"Listen, cute stuff, if I wanted to rile you up, you'd know it."
She almost smiles as she rolls her eyes. "Oh please."
"Is that a request?" I shrug. "OK."
She gasps as I push her hard against the door to the galley kitchen behind her, letting my body press flat against her curves. I'm calling her bluff. Daring her to back down here, and I think she knows it even if she won't play the game back. Her eyes flare with a fire in them and her chest hitches with her breath. Just that simple sound of her quiet gasp suddenly has me rock-hard in my pants, and that I know she knows about.
She shakes her head slowly. "I'm not falling for this kind of bullshit, Logan. Your little games aren't working."
I smirk as I let my eyes drop to the front of her shirt, seeing the telling outlines of her hard nipples poking beneath the fabric there. "Oh aren't they?"
She blushes bright red. "I'm not falling for that again." She says quietly.
"Falling for what?" I growl lowly, leaning into her.
"That charm."
"Oh so you do think I'm charming."
I'm leaning even closer when she lets her breath out and rolls her eyes again, like the moment just faltered. "I think you're delusional, and I told you, that isn't happening again."
I move back from her. "Who said I want it to? You're the one getting all hot and bothered around me."
Her eyes blaze and she opens her mouth as if she's about to scream at me before she snaps those pouty lips shut and turns her head to look away. And I want to kiss her so fucking badly in that moment. Kiss her and so much more. I want to take her right here in the back of my plane, the pilot, and the finance guys, and Peyton up front be damned.
But I don't, obviously. And then the moment passes as soon as we hear one of the pilots come over the intercom about our decent into Dulles.
"Logan, let me go." I look back at Quinn, looking at me with those big eyes. And all I can think about is the way she looked that night, when she took me in and took care of me. It's lust I feel, immediately at least, but fuck it's something else too. It's the way she took in a stranger who looked like I did and made me whole.
I shake my head to clear it. Fuck, what am I doing? This is William's daughter for fuck's sake. This is the definition of off-limits.
And then the moment is gone entirely as she pushes me back and slips away from me back towards the others.
Chapter Eight
Quinn
"I'm sorry again I couldn't stay longer after the wedding."
Major Lawson pulls out a chair for me at his desk in this extremely old-world and yet exceedingly grandfatherly way, and I can't help but smile as I take a seat. The Major is every bit the stiff-upper-lip soldier-type, but I can also see why my Father and him were such good friends.
"Oh, that's fine. You didn't miss much, really."
Well, I suppose you missed out on the spectacular and nuclear level event of me realizing the man I slept with and can't get out of my head is in fact the most off-limits man in my entire world, not to mention my new brother-in-law.
I don't say that, and instead just clear my throat.
"I know Reagan was really glad to have you there, and it meant a lot to Chelsea and me to have you be the one to give her away."
He nods quietly and solemnly as he takes his own seat across the desk from me. "Well, I was no substitute for your Father, you know, but it was an honor to stand there in his place for his little girl on her day."
"It would be the highest honor in a lifetime of medals," he'd said when Reagan had asked him to be the one to walk her down the aisle and give her away in lieu of our Dad, and the memory of that makes me grin.
"He'd be extraordinarily impressed by the woman you've become. You know that don't you?"
I smile, thinking of my Dad's look of surprise when his black-haired, gothy little poetry fanatic of an eldest daughter informed him that she wanted to go to medical school. As if I hadn't shocked him enough with black eyeliner and heavy metal up to that very point. It's a look I wish I could've sealed up in a little bottle and carried around me with forever.
"Well, I guess maybe part of it is making up for what the company used to do."
The Major nods. "Sins of the past, and all that. William always hated that part of the business, you know." He says, sitting forward in his chair and studying my face. "He'd certainly look at the new direction those boys of his are taking Archer Holdings in as the right move, I know that."
"Do you sell guns, Dad?"
"Who told you that?"
"I'm seventeen, I'm not stupid," I frown, crossing my arms. "Is it true?"
"Not everything is black and white, Quinn. Sometimes life is a bit more complicated than a yes or no."
I'd never liked it, back then when we were younger and my Father's constant absence from our lives to visit places like Kosovo, or Libya, or whatever other place in the world was busy killing each other. We all sort of knew that our Dad's company sold arms, and while I was hardly for that, I also never really held onto that hate like Reagan had. But now, through Hudson and hearing more about the man we all wished we'd known better, there's a cathartic sort of healing element to knowing that he'd actually been visiting those places to do the opposite of what we'd all just assumed he was doing.
"Your Father would be very pleased to hear about it." He smiles at me and shakes his head again. "But my, look at you, Quinn Archer. A doctor, and working for his company. He'd love it." He leans forward and winks at me. "And again, I'm not William, but I'd be remiss if I didn't at least check in with his daughters on his behalf."
I grin and roll my eyes as I feel my cheeks burn a little. "Before you even ask it, no. No boyfriends."
Major Lawson chuckles and shakes his head as he sits back in his chair. "I had to ask."
I smile at him, "Let me guess. Dad left last will directions for you to have any ill-intended suitor sent to Guantanamo or something?"
He laughs deeply, the kind of laugh that sucks you right into it too, and he leans back again to wipe his eyes. "Something like that, yes."
"Yeah, well, save your favor with the CIA, no boyfriends."
"With your credentials and your mother's looks?" The Major shakes his head. "What the hell is wrong with those idiots up there in New York?"
I snort. "I don't even have time for dating! I mean first with the hospital work, and now the stuff with the outreach program, and then there's Logan-"
The Major's eyebrows twitch just enough for me to trip over my words, and I freeze.
"What about Logan?"
"Hmm?" I swallow, trying to make my face look as blank as possible. "Oh, nothing."
Smooth, Quinn, so smooth.
"I just mean with him running the new healthcare program at Archer and everything. He keeps me pretty busy over there!"
The Major's brow raises with just the slightest hint of a smile on his face as he nods. "Logan's a good man, you know."
I laugh, maybe a bit too harshly and quickly than I mean to. "He's, uh, he's something alright."
"He can be prickly."
I do hold back a snort this time, but Major Lawson chuckles. "You know, your father had a way of seeing things in people that others didn't, including themselves."
"Not everything is what it looks like on the outside, you know."
So what is it that I see in Logan? What can I possibly -
No. I shake the thought from my head quickly. God, what am I thinking? I don't see anything in Logan except a mistake I need to just put behind me and move on from. Except if that's the case, why am I still dwelling on it? If Logan is such a cataclysmic and obvious bad decision, why am I having such a hard time getting him out of my damn head and just forgetting about the whole sordid thing?
I force myself to push the whole thing with Logan out of my head for the time being, and spend the next thirty minutes or so chatting with Major Lawson. But it's right back there in my head the second I leave his office, it's still floating around as I grab a coffee at a cafe down the street, and it's still gnawing at me as I make my way over to the National Mall.
Ok, enough of this, I finally think, setting my jaw and staring across the reflecting pool. One mistake one night is not going to mess with my head this much, and I decide right then and there that it's time to just cut this whole thing loose and just move on.
Simple.
"Been enjoying the view?"
I'm sitting on the steps near the top of the Lincoln Memorial when I turn to see Logan walking down towards me. "I was," I say petulantly at him.
He smirks and nods his chin towards my chest. "Yeah, me too."
I frown at his glance and look down to realize the top button of my shirt is open a bit more than it should be. I frown and try to shove the burning blush from my cheeks as I hastily button back up. "Do you always have to be the man-child?" I shake my head at him.
Logan shrugs, grinning at me. "Keep your shirt on and maybe I won't stare so much."
I roll my eyes. "Like it's my fault my button came undone."
"Like it's my fault you've got great looking tits!"
The childish tete-a-tete comes to a screeching halt as we both glare at each other before turning away in silence.
Oh yeah, moving on is going swimmingly.