Page 29 of A Convenient Ring to Claim Her

He stared at her for one, two, three heartbeats. Then the corner of his mouth twitched.

“He’s already in the bottom of the lake.” He looked forward and knocked on his side window to get his chauffeur’s attention. “I missed dinner with my aunt and now I have to reschedule.”

Quinn bit her smile as she looked out her own side window.

CHAPTER EIGHT

EDENTEXTEDHIMAGAIN, so Micah walked into the lounge where Quinn had sat down to catch her breath when they’d arrived back at his villa.

She might sound chipper, but she was still drugged up and sore all over. In the time it had taken him to explain to his housekeeper that a room should be prepared, Quinn had tucked herself into the corner of a wingback chair and had fallen fast asleep.

He’d thought about carrying her up to a bedroom, but aside from worrying he would put too much pressure on her shoulder, he liked that he was able to walk in here and check that she was breathing and comfortable.

It had been nearly two hours, though. He brushed his knuckle against her soft cheek and watched her eyelids flutter in confusion.

“If you sleep much longer, you won’t sleep tonight.”

“I beg to differ.” She straightened and winced, yawned. Her hair fell in her face and she brushed it away, but it wasn’t in a mood to behave. “Those painkillers could drop a bull elephant.”

She wore one rolled-back sleeve of his shirt, since it had been the easiest item for her to put on around the contraption she wore. Her bottoms were her own boxer-style pajama shorts in pink and green. She should have looked ridiculous, but he had to tear his eyes off her bare legs and the freckles peeking from the open collar of his shirt.

“Eden is desperate for proof of life.” He didn’t have Quinn’s credentials or he would have set up the new phone that had arrived. He offered his own. Eden’s number was at the top of his recent calls so she only had to touch the button to place the call. “I’ll let the housekeeper know you’re up and need lunch.”

“Thanks.” She took the phone and it connected as he reached the door.

“Is she—Oh, it’s you!”

“It’s me,” Quinn said sheepishly. “I’m fine. I look like twenty miles of dirt road, but I was only knocked, like, ten feet.”

“Don’t make jokes. Youscaredme. I’m so glad Micah was there. What if you’d been stuck in a hospital and I didn’t even know?”

That question had been repeating in Micah’s head all this time, along with a thousand other thoughts and reactions to news about his other sister. He’d been agitated last night after that news. Freshly furious with his father—he’d been angry with that man his whole life—and deeply chagrined at the hostility he’d shown toward Remy. Eden had explained that Remy’s family had been worried Micah’s father would try to claim Yasmine if he knew about her. They’d hidden the truth of her DNA even from her, but all that meant was that his father had yet again dodged taking responsibility for his actions. It fell to Micah to do it.

And there was Quinn, knowing that intensely private information about him, holding it in and navigating his anger while she protected his sister. He hadn’t known how to make sense of that, of the fact that he was grateful she hadn’t let him do anything stupid, but also furious that she hadn’t told him. Why was she always on someone else’s side, never his?

Which was a childish reaction, he knew, but in the fraught midnight hours, he’d wallowed in that sense of betrayal, drawing deeply on the pain of it because in some ways, that was the way he understood close relationships were meant to be—painful. As a child, he had loved his mother and sister, but wasn’t allowed to be with them. The family he was allowed to see were critical and cold.

When Quinn had told him to go home, he’d been hurt by it and tempted to go. He’d been exhausted and wanted to lick his wounds, but he simply couldn’t leave her there. Couldn’t risk coming back to her having disappeared.

There was irony in the fact that Quinn always said they could think better after they’d slept together because he’d woken far more clearheaded once he’d slept with her head numbing his biceps and her ass against his hip for a few hours. They had a lot to talk through, but he had the patience now to take it one thing at a time.

Then she’d started talking about going home and compromising her goals and that had been a hard no for him.

In fact, she was probably conspiring right now with his sister to get on a plane, he realized.

He left his instructions with the housekeeper and arrived outside the lounge in time to hear Quinn saying, “Micah has offered to let me stay at his place in Vienna, but I haven’t decided.”

Maybeshehadn’t, but he had.

“Are you two...”

“No.” Quinn sighed. “This is why we kept it off your radar. We didn’t want you to think this was anything serious. It was just...something that happened sometimes. It never meant anything.”

“I know you better than that,” Eden admonished. “Listen, if you’re letting my brother treat you as if you don’t mean anything, then I need to have a talk with him. You should expect more from him.”

“He’s giving me exactly what I want,” Quinn insisted. “I don’t want to get married and have babies. That’s fine for you,” she hurried to say. “But I don’t want those obligations and responsibilities. I want an education and a career and sometimes I want to sleep with someone. Micah gives me that without trying to take over my life. Why is that wrong?”

“Because you deserve to be loved, Quinn.”

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