L.E. Truscott's Blog, page 16

Project October 2017: Week One

Yes, it’s that time of year again when I go on a partial hiatus to do a really intensive month of writing. Normal posts will resume in November but, in the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy an insight into this year’s Project October.

Week One: Preparation

Before I even start, I know this Project October won’t be like any other Project October I’ve done. Normally, Project October is about writing as many words as possible. Normally, I aim for 1,000 words a day, which equates to 31,000 words over the course of the month. But this isn’t normal. Because the book I’ve chosen to work on is Trine and I’ve already written 85,000 words. It doesn’t need another 31,000 words. According to my calculations, I only need to write another 7 chapters, another 16,000 words and I’ll be finished.

During my last Project October, I realised how close I was to finishing and contemplated doing an extra two weeks of intensive writing just to get it over and done with. It didn’t end up happening because the burnout factor when doing Project October is high and I just couldn’t keep going. That was over a year ago now and in between I wrote and published a completely different book.

I feel like I’ve been writing this book forever. I started writing it in 2012 and since then I’ve written and published three other books. Trine is the middle child that gets ignored in favour of all the other children, not because it’s not as good (in fact, I think it’s some of the best writing I’ve ever done) but because it’s hard. I think the old saying goes that easy reading is damn hard writing and I’m proud of it but I don’t always enjoy working on it because of how hard I have sometimes found it.

I think I’m also hesitant because I still don’t know how the book is going to end. I had a vague idea of how I wanted it to end but the closer I get to that point, it seems it lacks the twist or the punch. Should the bad guy die? Isn’t it horribly unoriginal? Should the main character die? She’s been through a lot and she certainly doesn’t deserve it. Should anyone die? It seems like someone needs to. I just don’t know who.

Anyway, I’ve printed out the 85,000 words I have already written and I’m preparing by reading it. I really need to. Because so much of it was written so long ago, while I can remember the big picture stuff, I can’t remember any of the smaller details. Hopefully, that means it will feel new and I will feel fresh as I approach it again.

But right now I’m nervous. I’m apprehensive. Writing endings almost always makes me feel this way. And not knowing what the ending is or should be makes it worse. It makes me hesitant about starting the Project October process. It’s not the best way to go into it. I should be excited and raring to go. Instead, the smaller goal is just making me think I’m going to fail in a bigger way than when I don’t reach the larger target.

Oh, this is exactly what a writer needs as she prepares for a month of intensive writing – not!

Book Review: The Last Grand Passion by Emma Darcy

Just to round out a couple of months devoted to romance novels, I’m going to review some Mills & Boon books that were a formative part of my young adult reading experience. That sounds a little weird but I am talking about the latter end of my teenage years. I don’t read romance anymore but I have reread these books for the purpose of these reviews. Enjoy!

*****

I first read this book more than two decades ago and included it on a list of my top ten books about fifteen years ago, writing, “Although romance isn’t always high class literature, it can have an actual plotline that means something. This is the kind of novel I aspire to write, with believable conflicts and an ending that makes your breath catch and your heart skip a beat with the absolute beauty and perfectness of it.”

The problem is that those are the only things to recommend it. There are a few books I’ve read that while I was reading them, I didn’t like them at all. And then because of a surprise ending that was jaw-dropping, it made me forget about the fact that I didn’t actually like the book. The Last Grand Passion falls squarely into this category.

Annelise Tolliver and Thady Riordan knew each other seven years ago. But before it turned into a romance, Thady left unexpectedly without saying goodbye. Now Anne (as she is known to her family) is a successful production designer for the theatre and planning her sister’s wedding. At twenty-eight and unmarried, all her mother and sisters ever seem to do is pester her about settling down because a career is one thing, but a marriage and babies is another entirely. (The book was published in 1993 and, boy, does it show!)

Thady shows up just as unexpectedly as he left, saying he wants to be with her. But he can’t (or won’t) offer her marriage or love. Since she’s spent the last seven years pining for him, Anne figures she’ll just take what she can get from him now and hopefully he’ll change his mind at some point in the future.

They move from Sydney to London together, Anne does the production design for Thady’s plays (he’s a playwright) and they socialise with a circle of friends who all seem to know something that Anne doesn’t. Deciding that if she can’t have him completely, she’ll content herself with a little piece of him, she stops taking her contraception and deliberately falls pregnant (and feminists everywhere shake their heads).

When Anne returns to Sydney for her sister’s wedding and Christmas with her family, Thady doesn’t accompany her, saying he has business in the US and doesn’t know how long it will take. He’s gone for more than three months and when he returns to London, he’s a shell of his former self.

There’s a touch of Jane Eyre to this book – a dark brooding hero with a secret, a woman in love despite not being offered traditional love in return, a shocking revelation. But the characters are caricatures, the dialogue is laughable, the “romance” is severely lacking and I wasn’t more than a few chapters in before I wanted to put the book down and never pick it up again.

But I persisted, wanting to get to the twist ending and have the same reaction I had all those years ago when I first read it. As with so many books with twist endings though, because I knew the twist, it just didn’t have to same punch.

I’m a genuine fan of Emma Darcy. I believe she is one of the greatest romance writers in Australia, if not the greatest. And while there is one terrific element in this story, that isn’t anywhere near enough. I suspect many of these types of romance novels will date horribly, remaining stuck in a very specific period of time. And unlike Jane Austen’s romances, which give a brilliant insight into the manners and practices of courtship during the early 1800s, I doubt very much this will do the same for the 1990s.

If you want to find the brilliance of Emma Darcy’s romance novels, read one of her other books because you won’t find it here.

2 stars

*First published on Goodreads 22 January 2017

Book Review: Bride Required by Alison Fraser

Just to round out a couple of months devoted to romance novels, I’m going to review some Mills & Boon books that were a formative part of my young adult reading experience. That sounds a little weird but I am talking about the latter end of my teenage years. I don’t read romance anymore but I have reread these books for the purpose of these reviews. Enjoy!

*****

As soon as you begin reading this book and discover that the main female character is just seventeen years old, the seed is planted in the back of your mind that there is going to be yet another inappropriate age gap between her and her male love interest. But the further you read, the less bothersome it is because she’s feisty and mature beyond her years and the physical contact is pretty PG right up until the last third of the book, by which time she has turned eighteen.

Dee is homeless, busking for money on London’s streets while she struggles to feed both herself and her dog, and living in a boarded up building without water or electricity scheduled for demolition. Baxter is a doctor, recently returned from a lengthy stint working for a charity in Africa and close to burned out. When he spots Dee playing her flute in a corridor of the London Underground, she’s exactly what he’s looking for. Which isn’t a girlfriend but someone prepared to enter into a marriage of convenience in exchange for payment.

Dee isn’t naïve – she’s been exposed to enough bad things in her short life to be wary. But when she hurts her knee and Baxter takes care of her, she realises he’s exactly what he says he is. The only problem is that despite abandoning his plan to use her in a marriage of convenience, he won’t just let her go back to her life on the streets. He gives her an ultimatum: come to Scotland with him where he can continue looking after her (and her badly damaged leg) and maybe get her back into school or return home and sort out her problems with her family.

She chooses to return to her family, planning to see Baxter off and then do nothing of the sort, but he insists on driving her right to the front door. She fumes as he goes through her bag to find her birth certificate, telling her he’s going to drive to the address on it and see if that gets them anywhere close. Dee finally gives in and gives him the correct address but when they get there, Baxter sees her dysfunctional family is something worse than living on the streets. And so they go to Scotland.

The dialogue in this book is pitch perfect. Instead of the usual waffle that permeates so many romance novels, their discussions are interesting and not always about themselves and their burgeoning love. There’s an actual plot, genuine drama and life difficulties, and terrific writing. I’ve read quite a few of Alison Fraser’s books and her efforts are always significantly better than most of the other writers writing in the same genre.

This book is a little unusual in that it is written from both the main characters’ perspectives, not just one. Usually, romance writers only show the thoughts of one main character in order to maintain the drama that comes from the misunderstandings that dominate romance as opposed to genuine reasons keeping them apart.

The only thing that detracts is Dee’s age but it’s a necessary component of the plot and Baxter is written so well that he doesn’t come off as a creepy old man – always a good thing in romance fiction.

If you’re looking for a good romance read, you’ll find it in this book. If you’re looking for a good example of how to write romance, you’ll find that as well. If you’re not a romance fan, then don’t bother because it doesn’t pretend to be anything else but if you are, it should tick every box.

5 stars

*First published on Goodreads 17 January 2017

Book Review: Freedom to Love by Carole Mortimer

Just to round out a couple of months devoted to romance novels, I’m going to review some Mills & Boon books that were a formative part of my young adult reading experience. That sounds a little weird but I am talking about the latter end of my teenage years. I don’t read romance anymore but I have reread these books for the purpose of these reviews. Enjoy!

*****

This is the first Mills & Boon book I ever read. For some reason it was in the library at the senior campus of my high school and whenever I had a free period or nothing better to do, I would sit in the aisle and read it (circa the early to mid-1990s).

First published in 1981, it hasn’t dated well. It’s full of “How dare you!” and embarrassment at the thought of pre-marital sex and punishing kisses and contrived plot points. Katy Harris is eighteen and the third wheel on a camping trip in the Canadian mountains outside of Calgary. Her twenty-year-old sister, Gemma, and Gemma’s icky fiancé, Gerald, are using her as cover to keep their parents happy. On the plane on the way over from London, Katy is seated next to Adam Wild, a famous photographer in his mid-thirties who wasn’t able to get a seat in first class. Things don’t start well when Katy digs her nails into his arm, thinking it is the armrest, as fear kicks in on her first time in a plane. They bicker and bicker and bicker about everything, anything and nothing at all, setting up a love/hate dynamic with the love component based primarily on their mutual physical attraction.

From then on, they’re thrown together at every turn. Seeing her discomfort at sharing a campervan with her sister and her sister’s partner, particularly given their nocturnal activities, he offers for her to spend her holiday with him instead. She’s mortified at the idea and turns him down flat, particularly in light of his reputation as a womaniser. But one evening after a walk, she mistakes his campervan for Gemma and Gerald’s and goes to sleep in the back of it. By the time she wakes, they’re a day’s drive in the opposite direction from where Gemma and Gerald were heading. So Katy’s forced to be his travelling companion.

They tour lakes and mountains as Adam takes photographs for a book and Katy manages to fall in the lakes and down the mountains, bringing out his angry but caring side. He treats her like a child but that’s hardly surprising given their eighteen year age gap. They can’t go a single day without arguing, not even when Katy falls ill and he treats her feverish sufferings.

But just as Katy is on the verge of declaring her love, Adam informs her that he can’t give her the kind of relationship she deserves – one that involves devotion and a home and babies. They part reluctantly and head back to their normal lives. Will they ever work things out? Of course, they will – I don’t think I ever read a Mills & Boon where the couple don’t end up happily ever after.

Adam is a stereotypically middle-aged angry male, taking out his pent-up frustrations on Katy’s virginal but kissable lips and ample bosom. Gemma is a selfish sister and Gerald is so crude that he wouldn’t get away with saying the things he does today without having his face constantly slapped. There’s some attempt at character development with both Adam and Katy having a form of PTSD from incidents in their histories but there’s almost no plot and the dialogue is wooden. Katy’s tantrums can almost be forgiven considering her age but there’s no excuse for Adam’s.

Still, it holds a special place in my heart simply because it was the first and because it was reading Mills & Boons and thinking I could write better ones that really started me on my path to becoming a writer. In a word: nostalgic.

2 stars

*First published on Goodreads 14 January 2017

Liberty’s Secret: Chapter Fifteen

I wrote Liberty’s Secret thirteen years ago when I thought I was going to be a romance writer (before I got bored by the formula). But when I decided that wasn’t the kind of writing I wanted to do, my completed genre novel was essentially abandoned and forgotten. But sometimes I get nostalgic about the path I’ve taken as a writer (and that includes the path not taken). So over the next two months, I’ll be posting it here a chapter at a time.

This is Chapter Fifteen, the final chapter.

*****

She kept on yelling those four words like a woman obsessed, her clenched fists flailing uselessly against the man, his hands holding off the worst of her blows but allowing most to strike against him in some sort of penance.

Paralysed by Libby’s display, Quinn just watched, unable to move, unable to comprehend anything further than the fact that in her perception this was the man responsible for her mother’s car accident. After what seemed an eternity, but must only have been seconds, Quinn finally reacted. He moved across the carpet and captured Libby in his arms, pinning her hands to her side and dragging her struggling body inside the apartment and past the archway into the lounge.

Once her view of the man responsible for her outrage was compromised, she seemed to back off from her anger marginally until it was overtaken by the racking sobs that consumed her body. She burrowed into Quinn’s chest as they fell together to the couch, and he stroked his hand comfortingly down her back over and over, much as he had done the night they had finally made love.

It seemed an age before she was calm enough to pull away from him. She remained seated on the couch with her head in her hands, hiding her face and her tear-stained cheeks. Quinn studied her with concern, his face clenched tight with tension, his eyes consumed with only the sight of her until he realised that the man responsible for Libby’s distress was standing by the archway, where Quinn himself had stood not fifteen minutes ago watching Libby.

His expression was one of extreme anguish as his eyes rested on Libby’s curved back. He was watching her with such sadness that Quinn almost didn’t know who to empathise with. But Libby was always going to be his main concern. He rose and paced over to where the man stood, aware that Libby’s head came up to watch him confront the cause of her outrage.

‘I think you should leave.’ Quinn’s voice was steady.

‘No, I have to talk to Libby.’ His voice was just as steady, clear and concise, and despite his own sadness, quite insistent.

‘It’s fairly obvious that she doesn’t want to talk to you,’ Quinn bit out, any empathy he had felt draining by the second.

‘She wants to talk to me. She knows she wants to talk to me,’ he insisted loudly to ensure Libby would hear him, but he took hesitant steps back out into the hallway.

Quinn knew he would never make this confrontation physical, but his adversary didn’t, so he drove home his advantage, drawing up to his full height, which wasn’t much taller than the other man but enough to seem threatening.

‘From what I can see, I think she wants to kill you,’ Quinn pointed out in his best impression of what amounted to a threat.

‘Yeah, that too,’ the other man admitted, and Quinn was thrown off balance.

‘Don’t make me throw you out.’ It seemed almost a comical thing to say but the situation made it less so.

‘If you knew how important this is, if you knew…’ He trailed off, and Quinn had a sudden terrible feeling, like the pit of his stomach dropping out, that he did in fact know.

‘Quinn.’ He swung around to see Libby standing in the archway, her arms crossed defensively across her chest, her cheeks pink from scrubbing away tears. He could see it in her eyes that she was ready to submit to this man’s request, ready to hear whatever it was he wanted to say. And when she calmly said, ‘Hello, Adam,’ and fixed her eyes on Adam’s face, Quinn knew his suspicions had been right.

This was the man who had made Libby’s life a living hell. This was the man who had managed to come between him and Libby for so long. Adam Hall.

‘Why are you here?’ She didn’t waste any time pretending this meeting was a pleasure for her.

‘It was time, Libby. It’s been four years.’

‘It could have been eight and I still wouldn’t have wanted to see you.’ She retreated into the lounge and Adam hesitated only momentarily before following her. Feeling oddly out of place once more, Quinn paused in the hall before taking up an observatory position by the archway as Adam had previously.

Libby was standing by the window, staring out unseeingly, and Adam a mere metre behind her, his hand reaching to touch her shoulder, but falling before finding its target. Quinn’s voice was lost but he wanted to shout, ‘Don’t touch her.’ He didn’t though, just remained watching, silently experiencing the most excruciating emotional pain.

‘How did you know where I was?’ Libby’s voice seemed to echo in the absolute silence of the room.

‘Fraser Graham told me you might be here.’

Both Libby and Quinn started at the reference, and she shook her head as if she couldn’t believe the extent to which Fraser had interfered. She met Quinn’s eyes briefly but he couldn’t read her expression and then she looked away.

Adam followed her line of vision to where Quinn stood. ‘Could we have some privacy?’

Quinn was angry at the request, but Libby was angrier.

‘You don’t have the right to ask anything of either of us.’

‘What does he have to do with us?’ He was just making her even more irate.

‘There is no us, Adam. In fact, he has more right to ask that question of you than you have to ask it of him.’

Adam looked at Quinn as if only now realising why he and Libby could have been here in the middle of a working day.

‘You trust him?’ It seemed painful for Adam to ask.

‘Yes.’ There was no hesitation in her answer and Quinn was consumed with love for her.

‘You love him?’

This time there was a pause and Quinn realised Libby was watching him with an almost imperceptible smile. ‘Yes.’ She said it softly, and it was strange to hear it from the other side of the room. He felt his legs start to move his body towards her, but he held himself back with a phenomenal effort. He wanted to smile back at her but his face was frozen with the astonishment of her revelation.

Adam had to be aware of what was flowing between them.

The ringing of the doorbell again surprised them all, Quinn especially. His third unexpected guest of the day within the period of an hour. He wouldn’t be surprised if this time it were the media. Happy snaps of Libby’s reunion with Adam Hall would be worth a small fortune to any number of glossy tabloid magazines.

He left Libby and Adam standing in the lounge to open the door. Standing beyond it was a small, beautiful woman cradling an adorable baby girl and clutching the hand of a boy about four years old.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ she said in a perfectly cultured voice that held more than a hint of a foreign accent but also the suggestion of many sessions of vocal coaching. ‘Is Adam here?’

Quinn said nothing, just stepped aside to let her in. She paused just beyond the door, waiting for him to escort her to the man she was looking for. He ushered her into the lounge where Libby and Adam stood facing each other, and it was obvious nothing further had passed between them.

Libby saw their new arrival first as she was facing the archway. Adam had his back to the others entering the room but turned to see who had arrived when Libby’s shock became evident.

‘Sofia!’ Quinn could tell by the tone of her voice that this was the last person Libby had expected to be ringing the doorbell.

‘Sofia, I asked you to wait in the car,’ Adam said with evident frustration.

‘I know, but Grayson was starting to fuss.’ The little boy at her side looked up at her angelically and then across at Adam.

‘Daddy?’ The small, uncertain voice of the boy cut across everything, all the tension that had consumed the adults.

Adam held out his arms and Grayson ran into them, holding on tightly as he was swung up by strong hands. There was no doubting that this was Adam’s son.

‘Libby,’ Adam said, turning to face her again, ‘this is my son, Grayson.’ As Sofia joined him he continued, ‘This is my daughter, Elizabeth. Libby for short.’ Quinn could see the older Libby’s surprise.

‘And this is my wife, Sofia Hall. I don’t think you were ever formally introduced.’

‘I didn’t know you were married,’ Libby said after a long and strange silence.

‘Nobody does,’ Adam answered. ‘I’m sure you can understand Sofia’s reticence to have anything to do with the media after…well, you know.’ He shrugged his remorse. ‘I don’t act anymore.’

As if his career was still the most important thing, Quinn thought without sympathy. Despite the appearance of all being forgiven, he could not forget that this was the man who had betrayed Libby all those years ago. And now he was flaunting his lover, now his wife, in front of his former girlfriend.

Adam was smiling, trying to coax a similar response from Libby, but she wouldn’t play his game. Instead she said, ‘You were right, Adam. It was time for us to meet again.’ But her tone implied no sort of forgiveness. And Adam knew he would never get it.

‘I think you should leave now.’ Her tone was uncompromising.

Adam accepted her directive without argument, gathering his family and shepherding them towards the exit. Perhaps it was not the ending that Adam had expected or hoped for, but it was an ending. Maybe there was even some sense of closure.

Quinn accompanied the guests to the front door. It was a strangely surreal parting, with Libby trailing behind them, lingering in the archway with an unreadable expression.

Quinn pulled open the front door, belatedly registering the flash of the camera. All four of them turned to look at the source of the explosion of light, only to have more similar flares going off in their face.

He didn’t know how, but the press had managed to track down Libby at his apartment, and unfortunately had also managed to catch the two lovebirds entertaining her former boyfriend and his lover turned wife. It didn’t get much more complicated, or juicy, than that in the eyes of the press.

Quinn slammed the door shut in the photographers’ faces, knowing even as he did it that the action came far too late. Counting the flashes, they had at least ten reasonable shots of him, Libby, Adam carrying Grayson, and Sofia cradling Elizabeth.

‘Does this mean we’re trapped in here?’ Adam asked. Quinn’s second floor apartment had only one entrance and thus one exit.

‘I…’ Of course, there was the fire escape. But he couldn’t imagine Adam and Sofia making it down the ladder clutching their children. ‘I have a plan,’ he said, not answering his question.

Quickly, he collected his keys, his helmet and his leather jacket, slinging it over his shoulder. Libby climbed down the rusting ladder of the fire escape first. It was difficult going in her two-inch heels but she made it without fuss. Quinn followed her more swiftly, calling up to the Hall family still stuck in his apartment, ‘We’ll distract them so you can sneak out.’ Adam nodded his thanks and disappeared back into the apartment.

This was turning out to be the strangest day of Quinn’s life. And possibly the best.

She loved him! He longed to shout it to the eternal sky, but there were more pressing concerns at the moment.

In the garage, his motorcycle rested in his parking spot. Quinn took the spare helmet from the storage space and handed it to Libby. ‘Are you ready for your first ride?’

He held out the jacket for her to slip into and she turned to face him with her helmet tucked under her arm. She looked exactly like Dee the first time she had ridden with him. Except that this biker chick was all woman. His woman.

‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’ She fastened the helmet under her chin and straddled the bike behind him, her skirt riding dangerously, provocatively high as she parted her legs around him. The bare skin of her thigh caught his gaze and as the motorcycle roared to life, he felt a concurrent surge between his legs.

The bike emerged slowly from the garage, giving the media still thumping on his apartment door a chance to see that they had escaped, and what’s more, were getting away. As one, the reporters and photographers ran down the outer staircase leading up to his place and scrambled into their cars, gunning their engines and preparing to give chase. But it didn’t matter. Libby and Quinn were long gone.

No-one was waiting for them when they arrived at Libby’s house but Quinn knew it was only a matter of time before the media returned to their base camp, reasoning that Libby would eventually have to return here as well, if indeed she hadn’t returned here straight away.

He parked his motorcycle up under a thick patch of trees and bushes where the prying eyes of the press would not be able to detect it, holding up the weight of the bike as Libby dismounted, then easing the stand down and getting off himself. Libby stood just out of his reach, her hair ruffled from the helmet, her skirt still pushed high on her thighs, a secret smile on her face. Without a word from either of them, he followed her into the house and up the stairs to her bedroom, pausing only to dump his helmet on the carpet beside her bed.

She shrugged out of his leather jacket, letting it drop from her shoulders seductively. She was obviously as aroused as he was, but Quinn didn’t know whether it was from the excitement of outrunning the media on the motorbike or from something else. For him, it was something else. It was the knowledge that she loved him.

‘So you love me, huh?’ He had to hear her say it again. He wanted to hear her say it forever.

‘Yes,’ she said shyly, then paused as her eyes searched the back of her eyelids for a memory. ‘Do you remember the first time you were here?’

He would never forget it. ‘Yes.’

‘And I told you that this house was the only thing I’d ever dreamed of?’ He nodded.

‘That’s not true anymore, Quinn. I’m starting to dream about all those other things you said. The big white wedding. The little Libby Freemans running around the house. Little Quinn O’Connells running around with them.’

She seemed to know just what to say to make his love ever stronger.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ She undid the tiny buckles on her shoes as she spoke, kicking them away.

‘I guess what I’m going to do is I’m going to marry you.’ He held back long enough to say, ‘If you’ll have me.’

‘I’ll have you today and tomorrow and forever, Quinn. I love you.’ It was the catalyst for a powerful need in him.

‘I think I need to have you right now, Libby,’ he confessed, wrapping his arms around her waist while she stripped away his t-shirt.

Her lips on his were water droplets on a hotplate, sizzling. She matched his enthusiasm with every feverish move and it wasn’t long before their clothes were on the floor and they were joined in mutual pleasure, explosions and starbursts and fireworks celebrating that they were one.

It was a long time after their laboured breathing had returned to normal, and as Libby lay stroking a lazy line down Quinn’s spine, that he finally spoke.

‘Do you want to tell me about Adam?’

Her hand stopped momentarily, her fingers shaking almost imperceptibly, but she found the strength to continue tracing up and down his well-muscled back.

‘I’ve never told anyone before. Except Fraser. I’m not sure that there’s anything that Fraser doesn’t know about me.’ It was one last respite before she began to tell it.

‘He doesn’t know this,’ Quinn said, twisting underneath the sheet to kiss her hard and brief on the mouth but returning to his position on his stomach. He knew Libby needed to be able to feel she was in a place of control.

‘I thought I had everything four years ago. I had my mother, I had my sisters, I had my career, I had Fraser, I had Adam. But it all fell apart in the space of a few days. I thought it was all Adam’s fault. But it was really my own.

‘I’m not saying that I was to blame. But if I had just been a little stronger, if I hadn’t automatically looked for the easy way out, then maybe things would have been different.’

Suddenly Quinn wasn’t sure that he wanted to hear this. She was naked beside him but she sounded like she was wishing for a time that no longer existed, a time that had been dominated by the man he had met just hours ago. He tried not to let his apprehension show. She had told him she loved him, hadn’t she? Shouldn’t that be enough?

‘I let Adam walk all over me. The one thing my mother had told me never to let a man do. And I let him do it.’

‘You thought that he loved you,’ Quinn said through clenched teeth, trying not to let the sound of his fear show in his voice.

‘I couldn’t have cared less if he loved me or not. I didn’t love him.’

Quinn sat up, perching himself on his elbows. ‘You didn’t? But the newspaper said you were virtually engaged.’

‘We were never anything more than good friends. I thought he was my best friend. But then those rumours started and George Bannister convinced Adam that it was in his best interests for people to think we were in love, that it would mean something to his career.’ She had found her rhythm.

‘When Adam told me he loved me in front of all those cameras, I didn’t know what the hell was going on.’

‘But you went along with it. That’s what the article implied.’

‘Of course, I did. My mother was a famous model, my sisters are both famous models. I know never to antagonise the media or give them anything that could make a story bigger than it seems. What Adam did made the story big, but what they didn’t know could have made it even bigger.’

‘I don’t understand. If you weren’t in love with him, then why were you so upset?’

‘Because he used me. I thought we were friends, but friends don’t do that to each other. I had become something of a celebrity thanks to Adam, and George decided he had some sort of claim on it.’ Her bitterness was evident for Adam’s former manager. ‘I didn’t know anything about Sofia, but if I had I would have been happy for Adam. But instead he chose to use me and then betray me in front of the whole world.’

She laughed without amusement, her eyes unseeing as she immersed herself in the past. ‘The irony is that I could have forgiven Adam all of that.’

‘But you’ve been angry with him all these years.’ Quinn recalled her first words to Adam after a separation of four years. You killed my mother. ‘Grace,’ he said, recalling Libby’s mother’s name from the article that had been the source of his misinformation.

Libby smiled fondly at the mention of her mother. ‘Mum knew that I put up with all the cameras and reporters and the limelight for Adam’s sake. And she knew I didn’t love him. She was just as surprised as I was when Adam pulled that stunt. She was overseas at the time, watching like the rest of the world with little insight into what was really happening. So when she opened her morning paper to see those pictures of Adam and Sofia, her first instinct was to come rushing home to be with me.’

And suddenly Quinn understood. Grace had been rushing back to be by her daughter’s side when a car accident had taken her life, taken her from her children.

‘I could have forgiven Adam merely taking advantage of me, but I could never ever forgive him for taking my mother from me.’ It was the end of the complete story. ‘And that’s all, folks,’ Libby finished on a forced note of humour to undercut the absolute misery that had been those few days of her life.

She bent to lay her head between Quinn’s shoulder blades and he could feel her breathing, the softness of her breasts pressing into his side.

‘That day when you first tried to tell me that you loved me, I was so scared of a repeat. The last time I heard those words, “I love you”, in the context you were using them, they were the most dishonest words I’d ever heard spoken. I didn’t want to hear you say it only to find out once again that they couldn’t be taken seriously. Not from you. I already loved you, Quinn. I couldn’t bear to think that maybe you would do what Adam did to me, and this time, I would truly feel it. Feel the absolute betrayal of using those words when they were never meant.’

‘I meant them, Libby. I’ll mean them every day.’ She kissed his shoulder and laid her cheek on the pillow next to his head. ‘Do you know how attracted to you I was? Right from the start when you first came to work for the magazine. You stood out from every other woman I’d ever known.’

‘You’ve known a lot of women, have you?’ Libby asked with a laugh.

‘Not like I know you.’ She smiled at his dismissal of them. ‘I can’t even see anyone else when you’re in my life. You fill my eyes. Anything in the periphery is just filler. You’re everything, Libby. I’d never let anything happen to you.’

She let her hand drift down the side of his cheek, feeling the beginnings of stubble on the side of his jaw, and he brought his fingers up to cup hers, kissing the palm when she found his lips.

‘After what Adam did to me,’ she said in a whisper, ‘I never thought I’d be able to trust anyone again. And especially never trust anyone not to hurt my family. You gave that back to me, Quinn. I see the way you are with Dee. I know you’d never let anything happen to her, either.’

‘She’s like a sister to me,’ he confessed.

‘A sister-in-law,’ Libby said happily.

‘Soon,’ Quinn agreed, the promise evident in the word.

‘Very soon,’ Libby emphasised, lifting her head and he realised she was no longer talking about their engagement becoming a marriage. He turned underneath her and she came down on top of him, her hair framing her beautiful face, love shining happily in her eyes.

Quinn’s head came up to capture her mouth tenderly and she kissed him back slowly. There was nothing to rush them now. They had the rest of forever.

‘Mum, I’m home,’ they both heard a teenage voice call from downstairs, beyond the closed door of Libby’s bedroom.

They came apart from each other marginally to exchange a look, and neither could help laughing, or resist returning for one last kiss before rising to dress. It seemed forever had never factored in the ability of a girl named Kennedy Freeman to interrupt at all the right moments.

Liberty’s Secret: Chapter Fourteen

I wrote Liberty’s Secret thirteen years ago when I thought I was going to be a romance writer (before I got bored by the formula). But when I decided that wasn’t the kind of writing I wanted to do, my completed genre novel was essentially abandoned and forgotten. But sometimes I get nostalgic about the path I’ve taken as a writer (and that includes the path not taken). So over the next two months, I’ll be posting it here a chapter at a time.

This is Chapter Fourteen.

*****

‘Where the hell have you been?’

Libby stood in the open doorway of Quinn’s apartment, her hands on her hips and her face tight with displeasure. It was Friday morning – the end of the week – and she had eventually, finally, come to him, just as both Fraser and Dee had predicted.

Quinn’s satisfaction at seeing her was immense. He drank in the sight of her, the separation having taken its toll. She was dressed for work in an emerald green suit, her jacket buttoned top to bottom, completely closed, and he tried not to think about the metaphor. Her flat Mary Janes were absent, replaced by a similar pair of shoes with a two inch heel so that they were on eye-level with each other. He wondered if she had been thinking of an encounter with him when she had put them on this morning.

Conversely, he was dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt, standard non-office dress for him, and was clutching a bunch of papers that had, until Libby’s arrival, completely consumed him. Now if he could have managed to unclench his fist, he would have let them all flutter to the ground.

‘Hello, Libby,’ he said in a voice that was strange even to his own ears. They stood there facing off for a few moments before it occurred to him to invite her in. He caught a glimpse of the top of her thigh as the split in the left side of her skirt parted provocatively when she stepped forward.

But even as he stood aside to allow her entry, there was a sensation rising from somewhere within him that urged him not to let her see his apartment. It was an emotional wasteland. This was not his home, had never been, in fact. This was simply where he lived. It was not a place he particularly liked.

To the rational side of him, however, hiding it from Libby seemed nonsensical. So he let her in.

They stood in the hallway facing each other. Quinn’s hand finally relaxed its grip on the sheaf of papers he was holding and he let them drift onto the hall table, unconcerned with their content, not remembering its content anyway. He must have stared at her for fully a minute before he recalled that she had spoken to him on her arrival.

‘I’ve been here,’ he said, wondering where else she had expected him to be.

‘I mean, why haven’t you been at work?’

‘I quit, remember?’

‘You really were serious?’

‘Of course. Did you think once I’d gotten what I wanted I would take it back?’

She shrugged her shoulders as if she honestly didn’t know.

‘You know what men are like,’ she said with as odd sort of resignation. ‘They make promises, they say whatever they think they need to say, then they put their pants back on.’

Quinn laughed before he could stop himself but controlled his amusement, saying with a smile, ‘I meant what I said.’ And then continued without expression, ‘Everything I said.’

Libby didn’t seem to know what to say after that. Quinn certainly didn’t. He knew what he wanted to do, but the circumstances of their last parting didn’t really lend themselves to it.

‘What are you doing here?’ He decided he had a right to ask since it was his apartment.

‘I…didn’t know where else to go,’ she said to the carpet. ‘I haven’t been able to get a moment’s peace all week. I’ve got cameras going off in my face every time I look up.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ Quinn said, thinking of his conversation with Dee.

‘And that’s another reason I’m here.’

He didn’t understand.

‘Dee told me you picked her up after school on Monday. That you’d taken her to the river.’

‘Yes, well, I’m a man of leisure these days.’ It seemed an age ago. ‘She said your mother used to take her there to watch the sunset.’

‘She did. And after Mum died, I took her there to watch the sunset.’ She stressed the word ‘I’. And Quinn could sense where she was going.

‘Libby, it was an arbitrary decision, just a place to go. It didn’t mean anything.’

‘Yes, it did. It meant something to Dee. All week I’ve heard nothing but Quinn this, Quinn that.’

Well, that had been the plan, hadn’t it? Dee was going to implant the subconscious seed. But it hadn’t occurred to him that his spending time with Dee would upset her. ‘I didn’t realise that it was going to be a problem.’

She didn’t respond to that. ‘The leather jacket?’

‘Just a gift.’

‘And the heart to heart talk?’ She shifted uncomfortably in place as she said it.

‘She needed someone to talk to.’

‘And that someone should have been me.’ She said it tightly, almost torturedly.

‘Are you jealous of me? Because Dee talked to me about what’s going on?’ Before she answered, it occurred to him that he might have it backwards. ‘Or are you jealous of Dee?’

She immediately scoffed at the idea, then looked at the floor as if his words had made her realise it was the truth. Quinn could see the reluctant confession in her eyes as she looked back up at him.

‘I didn’t mean to interfere.’ And it hadn’t even occurred to him that was what he had been doing. But he could appreciate that she might see it that way.

‘Then what did you mean to do?’

‘I was just looking for an in.’

‘An in?’ It was a question and the answer occurred to her as she was asking it. ‘Oh.’ After a pause, she continued, ‘I guess I should be thanking you.’

It was a complete about-face. ‘For what?’

‘For helping me with Dee. I’ve been in mother mode for so long, maybe I forgot how to just be her sister.’ There was something in the way she said it that Quinn had to question.

‘But you don’t really want to be thanking me, do you?’

She looked up as if astonished at how easily he could read her. ‘No,’ she finally said. ‘If you want to know the truth, when I think about it, I just get really angry.’

It didn’t make any sense to Quinn. And as a consequence, he had no idea what to say.

‘This is so easy for you. Someone has a problem, you solve it. Someone needs a place to go, your door is wide open. Someone needs you to wait, and you’re willing to wait forever.’ She wandered down the hall away from him, then turned and wandered back, her pace becoming feverish.

Was she talking about herself? Quinn wondered. But it still didn’t make any sense. His patience was upsetting her?

A red stain stole over her cheeks as she continued her pacing, her hands going to the buttons of her jacket. She wrenched them out of the buttonholes as she went on talking.

‘Someone needs your advice, you know the perfect thing to say. Someone falls, you pick them up. Someone forgets, you help them remember.’ Her jacket was completely unbuttoned now and coming off her shoulders.

‘Someone needs love and you make them fall in love with you.’ She flung the jacket to the ground as her anger reached its peak.

Quinn started at the admission, then fell still, thinking. Was it an admission?

‘Libby, I…’ he began, but couldn’t finish. She shook her head in frustration and raised a hand in a placating gesture, turning away from him so he could only see her profile.

For the first time she really took notice of her surroundings, not just the man who had admitted her entrance. Quinn knew what she was seeing. The walls were painted a dirty white, had deliberately been painted that colour before he had moved in. The result was a cold atmosphere that seemed as welcoming as the Antarctic winter. He had done nothing to soften the harshness. The walls remained bare. Optimists would have called it a minimalist look.

Libby moved forward into the open space that made up his lounge, his office and his kitchen. It was tidy. That was perhaps the kindest thing that could be said. The couch was comfortable but old and was positioned to capture the best view of the television. The only personal touches were his video collection, a selection of sport, mysteries and documentaries, and a silver framed photograph of a young woman. A lovely young woman who had eventually grown into the lovely older woman who had been Quinn’s mother.

‘Is this your mother?’ Libby asked, moving across the room, picking up the frame and studying the photograph closely.

‘Yes.’

‘She was beautiful.’

‘Yes.’

‘You look a little like her,’ Libby commented, turning to compare him with the picture.

‘Some people say that,’ Quinn answered shortly, unsure of what she was doing.

‘You look more like Fraser, though.’ She turned to put the frame back in its place and kept her back to him. No-one had ever said that to him before, but then again, no-one had ever had any reason to.

She continued her sweeping inspection, taking in the kitchen table with his laptop open, the cursor blinking expectantly. A mess of papers surrounded the computer, along with the variety of daily and weekly newspapers and magazines Quinn read to keep up with business affairs.

He thought guiltily of the rags pushed beneath the more respectable journals, of the pictures they had been publishing of Libby all week, although they gradually were pushed further and further towards the middle of the paper. The interest was waning, although obviously not quickly enough to suit Libby.

Tuesday’s edition had published a picture of her driving her car out of her driveway with Dee in the passenger seat. Wednesday’s pictures were a long lens series of shots; of Libby sitting at her desk on the top floor of the Verbatim building, the phone held to her ear; of Libby with Julia, the recently promoted vice president – financial; of Libby staring out the window directly at the camera; and finally, of Libby tugging shut the blinds. Thursday’s paper had made much of her lunch date with Fraser as they sat eating in Reginald’s. The pictures had been poor quality because Reginald’s guarded its patrons’ privacy zealously.

As soon as Quinn had seen the pictures of her lunching with Fraser, he had dialled his father’s number, asking a multitude of questions the instant the call was answered. How had she seemed? What had she said? Was his name mentioned? Had they talked at all about him? Did she have any intention of coming to see him within the very near future?

Fraser’s answers to all these questions had been irritatingly brief. She had seemed okay, they had only talked about business, and there had been no mention of anything relating to the current storm of media attention, except for her thanks regarding his support in boycotting reporting of her situation.

Fraser had continued the policy he had begun four years ago, instructing all the publications of his company to ignore Libby’s story.

Libby moved over to the window that overlooked the traffic congested street Quinn’s apartment block had been built on, trailing a hand absently over the back of the couch as she went. She stared out at the mid-morning stream of cars for some time and Quinn felt compelled to break the silence, felt compelled to ask what he did.

‘Libby, why are you really here?’

She turned from the window to face him, and he was annoyed to find that she was wearing that vague smile. It didn’t reach her eyes, couldn’t in fact. And couldn’t disguise the fear clouding her.

‘Maybe I’m just looking for a little reciprocity,’ she said cryptically. Quinn frowned, not understanding, so she said, ‘The grand tour.’

‘You came here to see my apartment?’

‘Maybe,’ she prevaricated, knowing it wasn’t an answer.

‘Okay,’ he said, drawing the word out longer than he had to, merely for something to say. From where he still stood by the archway to the hall, he pointed into the area where Libby stood. ‘Lounge and kitchen.’ He pointed down the hallway. ‘Hallway, bedroom, bathroom.’

‘You call that a tour?’ She moved closer to him, stopping in front of him.

‘Was there something you specifically wanted to see?’

‘Someone.’ She whispered it, so quietly Quinn wasn’t sure she had spoken. But suddenly he knew he’d had enough of words; it was time for action.

‘There was something I wanted to show you,’ he said forcefully, taking her arm and leading her down the hall towards the only two rooms that were located there, as he had just informed her. She must know where he was taking her and she wasn’t resisting.

He pulled her into the room that facilitated as his sleeping quarters. It was as bare as the rest of the house. The wrought iron double bed was neatly made up with white sheets and covers, perhaps the only pristine white in the entire apartment. On his bedside table was a collection of biographies of the world’s great business leaders and a selection of motorbike magazines that prided themselves on actually being about motorcycles and not half-naked girls draped over motorcycles.

Quinn took it all in in little more than a moment, forgetting to worry about how Libby would perceive his existence. He turned to face her as she stood in the doorway, his hand still clasped around her arm, keeping her close. She was looking at him expectantly but Quinn’s courage had deserted him.

So instead Libby said, ‘It’s nice,’ referring to the room, but obviously not meaning it. He couldn’t blame her.

‘Tell me what you’re really thinking.’

‘It’s empty,’ she said without having to think about it. ‘Why do you stay here?’

‘I don’t have a reason to leave.’ He looked at her hopefully. ‘Maybe I’m waiting for someone to give me one.’

The silence seemed to last a long time.

‘Quinn—’

‘Libby—’ he said at the same moment.

It only strengthened the tension that they were both in the grip of. Finally Libby simply closed her eyes.

Quinn didn’t move or say anything. He needed her to be able to look at him directly and tell him everything, without hesitation, without needing to hide behind closed eyelids. He dropped his hand from her arm but remained standing in front of her.

The removal of his touch was registered with a flicker of her eyelids, although they remained shut tight. Quinn took a moment to run his gaze down over her body, taking in her slim shoulders, the cleavage that peaked from the vee of her white top, the small waist, the curving hips, the slim legs that appeared so temptingly from beneath the hem of her skirt. When he looked back up at her face, she was watching him watching her. He was momentarily caught off guard.

‘Quinn.’ Her tone was suddenly sure and her eyes were remaining completely open. She took a step towards him and for all his good intentions of waiting until she was willing to open herself completely to him, he matched her step, and she was in his arms.

‘Quinn.’ This time her voice was breathless, like she could barely summon the air to speak the words. And it was fully his intention to keep her breathless for a good while longer. His mouth came down on hers as hers came up to meet his, and their lips collided forcefully, but fit together perfectly, like there had never been another mouth destined to connect with his own.

This was what he had been waiting for. Libby was in his arms once more, and as far as he could tell, she didn’t want to leave. He wasn’t thinking about the fact she had yet to open up to him. He could live without ever hearing any explanation as long as he could have her in his arms forever.

His lips moved hungrily over hers, then covered her face in tiny kisses, his hands in her hair, her hands cupping his shoulder blades. They dropped to her side when his mouth found her neck, and he took advantage to allow his fingers to steal up under her shirt to tantalise the smooth skin of her waist. Her skirt was already around her thighs as one knee came up to stroke its way down the inside of his thigh, and thoughts of throwing Libby onto the bed were positioning themselves in the forefront of his mind when an insistent ringing sound penetrated his consciousness.

She became aware of it at the same moment, her leg coming down from its very tempting position and rejoining its mate on the floor. She put her hands around his waist and let them drift down to rest on the curves of his buttocks.

‘Ignore it,’ she whispered, and focused the attention of her mouth on the underside of his chin, finding a sensitive spot and exploiting her power. But sense overcame sensation when he thought about who could possibly be at the front door. Who always seemed to manage to interrupt them at the least convenient time?

‘Libby,’ he found the strength to gasp out, ‘what if it’s Dee?’

His words stopped her and she looked up into his eyes with something approaching concern. ‘It couldn’t be. She’s at school.’

‘Who is the one person who always interrupts us when we start…?’ He didn’t finish but knew his words had hit the mark. Libby straightened her clothes and ran a hand over her hair, then opened the door ahead of him and ran to the front door. She yanked it open without bothering to spy their visitor through the peephole.

Quinn couldn’t see who was standing beyond the threshold but Libby’s reaction told him it wasn’t Dee. She took a stumbling step backwards, her hand seeking the wall to hold her up.

Fleetingly, it occurred to him that it might be a reporter, but the absence of cameras flashing pushed the idea out of his mind.

And for all that this interloper had been unwelcome, Libby couldn’t seem to pull her gaze from the sight of the person. Quinn strode forward to finally glimpse him, a man as it turned out, with model good looks and perfectly tousled hair. He was looking at Libby with something akin to regret, which Quinn couldn’t understand. The visitor managed to look away from Libby to take in Quinn’s appearance behind her, but gave him scant attention, dismissing him and looking away.

The silence extended for much longer than would have been comfortable for even the best of friends, the most intimate of lovers, faced with each other at an open door. Quinn somehow felt superfluous, which was strange considering they were all standing in the hallway of his apartment. He wondered how long the standoff could go on when finally the visitor said calmly, ‘Hello, Libby,’ much as Quinn had earlier after Libby had appeared so suddenly at his door. But her reaction to this greeting was much more vehement, much more expressive, something he would have doubted could be after her anger less than half an hour ago.

Suddenly she didn’t need the wall to hold herself up. She didn’t need to maintain any distance, as she had previously seemed to feel the need. And she couldn’t maintain the shocked emotion that had held her rooted to the carpet for so long. She ran at the man at the door, her fists beating on his chest, screaming, ‘You killed my mother!’

Liberty’s Secret: Chapter Thirteen

I wrote Liberty’s Secret thirteen years ago when I thought I was going to be a romance writer (before I got bored by the formula). But when I decided that wasn’t the kind of writing I wanted to do, my completed genre novel was essentially abandoned and forgotten. But sometimes I get nostalgic about the path I’ve taken as a writer (and that includes the path not taken). So over the next two months, I’ll be posting it here a chapter at a time.

This is Chapter Thirteen.

*****

The moment Libby stepped from the limousine, the front door to the house opened and Dee appeared from inside. She ran to her sister, engulfing her in a bear hug, her face buried in Libby’s shoulder. It was obvious Dee had seen the article and was hurting deeply. Once again, as Libby had surmised, her feelings of hurt and humiliation had to be pushed aside to make room for Dee’s.

Quinn watched them hug from his vantage point inside the back of the car, not wanting to interrupt. He had told Libby that she had him to help her deal with her problems but the scene was proving to him that what was between her and Dee was something he could never, and would never want to, intrude on. He only left the cocooning comfort of the car once he had watched them walk into the house, arm in arm.

Fraser met him at the door with a very serious expression on his face.

‘Quinn, I am so very sorry about this. I had no idea. If I had known, I would have done everything in my power to stop its publication.’ Fraser gripped his shoulder in an effort to convey his regret.

‘It’s not your fault, Dad.’

Both men started at the word, Fraser wondering if he had heard correctly and Quinn wondering if he had said it or just thought it. Both, however, knew that there were more pressing concerns.

Quinn followed his father into the sitting room where Libby and Dee were perched on a sofa holding hands.

‘Do you want some time alone?’ Fraser asked, and Libby looked up at him while Dee remained with her eyes glued to the point where their hands were joined.

‘No, Fraser,’ Libby said with a strange inflection in her voice, and when she looked at Quinn he knew that she was seeing him in a different light now that she knew he was his father. ‘That’s okay. We’re okay,’ she assured him, looking to Quinn with a plea not to contradict her. He shoved his hands into his pockets to signal his acquiescence.

‘But I think Dee would like to go home.’ She stood and Dee stood with her. ‘We’d just really like to get home. Would Henry mind one more trip?’

‘Not at all,’ Fraser said instantly, backing out of the room. He called out to a member of his staff, who arrived immediately with Dee’s luggage. ‘Come on, Dee.’

Dee went to Fraser straight away, into the comfort of his arms as they walked to the open front door. Libby followed a short distance behind with Quinn. They were both unsure of what to say to each other, and at that moment Quinn wondered whether it was simply better not to speak.

He reached the front door before Libby, and closed it forcefully before turning to stand in front of her. The look on her face asked the question and he answered it by taking her face between his hands and kissing her. Her hands went to his, but did not try to wrench them away. She was kissing him back. And in that kiss was everything that was between them. The intimacy, the passion, the fear, the promise of something further when they could finally work through everything that was forcing them to be apart for the moment.

When Quinn pulled back, Libby was looking at him openly, but she still couldn’t bring herself to say anything.

‘You have me.’ He repeated the only thing he could think might bring her some small comfort. She looked at him for a moment longer before stepping aside and opening the door that had shielded them from the view of Fraser and Dee. She closed it behind her, cutting Quinn off.

He watched from a curtained window beside the door as the two Freeman sisters got into the car, as Henry drove off slowly down the driveway, as Fraser waved them goodbye from his position in front of the house. Quinn let the curtain drop and went back into the sitting room. He contemplated pouring himself a stiff drink, but doubted it would solve anything.

He was lounging on a sofa staring at the ceiling when Fraser returned. His father stood in the archway to the room regarding him without expression.

‘Why did this have to happen now?’ Quinn asked, exhaling noisily with frustration.

‘Did she tell you herself?’ Fraser asked, and Quinn shook his head. ‘It would have happened sooner or later anyway.’

‘But why did it have to happen this exact morning? She would have told me eventually. She would have told me. And that would have been the sign of her trust.’

‘She trusts you already.’ Fraser sat down beside him. ‘It’s herself she doesn’t trust.’

‘So what do I do now?’

‘You wait,’ Fraser said simply.

‘And if she never comes to me?’ The thought was so unpalatable that Quinn could barely voice it.

‘That’s a possibility.’ Fraser’s tone was slightly choked. It was exactly what had happened to him. He obviously didn’t want it to happen to his son as well. ‘But I think she’ll come. She loves you. She trusts you. She knows you love her. And more than anything, she just wants to be happy. She knows you can make her happy.’

Quinn didn’t agree but he didn’t disagree either.

Fraser paused a moment before continuing. ‘So is there something else we should talk about?’

‘Something else?’ At that moment, Quinn couldn’t imagine that there was anything else to talk about.

‘Dad?’ It was all Fraser had to say for him to understand.

‘Well, you are my father and it was about time, surely.’

‘And that’s it? It was just suddenly time?’

‘No. There’s more to it than that.’ Quinn tried to think of the perfect way to sum it up. But he couldn’t. So he just began speaking, and let it all flow out. ‘When I saw how upset Libby was about the article, I thought that perhaps if she knew that we all have our little secrets, then she wouldn’t feel so bad. So I told her you were my father. And it must have acted as some sort of catalyst. I finally told someone and it was a weight off my shoulders. And I don’t think I want to hide it anymore.’

He thought for a second. ‘We’re just perpetuating what Mum did to us by keeping it to ourselves. We’re betraying ourselves by keeping her secret. I want people to know that I have a father and that I am proud of him. That I’m proud to be his son.’

Fraser’s smile was uncontained. ‘I’m proud to be your father. I always thought of you as the son I never had. It just turned out that you were the son I always did.’

A content silence fell over them, broken only when Fraser said, ‘I take it last night went well?’

The memory of it alone was enough to bring a smile to Quinn’s face. ‘It went well.’

‘Good.’ Fraser stood up. ‘I was afraid I might have to fire one of you.’

‘Oh.’ Quinn jumped to his feet, not exactly sure how he was going to say this to the man who was both his father and his boss. ‘Well, actually, that’s something I have to discuss with you.’ They wandered down the hall towards the kitchen.

‘Do you think I’m someone you could work without?’

‘What’s this about, Quinn?’

‘Dad, I quit.’

* * *

By Monday afternoon, Quinn was like a caged tiger in his apartment. He had never been unemployed before and the idleness, along with the enforced wait for further contact with Libby, was beginning to drive him crazy.

He had spent the morning tinkering with his bike, convincing himself it needed some attention. After removing spark plugs that could have survived for a further six months, he headed down to the specialist motorcycle shop where he shopped for everything from spark plugs to helmets and leather jackets.

‘Hi, Jack,’ he greeted the man behind the service counter.

‘Quinn,’ Jack said gruffly in return. ‘Be with you in a minute.’

Quinn leaned against the counter, surveying the layout of the shop. There were rows and rows of helmets in all the colours of the rainbow, making the black one tucked under his arm seem rather old-hat. There was rack after rack of leathers, adorned with motorcycle brands. The idea was forming in his mind before he even spotted the brand new black leather jacket adorning the mannequin in the middle of the store.

‘What do you say, Jack? That jacket be about the right size for a fifteen-year-old?’

He had purchased the spark plugs and the jacket before sense could interfere with his plan. He changed out of his grease covered jeans and white t-shirt into clean black jeans and black t-shirt and sped away from his apartment.

At exactly three-thirty, he was waiting outside Dee’s school, with the new leather jacket hanging over the back of the bike along with his own well-worn jacket.

When the bell signalled, tension was evident in every muscle in Quinn’s face. It occurred to him that perhaps Dee hadn’t come to school. She had been very upset yesterday, enough to warrant a small leave of absence. But his worry was for nothing. She emerged by herself, her head down, her backpack slung over one shoulder.

She walked right up to the school gate before noticing him.

‘Quinn.’ The tone of her voice was slightly dimmer than usual but she hurried forward to meet him, then stopped almost awkwardly.

‘Hi, Dee,’ he greeted her, studying her face. He couldn’t tell if the previous day had taken its toll or not. Emotions seemed at war on her face, a mixture of pleasure and confusion.

‘Have you come to take me home?’ she asked with a small smile.

‘If you like.’

‘I don’t really want to go home,’ she confided with a weary air.

‘Any reason why?’

‘Well, the press are camped out on the nature strip. That damn article reminded everyone and now we can’t get a moment’s peace. They were there when we woke up this morning, they followed Libby to work, they tried to interview all the workers as they arrived at the Verbatim building. I spoke to Libby at lunchtime. She said I should go to Grandma’s, not home.’ She looked around as if searching for the flash of camera bulbs.

‘I don’t have to take you home. We could just go for a ride if you prefer.’

Dee smiled at the idea.

‘I brought you a present, just in case.’ He held up the shiny black jacket and Dee gasped with excitement.

‘For me?’

‘For you,’ he confirmed and she squealed with pleasure. She dropped her bag to the ground and immediately put the jacket on, admiring the fit.

‘Thank you, Quinn. This is the best present I’ve ever been given.’ To her fifteen-year-old mind, it probably was.

‘Any preferences on a destination?’ he asked, straddling the bike and handing her a helmet before tightening his under his chin.

‘Let’s go down to the river. Mum used to take me down to the river to watch the sunset.’ She jumped on behind him and they roared off down to the river, parking the bike on the bank and sitting at the water’s edge.

Dee trailed her fingers in the cool water, watching her reflection ripple out in circles as the surface was disturbed.

‘How’s Libby?’ Quinn asked after the silence had consumed them for some time.

‘She’s…I don’t want to say unfeeling. But you know that face she gets? The one where you can’t tell if she just doesn’t care or if she hasn’t even heard what you said? She’s been wearing it non-stop since she got back from your cabin.’

‘I call it vague.’

‘Yeah,’ Dee agreed, looking up with a smile. ‘That’s exactly what it is.’ She was silent again.

‘But you know what the strange thing is?’ she said after a minute. ‘I’ve seen that face a million times. She uses it on my teachers, she uses it on Fraser, she uses it on Grandma, she uses it when Mormons knock on the door, I’ve even seen her use it on you. But she’s never used it on me before.’

‘It was all I ever got when I first met her.’ It seemed an age ago.

‘I always thought we were so close that she’d never want to hide her feelings from me. She’s everything in my life.’

‘You’re everything in her life, Dee.’ Quinn felt the conviction of the words as he said them.

‘Then why can’t she tell me what she’s really feeling? Why can’t she say, “Dee, I’m so angry about this” or “Dee, I’m so hurt because of this” or something?’

‘She thinks she’s protecting you.’

‘Me? I don’t need protecting. Apart from the fact that it hurts Libby, this doesn’t affect me at all.’

And there was the paradox. Libby was upset on Dee’s behalf and Dee was upset on Libby’s behalf. Once Libby realised that it didn’t affect Dee in the way it once had, she could move on and deal with her own hurt.

‘Have you told Libby that?’

‘No.’ Dee looked at him quizzically. ‘She knows.’

‘Libby thinks she has to push all her feelings aside over this to help you deal with it, to keep you from being hurt any more than you already have been.’

‘I was hurt four years ago. My mum was gone and I didn’t understand why. I get a bit girly about it on the anniversary of her death, as you saw. That day you were helping us cook dinner. But I deal. I’ve dealt. It’s past.’

‘Maybe you should tell Libby that.’

‘Maybe I should,’ she agreed. ‘Why are you so good at this?’

‘I’m not usually,’ Quinn admitted. ‘You’d better take advantage while you can.’

Dee smiled at him and he mimicked her expression as a feeling of warmth stole over him. He lay back on the grass to soak up the last rays of the day when she spoke again.

‘Quinn, why aren’t you at work?’

‘Oh, I quit,’ he said casually, for the first time that day not feeling the strange guilt or frustration that had dogged him for most of the morning.

‘Why?’ Dee’s surprise was evident in her voice.

‘Maybe I should let Libby tell you.’

‘Hell would freeze over first,’ she grumbled, lying back with her arms extended under her head to cushion the ground.

‘Well, she said, “Quinn, I don’t get involved with people I work with” and I said, “Libby, I quit” or something like that.’

‘Wow, that’s so romantic!’ Dee sighed loudly and Quinn had a moment of déjà vu.

‘You’re not going to ask if we’re getting married, are you?’

‘No,’ she laughed, ‘I’m just saying it’s romantic.’

‘Yeah,’ Quinn said with a smile, ‘it was sort of romantic.’

‘I think so,’ Dee reiterated. Quinn thought for a moment.

‘You’re so easy to impress, Dee. If only Libby were as susceptible.’

‘She is,’ she said, looking at him. ‘Libby and I are the same. She’s made me everything I am. I’m just a little version of her with a smart mouth and a slightly less tragic past.’

‘Will she come to me?’ he asked, driven to incongruity by his longing.

Dee looked into his eyes and he stared straight back, noting without surprise her understanding, the maturity beyond her years.

‘Eventually.’

But eventually was too long.

‘Don’t worry,’ Dee said, her perception obvious again. ‘I’ll be planting the seeds as soon as she gets home. The end of the week is my guess.’

They took the long way home, savouring the wind tugging at their jackets, stopping first at Grandma Freeman’s house and continuing once Libby’s message to come home was passed on. The press were still camped on the nature strip, so Quinn didn’t stop his bike. He drove around into the street behind the Freeman house and watched Dee run through the yard of the house behind hers, then vault the fence.

‘End of the week,’ she yelled to him, her head and a hand popping up over the fence to wave goodbye to him.

‘Is that Friday or Sunday?’ Quinn yelled back.

‘Better give me until Sunday.’

Liberty’s Secret: Chapter Twelve

I wrote Liberty’s Secret thirteen years ago when I thought I was going to be a romance writer (before I got bored by the formula). But when I decided that wasn’t the kind of writing I wanted to do, my completed genre novel was essentially abandoned and forgotten. But sometimes I get nostalgic about the path I’ve taken as a writer (and that includes the path not taken). So over the next two months, I’ll be posting it here a chapter at a time.

This is Chapter Twelve.

*****

‘At Liberty To Love,’ screamed the headline, in a pun Quinn didn’t understand. He debated whether to read on. And the pro side won out. That was a picture of him on the front page, so it concerned him, too.

Four years is a long time in entertainment, as anyone in the industry will attest to. Four years has certainly been a long time in the life of Liberty Freeman.

Liberty Freeman? Quinn thought quizzically. Her name was Liberty? The first paragraph confirmed the article was about Libby, so again the debate about whether to read on arose. It wouldn’t be intruding on her privacy, any more so than the newspaper had already done, but did that make it any less reprehensible? In the end, Quinn was weak. He had to know more about what made this woman tick. So he read on.

It was just four short years ago when Liberty, or Libby as she is known to her friends, first came to our attention as the pretty, shy girlfriend of nineties’ acting sensation Adam Hall. The two had met through Libby’s sisters, April and Helena, who were both making it big modelling on the catwalks of Paris and Milan. The two sisters are currently among the most sought after models in Europe, having graced numerous magazine covers and headlined a selection of couture fashion shows.

From friendship blossomed the stunning romance that took the entertainment scene by storm. Libby, a backroom editor with the distinguished literary agency Wilson & Co., was propelled headlong into the non-stop glamour world of acting and celebrities, along the way becoming a minor celebrity herself, as the girl next door who had captured the heart of the world’s most eligible acting bachelor.

Libby was hardly a stranger to the limelight. As a small child she had appeared at catwalk parades, mingling backstage with models who must have seemed like walking trees to the youngster. Her mother, Grace, of course, was a famous model of the seventies, who only gave up her career after the birth of her second daughter, Helena.

There was speculation for some time that Libby might follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a model, utilising the stunningly unique looks that had been passed on from her mother, but this was extinguished when Libby was accepted to the University of Melbourne. She took up the offered place, gaining a Masters in English Literature before taking up her position at Wilson & Co.

The wonderful life that everyone plans and hopes for seemed to be coming true for Libby. Her romance with Adam Hall continued to flourish and rumours of an engagement began to circulate. The rumours were denied at once by Hall’s agent and spokesperson, George Bannister, but the denial merely added fuel to the gossip rather than laying it to rest.

Millions of teenage girls around the world cried themselves to sleep at night at the thought that Adam Hall would soon be off the bachelor market. Throughout the spread of the rumours, Libby held her silence, refusing to comment on them, saying only that she refused to dignify them by responding and that her private life was her own.

It seemed, however, that Hall had other ideas regarding the role of their relationship in his career. He was suddenly an A list actor, and most people perceived that it was due to Libby’s influence, helping him read scripts and select inspired film roles, advising him against returning to the B grade action thrillers that had begun his career.

So despite the later assurances of the public that it would have had little impact on their movie viewing habits, Hall publicly declared his love for his girlfriend, believing the show of emotion would add further depth to his public image.

“I love you, Libby Freeman.” The words echoed around the world. Even at the time, however, it seemed that Libby was little more than a prop in the events that unfolded around Hall’s declaration. The image of her shocked face was splashed all over newsstands around the English-speaking world, with pages two and three of every glossy magazine printing spreads of the sequence of photographs, encompassing her instant shock, her pleasure as she overcame the suddenness and very public nature of the announcement, their lips pressed together in a similarly public show of emotion, and the dazzled expression mingled with confusion as she was led away by Hall.

She was not to know it at the time, but it was the lead-up to the most important events of her life. The next morning she was studying the strangely surreal photographs of herself and Hall before heading off to work. A day later she was studying more photographs of Hall, only this time she was absent from the lurid, lewd colour snapshots.

Hall had been sprung in a love nest with his latest leading co-star, Sofia Jones, who would later go on to give birth to Hall’s son. The revelation, so quickly on the heels of Hall’s announcement of his supposed devotion to Libby, filled pages and pages of glossy magazines for weeks.

It can only be speculated upon how Libby’s reaction to this stunning humiliation would have unfolded had it not been subsumed by the sudden tragic death of her mother, Grace Freeman, in a car accident the very next day. Her own emotions regarding the very public betrayal by her boyfriend had to be set aside as she took on the responsibility for her eleven-year-old sister, Kennedy, a late addition to the Freeman family, born after the death of Libby’s father who succumbed to cancer when she was just twelve.

The bond between the two sisters was cemented. Both had lost a parent at an impressionable age. April and Helena returned from Europe for the funeral, both professing their desire to resettle in Australia permanently to reunite the family in what was undoubtedly a tough time. But they were persuaded by Libby not to give up their careers, and they returned to their respective homes in Paris and Milan. Libby became Kennedy’s legal guardian, setting about ensuring her future.

After almost a month’s compassionate leave, Libby returned to her work at Wilson & Co., applying herself with what one colleague referred to as “more than just dedication. She was looking for a way to forget everything that had happened to her in that three-day period.”

Despite this passion with which she dedicated herself to her work, she was passed over several times for promotion within Wilson & Co. Although there was no anger evident in Libby at being passed over for higher positions within the firm, workmates felt the anger on her behalf. The executives of the largely conservative firm of Wilson & Co. were hesitant to give someone with such a high public profile as Libby an executive level role within the company, especially given the nature of the publicity that had dogged her for months now.

When Fraser Graham emerged onto the scene, offering Libby the position of editor at his recently acquired magazine, Society, she accepted the offer immediately, despite the magazine’s poor circulation figures and reputation for consisting of fat cat journalists who believed their positions were secure long into the foreseeable future.

Libby and Fraser Graham were introduced by George Bannister shortly before Adam Hall’s betrayal and Grace Freeman’s death. The pair’s friendship was sealed by Fraser’s support during Libby’s ordeal. He ordered all glossy magazines under the umbrella of his publishing empire to boycott reporting on the circumstances of her break-up with Hall and the death of her mother, out of respect.

Among Libby’s first official actions as editor of Society was the clean out of staff she felt could not adapt to the regime she was implementing. Close to half the staff of Society were made redundant, their positions filled by a breed of young, fresh journalists Libby felt suited the vision she had for the magazine.

That vision was realised in the year that Libby spent heading up the publication. Articles on plastic surgery and the wild tantrums of supermodels and spoilt actors were banned, replaced by regular monthly sections on business, politics, the environment, literature, and, in a risky but strangely successful move, religion. Supermodels and actors were confined to the entertainment section, but were only permitted if Libby considered the issue truly newsworthy.

Through her editorials, the public was able to catch a glimpse of the intensely private woman who had once been the nation’s sweetheart. She frequently spoke her mind on political and social issues, taking sometimes controversial standpoints, but frequently reminding the reading public that the views were her own and no-one else’s.

Her editorial policy also reflected in the structure implemented for the staff of Society. An autonomous hierarchy allowed reporters more freedom than ever. And although she retained the right to refuse the publication of articles she felt would do a disservice to the magazine’s reputation, the power was used sparingly.

Six months ago she resigned her post at Society after only a year with the magazine. The announcement of her resignation was a shock to many who felt Libby was the best thing to happen to Society in the thirty years since its inception.

Almost immediately, however, Libby took up a position within another of Fraser Graham’s new acquisitions, a publishing company called Verbatim. She was installed as a co-vice president alongside the financial wizard Quinn O’Connell, who was partially responsible for the regeneration of Society magazine. Together they have completed a clean-out of the company, restructuring the hierarchy and contracting a variety of new authors, many on the books of Wilson & Co.

Although the task of turning Verbatim’s financial fortunes around has been suggested as a long term undertaking, positive results have already been achieved with the unearthing of several promising new writers and editors, and the teaming of Libby and Quinn. Several sources have suggested that they complement each other perfectly in their approaches to the task at hand.

Other sources have suggested that perhaps there is more to their relationship than simply the corporate aspect. Whispers in the halls of Verbatim are that the two vice presidents have been involved romantically for some time.

Last night’s Verbatim Ball, attended by all employees of the company at Fraser Graham’s palatial mansion, was the scene of further speculation after the couple mysteriously disappeared early in the evening. They were whisked away in a black limousine on the pretext of business, but further inquiries failed to reveal the nature of the business or where it was being conducted. It is suspected that the couple were snatching a few private moments together.

Could it be, finally, that the woman the world once watched being deceived by Adam Hall could have found true love with Quinn O’Connell?

Quinn lowered the paper slowly, disbelievingly, almost in shock. Never in a million imaginings had he thought Libby’s secret to be this huge, this public, this painful. He could now see why it had taken such a toll on her, why she hadn’t been able to force herself to let him in on it.

He tried to recollect the time four years ago when this news had seemingly consumed the world but failed. Before joining the staff of Society, Quinn doubted he had ever picked up a glossy magazine. His reading material had consisted of specialist financial and business papers, and they had obviously chosen not to run with the story of ‘Libby Freeman, girl-next-door makes good, faces demons’.

Which was all beside the point. He knew now, perhaps when she least wanted him to. There was the slight possibility that she would sigh with relief when informed that she would not have to go through the painful task of recounting that period of her life. The reason for that was highly unpalatable though. The most intimate details of her life were spread out of the front page of a national daily for the entire country to see.

Some details of his life were in there, too, specifically his and Libby’s burgeoning relationship, but he couldn’t feel any anger on his own behalf.

He tried to imagine how he would feel if he woke up one morning to find the news of his well-kept secret, that Fraser was his father, making front-page news. He couldn’t imagine it, no matter how hard he tried. But he didn’t have to succeed in that pursuit to know, at the very least, Libby was going to be extremely unhappy.

Quinn tried to be completely unselfish in his thinking but failed. It couldn’t help but occur to him that this article had come at the worse possible time. But his own feelings had to be pushed aside for the moment. He couldn’t think about how this might stall whatever had begun between Libby and himself six months ago and finally come to a head last night. He had to force himself to concentrate on Libby. Her feelings would take precedence. He would support her in whatever fashion was necessary. And if that meant backing off for a while, then he would do it. Even if it sounded like the worst thing he could imagine at that very moment.

He had no doubt that Fraser would be staring at this article right now, too, wondering why the hell this had happened and what the hell they could do to make it better. Equally, he was sure that he was coming up with as few ideas as Quinn was. He looked at his watch, noting it was still relatively early, but knowing if he called, the phone would be answered on the first ring. He made the decision to call. He had to consult Fraser about what he was going to tell Dee, and if he was going to tell her at all, or wait for Libby’s return. He also had to ask his father about what they were going to do. These sorts of things did not go unpunished in Fraser’s realm, despite the article, the newspaper and the journalist all being under the control of someone else. Libby was family, regardless of what might happen in his relationship with her. Libby was like a daughter to Fraser; he would not let this go by without retribution for bringing pain to someone he held so dear.

Quinn made the decision to call, lifting the paper and taking one last look at the photograph emblazoned across the front.

‘Oh my God,’ he heard behind him the next instant. His head swung to take in Libby’s shocked expression as her eyes took in the headline, the photograph, the lines and lines of text that she must instinctively know were about her.

She was dressed in blue jeans and a white jumper and carrying her overnight bag, which slipped from her fingers, landing with a thud on the floor.

‘Libby!’ Quinn was instantly on his feet, folding the paper in half so that the offending picture was out of sight and dumping it on the floor.

She couldn’t face him, couldn’t seem to, at least, as she turned to hide her emotions.

‘Libby, I…’ His hands went to her shoulders but she shrugged them off and stepped further away.

‘Why do they keep doing this to us?’

Quinn didn’t know what to say, knowing she didn’t mean herself and him. Her first thoughts were of her sister.

There was no comfort he could offer, not even the physical act of simply holding her because it seemed repugnant to her at that moment. And it didn’t seem to be required either. After a few more seconds, she straightened her shoulders and threw back her head, then turned to face him. Her eyes were clouds straight from the sky, promising rain but holding back, disguising the true nature of what was yet to come.

‘Let me see it,’ she commanded, but he hesitated, wanting to protect her somehow, even if it seemed all too late. Libby put out her hand, the action itself repeating her request. He shook his head, not denying her demand, just so damn sorry that this had to be happening.

She took the paper from him when he offered it to her, folding it open to the garish front page to reveal the picture that had been secretly taken of them last night as they were pushed out the front door by Fraser. He watched Libby studying the photograph with a detachment that must have taken considerable energy.

She read every single word, even turning the page to make sure there was nothing further, then refolded the broadsheet calmly.

‘They make it all sound pretty exciting, don’t they?’

He knew she didn’t want him to answer and it left him at a disadvantage. He carefully measured everything he could say and eventually chose the most innocuous. ‘I never knew your real name was Liberty.’

She smiled blankly at the comment. It was probably the one and only thing he could take from the article that wasn’t likely to upset her.

‘My mum named me Liberty because she said I was her freedom, her way out of her modelling career. Strange, I suppose, that she didn’t quit until after Helena was born. But that’s what she always told me. That I was her freedom.’ She trailed off uncertainly. ‘But she always called me Libby. Everyone has always called me Libby.’

There was a strange irony in the story behind Libby’s name, Quinn conceded. Libby’s birth had been her mother’s freedom, and Grace’s death had been Libby’s undoing.

He wished he could put his arms around her and everything would be alright, but the world didn’t work like that. And Libby knew it. She had known it at twelve when her father died, she had known it four years ago when Adam Hall had deceived her, her mother had been killed and she had taken over the care of her younger sister, and she knew it now, when everything she had fought to recover from was brought back to her in such a public medium.

They left the cabin without delay, Libby giving Henry instructions to take them straight to Fraser’s house. The chauffeur obeyed immediately, sensing the emotion in her voice that said she was not to be toyed with this morning. He drove with the partition up, separating himself from his passengers.

In a déjà vu moment, Libby pressed herself to the door furthest from Quinn, intent on staring out the window, intent on ignoring him, intent on making the two-and-a-half-hour journey without having to register his presence.

There was a strange sort of irony to his own situation, Quinn realised as he watched the woman he loved, and would always love, try to shut him out. Was it fate, he wondered, that the woman who held the key to his heart was quite possibly going to destroy him because of a secret that he had no control over? He had been through it before with his mother, thinking that she was the only person he could truly trust and being cruelly dispossessed of that illusion when she had revealed Fraser was his father. She had denied him a father for some no doubt juvenile reason – Quinn was mature enough now to be able to admit it – relating to the social differences in their background. And now Libby was trying to deny him, too. Her reasons weren’t juvenile. He could appreciate that. But Quinn knew that they could be happy together, that the hurt she had suffered at the hands of Adam Hall could be cancelled out, wiped from the slate, disappear in a puff of inconsequential smoke under the weight of their mutual happiness.

She held the key to his heart. Now he had to figure out what the key to hers was. And it all came down to this secret of hers, which was a secret no more. Her secret had forced them apart. Maybe his secret would bring them back together.

‘Libby, I know you don’t want to talk right now—’

‘That’s right. I don’t,’ she interrupted as if marvelling at his stupidity. Most people could recognise when to back off and she was definitely giving out the signals. But Quinn pressed ahead.

‘We all have our secrets, Libby.’ It was a simple enough statement, and true enough, but its effect on her was far greater than Quinn had imagined it would be. Her anger was obvious.

‘What secret do you have that could possibly compare to this? Could your secret come back to haunt you over and over? Could your secret destroy your life and strip away the possibility of ever having any privacy again? Could your secret hurt your family? Could your secret be so painful that the thought of anyone else knowing is just too difficult to fathom? Could your secret destroy the possibility of your ever trusting anyone ever again?’ She was out of breath when she finished, all her anger and hurt and distaste pouring out of her. Quinn didn’t mind that it was directed at him if it meant that it would somehow ease her pain.

But the answer to all of those questions was yes. He had been hurt in precisely the same way as she had, but he wasn’t letting it come between them. She had to know there was a light at the end of the tunnel and revealing his link with Fraser would prove to her that even if it did take ten years, as it had taken he and his father, the time would come when it would stop hurting and she would be able to truly move forward with her life.

He answered her questions one by one.

‘Yes, I have a secret that could compare. I have a secret that comes back to haunt me over and over. I have a secret that could strip away the possibility of ever leading a normal life. I have a secret that is so painful that only one other person in this world is aware of it. I have a secret that for a long time made me distrust everyone and everything.’

Libby didn’t say anything. She just looked at him, for the first time since she had discovered the article concerned with something beyond her own hurt and humiliation. He could see it on her face. He could sense it in the way she moved closer to him on the bench seat. He could feel it in the atmosphere surrounding them that her irrational anger at him was subsiding, replaced with something that had last night encompassed them, except this time he was the one with the secret and she the comforter.

‘I told you about my mother, about how I never knew who my father was until she was dying and revealed it to me, far too late for it to be any sort of consolation for the fact that she had betrayed me. Even worse was that I had known my father all my life, not knowing that he was my father, not realising that I was his son. I despised my mother for doing that to me. The one person I had trusted all along was a complete stranger. She had taken away a part of me that I could never reclaim. The pain of her death was twice as hard for me than it should have been because not only did I have to deal with my grief, my loss, the pain of losing her, I also had to deal with reconciling those feelings with anger and hate and distrust.’

The look on Libby’s face was pure sorrow and suddenly Quinn was rethinking his decision to tell her. Perhaps it wasn’t the time to burden her with this. There had to be some other way. But when she spoke, he knew he couldn’t deny her.

‘Who is your father?’ She had to know.

‘Fraser. Fraser is my father.’ They were the words he had never spoken before to another living soul except himself, and only in his mind. It was a relief finally, a weight lifted from his shoulders.

‘Oh, Quinn, I didn’t know,’ she whispered, her empathy evident.

‘Nobody knows. Fraser’s never told anyone. I’ve never told anyone.’

‘Except me.’

‘Except you.’

Libby sat limply on the seat, her mind ticking over, her hands unmoving by her sides. ‘I’m glad you told me, Quinn. I’m sorry about what I said before.’

Quinn could sense the great big ‘but’ that she was about to deliver. She waited a moment before saying it. ‘But it still doesn’t change the fact that what you have had to go through and what I have had to go through are entirely different things.’

‘They’re not so different, Libby. If you could stand back and look at the big picture for a moment you would see that.’

‘I am looking at the big picture. I’m looking at the huge picture of me plastered across the newspaper for the entire world to see. I’m looking at the article that recaps all the most horrible moments of my life. I’m looking at the same humiliation of four years ago. Every time I look at it, all I see is those cameras going off, hundreds and hundreds of them capturing the worst moment of my life.’

Quinn stayed silent, knowing he could never convince her that what she felt would pass.

‘Try to imagine the world’s press on your heels, snapping your picture as you comforted your dying mother, as she told you finally that Fraser was your father, and then being reminded for months afterwards of the betrayal. Then try to imagine that instead of having ten years to get to know your father, try to imagine that he is killed in a car accident the very next day. Try to imagine having no-one.’

Quinn sensed that everything was spilling from her. He remained quiet, hoping, but not knowing for what.

‘I’m not trying to be cruel. But you and Fraser had each other to get through it. And your secret is safe. I had a child to care for, whose grief had to take primary concern. I had to go through that completely alone. I had no-one. And I have to get through this by myself. I still have a child to care for, and her feelings still have to take first place. I am still completely alone. I still have no-one.’

‘You have me,’ Quinn said quietly, instantly, not stopping to think about the words.

She had no response to that. To deny it would be to kill what was between them, and as much as she was hurting, he knew she didn’t want to do that. But to admit it was to trust him, completely, implicitly, and she couldn’t do that either.

They sat in silence the rest of the way home with his statement hanging uncomfortably between them, resolving nothing. As the limousine turned into Fraser’s long driveway, Quinn felt a surge of regret. He had spent the rest of the car trip hoping that Libby would say something, anything so that his words would not remain the last thing said between them. But she hadn’t. So now he had to wait for her to make the next move. Now he had to wait until she was ready. And the past six months had taught him that the wait could be a long one.

Liberty’s Secret: Chapter Eleven

I wrote Liberty’s Secret thirteen years ago when I thought I was going to be a romance writer (before I got bored by the formula). But when I decided that wasn’t the kind of writing I wanted to do, my completed genre novel was essentially abandoned and forgotten. But sometimes I get nostalgic about the path I’ve taken as a writer (and that includes the path not taken). So over the next two months, I’ll be posting it here a chapter at a time.

This is Chapter Eleven.

*****

‘What?’ Libby’s response was subdued, muted, almost as if she hadn’t understood the words. Before Quinn could reiterate his statement, she turned away with a smile on her face that signalled anything but amusement. He couldn’t read its meaning precisely but something made him think she did not accept the sincerity of his resignation.

‘Libby—’

‘You can’t get me that easily,’ she said, turning back to face him and this time her expression was obvious. ‘You’re not going to manipulate me into bed with you.’

‘Manipulate you?’ He hoped he looked as incredulous as he felt. ‘You think I’m trying to manipulate you?’

She bit her bottom lip and looked at the floor with something approaching regret, but didn’t say anything.

‘Libby, you know how I feel about you. That’s probably the reason you’re so scared. But that can’t excuse what you just said to me. I have done everything I could think of to remove the barriers between us, most of them erected by you. I’m willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for you and you still think I’m playing some sort of game.’

There was moisture in the corners of her eyes and Quinn didn’t like the thought that he was the cause. He moved past her to the telephone. ‘I’ll call that cab.’

It was over. He knew it. And despite her obvious pain, so did she.

He heard the dial tone in the receiver at his ear at the same moment as Libby said from behind him, ‘You mean you’d give up Verbatim just to be with me?’

Quinn looked at her over his shoulder without having dialled a single number. ‘I’d give up everything.’

‘Quinn,’ she whispered as tears threatened. But before they could come she was reining in control of her emotions. That didn’t matter to Quinn, though. He had seen the weakness.

‘Libby.’ He moved towards her, forgetting the phone and stumbling into a chair. When she saw his movement, she turned and fled.

Cursing the phone and the chair but straightening them before he went after her, Quinn burst out of the kitchen into the lounge in time to see Libby at the top of the stairs. He took them two at a time, reaching the top as a door slammed somewhere on the second level. He opened every door, peering in the three bedrooms and the bathroom before opening the door of the master bedroom.

She sat on the edge of the bed facing the window, her back to him, her shoulders rising and falling fast. She knew he was suddenly there with her. Quinn shut the door behind him, leaning against it, leaving the light off, knowing the semi-dark would benefit them both.

‘Libby,’ he said without moving, ‘I don’t want to hurt you. I hate the idea that I’ve done this to you.’

Her voice sounded calm but her control was faltering as she responded, ‘You haven’t. I’ve done this to myself.’

Her secret. That was what she meant. Whatever it was, it had done this to her.

‘Tell me.’ He could hear the plea in his voice, and the corresponding desperation in her own as she said, ‘I can’t. I just can’t.’

He let out a sigh and sat down on the bed, facing the door. They were only a metre apart but the gulf seemed ever widening. He didn’t know how to make this right.

He had almost decided that what Libby needed most was to be alone when he felt her hand seeking his on the bedspread. He shifted his position, raising one leg to rest folded on the bed as their hands met and entwined. But Libby still wouldn’t look in his direction. Despite the comfort of his hand, she continued staring out the window, unable to move, until finally she did. He moved at the same time, sensing the change, his arms going around her waist as hers went around his neck.

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, burying her face in the hollow of his throat and pressing herself close. They sat there embracing for a long time, the seconds too many to count, the minutes to numerous to register. Eventually he lowered her onto the mattress, sensing rather than feeling her fatigue, and she didn’t resist. She just curled up next to him with her head on his chest, almost unwilling to let go.

The temperature was considerably less warm upstairs away from the fire, Quinn noted as Libby shivered despite the heat generated by their embrace. She was still wearing his jacket, but it was inadequate against the cold of the country night. He sat up for a moment to pull the blanket at the end of the bed over them and Libby clutched at him arm.

‘Don’t leave me,’ she pleaded in a small voice, gripping his shirt and pulling him back to her.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he promised, tucking her even closer and letting the blanket fall over them, his hand soothing her under the blanket, moving over her back in a hypnotic motion. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he repeated. ‘I love you, Libby.’

The words were unconsciously said, without thought for her apparent distaste of the expression. And he couldn’t regret them, despite her feelings.

‘I know,’ she said in a small, content voice, surprising him, and he smiled until he fell asleep.

* * *

He didn’t know how long he slept. And as consciousness stole over him, he wasn’t sure why he was waking again. It was still dark. And it was still cold. Maybe that was what had woken him. The cold was seeping inside his shirt, prickling his skin. Except for an intermittent warm sensation just over his heart.

It took a moment for his eyes to respond to the command to open. When they finally did, he wasn’t sure that he wasn’t still asleep and dreaming.

Libby was kneeling beside him and her head was on his chest, her ear over his heart, her eyes on his face. The cold that he had sensed seeping inside his shirt wasn’t seeping at all. The buttons were all unfastened, exposing his skin to the night air, the blanket pulled down to his waist.

When Libby saw that he was awake, she sat up hesitantly, her hair falling over one shoulder. She pushed the chocolate brown mass behind one ear, then rested her hands on either side of her as she lent forward slightly.

‘Libby?’ Quinn brought a hand up to rest on her thigh, and it was then he realised that along with the black jacket, her gown was gone, and she was dressed only in her underwear, a strapless white lace bra and matching pants. The other half of the blanket that was pulled up to his waist was draped about her shoulders, chasing off the worst of the chills.

He sat up half way, his hand on her thigh moving up to cup her hip, feeling the soft scratchy lace, tracing it with a finger. Her hand went to his, pressing it into her flesh, pressing it under the waistband, then sliding up his shirt-covered arm and around his neck. She moved then, her legs going either side of his and her arms going around his shoulders, her face buried under his chin.

Quinn didn’t question her motives, didn’t care at that exact moment. He just tightened his hold, sitting up fully and pushing back her hair. He didn’t want to speak because he always said the wrong thing. Instead he would kiss her.

But she made the move before him, her lips on his neck, working her way up until she found his lips, pressing brief, desperate kisses against his mouth, then his cheeks and his eyelids. And then suddenly she stopped, pulling back to look at him, and he let her have the control, knowing it was the only way.

He waited for the words.

‘I…’ She wanted to tell him, to say it, but it was too hard for her, so he offered her an escape.

‘Libby, you don’t have to say it. I don’t need to hear it. I just need you.’

The look in her eyes was her answer, and her response was to push his unbuttoned shirt off his shoulders and kiss her way along his collarbone from the tip of one shoulder to the other, pausing in the middle to focus her attention on the small hollow, tracing the line down his chest. Quinn threaded his hands through her silken hair, cupping her face as she rose and running his thumb across the softness of her lips. She kissed the pad of his thumb, and the fleshy base, his palm, and the pulse at his wrist.

Quinn caressed his way down her throat, over the bones in her chest, lingering on the perfect creamy slopes of her breasts, finally moving lower to circle the dark suggestion of her nipples through the lace of her bra.

Libby’s head fell back as she exhaled quietly her pleasure at his touch. He replaced one hand with his mouth, but only for a moment, moving back up to claim her mouth, wanting some sense of equality between them. Her fingers held his face as their tongues met and his hands went to the clasp of her bra, wrenching it undone with haste and disposing of the garment. She pressed herself closer as soon as the barrier was gone, and he felt the softness of her flesh so intimately against him, so warm, so perfect.

Libby captured his wrists and worked on the tiny cuff buttons, slipping the discs through the holes and sliding his shirt off until he was as bare as she was. Her hands stole over the light dusting of hair on his chest, tracing the muscles and his pebbled male nipples until the breath caught in Quinn’s chest. With unconscious teasing, she moved on, her fingers running the length of his torso, feeling the flatness of his stomach and the way he quivered when her hands moved lower. He was hard immediately and his control was under threat.

But Libby again moved on, whether with mischievous intent or innocent playfulness he wasn’t sure, and her attention went to his arms and the rippling muscles, the strength, running all the way down to lace her fingers with his and to push him back on the bed. She came down with him, body to body, fingering his hair and pushing it back from his brow, and just looked into his face, studying every line, his eyes, his lips.

She closed her eyes and dropped her mouth to his, her lips moving in a sweet caress over his, and Quinn responded in a similar fashion, savouring the sensation of their bodies, their hips, their chests, their mouths pressed together. He strained against the pressure of his clothes, constraining the full force of his passion for her, and Libby recognised the movement of need in him. She kissed her way down his body, her lips leaving his mouth to trail hot wet kisses over his neck and chest, pausing with devastating effect, then continuing past his stomach to the waistband of his pants. She anointed the line of skin above his belt with her tongue while her hands went to work on the fastening.

She pulled the strip of leather free and flung it uncaring across the room before turning her attention to the zipper of his trousers. The delicate speed with which she dispensed with his pants only increased his arousal and for the first time they were completely equal. But even the short seconds it had taken her to free him from his clothes were too long away from Quinn’s arms. He acknowledged to himself that now he knew the satisfaction of it, he could hardly bear a moment of some part of them not being joined.

He pulled her back to him and turned her onto her back and immediately her feet were part of her seduction as they skimmed the backs of his legs. As soon as he could manage it, the final clothing barrier between them was gone and he was kissing her, his tongue teasing the corners of her lips, sweeping across her teeth, meeting and entwining with her tongue.

The cold night air no longer had their attention, no longer was felt on their skin. The heat they generated together protected them from the bite, cocooned them safely from feeling anything but their intensity.

Taking advantage of the leg Libby had wrapped around his hip, Quinn watched Libby’s face as his fingers found her secret core. He could tell she wanted to return his gaze, but as he stroked the junction between her thighs with ever-increasing rhythm and pressure, the resulting pleasure forced her eyes closed. She strained against him exposing the column of her throat, her hands tightening on his arms, her fingernails digging in to his skin.

She gasped as the power of the experience washed over her in wave after wave. Quinn leisurely explored the length of her throat with his mouth to allow her a moment to recover, but she didn’t want to recover. She didn’t want to pull back. She wanted to jump. And Quinn wanted to jump with her. He wanted them to jump together.

She drew him ever closer, drew him into her embrace, drew him into her body. He heard her deep indrawn breath as pushed urgently deeper, desperate to be as close as he could. Her other leg went around his waist to complete the circle with the same instinct, with Quinn setting the rhythm, knowing if he didn’t take control at this point then he would explode far too soon, driving him beyond being able to ensure their mutual pleasure.

He listened with satisfaction as the first moan was driven from her, then kissed the second back into her mouth, moving against her all the while, stroking his hands down her body, overloading her senses in the same way she overloaded his. Her own hands were feverish against him, in his hair, framing his face, on his back, scratching her mark into him, branding him. It all combined against Quinn’s plan to make this moment last forever.

He could see it in her eyes the instant it hit her. He could feel it in her body as she convulsed around him and it drove him over the edge with her. Together they were falling, they were dropping into the pit of an unimaginable pleasure, they were catching each other and riding the crest until it subsided, washing over them and creeping back out to sea until the next time they swam out.

Quinn breathed heavily into Libby’s shoulder, listening to her doing the same, her warm breath tickling against his ear. Their closeness was perfect and he didn’t want it to end. And Libby didn’t want it to end either. When he rolled off her and lay back against the pillow, she pressed close to him, her head on his chest, her hand on his hip, keeping him close.

The silence that followed was imbued with tension. Even in his contentment as he stared down at the top of Libby’s head, Quinn couldn’t help thinking ahead to wonder what happened next. He knew this had to be a turning point; it was an obvious breakdown of barriers, but whether they remained down was something else completely.

There wasn’t anything he could do except hope. He knew what he felt for this woman was exceptional, different. And she knew it, too. It wasn’t everyday he resigned from his job to prove it.

His hand sought Libby’s, lacing their fingers. Her hand was slack and he tilted her chin up to look into her face. In sleep she appeared more beautiful, if that was possible. He kissed her forehead, drawing her as close as he could and forced himself not to think beyond this one perfect moment.

* * *

Sunlight filtering through the uncurtained window woke Quinn at dawn. The sensation of waking at his cabin was not a new one. The past few months had incorporated the feeling frequently. But waking at his cabin with Libby at his side was unfamiliar. Completely new. And completely welcome. It was an experience he had been dreaming of for the past six months.

She was sleeping on her stomach with one elbow hooked under her head, her hair spread over the pillow. Quinn turned on his side to memorise all the features of her face, the length of her lashes, the curve of her cheek, the fullness of her lips, being careful not to wake her.

Half an hour later, still lying next to her in contemplation, he heard the sound of a car pulling up. Pulling a blanket from a chair by the bed and wrapping it around himself, he went to the window. The black limousine from last night had returned and Henry was standing by the front of the car with a paper spread over the bonnet as he scanned the pages.

Quinn supposed Henry had simply been doing his job and considering the results of last night, he could hardly be angry. He smiled down at the figure of the chauffeur, who was still unaware that he was being observed.

Taking one last long look at Libby’s sleeping form, he went downstairs to grab the overnight bag that had been provided by Fraser and then back up to the second floor into the bathroom. He showered quickly, dressing in the black jeans and t-shirt he found in the bag, topping the outfit with a black v-neck jumper that was tucked away in one of the drawers in the bedroom. He ran a hand through his hair, tousling it into some sort of order, and slipped quietly out of the room. Libby still hadn’t stirred.

‘Good morning, Henry,’ Quinn called as he opened the front door and walked out onto the veranda. Henry looked up from the paper at the sound of his voice, his expression sheepish even through the old world air the chauffeur perpetually wore.

‘Good morning, Mr O’Connell,’ he responded, closing his paper. One of Fraser’s broadsheets, Quinn noted in approval. He decided not to mention the previous night, knowing it would make Henry uncomfortable and sensing that his own comfort might also be called into question.

The decision made him unsure of what to say. But Henry made further speech unnecessary. He opened the door of the limousine and produced a basket full of luxurious breakfast items.

‘Compliments of Mr Graham,’ Henry pronounced, handing over the basket. It was full of breads and pastries, fruits and jams, fruit juices and a little thermos Quinn suspected held coffee if the two coffee cups were anything to go by. A selection of Sunday newspapers rounded out the collection of items.

‘Any more orders I should know about?’

‘Just that when you are ready to return to the city, or wherever you would like to go, I am at your disposal, Mr O’Connell.’

‘I doubt we’ll be ready for some time but I’ll let you know,’ Quinn informed him.

‘Very good, sir,’ Henry said, immediately spreading the paper over the bonnet of the car once again as Quinn returned to the house.

He spread the food out on the rug in front of the fireplace which held the embers of the previous night’s fire, setting the newspapers aside for later and pouring the rich-smelling coffee into the two miniature coffee cups provided.

Climbing the stairs with a cup in each hand, he strained to make out the noises of activity but could discern nothing. When he pushed open the bedroom door, Libby was still sleeping soundly under the covers, her creamy shoulders visible over the sheet that covered her modesty. Quinn almost didn’t want to wake her.

But he did want to wake her. He wanted to tell her everything that last night had meant to him. And he wanted her to tell him it had meant something to her as well.

He sat beside her on the bed, setting one of the coffee cups on the bedside table and holding the other under her nose. When she rolled in the direction of the cup, Quinn knew he had her attention.

‘Good morning,’ he said quietly, not daring to smile, but not letting the uncertainty reach his voice.

‘Morning,’ she returned without opening her eyes.

‘It’s time to wake up.’

Her beautiful eyes finally fluttered open, fixing on him in a languorous gaze. Libby’s arms went above her head, stretching out the knots and the kinks that had developed in sleep. He was tempted to wrench off his clothes and join her under the covers again, but the knowledge that Henry was waiting for them downstairs held him back.

‘I smell coffee,’ Libby said, still under the half haze of sleep, but sitting up, making sure the sheet was tucked securely beneath her arms.

‘You want?’

‘I want,’ she answered, taking the cup from him, distracting him by letting the sheet fall, then depositing it on the table. ‘I don’t drink coffee.’

Her arms went around his neck, pulling him close, pulling him down on top of her. She kissed him with all the passion he remembered from last night, then said, ‘I’m glad last night happened.’

‘Me, too.’

She kissed him seductively once more. ‘Want to let it happen again?’

‘I want,’ he whispered in a low voice, but pulled back. ‘But Henry’s downstairs with the limo.’

‘And coffee?’ she surmised, letting him sit up.

‘And fruit and pastries and newspapers,’ he added as she yanked the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around herself sari-style. She picked up the overnight bag Quinn had brought up for her and rifled through it, selecting various items of clothing.

‘Just give me a few minutes to shower and dress.’ She looked around without moving. ‘Where’s the shower?’

‘Across the hall,’ Quinn pointed, moving over to the bedroom entrance. ‘I’ll wait for you downstairs.’

He left her to it, descending the stairs to sit on the rug amongst the food he had set out, but not wanting to eat without her. So he opened the newspapers, scanning the front page of Fraser’s broadsheet before skimming the front page of his tabloid, then unrolling the rival broadsheet, admitting to himself that he was more his father’s son than even he wanted to admit at times.

He couldn’t have been more shocked when he opened the paper out fully. For there, right on the front page, was a photograph of an angel in a lilac ball gown accompanied by a tuxedoed someone who looked distinctly like himself. He couldn’t imagine why but it seemed he and Libby were newsworthy enough to have made the front page.

Liberty’s Secret: Chapter Ten

I wrote Liberty’s Secret thirteen years ago when I thought I was going to be a romance writer (before I got bored by the formula). But when I decided that wasn’t the kind of writing I wanted to do, my completed genre novel was essentially abandoned and forgotten. But sometimes I get nostalgic about the path I’ve taken as a writer (and that includes the path not taken). So over the next two months, I’ll be posting it here a chapter at a time.

This is Chapter Ten.

*****

‘Where?’ Libby looked over from the other side of the limousine where she was pressed against the door. Quinn prevaricated for a moment, hating how the information was going to make him look but knowing he couldn’t conceal this from her.

‘My cabin.’

‘Your cabin?’

‘I own a cabin down on the peninsula. We’re pretty close now.’

‘Why would Fraser be sending us to your cabin on business?’ she asked with a confused smile on her face. Almost immediately her expression altered and Quinn knew the answer had come to her. This was not about business. So the next question followed logically enough. ‘Why would Fraser be sending us to your cabin?’

‘I have no idea,’ Quinn said with frustration, searching his mind for clues to Fraser’s reasoning.

He didn’t have to search far. Dee’s behaviour at the ball suggested she had known Fraser would offer to let her stay while Libby went off to deal with business matters. She had known. She had known because she had been involved in the entire affair.

Yesterday’s conversation about his cabin may have been entirely coincidental but no doubt that was the seed of the idea. His private, isolated cabin.

He breathed out slowly, his hand running unconsciously through his hair.

‘What?’ Libby left her contemplation of the roadside rushing past to focus on him.

‘I have an idea,’ he said, playing on his last words. She turned to face him fully.

‘Yesterday when I took Dee home, she asked why I hadn’t been around. Diplomatically I told her I’d been spending a lot of time at my cabin. I guess I didn’t think about it at the time but she seemed very interested. In fact, she was pumping me for information.’ It seemed so obvious now.

‘That doesn’t mean anything. It could just be a coincidence. And after all, you were the one who introduced the topic.’ Libby was eager to protect her sister, and her own perception of Dee. Surely her own flesh and blood wouldn’t do this to her? He could see her thoughts easily.

‘She also said tonight would be the perfect night for us to reconcile because, and I quote, I’d “be all tuxed up” and you’d “have the Cinderella thing going on”.’

Quinn’s quote was far too dialectically perfect for Libby to question its veracity. She didn’t say anything, but seemed to have accepted that Dee had set them up.

‘I may have accidentally planted the idea of this in her head,’ Quinn confessed, trying to draw some of the blame away from Dee. He didn’t doubt she had simply thought she was helping.

‘She couldn’t have done this all by herself,’ Libby said in a small voice, feeling betrayed. She slumped back into her seat as it came to her. ‘Fraser.’

Of course. The reason Dee and Fraser’s movements had seemed so perfectly choreographed was because they had been.

‘But why would he be involved in this? Why would Dee bring him into this?’

Quinn shifted uncomfortably, feeling his guilt rise.

‘He would never become involved in this sort of matchmaking on just Dee’s say so that there was something between us.’ And suddenly it occurred to her. ‘Oh, Quinn, you didn’t.’

‘Fraser and I are very close,’ he said, and the urge to reveal the link they shared became overwhelming.

‘It wouldn’t matter if you and Fraser were joined at the hip. You shouldn’t have told him anything about us. He’s my boss. We do not take our private lives to the office.’

‘He shouldn’t know that two of his vice presidents are finding it impossible to interact, even on a professional level?’

‘Our interaction wasn’t required. Verbatim was not suffering. And you know I would never have let personal feelings intrude on business.’ Libby was very angry now and he knew why. Professionally she could not be faulted. Any suggestion that their relationship had impacted on business was not fair.

‘If Fraser had concerns about our ability to work together, then he should have come to me, to us and just said so. Why does he insist on playing these games? First forcing me to resign six months ago and now this. I don’t know why I put up with it. No job is worth what Fraser has put me through, regardless of our history. I am not some toy for him to play with when he runs out of business matters to stick his nose into.’

She was incredibly angry, although Quinn felt that perhaps the circumstances were the cause rather than her perception of Fraser’s interference. He was an easy target.

But suddenly, all Quinn could really think of was how amazingly beautiful she was, how even through her anger, her inner beauty shone. And he knew the exact moment she sensed what he was thinking. She stopped talking, her eyes wide, her hands fidgeting in the folds of her dress.

To Quinn, the circumstances didn’t seem so bad anymore. Wasn’t this what he had wanted all along? To get her alone? With no chance of Dee and her infernal warning system anywhere within interfering distance?

Well, apart from Henry, he had her alone. There would be no teenage sister to interrupt anything they started. The only thing that could keep them apart now was themselves. But perhaps they were a bigger factor than anything else. Dee could be pinpointed as an convenient target for blame. But, in truth, they were keeping themselves apart from each other. Tonight had to be about overcoming the reasons. Or at least not letting the reasons keep them apart.

Tonight was also his last chance, Quinn knew. The longer he let Libby convince herself that she was justified in pushing him away, the harder it would be to overcome her convictions. He loved her. He had to make her understand that could overcome just about anything.

It was an appropriate time for the realisation as the limousine snaked its way down the unpaved driveway that led to his cabin and pulled up outside the two-storey wooden house.

As he had told Dee, it was far less rustic than calling it a cabin suggested. It was all dark wood and glinting windows in the light filtering down from the night sky. And much like Libby’s pride in her house, this was Quinn’s true home. Not the house he and his mother had rented for the majority of his life, or the apartment he owned on the outskirts of the city merely for convenience. He spent as little time as he could in that apartment, especially after the experience of seeing Libby and Dee in their home. It had proved a revelation of how stultifying his own existence had become. It was why he had been spending so much time down here on the coast.

‘We’re here,’ Quinn announced, although it was unnecessary. Libby was leaning over towards him, peering out his window at the cabin.

‘This is it?’ she asked just as unnecessarily and he nodded, watching her face. Her eyes moved from the structure to the human figure just outside the car door, Henry, placing two overnight bags on the ground just away from the car. The chauffeur avoided looking at the car, avoided looking in their direction despite the tinted windows preventing anyone from seeing into the vehicle.

They watched him climb back into the driver’s side of the car and felt the door slam shut. Almost immediately the door locks clicked up.

Libby took the initiative, opening her door and climbing out, still wrapped in his jacket. Quinn picked up her discarded lilac shawl and pushed his own door open, slamming it shut behind him. Libby looked at him over the limousine roof, standing in the space between the car and the open door. It didn’t take a genius to realise that between the bags and the location, as soon as she closed the door, Henry would drive off, leaving them alone in the night.

She knew it was inevitable, so she closed the door and walked around behind the long black stretch to join him standing by the bags. The car pulled away immediately. Despite the realisation of inevitability, Libby’s anger was not dissipating.

‘You’re going to hell for this, Henry!’ she shouted at the glaring taillights, searching the ground around them as if for something to throw at the retreating car. Finding nothing suitable, she stared up at the sky, her shoulders back and her hair lifting, floating gently in the breeze that was turning the cool night colder.

‘We’d better get inside,’ Quinn said, picking up the bags and heading for the front door. A set of keys that had sat unnoticed on top of one of the bags fell to the ground, shaking Libby out of her annoyance and she turned and moved forward to retrieve them. But she didn’t move any further.

‘It’s going to get colder. We should go inside.’

The keys dangled in her nerveless fingers. She had to know, just as Quinn did, what was expected of them by Fraser and Dee.

As much as he didn’t want to say it, he suspected it was the only thing that would pacify Libby and persuade her into coming into the house. ‘I’ll call a cab as soon as we get inside.’

The words seemed to hit the mark. She strode to the front door and inserted the key in the keyhole. She pushed the door open slowly, taking a few hesitant steps inside. Quinn followed, swinging the door shut to keep out the cold, and suddenly noticed the flickering red light and the warmth of the room.

A roaring fire occupied the fireplace, and had obviously been tended recently. Libby had noticed it, too.

‘They’re not leaving much to chance, are they?’

He set the bags by the door as she wandered over to the kitchen table where a bucket of ice and a chilled bottle of champagne sat.

‘Not much at all,’ she reiterated, lifting the bottle from the ice and turning to show him.

He followed her path into the kitchen, stopping beside her as she picked up the ‘documentation’ that Fraser had been referring to. A small envelope with both their names handwritten on the front, and containing a single sheet of paper.

‘Dear Libby and Quinn,’ Libby read in a small voice. ‘We hope you’ll forgive us, but we thought this course of action was for the best. Fraser and I discussed this and decided the real issue in your relationship was the lack of any quality time you were able to spend together, primarily because of work and my expert ability to interrupt at inconvenient times.’

At least Dee had recognised her ability.

‘When Quinn mentioned his cabin on the coast, it seemed like the obvious answer to all problems. No work, no little sister, nothing except both of you. The only difficulty was getting you both there. Quinn would have gone in an instant, I know, but Libby, we all know you’re so stubborn that you would have resisted with everything in you. This way just made things easier. A fait accompli. And you know this is what you want. You want Quinn. Quinn wants you. And Fraser and I just want to see you both happy.’ Libby stopped reading and looked at Quinn with an uncertain but wry smile.

‘She sounds like the older sister.’

He didn’t say anything. She resumed reading.

‘Fraser may have to take one of you away from Verbatim if you don’t sort it out but that’s neither here nor there if you do sort it out. Both Fraser and I agree that you are our favourite people in the world. We would be ultimately very happy to see you end up together. But we want you to do it for yourselves. Do it for the right reasons. I won’t say the ‘L’ word. I’ll just implant the idea of it into you sub-conscious. Good luck. Love, Dee and Fraser.’

Libby looked up and handed him the letter. ‘That’s it.’

Quinn didn’t bother looking at the words on the page. He dropped it onto the table as Libby sat down on a kitchen chair and rested her head in her hands.

‘You feel it, don’t you?’ he asked, remaining standing, needing some sort of advantage. Dee’s words had given him the hope that Libby wasn’t indifferent to him, but he needed to hear the words from her own lips, under her own steam, before he would allow himself to feel anything resembling triumph.

‘It’s not that easy,’ she said after a moment, fidgeting in the chair and fiddling with the silver paper on the top of the champagne bottle.

Quinn traced a finger over the back of the hand that was not consumed with distracting her from the conversation he was determined to have. ‘It can be that easy if you’ll let it. I…’ Love you, Libby, he thought, but knew from previous experience that she would not respond to the confession. ‘I feel for you, Libby. So strongly that it hurts sometimes. I know what I want.’ He wanted to hear her say she felt the same. He wanted her to share the secret she felt couldn’t be overcome to let them be together. He wanted her.

‘Sometimes I think I want the same thing,’ Libby admitted and Quinn almost couldn’t believe that she had said it. But she couldn’t just leave it at that. ‘But in my saner moments I know I can’t let it happen.’

‘Why not?’ It was an opening, if she was willing to take it, willing to share with him. But she didn’t say anything.

‘This isn’t about sanity, Libby. This is about what you feel. Why can’t you just let it be about that?’

‘Because I have to think about more things than just a momentary feeling. I have to think about what’s best for me, what’s best for Dee, what’s best for our future, what’s best for our happiness.’

‘How do you know I’m not what’s best for you?’ It seemed obvious to Quinn that if he could make her feel this way, then what was between them was right.

‘I don’t,’ she admitted. ‘But I want some sort of certainty.’

‘There’s no such thing when it comes to life. I can’t give you a guarantee. I could cross the road tomorrow and be hit by a bus.’

‘I know. And that has something to do with why I can’t let you in.’

‘What?’ She wouldn’t let him close because she was afraid of losing him? Was it as simple as that? It couldn’t be. He thought of quoting, ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all,’ but doubted she would appreciate it.

‘It’s a lot more than that, Quinn. All it comes down to is I can’t offer you what you want. So it’s over.’ She stood up to face him. ‘Are you going to call the cab now?’

‘No! I’m not letting you leave. Not if that’s all you can come up with.’

‘I’ll call the damn cab myself,’ she announced, brushing past him and picking up the receiver. He stole it from her hand and slammed it down. She looked up at him with parted lips and he brought his head down to kiss her, registering that it was savage but unable to prevent himself from the action. He also registered that she was kissing him back. But she seemed to rethink what she was doing the moment his lips softened on hers.

She pulled back, raising a hand to cover her mouth. ‘I…’

‘It better be good, Libby.’ Quinn hovered with obvious intent.

‘I…I don’t get involved with people I work with,’ she offered almost feebly, as if knowing he would not be satisfied. But in a way, it was the best thing she could have said as far as Quinn was concerned. Because he had the perfect answer.

‘I quit.’