My Darling Melissa (26 page)

At last Quinn came out of his reverie to smile at her. “I’m honored,” he said.

Melissa didn’t know whether he was being kind or contemptuous, and that nettled her. “You behave as though this newspaper were some childish game of mine,” she protested. “You don’t think I can do this.”

Quinn raised one hand in a plea for peace. “I think,” he began diplomatically, “that you don’t have the first idea of what’s involved. I’m also aware that you’ve probably never suffered a really notable failure in your life, and you therefore have no conception of the fact that not every idea that rises to the surface of that formidable mind of yours is going to work.”

Melissa stopped eating and folded her arms, but before she could say anything Gillian and Mitch arrived, holding their plates.

“May we join you?” Mitch asked.

“Sure,” Quinn replied in masculine fashion—thoughtless of Melissa’s reaction.

Melissa and Gillian, equally uncomfortable, exchanged a look.

By the time Mitch had seated her, however, Gillian was in fine fettle. “Remarkable,” she said, with a deprecating glance at Melissa’s dusty blouse.

The men, involved in a conversation of their own, paid no attention to the small drama being played out at their table.

“Thank you,” Melissa replied, as though Gillian had complimented her.

Gillian gave a little twittering laugh that was devoid of mirth and speared a strawberry with her fork, chewing it delicately before inquiring, “I must know, darling—were you part of that spectacle in the field this morning?”

Melissa smiled at Gillian’s reference to the baseball game. “Oh, definitely—darling. My team won, in fact.”

With a knowing glance at Quinn’s profile Gillian replied,
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, if I were you. Tell me, though. Wherever did you get enough harridans to make up two teams?”

Melissa longed to throw something at Gillian; instead, she smiled again. “Why, I advertised, of course,” she answered sweetly. “I put up fliers that read ‘Harridans Wanted for Baseball Game.’ And I must say, we were all surprised when you didn’t apply.”

Gillian had the good grace to blush and look away, and Melissa turned to Quinn, hoping to make a place for herself in his conversation with Mitch. Instead, she watched in round-eyed horror as her husband’s friend poked his fork into a slimy mess of raw oysters and swallowed one with relish.

Nausea erupted in Melissa’s stomach like a geyser, she clapped one hand over her mouth and fled toward the nearest exit, the French doors leading out into the side garden.

Fifteen minutes later, when she let herself into the suite, Quinn was there, pacing, looking as colorless as Melissa felt.

“Sweetheart, where were you?” he asked, taking her shoulders in his hands. “I looked everywhere.”

“I didn’t want you to see me,” Melissa confessed in a small voice, and when she started toward the bathroom Quinn let her go.

She scrubbed her teeth and splashed cold water over her face. When she looked into the mirror she saw that Quinn was standing behind her, leaning against the door jamb, his arms folded.

Although he didn’t speak again, his stance and expression said that he would wait as long as he had to for an explanation, probably blocking the bathroom doorway the whole time.

Melissa sighed and faced him squarely. “I was throwing up in the shrubbery, if you must know,” she announced. “I probably have the grippe or something.”

Quinn was staring at her in much the same way she’d regarded Mitch’s raw oysters at breakfast. “Or you could be pregnant,” he said.

His feelings concerning fatherhood were perfectly apparent in the way he spoke—he wanted no part of it—and Melissa felt as though he’d run her through with a sword. She turned away to hide her reaction, only to realize that he could see her face clearly in the mirror above the sink.

“Melissa—”

She stiffened, sensing that he was reaching for her, not wanting to be touched. “Go away, Quinn,” she whispered despondently, hunched over the sink. “Please. Just go away and leave me alone.”

He lingered a while and then left, but Melissa didn’t move until she heard the door of the suite close behind him. Then she went out onto the terrace, letting the fresh breeze revive her and dry her tears.

When she felt ready to pass through the lobby and bear the inspection of any guests who might be lingering there, she went downstairs. She was outside and well down the road that led toward town when she was nearly run over by a buggy rounding the curve.

Mitch Williams drew his horse and rig to a stop beside her, grinning at her and touching the brim of his hat. “Hello, sunshine,” he said. “Like a ride home?”

Melissa’s stubborn nature urged her to walk, but she was still feeling queasy and undone, and she wasn’t sure she was up to covering the distance on foot. She nodded and had climbed into the buggy before Mitch could wrap the reins around the brake lever and assist her.

He chuckled, taking in her bloomers and soiled blouse with far more interest than Quinn had shown. “You are an independent little mite, aren’t you?” The words were more of a comment than a question, and since he didn’t seem to expect an answer, Melissa didn’t offer one.

“Where’s your friend?” she asked instead.

Mitch looked baffled for a moment, before a revelation struck him. “Gillian?” he said.

Impatient, Melissa nodded. She thought Mr. Williams was awfully thick at times, for a lawyer, but she didn’t say that aloud. One had to be on fairly intimate terms with a person in order to insult him outright.

“Gillian’s in a meeting with Quinn,” he finally said, as though there were no reason for anyone in the world to be upset by such news.

But Melissa was upset. In fact, it was all she could do not to jump out of the buggy, race back to the hotel, and burst in on their conference, demanding to be a part of it.

Mitch had noticed her troubled expression, and he tilted his head to look into her eyes. “It bothers you that Gillian and Quinn are alone together?”

Melissa swallowed. There was no sense in lying, for she knew her face betrayed her completely, but she hated having anyone know. “I realize that they’re business partners,” she began miserably, expecting Mitch to take that tack in comforting her. Her voice trailed away.

It soon became apparent that reassuring Melissa was not a duty Mitch cared to assume. “The sooner you accept the way things are between those two,” he said seriously, “the better off you’ll be. Quinn and Gillian go back a long, long way.”

Melissa grasped the edges of the narrow buggy seat to steady herself. “What do you mean?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

“They grew up together,” Mitch answered, sounding surprised that Melissa hadn’t known. “You’d find their initials carved in the trunk of more than one tree, if you knew where to look. Quinn and Gillian must have been engaged half a dozen times—things just have a way of stopping and then starting up again, when it comes to those two.”

A wild feeling possessed Melissa, a need to escape that rolling, pitching buggy and Mitch’s kindly, hurtful words. “Why didn’t they marry?” she ventured when she could trust herself to speak.

“Gillian’s daddy founded this town,” Mitch replied. “He’d already made his fortune in California back in ’forty-nine, and he was a rich man when he came here. In short, he never thought Quinn was good enough for his baby girl, the Raffertys being what they were, and he did everything he could to keep them apart.” He paused and sighed
heavily. “It’s common knowledge that Quinn made his fortune just to show that old man he could do it.”

Melissa was broken inside. It was such a romantic story, but she had no place in it. She lowered her head. “That still doesn’t explain why they never married.”

“They were planning to,” Mitch responded affably. “But then Quinn up and married you.”

Melissa lowered her head. She’d known that Quinn and Gillian were engaged when she and Quinn met, but somehow the significance of that had escaped her until now. Thinking of her husband’s reaction to the possibility that she might be pregnant, she fought back tears of utter despair.

When they reached Quinn’s house Melissa babbled something incoherent, jumped out of the buggy, and ran up the walk without looking back. Her vision was blurred and she was gasping for breath when she burst into the entryway.

A strange woman in very plain clothes was just about to start up the stairs with a tray, and Melissa’s appearance apparently startled her so thoroughly that she nearly dropped her burden.

“Land sakes!” cried the woman, dragging horrified eyes from Melissa’s head to her feet. “Mrs. Wright, come quickly! There’s a vagrant here!”

At that Melissa began to laugh, despite her complete despondency. She laughed until weakness overcame her, until she was forced to grip the newel post at the base of the stairs in order to stand. Strangely, at the same time, tears were streaking down her face. Mrs. Wright, when she arrived, was so concerned that she put her arms around Melissa and said, “There, now, Mrs. Rafferty, everything will be all right.”

With that the housekeeper started ushering Melissa up the stairs. She brought her to the master suite and seated her on the settee facing the empty fireplace.

“Shall I bring you tea, Mrs. Rafferty?” she asked.

Melissa had regained her composure by that time, except for periodic gasping hiccups, and she nodded. “Yes, please,”
she said, with as much dignity as she could muster. “But before you go—who was that woman downstairs?”

Mrs. Wright smiled. “That’s Miss Alice. She was a sister to Mr. Rafferty’s mother, and she looks after Mary.”

“I thought Mary attended a private school,” Melissa said.

The housekeeper was easing toward the door. “She did, but she didn’t board there. She and Miss Alice had an apartment within walking distance.”

“I see,” Melissa replied, although she didn’t see at all and, furthermore, didn’t care. She was too full of misery to sort out the situation or even to ask what Miss Alice’s presence in the house signified.

Quinn longed to escape the small office he’d set aside for himself at the hotel; between Gillian’s perfume and her outrage, he was suffocating.

“How can you permit her to organize baseball games and run about dressed like a boy?!” His partner’s shrill voice intensified Quinn’s headache. “Do you know that she recruited those players from among our
guests?”

Quinn allowed himself a wan grin at the memory of Melissa diving for home plate. “They seemed to be enjoying themselves,” he said. “Maybe we should make baseball a regular part of our schedule.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of croquet,” Gillian said petulantly. “It’s far more—dignified. A game a lady can play in good conscience.”

Quinn left the window, from which he’d seriously considered jumping, and sank into the swivel chair behind his desk. “Spare me the dramatics, Gillian,” he said. “I know you, remember? As far as I’ve ever been able to discern, you don’t even have a conscience.”

Gillian was facing the desk, grasping its edges in immaculately gloved hands, and she leaned forward to provide Quinn with a glimpse of her cleavage. “She’s pregnant, isn’t she?” she demanded in an acid whisper. “Damn you, Quinn, you’ve gone and gotten that little idiot pregnant!”

In his mind Quinn saw his mother giving birth to baby
after baby, year after year, only to bury them, along with a part of her own dwindling spirit, a few months later. He hated himself in those moments for not shielding Melissa from the possibility of that ordeal. “Go away and leave me alone,” he said with a dismissive gesture of one hand. “I’ve got problems enough without you adding to them.”

But Gillian lingered, her words rife with bitter accusation. “You never loved me, did you? That’s why you could marry a total stranger—someone you found running down a railroad track, for God’s sake.” She paused at the murderous expression on Quinn’s face and then blurted out, “You’re half-sick with worry over that little hoyden, aren’t you? Tell me, Quinn Rafferty—where was all this concern seventeen years ago, when I had to go away and have your baby?”

Neither of them had raised that subject in a long time, and Quinn was incensed that Gillian would bring it up now. “I was sixteen when that happened,” he said coldly. “Believe me, I was concerned—especially after my dear father found out and beat me senseless in a drunken rage—but there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could do. Beyond asking you to marry me, of course. You declined, if you’ll remember.”

“I was only fifteen!” wailed Gillian.

Quinn got up and thrust open the window, dragging fresh air into his lungs. He felt besieged on every side, like a deer being torn apart by wolves, and he knew he was going to have to sacrifice a dream to survive. “I want out, Gillian,” he said evenly.

“Out?” Her voice was soft, breathy, and full of delicate injury. “What do you mean?”

He turned to face her, bracing his hands behind him on the windowsill. “I’m offering to sell you my half of the hotel,” he said flatly.

Gillian stared at him. “But that would sever our last tie, except for—”

“Except for Mary,” Quinn finished for her, his voice ragged. “It has to be this way, Gillian.”

Her violet eyes glimmered with desolation. “Why?” she whispered.

“Because I love my wife,” Quinn answered, and the words surprised him as much as they did Gillian.

She swallowed visibly and then nodded, her eyes still swimming. “I-I’ll consider your offer to sell,” she said, and then she reached for her handbag and left.

Mary held onto the banister with both hands as she made her way carefully down the stairs, her beautiful face alight with pride. “See, Quinn? Are you watching? I can do this and a lot more!”

As Quinn looked upon this lovely child who had been raised believing herself to be his sister he felt a thickness in his throat. “Of course I’m watching, pumpkin,” he said with an effort. “In fact, I can’t take my eyes off you.”

She reached the bottom of the stairs and waved both arms until Quinn moved into her embrace. Then, with a squeal of delight, she half choked him with the exuberance of her greeting. Her soft, fair hair, just the color of Gillian’s, was like silk against his cheek.