“What?”
“What did you do with Weston Myles?”
“Shut up. I’ve always been crazy about you. Remember your first day on the job?”
“How could I forget?” she said. “Sam McCormick from IT had me cornered at the coffee machine, and you came in guns blazing, telling him to never look in my direction again if he wanted to keep his job. I think he might actually have shit his pants.”
“And he never looked at you again.”
“Does he still work there?”
I looked at her with brows furrowed, “Why do you care?”
“Oh, no reason. He seemed nice, is all.”
I let out a grunt. “He won’t anymore.”
She turned around to face me. “You better not fire that poor man for no reason. We aren’t all so well to do, you know.”
I grabbed her hips and brought her close to me.
“You are Quinn Myles-Miller. You can have anything you want, bunny.”
“You’re the only one who's ever called me that,” she said, turning around to face the view again.
“I better be,” I told her, putting a hand under her shirt and rubbing her back as I stood next to her. “I’d hate for anyone else to know this exists.”
I traced the spot on her lower back that kept her little secret.
In her teenage years, Quinn wanted to prove to the girls in her class that she wasn’t just a goodie two shoes. So, before her 18th birthday, she snuck out and got a bunny tattoo in the same style as a very risqué logo.
Hers was very tasteful, and being just the outline, it was the cutest thing. The first time I saw it was when she was in my office and dropped a stack of reports right in front of my desk. She bent down to pick it up, and her blouse inched up just enough for me to see the ink.
I helped her pick up the papers, and before she left, she asked if I needed anything else. I told her, “That will be all. Thanks, bunny.” And the shades of red she turned will forever be burned in my memory.
We could barely see Lucy and Dray’s balloon at that point. They had drifted far enough away that I had Quinn all to myself as we looked down at Seattle and the sparkling water of Puget Sound.
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
QUINN
The sunsetover the Olympic Mountains created colors that I didn’t even know existed in nature. And having Weston envelop me in a hug made me feel like I was floating through a dreamland.
The last few days had been a whirlwind, but I never expected to feel like I belonged as much as I did here in the sky with him.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, rubbing my lower back. His touch sent shivers down my spine.
“This view is wild. What made you want to take up ballooning?” I asked him.
He hesitated for a moment, gazing at the breathtaking view. Then he met my eyes again.
“After you left, I tried everything to get you out of my mind. But it was like the old saying, if I tell you not to think about an elephant, what do you think about?”
“An elephant.”
“Right. Every day I’d go to work which reminded me of you and how you weren’t there. Then I’d come home to the penthouse where you had picked all the decor, which reminded me of you even more. So, one day I just drove away from it all. I drove until the sun began to set, and when I looked beyond the mountains—out of nowhere, a sea of balloons just lifted into the sky. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.”
He leaned onto the side of the giant basket holding us.