And if they managed to reconnect as friends, maybe this ridiculous need to touch him, to taste him would disappear. God, she could only hope. “When are you free?”
Quinn frowned, thinking. “Tonight I have plans. Tomorrow night I’m having drinks with some potential sponsors. Thursday is poker night.”
Once-a-month poker night with Kade and Mac was sacrosanct. Even Brodie, Kade’s fiancée, was under strict instructions to not go into labor until Friday morning.
Boys.
“Friday?” Quinn asked, lifting his startling eyes back to her face. God, she loved his eyes.
Friday? Really? “That would work except for one little thing.”
“What?”
“Friday is the Adam Foundation Masked Ball. It’s only the most important social event on the city’s calendar.”
Quinn pulled a face. “And I suppose I have to be there?”
“Q, I’m the official host and you’re my husband!”
“I’ll be masked. How will they even know that I’m there? I could be anyone,” Quinn protested.
“Yeah, there will be so many six-foot-three ripped men there with long blond hair and beards. C’mon, Quinn, you knew about this. I sent you an email about it last week.”
“Ugh.”
“Have you got a mask yet?”
Quinn sent her a get-real look and Cal sighed. Of course he hadn’t; he’d heard the words mask and ball and tuned out. “Leave it to me.”
“Plain black, as small as possible,” Quinn growled. “Do not make me look like an idiot.”
“The point of the masked ball is to be masked, as much as possible. Not knowing who is behind the mask is part of the fun,” Cal protested. Knowing that choosing a mask would be pure torture for him, she’d already purchased a plain black affair that covered three quarters of his face. It was, she and Wren agreed, as fussy as Quinn would tolerate. “Relax. Plain black tuxedo, black tie and the mask. That’s it.”
Quinn made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded like a rhino going into labor. She patted his shoulder and smiled. “Quinn, it’s a masked ball, not a root canal.”
Quinn reached out and tugged her ponytail. “So what are you wearing?”
Cal looked down into her empty coffee cup, wondering if she should tell him about the dress she’d found in a tiny boutique in Gastown. Maybe not, because she still wasn’t sure whether she’d have the guts to wear it. It was a kick-ass dress and not something her husband’s friends and acquaintances would expect her to wear.
It would make heads turn and tongues wag and probably not in a good way. But no one would mistake her message: Callahan Adam-Carter had died with her husband, but Cal Adam—or Cal Adam-Rayne to be precise—was back in town. “I’m not sure yet,” she hedged.
“Whatever you wear, I know you’ll look fantastic. You always do.”
Cal tipped her head and flushed at his words. It wasn’t an empty compliment or a line. Quinn said the words easily and with conviction. He genuinely believed them. God, it was such a silly thing, but such easy acceptance meant the world to her.
“So what time do you want to leave for the ball?” Quinn asked.
Cal lifted his wrist to look at the face of his high-tech watch. She was going to be late for her early meeting if she didn’t get cracking. “I’ll find you there, somewhere. I have to be there early to check on everything, so you can get there later. Or come with Mac and Kade. Anyway, I have to go,” Cal told him, leaning sideways to place a kiss on his cheek.
She inhaled his scent and instantly felt calmer, his arm under her fingers tight with muscle. God, her best friend—her fake husband—was all heat and harnessed power. Their eyes clashed and an emotion she didn’t recognize flashed between them. Quinn’s eyes dropped to her mouth and she touched her top lip with the tip of her tongue.
Quinn lifted his hand, bent his head and for one brief, red-hot second Cal thought that he would, finally, give her the kiss she was aching for. She waited, but Quinn just sucked in a harsh-sounding breath, pulled back and abruptly stood up.
Cal bent over to pick up both their cups, stood and walked to the stairs. “I’ll see you at the ball, okay?” she said, her voice wobbly as she tossed the words over her shoulder.
“Sure,” Quinn answered, sounding absolutely normal. So why did she sense—wish—that he was looking at her butt as she walked away?
* * *
It was later in the morning and Mac warbled a horrible version of the “Wedding March” tune as Quinn walked into the conference room at the Mavericks’ headquarters. He handed Mac a sour look and frowned at Kade.
“What?” Kade asked, looking confused. “What did I do?”
“You instituted the ban on getting physical anywhere other than the ice or the gym,” Quinn complained, dropping his helmet onto the seat of an empty chair. “If it wasn’t for you, then I could shut him up.”
“You really should see someone about those delusions, dude.” Mac smiled.
Standing opposite Mac, Quinn placed his hands flat on the table, leaned across it and got up in his face. “And I swear, if I hear that stupid song one more time, I will rip you a new one, Kade’s ban be damned.”
Mac just laughed at him. “You can try, bro, you can try. So how is married life?”
Quinn pulled back, blew out his breath and tried to hold onto his temper. He had this conversation at least once a day and he was thoroughly sick of it. What type of question was that anyway? he silently fumed. What he and Cal got up to behind closed doors—which was nothing that would make a nun blush—was nobody’s business but their own. Yet their marriage fascinated everybody, from his friends to the general public.
And why was Mac asking? He knew that their marriage was as fake as the tooth fairy. Quinn sent Mac an assessing look and decided to play him at his own game. “Actually, Cal and I had hot sex on the deck in the moonlight.”
“Seriously?” Mac’s face lit up with amusement.
“No, butthead, we didn’t.” Quinn looked at his helmet and wondered if he could use it to bash some sense into Mac’s thick skull. He dropped into a chair, placed his elbows on the table and shoveled his hands into his hair. “Dude,” he moaned, feeling a headache brewing, “I don’t know how else to explain this to you... Cal and I have been friends since we were in kindergarten. We are not going to sleep together. This is a sham marriage, one we entered to achieve a very specific objective. Remember?”
“What’s the point of being hitched if you don’t, at the very least, get some fun out of it? And by fun I mean sex.”
Quinn didn’t respond, knowing that Mac was just looking for a reaction. And they had the temerity to tell him that he needed to grow up?
“The point of their marriage was to rehab his reputation and that is going exceptionally well.” Wren’s cool voice brought a measure of intelligence to their conversation and Quinn could’ve kissed her.
“Really?” he asked.
Wren sent him a sympathetic smile. “Really. The press has definitely warmed up to you and Bayliss doesn’t think you are the spawn of Satan anymore.”
“Yay,” Quinn said, hiding his relief under sarcasm.
Once he agreed to sell his soul to the devil—aka Wren and her publicity machine—he’d placed his life into