facing this little girl and her plans for that baby brother or sister that she would never have. His boat was lashed to the top of his SUV—all he had to do was cut her short and leave.

“Annmarie—”

“Uncle Ian is a husband and so is Mr. Mike,” she rushed on as though sensing that he was about to bolt out the door. “And Mr. Max, he's too old.” She sighed. “You're just right. You could be the husband,” she said. “It doesn't have to be forever. Just until there's a baby.”

He could sense her looking at him, but he didn't dare meet her gaze. Nothing had ever been more terrifying than this child's simple trust. Even if she had no idea that she was asking the impossible—not only for him, but for Lily, as well.

“Mr. Quinn.” Her voice was impatient. “Did you hear me?”

“I did, munchkin.” He dropped to one knee so he was at eye level with her. When you couldn't avoid a situation, the best tactic was to face it head-on and get it over with. “You want a husband for your mom.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I want a baby brother or a baby sister. A daddy would be nice, too, but I really,
really
want a baby.” She took a step closer. “So, what do you think?” Her big brown eyes were so uncertain that he wanted to gather her close and promise her anything. “Would you?”

The outright denial he had to give her stuck in his throat.
He swallowed, then said as gently as he knew how, “I was a husband once, a long time ago. I didn't do it very well.”

She took another step closer. “Maybe you just have to practice. That's how I got better at riding my two-wheeler.”

If only it were that simple.

As if sensing he was about to turn her down, she whispered, “It can be a secret. I won't tell Mommy. You can think about it—that's what grown-ups say. They have to think about things.”

“Annmarie…” When she bit her lip to keep it from trembling, the outright no that he had to tell her became impossible. Sighing, he said, “Okay. No promises, but I'll think about it.”

She grinned as if he'd given her presents, leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, and then skipped away. “I'm going to go find Thad now.”

Hilda's son had also come with Annmarie and Lily this morning. The last time Quinn had seen him, he was peering intently through the lens of a microscope.

Quinn watched Annmarie dance across the room, her pigtails bouncing. He touched his cheek, possibilities he didn't want to think about tantalizing and tormenting him. Being a husband…being a daddy…being part of a forever family. The lyrics from a song he couldn't quite remember flitted through his head—something about little girls growing up and dads who were lucky enough to be given butterfly kisses. Oh, man, was he in trouble.

Fifteen minutes later Annmarie came back through the lab, this time with Thad, who announced that he'd seen hairy monsters in the microscope that Lily had let him look through and that they were on the way to his house for lunch.

“You told your mom you were leaving, didn't you?” Quinn said to Annmarie. Lily had somehow struck a balance keeping a close eye on Annmarie and enough freedom to be a child.

“Yep,” she replied. “And she said to stay on the road
and to go straight to Hilda's house.” She grinned. “And she said to tell you thank you for putting up with me.”

He laughed. “Any time.”

Will glanced up from his task of cleaning beakers as Quinn came through the door, his expression vaguely like someone with his hand caught in a cookie jar. He often had that expression, come to think of it. Quinn frowned, wondering what the guy was up to his time.

“I thought you were supposed to be helping Patrick or Max this morning,” he said.

Will shrugged. “Max said he could handle things alone.”

“Where's Patrick?”

Will shrugged again. “Like I would know.”

After the incident on the boat, the friendship between Will and Patrick had dissolved into an uneasy truce. Will did just enough to get by, and Patrick was preoccupied. The two of them were beginning to drive Quinn crazy.

Lily was on the phone, a conversation that let Mama Sarah know the kids were on their way. Given Lily's protectiveness about her daughter, Quinn wouldn't have been surprised if she had been determined to walk down the hill with the kids. She glanced up and the smile she gave him was the friendly one she gave everyone at work. If there were rumors about any involvement between them—and he suspected there were based on his experience with small towns—nothing in her behavior was the cause. He told himself he was relieved about that even as Annmarie's heartfelt request tightened his chest.

Being a husband to Lily…no way did he want to go there. A guy like Saint John—as Quinn had begun thinking of her dead husband—that's the kind of man she needed. As long as Quinn kept telling himself that, he could avoid admitting the idea of spending his life with her sounded great. A fairy tale that would never come true, a fantasy.

And then the thought of someone else touching that soft, warm skin on the inside of her thigh flashed through him,
followed by an even stronger surge of jealousy. He bit back a curse and found himself glaring at Will.

“The big pressure tank closest to the door has had some strange readings this morning,” Quinn said to him, handing over the clipboard that he'd nearly forgotten was tucked under his arm. “I want hourly readings the rest of the day.”

“Okay.”

When Will just stood there, Quinn added, “Start now.”

Without a word, Will ambled toward the door, shaking his head as he went.

“Everything okay?” Lily asked.

“Fine.” Nothing was, Quinn decided. Not the slow pace of the repairs on the submersible, not the decision he'd made to hire Will, and certainly not this urge he had to get Lily naked and tucked beneath him every time he saw her.

“Fine, hmm?”

Something in her voice made him look more closely at her. She waited until the door had closed behind Will, then smiled and crooked her finger at him in a “come here” gesture.

He didn't dare—not while she had that particular expression on her face.

She slipped off the stool and came toward him. The white lab coat mostly hid another of those sheer blouses she liked—this one pink, buttoned to her throat, and making her skin glow. She didn't stop until she stood a breath away from him, and then she took both of his hands within her much smaller ones.

The flirtatious smile became a more genuine one. “You don't have to tell me things are fine when they aren't.” The smile widened a fraction. “Even for me, the eternal optimist.”

“Things are fine,” he insisted.

She squeezed his hands. “Now they are.” She gazed up at him. “You have only one thing left to do.”

“What's that?” He realized he didn't care. She could ask anything of him.

“Kiss me, then go take care of whatever it is that has you so preoccupied.”

He could hardly tell her she was the reason for his preoccupation, so he did the only thing possible. Lowering his head, he brushed her lips with his own, then kissed her as she had requested, savoring the lush heat of her mouth. She held on to his hands as though they were a lifeline. For him, that touch was… It kept him anchored to the kiss—a simple kiss, though Lord knew there was nothing simple about this one.

Gradually, it ended, and her smile was brilliant when he lifted her head. “My mom always said, ‘Kiss it and make it better.' She was right.”

Better so long as he didn't count the uncomfortable fit of his jeans. “You're going to be the death of me.”

She let go of his hands and took a step away. “Go away now, or I won't be able to concentrate.”

Quinn laughed. She wasn't the only one. He turned on his heel, deciding that he'd check on Max and the progress on the submersible's repairs. As he came through the front offices, the main door opened and Cal Springfield came through.

Quinn had heard he was back from Anchorage, and based on the brand-new jeans and waterproof slicker he wore, he'd evidently done some shopping while he was there. The guy had “cop” written all over him, which made Quinn wonder why he'd ever believed the story that he'd worked with Lily.

“What's up, Springfield?” Quinn asked by way of greeting. According to the gossip at the Tin Cup, he was hunting someone on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Evidently he had given up the lie he had told Quinn the night he had arrived in Lynx Point. Helping to catch a criminal was one thing. Ratting on your neighbor was something else—and by breakfast time this morning, Springfield had managed to erode any support he might have had from nearly everyone.