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SHE WAS THERE. Bright and early. Standing on his porch holding a cup.

“Ready.” She grinned at him.

Today she was wearing a pair of jeans that looked so tight he had no idea how she was going to bend over and do any work in them. She had on her work boots, and a black tank top that scooped low over the curves of her pale breasts.

They were freckled. Like her face.

He was trying to recall if he’d ever made love to a woman who had freckles on her tits.

He did not think he had.

“Hi.”

He looked up, meeting her gaze, suddenly very aware that he had been obviously looking at her rack. “Morning,” he said.

She wrinkled her nose, and her cheeks went vaguely flushed. “What’s on the agenda for the day?”

“Work,” he said.

“When you say work...”

“I mean work.”

“So as far as the year goes, do you divide certain work up into quarters?” she asked.

“No. I don’t work in an office. I’ve never seen the point of playacting like I did.”

“It’s for... It is to help organize the business.”

He shrugged. “Sounds boring.”

He took long strides toward the truck, leaving her behind, and she took four steps to his every one, doing her best to keep up.

It was like he was being followed by a particularly persistent squirrel.

“Boring or not, it is reality. And if it’s boring to you, then what you need is for somebody...”

“Listen,” he said, finally losing his patience. He stopped and turned to face her, standing there in front of his truck, staring her down. “I got fucked over on that deal with your dad. I was too stupid to understand what mattered. I don’t take on things I can’t handle myself. Do you understand?”

She’d been badgering him about this yesterday. She’d been badgering him since she appeared. So sure and certain she knew it all. If she really wanted to know it all, then he’d tell her.

“I...”

“I was an idiot—is that what you wanted to hear? Because I didn’t have anybody advising me, because there was nobody with a fancy degree hanging around. Because...” He shook his head. “The details aren’t important. But the thing is, I don’t need you to lecture me. You went to college, little girl, congratulations. But that’s not the real world. In the real world, people die, and you have to pick up the pieces and move on. There are kids to raise. There’s shit to take care of.”

He could see that he’d hurt her. And he didn’t really care. Because who was she to come in here and start lecturing him on all these things like she knew better than him?

Like he didn’t know anything. About the life he’d been baptized into by hell fuckin’ fire when he was eighteen years old.

“I talked to Camilla a little while yesterday,” she said, her voice surprisingly soft. “She told me that she was two when your dad died. And that you’re basically her father and... I’m sorry. I think I didn’t fully give enough weight to that.”

The apology was shocking enough that it stopped him cold. Because one thing Quinn had proved about herself was that she was determined, and a little bit mean. He liked that about her, if he were forced to pick a thing to like.

That she was sharp and a bit pointy, that she wasn’t afraid to burrow down into an issue and refuse to come out. But she had backed way down this time. And it made him wonder what the hell emotion he had actually shown beneath his anger.

He needed to get a grip.

She was a Sullivan.