Chapter 10
N one of it was Delilah’s fault. Hell, she wasn’t even there. She didn’t know Jasmine, and she barely knew Quinn.
But none of that stopped him from being pissed off at her.
When the day of the hike came, he showed up at the parking lot at the trailhead feeling grumpy and out of sorts. Delilah had ruined his chance for no-strings sex, and a man couldn’t let that stand.
“Hi, Quinn.” Delilah waved to him as she got out of her car, which was parked next to his day-to-day car—he hadn’t brought the van this time. The boys piled out of the back seat, jumping around with the enthusiasm of puppies.
“Hey,” he said. Grunted, really.
“The boys are excited,” she said. “I guess you can see that, though.” Delilah looked excited, too—she was bright-eyed and cheerful, her face lightly flushed in a way that made her even prettier than usual.
For some reason, that annoyed the hell out of him.
“Quinn! Quinn! Mom says I have to stay on the trail this time, and I will, I promise,” Jesse said. “We have sunscreen and bug spray and bottles of water and some energy bars, because your website said to bring them.”
“We brought some for you, too.” Gavin pulled an energy bar out of his little backpack and waved it.
Ah, shit. His impulse was to snap at them that he could bring his own damned energy bars—which he would hardly need for a hike of this length—but how could you snap at a little kid who brought you food? It was impossible. Which meant he couldn’t even keep a good grump going, as much as he wanted to.
“Thanks, Gavin. Jesse. That was really nice of you.” He accepted the energy bar Gavin had offered him. “I’ll just tuck this away for later.” He slid the bar into his own pack.
“The weather is perfect, isn’t it?” Delilah tipped her head back to face the sky. “Look at those clouds.”
“I’ve seen clouds,” Quinn said.
“Oh.”
Delilah looked puzzled, and why wouldn’t she be? It had been a dick thing to say.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
“I just want to get started so we can be back on schedule. I’ve got other appointments.”
“All right.” But he could see that he’d dimmed her glow, and he felt like shit about it. Nobody should ever dim Delilah Ballard’s glow. Her asshole ex had done that, and Quinn didn’t want to do it, too.
“Sorry,” he told her. “I’m just in a bad mood. Hey, guys.” He turned to the boys. “Who’s ready for a hike?”
Delilah had started the outing feeling pretty good—the outdoors, some exercise, happy kids—but Quinn was obviously in a pissy mood, and that was making her start to question the whole thing.
“Are you sure everything’s all right?” she asked him.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”
The words themselves were okay, but the tone behind them wasn’t. Definitely pissy.
They started the hike heading east into the hills south of Big Sur. The trail was narrow, with brush and wild growing things on either side of them.
“Watch out for poison oak,” Delilah called to the boys, who’d gone up ahead of her.
“That’s not poison oak,” Quinn said. His tone suggested a schoolmarm who’d had enough of someone’s misbehavior.
“I didn’t say it was,” Delilah responded. “I said they should watch out for it.”
Quinn grunted something back at her.
“Look.” She stopped where she was, planting her feet and glaring up at him. “Should we just cut our losses and go back to the car? Because I’m paying you for a delightful hike, and your attitude is decidedly … undelightful.”
He stopped and turned to look at her. “I don’t have a dictionary handy, but I don’t think undelightful is a word.”
“Whatever. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed at the stubble on his chin—stubble that made him even more insanely sexy than he was without it—and raised his eyebrows in something that might have been conciliation.
“So. Do we quit, or not?” Delilah asked.
“No. I’m sorry. I’ll snap out of it.”
The fact that there was something for him to snap out of made her worry about him, just a little.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. Sure. Yes.”
“Okay …”
“I’m putting on my professional guide persona now. It’s fine. It’ll all be fine. Hey, boys!” He called ahead to the kids, who were quite a distance up the trail now. “Wait for me, okay? And, ah … that’s poison oak right there to your left. Stand back from that, would you?”
Quinn knew he was being an ass, and he didn’t want to be. Hell, he was working right now, and he usually avoided being an ass to even the worst of his clients. And the Ballards weren’t that. They’d followed the instructions on his website to the letter, and they deserved better from him than what he was giving them.
Since the source of his angst was his unwanted attraction to Delilah, he decided to focus on the boys instead.
He trotted up the trail to where the kids were standing. Then he knelt down at their level and pointed at the poison oak he’d warned them about.
“See that? See how it’s got the three leaves together, and it’s kind of red? That’s something you don’t want to touch. It’ll make you itchy and give you blisters.”
“I know. Mom told us,” Jesse said. “She showed us pictures and everything.”
Gavin nodded solemnly.
Good clients, Quinn reflected. They’d done their homework.
“Okay. Let’s keep walking and see what other interesting things we can find,” he suggested.
By the time they were twenty minutes into the walk, Quinn had needed to bring Jesse back onto the trail twice when he’d wandered into the brush to look at something, and Gavin was already complaining that he was tired.
So, thinking of creative solutions, Quinn picked Gavin up, raised him over his head, and settled the boy on his shoulders. That would solve the tiredness problem. He still wasn’t sure what he was going to do about Jesse’s wandering.
Then a solution presented itself.
“I want to ride up there,” Jesse said.
“Tell you what,” Quinn said. “If you stay on the trail for the next fifteen minutes—no stepping off—I’ll give you a turn.”
“Really?” The kid perked up, his eyes going wide.
“Sure. Let’s see if you can do it.”
After that, the kid stayed on the trail like he was glued to it, and Quinn congratulated himself on his ingenuity.
Delilah observed all of this from a few paces behind Quinn and the boys.
A few thoughts hit her, more or less at the same time: one, Quinn was a natural with kids, and two, Jesse and Gavin should have been doing all of this with Mitch instead of with a man they’d just met.
Instead, Mitch was probably at some Paris cafe right now eating fancy French food with his girlfriend. Unless it was the middle of the night in Paris. Who knew? Delilah was in no mood to figure out time zones.
Why had it been so easy for Mitch to walk away from his family? If he didn’t love Delilah anymore, that was fine. She was an adult—she could take it. But how had he walked away from his sons?
Quinn was so easy with the kids, joking with them, talking to them like he was truly interested in everything they had to say. And the boys looked so happy they were glowing.
The fact that they were so starved for positive male attention made her want to fly to Paris and throw her ex off the Eiffel Tower.
“You okay?” Quinn glanced back at Delilah and asked her the same thing she’d asked him not long ago. Maybe his bad mood had rubbed off on her.
“I’m fine.” She was walking with her arms crossed over her chest, the anger toward her ex building like steam in the center of her body.
“You don’t seem fine.”
“So now you’re an expert on who is or isn’t fine?”
“No. Nope. I’m just going to walk for a while.”
They continued on the trail, Quinn pointing out plants and animals to the kids, Jesse and Gavin changing places at the agreed-upon interval. Gavin was on foot now, which could have been a hazard since he was smaller than Jesse, but Gavin was also more compliant. When Quinn told him to stay on the trail, he got the sense that Gavin had never considered doing otherwise.
About an hour into the walk, they came to a clearing with a couple of boulders that were good for sitting, so Quinn pulled Jesse off his shoulders and they all sat to take a break.
“This is a good time for that water and those energy bars,” Quinn told the boys, and they obediently rooted around in their packs for their snacks.
“It’s going well with the kids,” Quinn remarked as Delilah sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree.
“Yeah. It is.” She couldn’t seem to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
“I’d have thought that’s a good thing,” Quinn said.
“Oh … it is.” Delilah scrubbed her face with her hands.
“So, is there a problem?”
He’d been the one showing unnecessary attitude at the start of this outing, now she was doing it. She told herself to stop.
“No. There’s no problem. The boys are having a wonderful time.”
“But you’re not?”
She couldn’t talk about it now, not with the kids within earshot. She couldn’t tell him how distressing it was to see a virtual stranger bonding with her children in a way their father never had and probably never would.
None of that was his fault—he was just showing her children a good time, the way she’d paid him to do.
Delilah took a deep breath, let it out, and told herself to grow up. She could put on a smiling face for the sake of her kids. She’d promised herself she would give her boys a happy holiday season. And right now, they were happy.
So she would be, too.
“You know how earlier, you had a mood?” she asked him.
“Yeah.”
“Well, now I’m having one. Ignore it. It’ll go away.”
“Okay. You all right?”
“Yes. I am. Or, I will be.” Time to change the subject. “You know, those energy bars don’t look half bad.”
By the time they got back to the car, Jesse and Gavin were tired, filthy, and content—just the way kids were supposed to be when they were on vacation and had just enjoyed some time outdoors.
Delilah got them into the back seat of her car and made sure they were buckled up, then closed them in and turned to Quinn.
“Thank you. They had a great time.” She’d paid him for the outing beforehand, and she had to admit it had been worth the price. He’d been an engaging guide, not only keeping her children entertained and under control, but also pointing out landmarks, wildlife species, and interesting plants and sharing anecdotes about the history of the region.
“I’m glad.” He put his hands into his pockets and stood there looking down at her in a way that didn’t feel professional. It felt decidedly personal.
“People probably tip you, right? Is that a thing?”
“It is, yeah. But you don’t need to do that.”
“Really, I could …”
“I don’t want you to. I had fun, just as much as the boys did.”
“Well.”
“You know what you could do instead?” he asked. “To show your appreciation for a job well done?”
“What?”
“You could let me take you to dinner.”
The words came out of Quinn’s mouth before he’d known he was going to say them. He absolutely did not want to date a single mother. Christ, hadn’t he established that in his dialogue with himself since he’d met her? Somehow, his mouth hadn’t gotten the memo.
He could see her hesitating, and he wished he could take it back. But part of him didn’t want to take anything back. He wanted to take her out to dinner and talk to her and be with her, and maybe kiss her. The part of him that wanted all of those things was winning.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“The boys. I can’t leave them alone, and we don’t know anyone here, so …”
“There’s a reputable babysitting service in town that I sometimes refer clients to. A lot of the hotels on Moonstone Beach use them. I could give you the number.”
“Oh, but—”
“Look. You showed them a great time today. When was the last time someone showed you a great time? And when was the last time you got to take some time to just be you and not somebody’s mom?”
That last part got her. He could see her starting to sway.
“I’ll think about it.”
“I’ll text you the babysitting service’s number. While you’re thinking.”
Delilah got in the car and drove back toward Cambria, thinking about Quinn’s offer.
That had been unexpected. What would a guy like him want with a woman like her? She was a mother. She was notably lacking in glamor. She hadn’t waxed her legs in months. And her makeup had sat unused for so long in her cosmetics bag that it had probably turned to dust by now.
She hadn’t been out on a date in years, not since she and Mitch had started seeing each other. She didn’t even know how to do it anymore.
Except, she kind of wanted to try.
“Hey. Guys?” she asked as she drove south on Highway 1. “What would you think if I … well, if I wanted to go someplace sometime, just by myself, and you guys stayed with a babysitter? How would you feel about that?”
Gavin was the one who answered. “Dolly’s nice. We could stay with her.”
Huh. Delilah hadn’t thought of Dolly. It was an interesting idea.
“Jesse? What do you think?” In the rearview mirror, Delilah saw Jesse shrug, indicating a lack of strong feelings one way or the other.
She hadn’t decided whether she wanted to go out with Quinn, but she had to admit it was probably feasible.
She just didn’t know if it would be smart.