Red Hot (13 page)

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Authors: Niobia Bryant

BOOK: Red Hot
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Lei's birthday was next week, and Vita had promised their daughter she was coming to visit. He hoped her sending this box wasn't because she wasn't coming anymore. That's what it had meant in the past. Big boxes filled with gifts would arrive a week before Christmas, birthdays, and other important events and milestones in Lei's life.
Quint walked the box into her bedroom and set it on the middle of her made bed. He spotted her Teen Nick calendar open to the month of October in the center of her wall of posters. She had placed a huge star around her birthday on the twenty-first and a circle around the seventeenth with
MOMMY!!!
written in pink Magic Marker.
He eyed the box as he left the room and closed her door securely.
He loved his daughter to death, but marrying Vita and choosing her to mother his child was the biggest mistake of his life. The absolute biggest. Sometimes he felt even more disgusted with himself than he did with his ex-wife.
Life was about choices.
Quint made his way back to his office. He started to look up to see if Kaitlyn was still sitting outside wasting her life away, but then he didn't. He busied himself going through the small stack of work orders for repairs in the various apartments.
The door swung open and he looked up, surprised to see Kaitlyn standing in the doorway. He leaned back in his chair and eyed her as she stood there glaring at him.
“You don't know me,” she said.
“I know plenty like you,” he said.
“The hell?” she snapped, stepping inside the building as the door swung all the way open. “It takes more than copping a free feel and getting a semihard to come out of your mouth to me any kind of way.”
“Did I strike a nerve?” he asked.
Kaitlyn placed her hands on his desk and leaned over. “And what if I tell you what I see about you?”
Quint sat up in his chair and pressed his elbows to the desk as he looked up at her. “You taken a moment out of your life to pay attention to someone other than yourself to form an opinion? Then give it to me.”
“You're an asshole.”
“That's the best you got?”
“That's all the effort you deserve.”
Quint's eyes flew over every aspect of her face. A beautiful woman. An even more beautiful mess. “And you're a spoiled heiress who is creating a life where she has no choice but to become a trophy wife so that staying pretty and dressing fly is all you have to fill your head with.”
Kaitlyn stood up straight. “So it's my fault my parents have built a legacy for me.”
“No, but it's your fault if you do nothing with it but shop and lounge all day,” he countered.
The wind suddenly rustled the browning leaves as fall geared up to reign with the coming of fall. With a swift gush, which raised the corners of the papers on his desk, the door slammed shut.
Kaitlyn jumped and let out a surprised yelp as she turned to press her ass against the desk. “I thought somebody just bust off a round,” she said, her hand pressed to her chest.
Quint caught a whiff of her perfume. It was the same that she wore last night. Soft and subtle. Teasing. Intriguing.
He shook his head to clear it. His thoughts shifted from the sight of her body in those formfitting leggings to the disappointment he just knew his daughter was about to experience. Again.
“Was being a manager of a low-level apartment complex the dreams you had for yourself?” Kaitlyn asked.
He looked up at her. “You are a beautiful mess.”
Kaitlyn frowned.
Quint rose to his feet and came around the desk to open the door to the office. He waved her out.
Kaitlyn turned on her heels and took the few steps to stand before him. “You shouldn't dish it if you can't take it,” she said, looking up at him.
“There's a difference between a low-blow insult and an observation,” he told her, looking down into her eyes.
“Yes, and it depends on the viewpoint of the one being observed,” she said.
He saw her eyes shift down to his mouth, and that made his heart pound as the wind carried her scent to him. His eyes drifted over her face, and it struck him how much of what he saw appealed to him. Excited him.
And he saw that she, too, felt whatever it was brewing between them. It was there in her eyes and in the quickened pace of her breathing.
But as much as something drew him, Quint knew he had to resist.
Kaitlyn Strong excited him too much, and passion like that could become addictive.
Kaitlyn turned and left the building.
He forced himself not to watch her walk away, but he felt the loss of her presence so close to him. He closed the door and reclaimed his seat, forcing his thoughts anywhere but on Kaitlyn.
He glanced at the time on his cell phone before he dialed his ex-wife.
“Yeah.”
Quint frowned at the male voice. In two years that had never happened.
“Sorry. I was trying to reach Vita,” he said. “Do I have the right number?”
“Who's this?”
“Quinton, her ex-husband.”
His earpiece suddenly filled with rustling noises and lowered voices whispering before she got on the line.
“What do you want, Quint?” she asked, sounding extra salty.
“I got the box for Lei that you sent, and with you coming next week, I wanted to make sure you wasn't flaking out,” he said patiently, not at all concerned with whatever relationship drama of hers he had just interrupted. His concern was their daughter.
The line remained quiet. Too quiet.
“What is it this time, Vita? Huh? Your man don't trust you long enough to leave his sight?” he asked, already dreading breaking the news to Lei. “Hell, bring him along. I just want you here for our daughter.”
“Tell Lei to call me and let me know if she loves her presents,” she said, sounding far too light and bright and jovial.
Quinton rubbed his hand over his bald head and wasn't surprised at the beads of perspiration that coated his hand. His dome always sweated when he was heated—in sex or in anger.
“You haven't laid eyes on your daughter in two damn years. He was worth you ruining our marriage, but is he worth you ruining your relationship with your daughter?” he asked in exasperation, slamming his hand on the desk.
“Oh, okay, then. Bye,” she said before ending the call.
At first Quinton could do nothing but stare at the phone. He dialed the number back, but he already knew it would go straight to voice mail.
He turned his chair and leaned back against the wall as he kicked his Timberlands up on the desk. He purposefully thought back to the days they had lived together as a family. Had Vita shown signs then that she could one day become the type of mother to leave her child behind? He couldn't go so far as to say she didn't love Lei. He just believed she loved
herself
more.
Quint stayed reflective and lost in thoughts, glad that none of the residents or any business intruded on him. He was surprised when he heard the sound of the school bus pulling to a stop in front of the complex. The laughter and noises of children soon followed.
It took less than five minutes before the office door opened. Lei was standing there in her white polo shirt and khaki pants, with the gold shoes that Kaitlyn gave her. In her hand was the box from her mother.
He looked up at her heart-shaped face and his gut literally clenched at the look on her face.
“She's not coming, is she?” she asked, stepping farther inside to drop the box on the desk, next to his feet.
Quint sat up straight and swung his feet down to the floor as he reached across the box and cupped her hand.
“No, baby, she's not coming. She's gonna call you later to explain,” he said gently.
“'Kay,” Lei said. She tucked her chin to her chest as she fingered the box before picking it up into her hands and turning to leave.
“Hey,” Quint called out to her. “You okay?”
“It's not like she works, or she doesn't have the money to come or send for me, 'cause she always sending me stuff,” she answered, without turning around, and then walked out of the office.
Quint picked up his cell phone and tried Vita's number again. Voice mail. Sometimes he wished she had just disappeared for good and had never contacted Lei because the ups and down of her lies and disappointments might affect their daughter far worse.
 
 
Later that evening Kaitlyn was on the phone listening to her niece, Kadina, tell her about an upcoming fashion show at her school when there was a soft knock at her door. She climbed off the couch and opened the door, not at all surprised to see Lei standing there. But she was surprised at the preteen's sad expression.
“What's wrong?” Kaitlyn asked, stepping back to open the door and reaching for her wrist to pull her inside gently.
Lei just shrugged her shoulders.
“Kadina, let me call you back,” she said into the phone.
“Okay. I have to give the baby a bath, anyway.”
Beep.
Kaitlyn crossed her arms over her chest as she walked over to where Lei sat, slumped on her sofa.
“Ooh. Don't frown. You'll have wrinkles before you're thirty.”
“I just talked to my mom and she said she wasn't coming for my birthday again.”
Kaitlyn's heart tugged.
In the days since she moved into the apartment, the little girl came to visit her often, and a few times she alluded to feeling neglected by her mom. Kaitlyn never knew quite what to say then . . . or now.
“She just messed up my whole birthday.”
Kaitlyn sat down on the sofa next to her. “Lei, you
never
let anybody steal your joy,” she said gently. “It's your birthday. Your day. And you're becoming an official teenager. Come on . . . that is way too fly to let anybody stop you from enjoying it.”
Lei looked up and smiled a little. “I'll like being a teenager,” she said, her eyes brightening.
Kaitlyn snapped her fingers. “Of course. It separates the little kids from the young adults, and that's too fabulous for words.”
Lei sat up a bit straighter.
“Are you having a party?”
Lei shook her head. “I told my dad I didn't want one because I thought I would spend the day with my mom,” she admitted, sounding disappointed again.
Kaitlyn rose to her feet. “Where's Quint?” she asked.
“Probably in his shed,” Lei said.
“That big building in the back?” Kaitlyn asked, pointing her thumb toward the rear of the apartment.
Lei nodded. “That's his carpentry shed. He brought it from his house so he could build things while we're living here,” she said, picking up the
Vogue
magazine Kaitlyn had been flipping through earlier during her day of boredom.
Carpentry shed?
His house?
Build things?
Kaitlyn opened her mouth to ask the many questions running through her mind, but she decided against it. It really wasn't any of her business.
“You head home. I have some things I have to take care of,” Kaitlyn told her.
“Yes, ma'am.” Lei set the magazine back on the sofa.
“You can have it. I'm all done with it,” Kaitlyn said, already heading for her kitchen.
“Thanks, Miss Kaitlyn.”
Moments later the front door closed behind her.
Kaitlyn left out the back door and paused on the balcony to look down at the metal shed. Indeed, the windows were lit. She had never really paid attention to the shed and just assumed it held tools. All the while it was Quint's hiding place.
She jogged down the stairs as the leaves of the trees rustled from a breeze or from the sudden movements of their inhabitants. She paused on the bottom of the steps, oddly remembering being a teenager sneaking with a boyfriend into the woods for a first kiss, and then being scared shitless by the sounds of rustling trees because she thought one of her brothers had caught them.
Kaitlyn smiled.
Growing up on Strong Ranch had been fun for a kid. She had been way more fearless and rough like her brothers. Back then, she hadn't cared about walking barefoot through grass heated by the summer sun, or riding bareback on her horse, or skinny-dipping in a cool pond.
But those days are over,
she thought, trying to remember the last time she rode the horse that she had received for her sixth birthday. It had been years.

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