Hot Ticket (27 page)

She listened for fifteen minutes of silence from his suite before she felt safe enough to enter, cross it, and open the mysterious door. It led to a corridor and a railroad car called “The Circus Train to Dreams.”

Inside, Quinn found facing rows of beds disguised as circus tents, each a different color stripe, with bright circus act murals in between and strategically placed stuffed lions, giraffes, tigers, and party-hat poodles. The children hooked up to IVs broke her heart, though they certainly seemed happy, as their laughter followed a certain Latino jock, in clown garb and makeup, as he waltzed flamboyantly down the middle aisle with a stuffed floppy lady clown strapped to his feet.

“Excuse me,” a nurse said, making Quinn jump, because all her senses, including her overflowing heart, were on high alert and focused on Tiago. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Lizzie?” Quinn said. “Is that you?”

The nurse stilled. “Quinn? Quinn Murdock?”

After a hug, Lizzie waved to a nurse at the other end of the car and took Quinn into a small office with charts and meds so they could sit and talk. “My brother didn’t tell me you were on the train. He’s such a brat. It’s great to see you again. You look awesome. Do you want a cup of coffee or a soft drink?”

“No thanks,” Quinn said. “You look great, too, but what is all this? I mean, I can tell what it is, and I assume the kids are headed to Orlando, but . . .”

“Tiago does this every trip. The ticket price for the main train goes a long way toward giving the kids their dream week. There’s another hospital car with older kids, then a Pullman car for their families with kitchen and dining cars beyond. Tiago comes over and entertains the kids every night so their parents can dine in peace.”

“Why does he keep it all such a secret?”

“He says it’ll ruin his hot playboy rep, but if you ask me, he uses that rep to dodge a serious relationship.”

“Makes sense,” Quinn said, “So whatever made him think of something so . . . responsible?”

“It was my brush with leukemia,” Lizzie said. “I was really sick when you went off to college, but I beat the odds, and Tiago wants to help other kids do the same. He was always there for me. Well, you remember, I almost died the night you graduated from high school. Tiago had to leave your party early.”

“I’ll take that cold drink now,” Quinn said, her mind racing. That’s why he left her asleep after they’d made love? She accepted a bottle of flavored water gratefully.

Later. She’d think about all the ways her life might be different, if she’d known the truth, later. “Do you like working with children?” she asked.

“I love it,” Lizzie said. “And I’m dating a wonderful doctor.”

“You have a life, you lucky thing. I’m trying to get one,” Quinn said. “I just got my degree in child psychology. Now all I have to do is tell my father I’m leaving the company.”

“Oh, oh,” Lizzie said. “He won’t like that.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You must have been in Tiago’s suite to get here,” Lizzie said. “But I didn’t know you two had hooked up again.”

“I have the suite next to his. Taking this train was an accident. No, scratch that. It was a premeditated birthday gift from my roommates, because I mentioned your brother once or twice,” or a dozen times. “I have a short-term job waiting for me in Orlando, taking my neighbor Charlie’s son, Jesse, to spring training while Charlie and his new wife have a ‘second’ honeymoon. They’re on their ‘first’ right now
with
Jesse. He’s eleven and not happy that his father remarried.”

“You have your work cut out for you.”

Quinn nodded, but she couldn’t let go of her shock. “So Tiago drops off the kids in Orlando and goes on to spring training. Then what, the kids and their families take the train back to Boston?”

“Yes, and the parents have the train to themselves. Tiago
doesn’t stop with bringing them to Orlando,” Lizzie said. “He gives each family spending money. Hell, he’ll even send the kids who beat the odds to college.” Lizzie touched Quinn’s hand. “But I don’t mean to give Tiago all the credit. He got the idea from your father.”

“What?” Quinn felt a bit dizzy. “What are you talking about?”

Lizzie stopped talking and started sorting charts.

“Too late, Lizzie. Now you have to tell me.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t know your father paid my medical bills. He also paid for a family trip to Florida, and for me and Tiago to go to college.”

Quinn’s stupefaction was cut short by an emergency call to the bed of a five-year-old who’d spiked a fever.

“Shouldn’t we call her parents?” Quinn asked when they stepped away from the bed.

“She doesn’t have any,” Lizzie said, “and sick kids don’t get adopted, so we need to get her well.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“The doctors are still trying to figure that out, but they’ve pretty much ruled out the worst-case scenarios.”

Lizzie did everything a nurse could and lowered Colette’s fever, but it took Quinn’s ladybug fingernail dance, and a slice of her heart, to make the curly haired little doll stop fussing.

“You’d better get out of here,” Lizzie said, checking her watch, “if you don’t want to get caught. Tiago will be coming by in a minute.”

“Yikes, yes, okay, thanks.” She kissed Colette’s cheek and then Lizzie’s. “I can’t believe how long we talked. Can I visit Colette again tomorrow and get your cell phone number so we can catch up more often?”

Lizzie hugged her. “I’d like that.”

Back in her suite, Quinn left the door open between her room and Tiago’s and speed-dialed her father.

He answered with a curt, “You want to tell me about that picture?”

“I was having a good time,” Quinn said. “Couldn’t you tell? I still am, and I don’t wish you were here.”

Her father grumbled something about smart-mouth kids.

“Tell me about the Santiago college scholarships, the medical bills, and the family trip to Orlando,” she said.

“Ask Tiago.”

“He’s not talking, but you are. Start now.”

“I paid for all of it. So what?”

“I know, but why?”

“So Tiago wouldn’t ruin your life.”

“No way. How could he do that?”

“The idiot asked if he could marry you the day after you graduated from high school.”

Quinn’s legs gave way as her heart sped. She sat, fast, shocked, thrilled, and angry that she was only now finding out. “
That’s
why you sent me to Paris early. No, wait, that’s not important. What did Tiago have to do in exchange for your . . . generosity?”

“You were too young to get married,” her father snapped. “You needed to go to college.”

“Agreed, but what did Tiago have to promise?”

“Quinn . . .”

“I’m listening.”

“He promised to pick a college at the other end of the country and to stay the hell away from you for the rest of the century.”

Quinn switched ears and felt light enough to float. “This is a new century, Dad.”

“I knew you’d figure that out.”

“Don’t you want me to be happy?”

“Of course I do, but—”

“So you accept my resignation.”

He blustered. No words, just the strangling sounds of a thwarted CEO.

“Dad?”

“Accepted.”

“As of this minute,” she said, “because I’m setting up shop as a child psychologist ASAP.”

“I thought that was a phase.”

“Not.”

A big parental sigh. “Will that make you happy?”

“Yeah, Dad, it will.”

“And Tiago?” her father asked.

“He’s still gonna play baseball.”

“Don’t be smart. That kiss didn’t look fake. What about the two of you?”

“I don’t know about him, but I’m taking it one day at a time.”

“Sensible.” Her father cleared his throat. “Give him my best. Tell him I went hoarse during the World Series.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Quinn heard Tiago’s door open and close and then he stood in her doorway and she felt as if she were seeing him for the first time. Long hair, luminous eyes, sexy beard . . . huge heart.

“Gotta go, Dad.” She clapped her phone shut.

“Hungry?” she asked, trying to put some perspective into the flaming case of hero worship speeding her heart.

“Starving,” he said, raising her temperature and her heart rate and closing the distance between them.

Tiago opened his mouth over Quinn’s as if he did it every day, praying she’d welcome him. When she did, her passion fueled his. He liked her hand at his nape, the scent of her hair—like the herbs in the field where they played. “I liked finding your door open as if you were waiting for me,” he said, nibbling her ear.

She stroked his beard. “I
was
waiting for you.”

“Right,” he said. “You must be starved. I’ll call the kitchen.” He picked up the house phone.

“Ask them to bring some munchies around ten,” Quinn said, “and leave them in your suite.”

Tiago called, still trying to figure out her game plan, both intrigued and aroused by her suggestion. “You have something else in mind for dinner?” he asked, hanging up.

“I’ve been thinking about jumping your bones,” she said. “And I don’t care to wait any longer.”

“Seventeen years, and the last woman who was that direct with me was you, on graduation night. You were the stealer that night.”

“I was no such—”

“You pantsed me, Murdock, and don’t pretend you forgot.”

Quinn raised her chin. “You were asking for it, strutting your tight butt around that party. Hell,” she said, “you’re asking for it now.”

He took her hand and led her to the stairs. “Then you’d better give it to me good,” he said.

She pulled him up short. “No strings,” she said. “No commitment. Let’s steal the romantic ambiance for a bit and call it a fantasy.”

“And what happens when we both have to go back to reality?” he asked, leading her up the stairs, abundantly aware of her hand on his inner thigh.

“We take reality one day at a time, and . . . stay in touch.” A double meaning, if ever he heard one.

He wished he knew for sure what she meant. “I go where baseball takes me; you know that,” he said, to be fair and up front.

“I know,” she said, “and I have plans, a new road to travel, but we have cell phones and e-mail, and we’re bound to end up in the same town once in a while.”

“One day at a time,” Tiago said, turning Quinn in his arms. “And we stay in touch.” He met her mouth with his, a feathery kiss, his lips parting hers, nibbling at their corners. “I like the idea.”

“So do I,” she said, getting down to business and making the big guy happy. “Pantsing you will go much easier without a party outside the door.” She began to unzip his pants, taking her damned sweet torturous time.

“Are you gonna make the grab or what? Everything keeps getting tighter.”

She gave him a wicked grin and knelt before him, his zipper at half mast, and she made the grab. Tiago gasped, closed his eyes, and saw stars dancing behind his lids.

“Guess I’m not the only one who goes commando around here,” Quinn said, running a finger along his length.

“Call it my ready stance, to make things easier.”

“Easier for who?” She tightened her fist around his happy dick and worked it like a pro. Tiago nearly jumped from his skin.

“Murdock, you’re going to be the death of me.” He pulled her to her feet and made short work of the buttons on the cardigan he’d helped her choose earlier, trying to get beneath the bra to the gratification inside.

By the light of the stars, they stripped each other naked, stroking and kissing every patch of bared skin along the way. Then he lifted her off her feet and carried her to the bed.

“I thought we were getting in the hot tub,” she said, clinging to his neck, her eyes glazed with lust, exactly the way he wanted her.

“We will,” he said. “After. Remember last night?” He grinned. “I’ll take those budding nips as a yes. Last night was for you. Tonight is partner’s choice, so first I’m going to make you come with my mouth and then I’m going to slip inside you and we’ll both come our brains out. Then we’ll get in the hot tub, and I’ll let you have your wicked way with me. How’s that for a deal?”

“Deal,” she said. But halfway through her tenth orgasm or so, when his cock was roughly the size of a bat and twice as hard, she rolled away from him, pushed him down, and climbed on top. “Hello, Big Boy,” she said impaling herself. “You like my version of a Tiago steal?” she asked, and took him home.

“Quinn?” He chuckled some time later. “Do I make a good mattress? Are you awake?”

She raised her head from his sweat-slick chest and pushed the hair from her eyes. “I was resting.”

Oh that face, that dear, sweet face. “That was some scream, Murdock.”

“Yeah, well, that was some orgasm,” she said. “I don’t think there’s a mechanical device made that can produce that.”

“Tried a few have you?” His dick came to life as he imagined it.

She rolled off him. “When you don’t have a life, you take what you can get.”

He led her to the hot tub, held her hand as she got in, and then he got them each an icy sparkling water from the minibar and joined her. “One of your gofers said something about you not having a life.”

She stopped with the bottle halfway to her lips. “You heard that?”

“Tell me about the gofers.”

“I told you, they’re my friends—Molly, Rouge, Lucie, Goretti, and Derek. We rent a huge old townhouse on Beacon Hill.”

“Friends from college?”

“No. Actually, we bonded during three hours at the ‘sold out’ end of a ticket line for an assertiveness training talk.”

Tiago sat forward. “Assertiveness training? You?” He laughed so hard, he lost his breath. He laughed until Quinn rose like a vengeful sprite and poured ice water over his head.

Tiago sputtered and towered over her.

“Done now?” she asked, her hands on her dripping hips. “Do you want to hear the story or not?”

“Yeah, you need assertiveness training.” Tiago pulled her back into the warm tingling water. “I’ll try to control myself . . . more or less.”

“See that you do.” She snuggled against him, but he pulled her over him, took a nipple into his mouth, slipped a hand between her legs, and found her sweet spot.