But he couldn’t give her the one she wanted.
She sighed. “You spent the last two weekends renovating my kitchen, and you know what? I think you secretly enjoyed it. You handled it far more capably than I could ever have imagined.”
“Guess the old man taught me something after all, huh?”
Her smile faded and he felt like an asshole.
“You’re not being fair,” she said quietly. “Yes, he was tough and demanding, but it’s not like you suffered for it. Look how well you turned out.”
Still sticking up for the bastard.
“He was hard on you,” she said, “because he saw your potential early on.”
If his dad had seen Mick’s potential, this was news to him. All he could remember was being refused every request to do anything, even though he’d been a decent kid who’d stayed out of trouble.
His mom looked at the shovel and rake hanging from hooks on the wall. Beside them were painted outlines of other tools that were now either lying on the floor or missing entirely, and she smiled sadly. “I’m surprised you haven’t painted over those outlines.”
Mick shrugged. He was trying to do things methodically and not let his emotions get the best him. “I’ve got to clear things out before I can paint.” But the truth was, he couldn’t wait to obliterate the physical proof of his father’s need for complete control. He straightened and felt the ache in his back and shoulders from the work. “I’m going to knock off for the day. I want to go shower.”
“It’s ridiculous, you coming from San Francisco so often and staying at the Wild West B and B instead of here.”
The Wild West B & B was so named because it had been there since the sidewalks were clapboard. It was rumored to be haunted, something he was certain the owners perpetuated to bring in business.
“You know you could move your office here,” his mom said. “Wildstone could use a man like you. You belong here, Mick.”
But that was just it. He didn’t.
And he never had.
Chapter 4
Sometimes my life feels like a test I didn’t study for.
—from “The Mixed-Up Files of Tilly Adams’s Journal”
After the humiliating panic attack on the beach in front of the dark-haired, dark-eyed, apparently unflappable stranger and his big, adorable dog, Quinn drove away just far enough that she couldn’t be seen by said unflappable stranger and adorable dog before she pulled over again to gather herself.
Probably an impossible task.
It hurt to think her birth mom had lived only two hundred miles north of her and she’d never known. And what about her birth father? Who was he? Did she have grandparents? Aunts? Uncles? Anyone else?
Why hadn’t she thought to ask Harry Potter?
She pulled back out into the street, and her GPS—programmed to find the town of Wildstone—wasn’t sure what to do with itself now that they were here. “In half a mile turn right,” it intoned in an irritated female voice that insinuated Quinn was an idiot.
Once she’d attempted to change the voice to male. She’d been hoping for an Aussie or British accent. Unfortunately, her tech skills didn’t extend that far and she’d ended up with this very stern, disapproving female voice.
But she turned right. Mostly because it felt good not to think.
“At the intersection, turn left.”
Quinn flicked a gaze to her silent phone. It was silent because it was off. She’d gotten in her car and driven here without telling anyone. Well, except Cliff, who’d seemed hugely relieved to hear she was on her way. He’d made an appointment to see her first thing tomorrow morning.
But in the end, she hadn’t waited for morning to make the drive. She was here and lead sat heavy in her gut with panic clogging her throat again, making it hard to breathe. Her head pounded in a way that was reminiscent of the night Beth had died, leaving Quinn alone and adrift and devastated without her best friend and confidante.
She missed the intersection.
“Recalculating,” the GPS said, judgment heavy in her tone.
Quinn reached out and turned the app off. In blissful silence, she pulled into a gas station and filled up on both gas and snacks. When she dumped her loot on the counter to pay, the clerk raised a brow. “Skipped dinner, huh? That’s rough.”
She’d stopped an hour ago and grabbed a sandwich that had served as her meal, which meant that this was actually dinner number two—not something she wanted to admit. “Yeah,” she said. “Real rough. Do you know of any good hotels in town?”
He grinned. “Hotels? No.”
“Motels?”
“Sure. There’s the Wild West B and B just up the street. It’s only two point five stars but it’s haunted, which is cool.”
Uh-huh. Thirty minutes later Quinn had checked into the place that claimed it was a “slice of heaven.”
She stood in the middle of her tiny room—which, for the record, was not exactly a slice of heaven—and looked around. The lower half of the walls were lined with wood that had come from fencing slats, the upper walls covered in floral print wallpaper that instantly brought to mind the old, wild west. The furniture looked like pieces from a wagon, and the room was decorated with flowers in rustic milk cans and wanted posters on the walls, all dated around 1900. Cheesy but cute.
The walls were clearly thin, as sound carried like nobody’s business. She could hear the bathroom sink dripping and the couple in the next room arguing.
“You’re watching TV?” a woman yelled. “We’ve got my mom watching the kids for a whole night and you’re watching baseball?”
“It’s the playoffs,” a man said.
“I can’t believe I wore my fun underwear for this!”
Quinn remoted the TV on and turned up the volume to give them some privacy and also to distract her from the drip, drip, dripping coming from the bathroom. She moved to the closet, which was a pretty antique armoire. It squeaked ominously as she opened it and peered into the dark cabinet.
Spooky, she decided, and shut it again. Besides, she wasn’t staying long enough to unpack. She wanted to go to sleep, then wake up and meet with Cliff in the morning for some answers to her questions. Then she was out.
Too keyed up to hit the sack, she sat on the bed and read the B & B’s brochure, which playfully warned her about their ghost. Apparently in 1892, this building had been a saloon and the madam had been murdered here. Hmm. Not exactly a good bedtime story.
Tossing the brochure aside, she looked around for a coffeemaker.
The fact that there wasn’t one nearly brought on another panic attack.
Next, she opened her laptop, where she came up against another problem. No Wi-Fi. She called the front desk and asked about it, and was laughed right off the phone.
Fine. She’d take a bath and soak her problems away. It might take all night but it was worth a try. Except . . .
She stifled a scream and jumped out of the bathroom.