A Convenient Proposal

It couldn't be real, this heady sense of ecstasy that overcame her every time he touched her like this, she told herself helplessly. But it was. Every nerve, every sinew, the very blood pounding through her veins was reacting to Quinn's touch, and it was exhilarating and so, so sweet.

His hands left the rich silky tangle of her hair and moved down her body, roaming over the soft swell of her breasts, her waist, her hips. She could feel herself beginning to tremble but she couldn't control the quivering, and then his tongue rippled along her small white teeth, causing her to arch shudderingly against him as her hands on his shoulders pulled him closer.

Her breasts felt lush and full and there was a heat in the core of her she couldn't deny; suddenly all her intimate parts were on fire under his passionate touch and she wanted more, much more.

'Hell, Candy, what are you doing to me…?' It was a ragged whisper, but thrilling, and his rigid body was trembling almost as much as hers.

And then they both heard it; the careful call of his name from the hall beyond the corridor.

'Quinn, your parents…'

For a moment she thought he wasn't going to stop, and in spite of the fact the door might open any moment she wasn't at all sure that she wanted him to.

And then he drew in a long, shuddering breath, his chest rising and falling under the charcoal silk as he fought for control. He drew away slowly, his body leaving hers first as his hands left her soft voluptuousness and moved either side of her shoulders to the wall, where he levered himself off her with his mouth still stroking her lips.

'You want me as much as I want you.' It was a statement, not a question, and Candy could only stare at him as her mind raced madly. Yes, she wanted him, but just wanting him wasn't enough, not for her.

In the year or so since Harper had died she felt she had lived a lifetime, and not just because of the physical recovery that had been so slow at first It was the mental scars that had been the hardest to overcome. Perhaps if she had been someone else, with no emotional baggage from her childhood and teens, Harper's betrayal wouldn't have hit her quite so hard. Perhaps. She would never know one way or the other about that.

/> But she was herself, warts and all, and she couldn't alter that. She was attracted to Quinn, more physically attracted than she had ever been to Harper, or any other man for that matter, but more than that she liked him too. She liked him very much. He had got under her skin somehow with his enigmatic personality—one moment so caring and gentle with his patients and anything small and helpless, and the next so remote and cool and controlled. He fascinated her, he annoyed and irritated her, he delighted her, and he made her feel more alive than she would have dreamt it was possible to feel.

And it was because of all that that she knew it would be sheer emotional suicide to start an affair with him. She simply wouldn't survive it when he decided to walk away. As he had already told her he would.

She expelled a quiet breath and then said the hardest sentence of her life. 'We can't always have what we want, Quinn.' And they both knew she was saying far more than the actual words.

He nodded slowly, his eyes on her flushed face. 'How did I know you were going to say something like that?' he drawled lazily.

But he didn't fool her this time. He was acting again, hiding the real Quinn under the easy, cool mask he liked to adopt when it suited him. She felt a sudden stirring of anger, and it propelled her down the corridor towards the far door with a regality that wasn't lost on the man looking after her. 'Your parents are obviously ready to go,' she said coldly over her shoulder, 'and it's rude to keep them waiting.'

The mental oath was never voiced, but Quinn's eyes were flint-hard as he followed her. Stop this now, a grim inner voice was warning him implacably. You know what you want for the future; you've got it all mapped out and you've made your decisions. There are a hundred women out there who can satisfy the physical side of things and none of them with any strings attached. Keep it distant, stay in control, watch yourself.

After the ruthless masculine beauty of the rest of the apartment, the guest bedroom was a surprise.

Once Candy and Quinn had said goodbye to his parents and gone upstairs, Quinn led her straight to her room, opening the door next to the master bedroom as he said, 'The bathroom's next door I'm afraid, but it's basically yours; I've got my own en suite.'

'What a lovely room.' She had barely spoken since they had left the back of the house, but now there was a note of real delight in her voice.

The ceiling followed the roofline over the big double bed with an exquisite antique brass bedstead, and the room was simply furnished with a small wardrobe and a striking Queen Anne chest which the stained floorboards exactly matched. The dark wood and brass was the only contrast in the all-cream room, but there was decoration in the form of the beautifully embroidered bedlinen trimmed with lace and the enormous vase of pale, rose-touched lilies in the far corner of the room.

'Thank you.' He didn't tell her this was the one room which had been naked and bare when he had moved in, apart from the same silver-grey carpet which covered the rest of the flat He had had that ripped up and had furnished this room in his own taste which, if he was being truthful, was more inclined to the rustic and antique than Essie's husband's had been.

'I feel guilty about those.' Candy was trying to bring a light note into the atmosphere, which had been strained, to say the least, since the incident in the corridor, as she pointed to the vase of flowers. 'You'd bought them for your patents and now they won't see them.'

Quinn shrugged easily. 'There'll be other times.'

'Yes, of course.' She tried to make her voice as relaxed as his but it was difficult. His dark masculinity seemed even more pronounced in the pale cream room, and since his hair had grown a little it was getting its tousled look back, which was so much more Quinn, somehow, than the cropped severity of the last few weeks.

'I'll leave you to unpack. Come through when you've finished and say goodnight to the cats,' he said coolly as the sound of Christmas carols from the TV drifted into the room.

She nodded, wondering why she wanted to cry. 'I'll do that.'

When she opened her case it took only moments to put her things away, and once that was done she stared down at the presents which had been under her clothes. Tabitha and the kittens each had a new toy, which she had wrapped in bright Mickey Mouse Christmas paper and was looking forward to seeing them rip open, and she had bought Quinn a small gift too. Of course that had been before she'd known she would be staying in his apartment, she reflected silently, as she thought about the heavy brass keyring in the shape of a bull—after the story about his battle with the bullock she had bought it a week or so ago—along with an expensive black leather wallet.

She hadn't anything for his parents. She sat down on the bed with a little plop. And she had seen a little pile of presents next to the Christmas-card tree. But there wouldn't be anything for her from his parents, she reassured herself in the next moment. They had been taken by surprise as much as she had. Or had they? She frowned. How long ago had Quinn told them he had a new 'girlfriend'?

She gathered up the parcels and hurried out of the room as doubt assailed her, walking into the sitting room to see Quinn setting a small table in front of the fire with two glasses of hot mulled wine and a small plate of mince pies.

'It is Christmas Eve,' he said almost apologetically, 'so I thought we should finish the evening on something of a festive air.'