Part 16

Zander came out of his class at PCU, and went to his car so he could go back to Alexis' office.

When he was walking through the parking lot, he saw Emily was there, about to get into a car.

He thought he would walk past her without saying more than hello.

"Zander," she said, "what are you doing here?"

"Coming from a class," he said, "the usual reason for being here."

"You're a student here?"

"Yeah."

"I have to look into transferring here."

"Oh."

"You don't have to be so unfriendly," she said.

"Oh, you want to be friends now? OK. I do have to go to work, though." He started to walk on.

"Zander, wait," she said.

He stopped, and stood looking at her in an attitude that told her to get it over with.

"Zander, I was coming to see you when I had that accident," she said, stopping in front of him, "and I'm afraid Sean may try to talk to you about it."

"I already talked to your shyster lawyer."

"Gia and another girl were going on about your mother, and your family, and I only wanted to ask you about who they were and why you never wanted to tell me about them." she said.

"Does it really matter? he asked, impatient to get it over with. "You wouldn't want to know them."

"Now your father owns part of ELQ! And before, he was a person you didn't even want to talk about!"

Zander was stunned for a minute. He remembered a little of his conversations with Alexis, and her showing him the incorporation work she was doing for Sergei, but none of it had translated into Sergei buying any part of ELQ. "I don't know anything about it," he said, finally.

"Grandfather thinks you put him up to it."

"I don't care what your grandfather thinks, Emily! And I don't put him up to things!"

"I don't see why you can't tell me about them now, they're here, so there's no big secret any more, is there?"

"No, not after Alexis and Quinn had to find them and make me deal with them. You weren't all that interested then, so why now?"

"I wasn't there! So why do you give Quinn all this credit, for caring, when it was only doing her job for her?"

"She didn't have to do as much as she did to help Alexis find them. But so what? You were never interested in them before, so I'm not wasting my time to explain them now! Find out yourself. Maybe Sergei will take over your company."

"If you had told me - I would have been there and I would have helped Alexis find them! Quinn wouldn't have had to do anything. You wouldn't even have another thought for her now, she'd just be a nurse who once took care of you!"

"No, you don't know any of that. I would have still fallen for Quinn."

"You wouldn't do a thing like that to me if I had been there."

"You're going to blame me for it all anyhow; I may as well be the bad guy. Sure, I would have. Like her boyfriend did to her. She's the one who wouldn't do a thing like that."

"Oh quit making such a saint out of her. Look what she did, telling the cops about my injuries."

"So you're mad that you got caught driving under influence? Big surprise that you blame her, and not yourself," he said sarcastically.

"If she had kept her mouth shut, no one would have to bother with it!"

"Yes you would! All the medical people saw your injuries."

"They didn't make anything of it. Only she is jealous."

"I doubt it. She probably only thought of protecting the public from drunk drivers."

"That's ridiculous, Zander! She's afraid you still love me!"

"You're the one who tells me she's not serious about me," Zander retorted. "and if that were true, she wouldn't care about that, then, would she?"

Emily considered this argument for a moment. It was a pretty good one. "She might not want things to change, anyway – she wants to hold onto her plaything. And she wouldn't be afraid of that without good reason."

"I don't know who you think you are, Emily, to tell me how Quinn feels about me. Do you realize how outlandish that is? I see her all the time. I know her better than you. Why should I believe your version of her feelings over hers?"

"Because people don't always tell the truth about things like that," Emily said.

"Well, I know that," Zander. "Yeah, I know that real well."

He walked off, determined to leave regardless of what she said and to say nothing more to her.

"You're making yet another mistake, Zander."

"Go back to your shyster boyfriend!" he turned and yelled as he walked.

Joanna and Quinn were at Kelly's after getting off of the midnight shift.

"Don't let him chase you out of any place you would normally go," Joanna said to Quinn. Quinn had said she didn't want to go to Kelly's, because Sean lived upstairs.

"You're right," Quinn said. "He's in this town, and I hope it's big enough for both of us. He'll get used to seeing me around and think it's no big deal and go about with whatever he was doing."

They were drinking coffee, talking about work, when Sean came down the stairs.

"There he is," Joanna said. "Don't move. He'll get a cup of coffee and leave."

Sean got a cup of coffee to go, but as he turned, he saw them. Joanna rolled her eyes at Quinn. "Guess we have not reached stage two yet," she said. "You know, when he gets so used to seeing you he thinks it's not worth stopping?"

Quinn made a face. Sean came up from behind her.

"Hi, ladies, nurses, you look beautiful today!" He even pulled up a chair and sat down.

"We just got off of work. We look tired," Joanna argued.

Sean grinned.

"What do you want, Sean?" Quinn asked, in a bored tone.

"To say hello," he said. "to two gorgeous women."

Quinn rolled her eyes.

"How's it going, Quinn?" he asked. "Did you have a nice birthday?"

"Very nice," she answered. "You remembered."

"Of course!"

"That's pretty good," Joanna commented. "My ex-husband didn't remember my birthday."

"That's why he's your ex-husband, I suspect," Sean said.

"Will you take your flattery and go elsewhere?" Quinn demanded.

"I'm on my way out to work," he answered. "But I've got a couple of minutes."

"Lucky us," Quinn said, dryly. She took a sip of coffee.

"Your Dad and Joe look the same," he said. "When I saw them down at the track, they were as chipper as ever."

"It hasn't been that long, what, how old did you expect them to be?"

"Well, your brothers are different. Grown a lot."

"That will happen at that age."

"Well, I'll see you around," he said, "Call me if you want to go out and talk over old times. See you, Joanna."

Quinn watched him go out. "Can you believe his nerve?" she asked Joanna.

"The nerve of the man appears to be boundless," Joanna answered. "I think he intends to win you over with niceness. Is that what he did whenever you'd have an argument?"

Quinn thought for a little while. "He did have a tendency to ignore any conflict and try to smooth it over with something else. Come up with an idea, like suggesting going to some restaurant you liked or to do something he knew you thought was fun."

"Sounds like a real schmoozer."

"He's getting worse, too!"