Big Girls Get the Blues Read Online Free

“He’s probably waiting for you outside.”
    “I know,” I said and turned to walk out.  “I’ll be fine.”  I looked back to him.  He was shorter than me, even out of my heels, and he was built spare and thin, but I could tell he had a will and a spine of iron.
    “I’m sorry for tonight.  I hope you’ll blame me and not my father.”
    He blinked at me and shook his head.  He actually was smiling, his dimples just as adorable as they were the first time I’d seen him smile.  “Don’t worry, I blame you completely.”
    I laughed, and so did he.  Our laughs sounded good together.  I gave him a little wave and headed out to the bar again, grabbing my jacket and my purse and went out the front door.
     
    *****
     
    Quinn was waiting for me, as Vince and I had both predicted, and I felt wary and strangely excited at that.  He’d waited for me.  He’d let my dad punch him in the eye .  H e’d sat in humiliation until we’d closed, and now he was waiting for me to talk to him.
    If I didn’t already know how this all was going to end, if I had any real hope that things might actually work out between us, I might have le t the moment overtake me.  I might have flung myself into his arms and begged him to ravish me on the spot—maybe on the hood of my GTO.
    But I knew for a fact that if I gave him even a fraction of my heart I’d get it back bloodied and tortured.  And I couldn’t live through another bad romance, another broken, bleeding heart.  I’d been in love with a man I’d thought I’d be with forever—
    Funny how you can start thinking in terms as ridiculous as “forever” so soon after meeting someone.  Love was the worst drug.  And I would not be its bitch ever again.
    I had a flash of a handsome, cruel face in my mind’s eye, and I could hear myself saying his name.  I shook my head and willed the memories to return to the dark little corner of my mind I kept them sequestered in. 
    Maybe I’d have to lock them in a box?  Maybe soon I’d have to lock memories of Quinn in a box too.
    He was leaning his sexy, denim-clad ass on the hood of my GTO—which would have been a crime if his ass hadn’t been so fantastic—and he looked up at me when I walked closer.  His eye was swollen and starting to turn a light purple.
    “You’re going to have a hell of a shiner tomorrow.”
    Quinn smiled and winced as his eye protested him making any expression.  “It’s worth it if it gets you talking to me.”
    I rolled my eyes at him.  When in doubt and feeling a little too intense about a guy, go for sarcasm.  “One black eye earns you five minutes.”
    “Then I should have had your dad punch me in the other eye too.”
    I gave him a chilly smile.  “I can always call him back.  He doesn’t live far.”
    He shook his head and sighed, looking down at the pavement before looking back into my eyes.  “I think I’ll pass.”
    “Afraid?”  I taunted.
    “Of you using your father as a weapon, knowing I’d never fight back…let me think?  Yeah.”
    “So you think I’m some sort of sociopath?”
    He stood up from my GTO’s hood and towered over me.  Just having his huge physicality so close to me made my heart flutter, and things much lover shudder. 
    Steady…
    I wasn’t going to do this again.  Twice was enough.  Once had been too much.
    Third time is not the charm!
    “I think,” Quinn said, stepping even closer, close enough I could smell the leather and silk of him, and feel the heat rolling off his body.  “That you have some kind of mental hang up about me...or maybe men in general.”
    I took a breath to argue, but he cut me off by holding up his fingers to my lips.  His thick, strong, rough fingers…
    A s hiver r an up my spine… my nipples harden ed …and I was ready to start hyperventilating any second.
    “And you especially have a kink in your think—” Kink in my think?   “ — about any man that finds you, in particularly attractive. ”
    It