“Have time for a quickie?”
He glanced at her bedside clock. “You know we never can settle for a quickie. Besides, even a quickie wouldn’t work. Aren’t you testifying again today?”
He was right on both counts. After their first night together, they had learned that their quickies could last for hours. She wasn’t the most knowledgeable when it came to sex, but Quinn’s expertise made up for her lack of experience. She couldn’t imagine a man pleasing her more, inside or outside the bedroom.
Sighing her regret, she made a promise. “Let’s plan for an extended quickie tonight.”
“You’re on.”
Samantha watched in admiration as he went across her bedroom to pick up the car keys he’d left on the dresser. She loved the way he walked. For such a tall, broad-shouldered, muscular man, he moved with amazing agility and grace. She could only imagine that all of his patients, at least the female ones, fell instantly in love with him.
When he turned back, her expression must have revealed her thoughts, because he grinned and said, “Stop looking at my ass and get dressed. Telling the judge what delayed you probably won’t win you any points.”
So true. This was her second day of testimony, and if there was anything clear about the trial, it was that the judge disliked cops—and female ones in particular.
Before she could respond, he headed to the door, that austere, grim expression back in place. “See you tonight.”
She grimaced in sympathy. When compared to meeting with a despised ex-spouse, facing an unfriendly judge didn’t sound so bad. “I hope it’s not too unpleasant.”
“I just hope I can get out of there without strangling her,” he muttered, and was out of the apartment almost before Samantha could register his astonishing statement. For Quinn to reveal his hatred was rare. Charlene must have really pissed him off this time.
Samantha dropped her head onto her pillow again. Her granddad would have approved of Quinn’s restraint in not discussing other people. Though her hometown of Midnight, Alabama, had been rife with gossipers and busybodies, Daniel Wilde had looked upon gossiping as an evil deed. The fact that the Wilde family had often been the subject of those gossipers hadn’t helped.
But her grandfather would have approved of Quinn for other reasons, too. She had often worried that she would never find the right man. She had dated often but had never felt a real connection with anyone. Her sisters, Savannah and Sabrina, had called her a hopeless romantic, insisting that there was no perfect man out there. She had been almost to the point of believing that. Then she’d met Quinn.
Silly, but sometimes she worried that he was too perfect. If perhaps she was seeing only what she wanted to see. When she was a kid, how many times had she looked up at her daddy and thought him to be the most perfect man alive? And what had he done? He had brutally murdered her beautiful mother and then had cowardly taken his own life. That had shaken Samantha’s trust to the core and destroyed her innocence.
Then, years later, both of her sisters had thought they’d found their perfect matches, only to learn how wrong they’d been. Why should she have faith in any man at all?
Now Savvy was back in Midnight for a short time to ready the Wilde mansion for sale. And she would most likely have to see the man who had shattered her heart. Life was just too damn unfair sometimes.
Even though Samantha and her sisters understandably had trust issues with men, they’d thankfully had one wonderful example. Daniel Wilde, their grandfather, had epitomized everything honorable and good. If Samantha could find a man half as wonderful as Daniel Wilde had been, she would call herself lucky. And unless she was seriously mistaken, that man was Quinn Braddock.
There was one major fly in her happily-ever-after ointment: Quinn wanted nothing permanent—he had made that clear from the start. Samantha, quite confident in her feminine powers, hadn’t been worried when he had made that announcement on their first date. It was the first time any man had ever made that stipulation. Instead of being insulted, she had been amused, almost seeing his warning as a challenge. Weeks later, when she realized she was falling in love with him, she wasn’t feeling quite so confident and was most definitely not amused.
After almost four months of dating, their relationship was intense, passionate and more satisfying than anything she’d ever experienced. Even sex was exciting