Hot Ticket (24 page)

Quinn was about to ask him to explain the nature of the odds Lizzie beat when she heard a peppy rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” While he went for his shirt pocket, she pulled her cell phone from her bag and ID’d her caller. “You got me a man with an enormous what?” she said in greeting.

“What, no hello?”

Tiago’s grin told Quinn he’d heard Derek’s flip response. No surprise; she had to hold the phone away from her ear so she wouldn’t go deaf.

“An enormous what?” Quinn repeated, keeping the threat of castration in her tone.

“An enormous . . . train?”

“But that’s not what you were going to say back at the station, was it, because you wanted to screw me.”

“No, I was gonna say ‘an enormous bank account,’ and of course I want to screw you, but you never—”

“Derek. Focus. Why’d you call?”

“I’ve still got your ticket.”

“No kidding, Sherlock. The Stealer’s about to throw me off the train.”

“We’re really sorry you’re pissed.”

“Yeah, well, sorry doesn’t buy the peace and quiet I was looking for.”

“No way. You said you couldn’t sit still that long. Now you won’t be bored, right?”

“Bored, no. Embarrassed, yes. FedEx my damned underwear to Florida!” Quinn clapped her phone shut. “He’d better watch his sorry ass when I get home.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Loser.”

“It’s a wonder you have any friends, bad-mouthing them like that.”

“Where’s my effing suite?”

“Sorry,” Tiago said. “Party first . . .
bed
later.”

As they stepped into a club car named Smoky Joe’s, a guy aimed a camera their way, and to Quinn’s surprise, Tiago took her into his arms and kissed her.

For a second, before she gave herself up to the kiss, Quinn considered fighting the sizzle, but she felt rooted to the spot . . . or to Tiago . . . with sturdy roots—years and years worth.

If she tried to pull away, she’d topple, because in a place deep down, their roots were inextricably tangled.

For the first time in years, Quinn felt strong, more herself beside Tiago than away from him, a clue she should jump ship—or train—
now
. But she couldn’t seem to tear herself away, literally.

“Harry, do you know the difference between The Stealer’s kisses and any other man’s?”

Quinn heard the disembodied voice, as if from a cloud, and tightened her hold on Tiago.

“No, what?” a second voice asked.

“The Stealer takes kisses; he don’t give them. Women kiss him, but he don’t kiss them back.”

The voice was right. While Miss Georgia Peach had played kissy-face, Tiago had stood like a slab of bacon . . . unlike his response at this moment. When he slanted his mouth over hers in a new and greedy way, Quinn forgot why the voices mattered.

“He’s putting a whole lotta effort into kissing this one.”

Yes,
Quinn thought,
he is.
Tongue to tongue, he lifted her against him, aching center to pulsing rod.

“
That’s
what I’m sayin’!”

“You think there’s something different about this one?”

“She
is
his trip babe. She’s wearing the hat.”

The hat?

“That makes no never mind. I never even seen him kiss a trip babe this way. Not in public. Private property or not.”

Trip babe. Quinn pulled away from Tiago with such force, she fell backward into an old man’s arms, his heart at her back picking up speed for the lap dance she was giving him.

Quinn jumped to her feet so fast she got a head rush.

Tiago had not moved. He stood staring at her, stunned and disoriented.

Male fans grinned, tipped their caps, and patted him on the back—the Neanderthals—as if he “done good,” while sad chic stick-women drooled like Tiago was prime rib at the health spa and they’d be going hungry.

And speaking of meat . . . Quinn swallowed a hysterical giggle, gave a low-lashed glance at Tiago’s “meaty bone,” and ignored her physical response to the sight.

He caught her drift and sat, looking as if she should be there with him, which made Quinn feel pretty powerful for a scary minute.

Miss Kiss-My-Cleavage, with a drink tray, bent over him and asked if she could get him
any
thing.

“Pull-eze,” Quinn said. “Do you pay her to say that?”

“A brewski,” Tiago said. “And bring the lady a birthday cake . . . with twenty candles. Quinn, what do you want to drink?”

She melted, more for the number of candles than the cake. “Appletini,” she said.

“That’ll grow hair on your chest,” some bozo slurred, and a nod from Tiago got the speaker led from the club car.

A friendly type came up and asked her to dance, but when Quinn stepped into his arms, he tried to cop a feel.

Tiago cut in with a clipped, “Private property.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” Quinn said, taking off the cap to read the embroidered slogan on the back: “Stolen by Tiago.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, placing it on Tiago’s head. “Be your own best friend.”

“It doesn’t mean we sleep together, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“That’s what
they
think it means. Didn’t you hear them?”

“It’s tradition. One girl each trip. It’s a publicity stunt, not a commitment.”

“Up yours, Panty Man. I won’t even be your symbolic property.”

“You know, Quinn, you’ve spelled trouble for me since we were five. I don’t know why I think you should be different now.”

“Me, trouble? Who stole whose panties? Who stole kisses behind the bleachers?”

“Ah senior year,” he said with a grin. “So, every day after school, you hung out behind the bleachers for a different reason?”

“I needed to learn how to kiss. I used you.”

“I know. Plus you were trying to outgrow your double A cups, and I really liked helping with that.”

Quinn remembered his mouth on her breasts and bit her lip against a verbal response, but she wasn’t the only one remembering. “Don’t look now,” she said, “but your calling card’s making another appearance.”

Tiago frowned and pulled her closer. “Nobody ever challenged me like you do.”

“That’s the draw,” she said. “We’re both fighters.”

“Me? Not so much.”

“The hell you’re not. You got yourself a baseball scholarship to UC Berkeley, then, what, half a season on the farm team in Pawtucket, before you went to play for Boston?”

“Remind me to tell you someday how that scholarship came about.”

“If we’re telling secrets, I’d like to know why you ran away after we . . . after . . .”

“I didn’t run,” Tiago said. “You did.”

Quinn went cold. She hadn’t expected him to deny it. “I thought you had more guts than that,” she said. “I think I’d like to see my suite now, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“No, don’t leave your party. Call a porter.”

“I said I’ll show you, and I will.” Their leaving early together brought a hush over the party until the car’s sliding door closed behind them.

Quinn tried to pry her fingers from Tiago’s, but he wouldn’t let her go. He tugged her hand up to his mouth and ran her knuckles over his parted lips, then he lowered the hand and stroked the new nails her friends had talked her into.

“Little oval ladybugs,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been surprised to find tiger-striped claws.”

Alone in her suite, Quinn stopped pacing beside a silver ice bucket, its split of champagne calling her name. She popped the cork with a “yikes” for the froth and poured herself a flute. The sweet bubbly nectar of natural white grapes—with a touch of pear—slid down her throat like silk sunshine.

When Tiago dropped her off and said he had business to attend, Quinn decided to skip the dining car. She didn’t have suitable evening clothes, though she certainly had sluttable ones. In a way, she wished Tiago had invited her to dinner. “Don’t go there,” she told herself. “Tiago’s train left your platform thirteen years ago.”

Quinn sat on the couch and wiggled her toes, happy to be free of her knee boots. She wore only a thick white terry robe—another complimentary signature item of Tiago’s—because she didn’t have anything else, damn it. But she was sweltering, so she untied the belt and let the robe fall open. “Screw modesty,” she said with a relieved sigh.

She sipped her champagne, ignored the clothes she’d tried to
sort and read the train’s brochure for the first time. She’d get The Losers for this, she thought, wishing the train stopped in New York so she could buy some essentials, like clothes and underwear. Instead, it stopped overnight on a spur in picturesque Connecticut for their “sleeping pleasure” and only switched tracks in New York.

Annoyed, she dialed Rouge, a clothing buyer with the fashion sense of a psychic goddess. “No underwear, Rouge?”

Her former friend chuckled. “If you’re going to break out of the boardroom, Hon, you have to free the vixen. You need to go wild to get a life.”

“Then why don’t
you
have a life.”

“I have issues.”

“And attitude,” Quinn said, “and I’m going to beat them out of you when I get home.”

“Sure you are. By the way, everything’s set at the other end of the line. Charlie’s gonna meet your train in Orlando.”

Quinn groaned. “How can I face Charlie looking like a hooker?”

“Try on the clothes before you judge them.”

“Underwear! I need underwear.”

“Kiss, kiss,” Rouge said with a laugh and hung up.

Quinn looked at the clothes . . . everywhere. Perfect drek. Really perfect. Beautiful, haute couture designer clothes, hot off the runway, thousands of dollars’ worth, with lace and feathers and spandex, all created with a different type of woman in mind. A woman with a life, sex appeal, and a man. Someone who liked daring lines that revealed cleavage, belly button, midriff, shoulder blades, and a great deal of spine . . . in more ways than one. They begged for a woman who wore swatches that passed for tops, in fine, soft, clingy, second-skin fabrics. A feminine, alluring someone with a name like Tiffany or . . . Rouge, damn her.

“Nothing to wear beneath the clothes and nothing to sleep in, either.” Quinn sighed. “Concentrate on the positives. Room service—
fast. Filet mignon, garlic potatoes, and crème brûlée—decadent. Suite—huge, opulent, and all mine. Second split of champagne—better than the first!” Quinn giggled as she refilled her glass. Damn, she amused herself. Good thing she liked her own company . . . because she’d grown up with only the servants who raised her.

These days, however, Tiago occupied bigger, and better, digs than she did, though she’d yet to see “Home Base.” She grinned, raised her glass, and drank to his success. “Nobody deserves it more.”

These days, the boy from the row shack on the valley side of the tracks could probably
buy
the spoiled brat from the mansion on the hillside. Quinn remembered looking down at his house as a kid, wishing she’d see him at the park later in the day, but he was often delivering papers or helping his dad in her father’s mill.

She didn’t know back then that the shacks belonged to her father. When she joined Murdock, Inc., and found out, she was appalled. She settled their tenants in temporary housing, razed the shacks, and built townhouses. Then she sold them for a song to the families who’d lived there for generations, and she held their mortgages herself.

That had been the first, but not the last, time she and her father butted heads.

By then, she’d heard Tiago’s family lived in a beautiful new house he built for them in Florida.

 Quinn woke to the sound of doors closing.

Midnight. Tiago must be back.

Sweat-slick in her thick robe, Quinn was desperate enough to beg, even from him. She tied the belt on the robe, unlocked what she perceived to be her half of the adjoining door to his suite, and knocked.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

Quinn rolled her eyes. “The big bad wolf.”

“Hey,” he said. “That’s my line.”

She smiled. “Take off your shirt.”

“Are you waiting behind the bleachers?”

“Open the damned door, Bat Boy!”

When he did, he was already shirtless, barefoot, fly unsnapped . . . pecks riding high, jeans riding low. Quinn tried not to gawk and lick her lips at the same time.

“Hel-
lo
!” Tiago said. “Anybody home?”

A case of lust-induced cotton mouth stuck her tongue to her palate. “I m’need somesing do smeep in.”

“Are you drunk?” Tiago slipped inside and dwarfed her suite while taking in the view: slut clothes and empty champagne bottles on the floor, knee boots, heels-up, on coat-hooks, cherry lace bra and bikinis dripping into the sink.

“Did you have an orgy? Because I’m really sorry I missed it.”

Quinn downed a second glass of water. “Champagne makes my mouth dry,” she said. “I tried to say that I need something to sleep in.”

“Plenty of room in my bed.”

She tightened the sash on her robe.

“You look like the Pillsbury Doughboy,” he said.

“And I’ve been too long in the oven. It’s hot as hell in here.”

“By all means, take it off. Unless you’re the sex-starved kind of hot, in which case, I’m certainly up for—”