Love, Diamonds, and Spades (16 page)

Just a few short months ago, if you’d asked her what her fantasy day-off would consist of, she would’ve absolutely said the spa. But when fantasy became reality, she’d discovered that relaxation was highly overrated. There was no doubt in her mind that she’d have preferred to have been at home just watching a movie and eating mini homemade pizzas. With her two favorite people.

It was a revelation she was still trying to grasp the full weight of.

Not today though.

Checking the time, she popped one last spoonful of food in her mouth and then ran to grab a quick shower before Rylan had to head out.

Feeling a little country today, she belted out her favorite country rock tune while gloriously using up all the hot water. These were exactly the sort of things she never took for granted—the half hour to eat and sing in the shower, all the while knowing that Coop was alright. Rylan made sure she had that every day if possible. And she was grateful to him for it every day.

That said, she didn’t want to take advantage of his kindness. Sprinting out of the bathroom, she hightailed it down the hall to her bedroom.

Where she ran smack dab into a mountain of muscles.

Her fingers flexed into his sides on reflex. And when she looked up, the burst of hunger burning in his eyes nearly consumed her whole.

His gaze ran over her face as if he were seeing the first blades of grass in spring. “You didn’t tell me you could sing like that.” God, his voice. She’d missed hearing his smoky voice curl around her, and deepen the longer she stood in his arms.

Belatedly, his words registered and she blushed. She never let anyone hear her sing. Back when she was younger, she and Penny used to sing in the community choir, but she’d long since stopped training her voice. “Did I sound like a drowning cat?”

Smiling affectionately at her, he shook his head. “You sounded like a sea siren, sugar.” His eyes traced over her lips. “Your voice is every bit as beautiful as you are.”

Slowly then, he rested his forehead against hers, murmuring so quietly she almost didn’t hear him, “So damn beautiful.”

Every cell in her body was screaming at her to just tilt her lips up to his, to take the kiss they were both dying for.

“I better head out, sweetheart.” He squeezed her hands gently. “See you at the fundraising auction tomorrow.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE NEXT NIGHT
, the small post-fundraising auction gathering at Ocotillos was already in full swing by nine p.m. Seemed like the entire town had turned out both for the auction and the after-party at Ocotillos. Rylan couldn’t have been more thrilled. They’d raised a ton of money for Coop, and Quinn was now looking genuinely content, almost completely at ease, for the first time in a long while. It was like the avalanche the universe had piled on her shoulders had finally lessened, if only for a few short hours.

That’s all that mattered.

Not the widening pit in his heart that ached to be filled whenever he was around her but couldn’t drag her to him for a kiss.

Not the sharp sense of loss he felt every time he left her home to spend the rest of the night wishing he could just be there holding her while she slept, making
sure
that she slept.

Not the feeling of wanting so badly to tell her how freakin’ much he missed her and wanted to spend the rest of his life loving both her and Coop.

No, this right here, this was all that mattered.

All of a sudden, he needed a breather. After quickly making sure she was still okay, and still smiling, he went outside to grab a moment alone to collect his thoughts.

It didn’t last long.

“Excuse me, do you know where I could find Quinn and Cooper?” asked a deep voice with a hint of an accent Rylan couldn’t quite place.

Looking over at the man in the designer suit, Rylan asked none-too-politely, “How do you know Quinn and Cooper?”

The man shifted his eyes from the brewpub, then back to Rylan. “Let’s just say, I’m an old acquaintance.”

When the man turned back to him fully, Rylan realized he was looking at a grown-up version of Cooper. “Shit. You’re Brody aren’t you? Cooper’s dad.”

Rylan waited exactly half a head nod as confirmation before he grabbed the man by his throat and dragged him to the side alley. “You’re a far way’s from Europe, Mr. Deadbeat Dad. What the hell are you doing here?”

Brody knocked Rylan’s hands away. “Back off, man. I’m here to talk to Quinn. Family matters.”

Rage rushed through Rylan’s veins so fast he was afraid for one second there that he truly was going to murder the man.

My family.

Quinn and Cooper were
his
family, not this asswipe’s. He wasn’t going to let this toxic piece of shit anywhere near Quinn or Cooper.

“Don’t you ever use Quinn and the word
family
in the same sentence again. You’re not family. You’re just the asshole who cheated on his girl, and left her to give birth to raise her son on her own. You’ve never sent her a single penny to help with Coop’s medical bills, and you’ve never even sent him a frickin’ birthday or Christmas card.”

“Look, it was the best thing for them both when I left. If I’d stayed, I would’ve screwed up their lives,” said Brody, suddenly looking and sounding almost…regretful.

Too little, too late. “Just get the hell out of here.”

“Don’t you think that’s Quinn’s decision? What gives you the right to keep a boy from his father? What, you think just because you’re sleeping with her, you can play step dad to
my
son?”

Rylan saw red. Chest heaving, he was so angry he couldn’t see straight. He rammed Brody back up against the wall, very nearly cracking the man’s head open in the process. “I’m going to ask you one last time,” he snarled. “What are you doing here?”

Brody snarled right back. “Can’t a father just want to help his son?”

Where this douche bag was concerned? Over Rylan’s dead body.

That’s when a thought occurred to him. “You know about Cooper’s surgery, don’t you?” His eyes narrowed and he let him down. “How?”

Brody shrugged. “There’s been some buzz on YouTube and some crowdsource pages that went viral after the chocolate and beer thing here. So I thought I’d stop by to see if I could...help.”

Rylan had a sickening feeling he knew where this was going. “Okay, you want to help Quinn? Cut a check right now and I’ll see to it that she gets it. Every little bit will ease the stress she’s been under lately.”

Brody’s jaw ticked and Rylan could practically see the conniving wheels turning.

“See, that’s the thing.” Brody’s voice turned slick. “Finances are a little tight right now. But I thought with all this music stuff you guys have going on to help Cooper, I’m a musician so why not come on down and help.”

Rylan stood there in shock for a second, almost disbelieving his own ears. “You’re just here to cash in on all the social media attention.”

Brody simply shrugged, but at least he showed embarrassment—albeit a fleeting microsecond mini flash only—over his despicable actions. “If my being here creates a bigger buzz, it’ll mean more attention for Cooper, right? Which will mean more money. What’s the harm in getting me a little face time and name time in the process? I mean how great would it be for everyone to see Coop and I doing some photo ops, maybe before and after the surgery, that sort of thing? We could even do some sort of documentary of the whole surgery, too. And I could play the music in the background of the video, you know?”

Un-friggin-believable. The guy was lower than scum. He was an evil, opportunistic little prick willing to put his own five-year old son through a possible media circus for a little table scrap of publicity. “You’d put your own son through that? Record all the fear and pain he’s about to go through and splash it all over the creation? You would do that knowing full well with the internet now days that it could all escalate to something crazy or even morph into something ugly that could possibly blow back against Quinn somehow—jeopardize the fundraisers or even her business. You’d be willing to put your ‘family’ through all of that?”

Rylan’s voice shook with pure fury. “After all you’ve already done to her,
this
is how you treat the mother of your child? Quinn would do absolutely anything for Cooper, anything to keep him happy, keep him safe. Even if it meant slaving away for pennies day and night for the next three lifetimes, she’d rather choose
that
path than subject that amazing little boy to a tenth of what you’re suggesting.”

Now it was Brody’s turn to look stunned. “You love Quinn.”

“I love them both,” he snapped. “And until my dying day, I’ll protect them in any way I can.”

For a second there, Rylan could’ve sworn that he saw a look of empathy in Brody’s expression. Even respect.

But it was gone a moment later, only to be replaced by a slow transformation, that seemed to shift Brody’s entire demeanor. Rylan didn’t trust that gleam in his eye.

“You know…” Brody began with carefully measured words. “I can see that my being here is a concern for you. I guess I don’t blame you. I
could
go back to Europe. Without Quinn and Cooper even knowing I was here…if that’s what
you
want.”

Rylan’s eyes narrowed and he remained silent, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Brody lifted an innocent, golly-gee shoulder. “I could just help out from Europe. With a song.” He leveled a look on Rylan. “But, really, it seems like the public who have been following Cooper’s story already thinks there’s already a perfect “dad” song on YouTube. I must’ve seen hundreds of comments just yesterday alone talking about how this song is the most amazing father–son anthem…”

Rylan couldn’t friggin’ believe his ears. “You want credit for my song. The song I wrote for Cooper.”

“Well, I just think it would be a little weird for there to be
two
Dad songs on this project, don’t you?”

The feral growl that came blasting out of Rylan’s chest was all the warning Brody needed to narrowly miss the fist coming at him.

Rylan jerked back his hand and shook off the blood. That brick wall might have possibly broken his hand, but he didn’t even register the pain. “You were
never
Cooper’s dad.”

Another fleeting look of regret flashed over Brody’s expression before again being replaced by that detached, I’m-in-it-for-the-money smirk…that for a second, Rylan was certain was a mask.

It was a very short second.

“I’m sure,” Brody shrugged, straightening his suit, “the media would love to shine a spotlight on Cooper’s parents. On how hard it must have been on Quinn for me to have left her pregnant and alone, a college dropout, forced to live with her best friend Luke, and now with creditors chasing her for years. God, can you imagine what a field day the media would have with that? I bet within twenty-four hours, folks will start speculating if Luke is Cooper’s dad, and if she’s secretly using the money to pay off some ill-gotten debts she was passing off as medical bills.” He crossed his arms coldly. “You’re in the music business—you and I both know how ugly these online crowd-sourced fundraisers can turn. And last I checked, the one that got started for Cooper the other week has gotten over a thousand donations already.”

What? That was news to him. He and Quinn had been so busy lately, he doubted that even she knew.

Brody tsked, steamrolling right along. “Private information in the wrong person’s hands can turn a campaign like that ugly, real fast.”

No shit. Rylan had seen it a number of times already, where folks who had no claim to fame were suddenly top internet news because of random social media posts going viral over an online fundraiser gone bad. Hundreds of thousands of comments twisting the truth via a massive game of telephone between strangers who really didn’t give a crap, but just got swept up in the social media shitstorm.

“Remember that one band who got a whole bunch of donations from fans and strangers, only to then become pariahs getting death threats when someone leaked that all of the band members had debts and skeletons in their closet?” Brody titled his head as is considering something carefully. “I suppose I don’t
have to
talk about that at all. I
could
tell the media that we both did what was best for Cooper. I
could
choose to focus the media’s attention on what an amazing job Quinn has done raising Cooper on her own. You know, since media attention that would make
my
career thrive would probably not be good for her…if what the private investigator I hired last week says is true.”

“You heartless son of a bitch.”

Brody dropped his little charade, and that weird little accent, as well. “Let’s cut to the chase. I’ll stay completely out of sight until my flight home next week and give you my word that you’ll never hear from me again if you sign the rights of that song over to me. I’ll get out of your hair and I’ll never interfere with Quinn or Cooper’s life, and I’ll do whatever I can to keep this from turning into something that could turn ugly for Quinn. I’ve had a PI on her for over a week; I know about her business problems.”