“They’re awful people.”
She snorted. “Look, I pretty much go into every situation figuring that people are awful and/or actively planning my murder and/or there’s a good chance they’ll turn into zombies and I’ll get to shoot them in the face.”
“Have to shoot them in the face.”
“No, I was right the first time.” She waved that way. “The point is, your family might be wicked rich and all that, but they aren’t going to be any worse than I am prepared for, because I am prepared for the absolute worst. So if you don’t mind me being bitchy—which is why you recruited me for this in the first place, I’ll remind you—then there’s nothing to worry about.”
Nothing except these people were experts at the well-aimed barb that managed to soar right past the best defenses and strike deep. He’d been on the receiving end of them too many times to discount, and he went into these encounters knowing exactly what his family and their peers were capable of. He didn’t like to think of them making Aubry feel…less. She wasn’t. She was better than the lot of them combined.
That was an uncomfortable thought.
“All the same—”
“Quinn, stop.” She was still looking at him as if she’d never seen him before. “Would it make you feel better if I promise to let you know the second I need to get out of there, and then we can flee into the night, howling our victory?”
He blinked and then refocused on the road. “If we’re fleeing, we probably shouldn’t be doing anything in victory.”
“Oh, pish. I’m pretty sure I could do some damage on the way out.” Her smile was downright evil.
Considering she was probably talking about property damage at the bare minimum, he shouldn’t find her so damn cute. He found himself smiling in return. “If anyone can afford it, it’ll be the wedding guests.”
“Exactly.”
He draped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her against his side, and tried not to think too hard about how good it felt to have her there. Like she fit. What the hell did it say about him that he found a woman willing to commit some light felonies for him hotter than fuck?
She was silent for all of ten seconds. “I don’t suppose this trip is going to be as eventful as the one into San Diego?”
He barked out a laugh. “You’re out of control.”
“And you’re the pot calling the kettle black.” She shrugged, her smile wavering. “What can I say? I only have a few more days of this, and I want to enjoy it as fully as possible. So sue me.”
“Only a few days left.”
He didn’t phrase it as a question, but she took it as such. “Well, yeah. I mean, obviously my putting limitations on this was a mistake. We’re like fire and gasoline, and it’s stupid to try to stop before we burn ourselves out.” Her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “But, seriously, if Jules knew what we were doing, she’d start getting stars in her eyes and meddling and planning our wedding and our kids’ weddings, and it’s just exhausting to think about.”
His stomach tied itself in knots, but he couldn’t say for sure if it was because she was putting a limitation on them or because she’d just mentioned a wedding and kids in the next breath. He tried to sound amused, but he knew for a fact he didn’t pull it off. “She gets excited.”
“Yeah, she does. Which is exactly why we can’t keep this up. I mean, I’m not going to lie and say sneaking around hadn’t occurred to me, but that’s a whole lot of effort, and Jules has a nose like a bloodhound when she thinks I’m keeping something from her. And she always knows when I’m keeping something from her.”
He wasn’t all that into the thought of sneaking around, either. Quinn wasn’t sneaky. He wasn’t underhanded. Fuck, he was about as subtle as a two-by-four to the side of the head—and so was Aubry. What she was saying made sense, but damn. He’d had every intention of exhausting his attraction to her and then going their separate ways once that happened. What was the other option? Dating? He almost laughed at the thought. They matched up in bed and that was it.
What would it even look like if they tried dating? Yeah, they’d managed to hold down a conversation or two since they started this trip, but that didn’t mean a damn thing in the grand scheme. They were like two actors that fell for each other because of forced proximity and an affinity for orgasms. The fledgling attraction he felt for her wasn’t likely to last them settling back into their normal lives. He had the ranch and his friends and, sure, their group of friends overlapped a bit now, but she would go back to being closeted up in her apartment or Jules’s shop. The thought of spending all his free time in front of a screen was almost enough to make him break out in hives. It wasn’t his thing. And it was her thing.
They were too different, even with the handful of things they shared in common. It worked right now, in these exact circumstances, but it wouldn’t keep working indefinitely. He’d be smart to just enjoy the time they had and let it go when they hit the Devil’s Falls town limits.
Quinn took a deep breath. “Okay, yeah, you’re right.”
“Yep. Totally right. So right, it’s actually painful.” She sounded like she was reading from a script.
He tapped her on the top of her head. “And you say I have a big head.”
“You do.” Her palm settled over his cock and his body instantly responded, his dick hardening and his hands itching to pull her into his lap. Aubry stroked him. “A big, big head. Massive. Just plain giant.”
Despite everything, he laughed. “Now you’re just teasing me.”
“Only mostly.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek and ducked under his arm, reclaiming her seat on the other side of the cab.
Quinn took his eyes off the road long enough to look at her. “What the hell?”
“Remember that torturous drive where you withheld orgasms and then made me come over and over again until I could barely walk? You should since it happened like two days ago.”
“I remember,” he gritted out.
She laughed. “Payback’s a bitch.”
…
Aubry tried not to focus on everything circling around her head. Like how Quinn admitted to liking her but then agreed they would never work in the real world, or that he’d tried to give her an out for the wedding. She tried really freaking hard. So hard that she spent the next several hours brooding on the most immediate issue—the wedding. It was clear the very idea of her attending now made him uncomfortable and there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it.
He said it was because his family is complicated.
Sure, that sounded great—on the surface. Like maybe he wanted to protect her, which meant maybe he had feelings. But that logic only lasted on a surface level. The more she thought about it, the more she was sure he was having regrets about agreeing to this whole thing in the first place.
And why wouldn’t he?
As she’d pointed out time and time again, she wasn’t nice. She wasn’t poised or put together. Honestly, she was a bundle of nerves and issues wrapped up in a gamer girl package. Not the kind of girl a guy wanted to bring home to his fancypants family who probably had gold plated utensils and thousand-thread-count sheets and whatever stupid crap rich people spent money on.
She knew, rationally, they came from different worlds. She was at peace with that. Mostly. It hadn’t mattered when she could barely stand him, and it shouldn’t matter now because they weren’t ever going to really date. She didn’t even really want a boyfriend or gentleman friend or any other term that encompassed a significant other, let alone one who probably stood to inherit a fortune. She’d learned the hard way that love could turn ugly if given the oppor
tunity, and she wasn’t interested in a repeat. Sure, most of her experience was with family and not relationships, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t the truth.
“You’re thinking awfully hard over there.”
She jumped and then mentally cursed herself for jumping. “Goes with the territory. Don’t worry about it.”
“Humor me.” He’d said it like he really wanted to know, like he wasn’t just being polite. But then, when had Quinn ever bothered to put a polite mask on his interactions with her? They’d been vicious and snarky and hotter than hell, but never polite.
She started to demur but then reconsidered. They’d already agreed this wasn’t going beyond the end of the trip. What would it hurt to try her hand at actually being honest and expressing her needs? It would be good practice for the “someday,” when she theoretically found someone that she wanted to settle down with. She ignored the pang the thought brought on and focused on the now. “I was just deciding how I feel about you wanting to hide your family from me. Or me from your family. I’m not really sure which way that’s going.”
Quinn narrowed his eyes as he pulled off the interstate. “What part of ‘I don’t want you to have to deal with them’ did you not understand?”
“It’s okay. I get it. I’m used to being that person who doesn’t play well with others.” It had just never bothered her until now. Her own mother had more or less disowned her when she got too big for her britches and moved away to go to college, but as much as it still hurt on days when she was feeling particularly low, most of the time she chalked that one up in the win column.
The only other family she had interaction with on a regular basis was Jules’s. Those people were all so damn nice she was pretty sure half the strays in town had been brought into the fold at one point or another, and she was no different. They weren’t fazed when she was having A Day and snapped at everyone who came within range, and someone was already there with a smile and some off-the-cuff joke to bring her back from the edge. And they weren’t fancy rich folk who worried too much about which fork to use and if she could trace her bloodline back to some ancestor who participated in the genocide of the Native Americans.