Page 28 of A Convenient Ring to Claim Her

“You were upset when you left yesterday.”

“I was upset when I arrived.”

“We both know I was a bastard to you. Let me apologize,” he insisted. “I did believe you were protecting Eden in Gibraltar when you revealed our affair. I have always appreciated your loyalty to her, but she was with Remy.Withhim. He has always been a sore point for me. When you did that, I felt pushed out. Ganged up on. That’s no excuse for my interference between you and the museum, though. That was beneath me.”

“I should have taken more care to protect your privacy. You have every right to be angry with me. I won’t do anything like it again,” she promised with a pang in her throat, keeping her eyes on the strawberry she was stabbing.

In the thick silence, she swore she could hear him wondering exactly what she wouldn’t repeat,The affair? Or the exposure of it?

“I’ll talk to the museum, ensure you have full access going forward,” he said.

As an olive branch, it was kind but... “I won’t need it. This is going to slow me down so I’ll go back to my original proposal for my dissertation and go home.” She nodded at her bound shoulder. “It’s not as ambitious, but Cs get degrees.” She had never been graded less than a B-plus and those were an F as far as she was concerned, but as the song went, she couldn’t always get what she wanted.

“You would never be able to live with half-assed effort,” he scoffed, giving her a funny feeling in her chest at how well he knew her.

“True, but I can’t be a student forever. I thought I could push myself through a few more years of full-time school to get my doctorate, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I worked for a few years and picked away at the degree. The downside is, I wanted a fighting chance at making policy changes once I got into social work, rather than being one of those people who can see what’s wrong, can see how to fix it, but doesn’t have the power or credentials to push for change.”

“That’s your end game? Fix the system?”

“Nuts, right?” She knew how pie-in-the-sky that was. “But what’s the alternative? Not even bother to try?”

He studied her the way he did sometimes, like he was seeing her. Seeingintoher.

She swallowed, remembering that they actually hated each other. She’d forgotten that, briefly, and had talked the way she used to, when he asked about school and her plans for her future. When she felt as though they were equals in some ways. Never in all ways, but intellectually, at least.

“I’m not important so I want to do something important,” she said with pithy self-deprecation.

His frown deepened, but thankfully, the surgeon entered, putting an end to his intense scrutiny. Or rather, now it became focused on him listening to the details of her reconstruction, asking pointed questions about her follow-up appointments and the physiotherapy she would need.

“I’ll do all that at home,” Quinn insisted. “I’m clear to fly, right?”

“I’d prefer to do the follow-up myself,” the surgeon said, flickering her thickly lashed brown eyes at Micah.

Quinn bet she would, especially as Quinn’s desire to rush back to Canada made it clear she wasn’t involved with Micah.

“Where are you going to stay when you get back to Canada?” Micah asked with impatience, as though she was being unreasonable. “With the newlyweds? You can’t live alone. Not when you can’t cook or even get groceries. You can’t work. You might as well stay and continue with your proposal for your dissertation. My place in Vienna is walking distance to the museum.”

“I can’t type.” She could actually, and she could also write decently wrong-handed. She’d had enough practice, but she didn’t want to owe him more than she already did.

“Use dictation equipment. I have some if you don’t want to buy your own.” His frown told her to find an argument with legs. “Let Dr. Fabrizio continue your care. I’ll take you home when I fly to see my mother for her birthday. What day would you like to see her again?” he asked the surgeon.

Quinn only went along with the arrangements because it meant she was allowed to put on clothes and leave. Of course, she couldn’t carry both her straw day bag and the small backpack she was using for travel. Micah had to carry the bigger bag down to the car for her. He handed it with his own to the driver of a BMW, then helped her into the back seat.

“You can drop me at the youth hostel,” she said as Micah came in beside her.

“Give us a minute,” he said as the driver started to take his position behind the wheel.

The man murmured something in Italian and closed the door, then moved to stand a short distance away.

“You and I said some cruel things to each other yesterday. Maybe we even thought we meant them. At the time.” Micah turned his head and his mahogany eyes held indecipherable swirls and shadows. “But we have a lot of history. I can’t cut you out of my life. It simply isn’t possible.”

The bottom of her stomach wobbled, unsure how to interpret that.

“No matter how big a snit you and I get into, you have my promise that you can always come to me for any reason. Put me in your phone as an emergency contact,” he ordered, then seemed to recollect, “The phone I will get you because yours was run over. Call me if you need money. A dry bed. Anything.”

She was so moved, she thought her throat would close up completely, so she did what she always did when emotions got too much for her. She cracked a joke.

“What about hiding a body? Because I can’t manage a shovel right now and the man who ran me down has really ticked me off.”

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