Summer Kisses (295 page)

I smooched the top of her head. “I’d better check in with the club. I told John I’d call sometime today but never got around to it.”

She handed me the phone then returned her head back to my chest as I dialed the main number.

“Hey, Jenna. It’s Quinn.”

“Hey, Boss. How was the camping?”

“Other than getting lost in the wilderness, we had a great time,” I said, my free hand absently fingering the ends of Katherine’s drying hair. “We’re staying at the Marriott in Louisville tonight. My cell phone’s about out of juice, so let me give you the hotel’s number in case of emergency.”

Katherine handed me the binder of hotel services, opened to the page with the phone number. I read it off to Jenna, and she repeated the digits as she wrote them down.

“Everything’s fine here,” she said. “Tell Katherine hello and ignore work. Some people might think you don’t know how to take a vacation.” I could hear the smile in her voice.

“I do so know how to take a vacation.”

Katherine grinned up at me and ran her fingertips through the hair on my chest. My response was to wink. She winked back. That sexy, intimate, just-between-us gesture made me want to get off the phone immediately.

“See you on Tuesday,” I told Jenna.

“Tell Katherine I said—”

I’d already cut the line but figured she wouldn’t take it too hard.

“Jenna says hi,” I said as Katherine reached out to replace the binder back on the nightstand.

“Hi Jenn—” she started before I cut her off with my lips nibbled insistently at the back of her neck and me dragged her into the curve of my body with an arm around her waist. Proof that I meant business flexed against the small of her back as I blew in her ear.

“Already?” She tilted her head to give me better access to her neck. “You’re insatiable,” she said on a moan-infused whisper.

“Complaining?” I asked between nips along the sensitive skin underneath her ear.

“Not at all.” She giggled, reaching one hand up to delve into my hair when the hotel phone rang.

“This had better be important.” I removed my hand from her breast. “H’lo?”

Jenna’s flurry of crying babble barely registered.

I rolled away from Katherine, trying to understand what Jenna was saying. “Try to remember. Did you repeat where we were staying?”

Katherine turned over and raised an eyebrow in question.

I listened for a moment then sighed resignedly. “No. Don’t worry about it. You couldn’t have known.” I shook his head. “She doesn’t give up, does she?”

Katherine propped herself up, intent on finding out what had happened. Finally, I hung up.

“What’s up?” Katherine asked.

“My least favorite reporter was at the gym when I called earlier. She’s left a half a dozen messages on my cell, and I’ve refused to answer them. I guess she decided to get an answer in person.”

“So did Jenna think she’d overheard the number?”

Quinn shrugged. “Jenna wanted to warn me it was a possibility so if Amanda did call, it wouldn’t be out of the blue.”

Katherine shrugged. “So let’s call the front desk and tell them to take a message.”

I nodded and did just that.

Then she raised up and left a soft kiss on my lips. “So, where were we?”

The next morning we made it out of the hotel before noon after making love for most of the night. We caught a leisurely lunch, over which we shot each other long heated looks, raising the temperature in the restaurant by an easy ten degrees. The drive back to Sudden Falls—and to the relative privacy of my bed—seemed to take forever.

The next eighteen hours were a cycle of rest, followed by the most delicious lovemaking —not to mention the occasional snack to restore us.

I woke Tuesday morning to the feel of Quinn’s lips on the back of my neck. “I have to go home and get clothes for the office.” The reluctance to leave the warm cocoon of my bed rang clear in his voice.

“Mmmm,” I murmured as his breath rippled over the soft hairs on my neck, sending a spiral of sensation over my whole body. “You say that, but it doesn’t really seem like you’re trying to leave.” I bent my head to give him further access to my neck. “Also, I’m not going to stop you, but don’t rely on my willpower to get you out of bed.”

He chuckled, palmed my breast with one hand and pressed me back into his hard erection with his other. “I have time if we’re quick.”

A thrill shot through me, but I kept my voice calm. “And they say romance is dead.”

I whimpered as his hand slipped from my belly, his fingers burying themselves in my soft folds, zeroing in on clitoris like it was marked with GPS.

“You’ve bewitched me,” he said a short while later. He brushed a strand of hair from my face.

My heart filled with tenderness and love. “You know when we were camping and you asked me about my best day ever?”

He nodded.

“I’ve changed my mind. It’s today.”

His eyes softened, even has he bent his head to place a gentle kiss on my lips. “Me, too.” He glanced up at the alarm clock on my nightstand. “Oh, yikes. I have to go.”

He leaped from the bed, and I didn’t even try to hide the fact that I was watching with interest as he pulled on his boxers and jeans.

“
Woman
, you need to quit looking at me like that or I will end up at work naked.”

“I find nothing wrong with that plan.” I wiggled my eyebrows at him.

He smiled, dropped a platonic kiss on the crown of my head, and backed away quickly. “I’ll see you at the office around ten?”

I nodded, and he was gone. The sound of the front door closing echoed through the quiet house in his wake. Reluctantly, I pulled myself out of bed and shuffled for the coffeepot.

The phone rang as I took my first sip.

It was Grace.

“Have you seen the paper this morning?”

My stomach dropped, even as I reached for my iPad to pull up the newspaper’s website.

“No. Why?”

The Fitness King and His Queen-Sized Lady.

I nearly spit out my coffee, blinking in shock as I reread the headline a couple dozen times before the words stopped making sense. Finally, the stabbing pain in my chest simmered into a nearly unbearable ache. As if the front-page title of this morning’s newspaper wasn’t bad enough, there was a truly horrid picture of Quinn and me leaving the Marriott. Actually, as usual, he looked fantastic. On the other hand, the photographer had managed to catch me at the worse possible angle, making me look at least three times my size.

What would this do to Quinn’s business? I swallowed hard as my real concern floated through.
What would it do to
us
?
I wanted to believe that Quinn had worked out all of his reservations about us, but there was a voice in the back of my mind that suggested I wasn’t quite good enough for him. That voice needed to shut the hell up.

“Are you okay?” Grace snapped me from my spiraling spin of doom.

“Yeah.”

“Think Quinn has seen it?” she asked.

“I doubt it. He just left.”

“
Reaaaaallllly…
” My sister paused dramatically. “Well, there’s a subject we’ll have to revisit. In the meantime, is there anything I can do?”

“No. Not unless you have the contacts to take out a hit on Amanda Shoemaker.”

“Um. Sadly, no. I don’t even know who her editor is. The
Enquirer
might own the community press, but we don’t mingle. What’s with this woman? Why the hateful article?”

“You mean the article’s worse than the title?”

“You haven’t read it yet?”

I started to scan the first couple of lines while I answered. “No.”

“Don’t, Katie. You really don’t want to read what she has to say.”

For once, I was tempted to take her advice. “Give me the highlights.”

“That’s a bad idea.”

“Tell me, or I’ll read it myself,” I threatened.

“You’ll probably do so anyway.”

Grace had a point. “So I guess you’ll have to be honest, then.”

“She basically claims that Quinn is only dating you, a plus-sized woman, to counteract the negative publicity the gym has received lately.” Grace paused. “It’s clear she’s a nasty woman taking out her frustrations on Quinn. The question is, why?”

“They used to date.”

“No wonder he broke up with her. She’s a bitch.”

I’d never loved my sister more. “That’s the general consensus.”

“What editor in his right mind would let her get away with that kind of vitriol, though?” Grace asked.

“Who knows? Probably because it makes for an entertaining read.” Not the point anyway. The damage was done. “Grace, I’m going to let you go. I need to get ready for work.”

I ended the call and dialed Quinn’s number right away. I didn’t want him to be blind-sided. And I needed to hear him say it wouldn’t make a difference. It went straight to voicemail. I left a message and tried not to take it personally.

He might be on the other line. Or in a bed cell-reception area.
Or he already heard about it and is dodging your calls.

From the best day of my life to the worst in less than an hour. That had to be a record.

~~~

Jenna was silent, her face somber when I came in the front door of the gym. She winced at the look on my face. “I’m so sorry.”

I didn’t have a lot of leftover emotional energy, but I took a deep breath and tried to reassure her. “Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t your fault.” I pointed to the employees-only door. “Is Quinn up there?”

I still hadn’t heard back from him, and I was starting to sweat. I’d left another message and a text for him, in between calls with Will, the head of public relations at the agency, and a number of the interns on my staff. We’d come up with several different strategies for combating this, and they were busy writing up multiple options.

Jenna nodded. “Yeah. John, too.”

Great.
John had always been
so
supportive of Quinn and me. It rankled that he’d been right. “How’s Quinn doing?”

“I don’t know. He was quiet when he came in a few minutes ago and then disappeared upstairs.”

“Thanks.” I started for the door, intent on facing the music as quickly as possible.

Quinn and John’s voices drifted from Quinn’s office as I got to the top of the stairs. Paige wasn’t at her desk, and I stepped toward the doorway. I came to a halt when John spoke.

“You have to do
something
. What about publicly talking about Katherine’s weight-loss regimen? You could make her into a success story in progress.”

My stomach jumped violently at the prospect, even though I’d suggested it as an option during my strategizing with the interns. I’d seen spokeswomen for one diet program after another jump sizes down and back up while America watched with rabid attention. I’d do it for Quinn, but I didn’t look forward to it.

Thankfully, Quinn backed up my position. “I hardly think that would be fair to Katherine.”

“Then think of something else. You’re taking risks with your business that you can’t afford.”

“Things aren’t that bad,” Quinn insisted.

“Mike Brown dropped out. You need at least three major investors before you can get this new club off the ground. With the money you’ve sunk into it, you’ll go bankrupt if it isn’t built.”

Fear for Quinn rumbled through my stomach. Until he spoke again. “Maybe you’d like Katherine and I to stop seeing each other until after the club breaks ground?” The fact that he sounded upset by the suggestion didn’t take the hurt from his words.

“That was the wrong answer,” I said from the open doorway.

The blood drained from his face as he looked up. “Katherine.”

Quinn stared at me, and I stared back, waiting for him to apologize. Unfortunately, no words came from his mouth. The moment stretched to eternity.

I pulled in a deep breath even as I stiffened my spine. My phone chimed in my pocket, but I ignored it.

Having worked up a good head of steam, I turned to John. “You’re not worthy of even licking Will’s boots. I really thought that you were a better person than this.”

I didn’t give them a chance to respond. Just spun around on my heel and headed for the stairs.

“Katherine,” Quinn called from the doorway. I didn’t want him to see the tears in my eyes, so I refused to look back.

“Well, that was—”

“Shut up, John!” I raced down the stairs after Katherine, my heart in my throat. She’d caught me by surprise, which wasn’t any excuse.
This whole morning had caught me by surprise.

I’d plugged in my phone, whose battery had given up the ghost early Monday morning, when I got home, but it started ringing and chiming incessantly while I’d been in the shower. I’d ignored its interruption to my happy morning until I was in the car on the way to the office. That’s when I answered John’s call informing me of Amanda’s latest. I couldn’t imagine how that hateful article must have made Katherine feel. I partly blamed myself for having gotten her involved.

But I couldn’t say that I would have changed the outcome. I wouldn’t have been willing to give her up even to save her this pain, and that might have made me a selfish ass.

I’d phoned her, which went straight to voicemail. I settled for leaving her a text message so she’d see it right away.
Just heard about the article. So sorry! Meet me at the office! <3 u!

I was sick at the idea of losing my business. But even more, the thought of losing Katherine made me feel blind panic. And the look on her face as she’d turned from my office showed me that even the last several days hadn’t gone quite far enough to convince her that I really meant it when I said I loved her.

I tried not to let that hurt as I barreled out of the stairwell doors.

“Katherine Mendoza, get your delectable ass back here!” My voice was much louder than I’d intended, especially considering I hadn’t taken a full breath since she’d torn out of my office.

She whirled around, tears in her eyes. But also the faintest sliver of hope.

It seemed like the entirety of the gym had turned in our direction. Instead of feeling embarrassment about that, I decided to use it to my advantage. I reached for the phone on the reception desk.