But that was tomorrow. Right now she was dancing! Dancing well! Never mind Alan's knock-down nearness; never mind the society photographer who stuck a large camera in their faces and flashed. Suddenly she was dancing, getting neither underfoot nor overfoot, gliding in three-quarter time to heavenly strains with the handsomest man in the ballroom. Suddenly it was all coming together for her: the rainbow swirls of long gowns, the flowers, the music, the lighting, the laughter. Suddenly she understood; and—polyester or no polyester—she belonged.
The waltz was nearly over and they hadn't exchanged a word. Quinta wondered whether Alan was always this way—so concentrated, so intense. Maybe that was how America's Cup skippers were. But no: she'd seen him murmuring pleasantly with Mavis Moran as he danced with her, and with the young woman in the receiving line from the something-Industrial Corporation. So it must be Quinta's fault: he was assuming she couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time.
Well, she thought happily, he's right. She wanted the moment to stay perfect, and who knew where chit-chat might lead them.
When the dance was over he gave her a light and courtly bow, a replica of the one he'd bestowed on her three years earlier. Was he making fun of the article she'd written about him? She muttered, in some confusion, "What's new with you, Alan? Has the pizza man struck again?"
He looked surprised. "Yesterday, as a matter of fact. If you don't mind my saying so, you sound like an obvious suspect." He was smiling as he said it, but his blue eyes looked puzzled.
"I'm innocent, honest," she said quickly. "I must have practical jokers on the brain; we've had one hard on our trail lately." She added, "I didn't mean to pry."
The orchestra struck up another dance, a tango this time. The ballroom floor began immediately to empty. Alan said, "This isn't my cup of tea. Do you mind if we sit this one out?"
She was about to ask, Together? but stopped herself in time.
He led her through French doors which opened out onto a modest terrace, not so small that it would be considered intimate, not so large that it invited curious onlookers. The night was deeply starry; a breeze lifted the folds of her long skirt and ruffled the jeweled sleeves of her top, sending pinpoints of starlight shimmering from her neckline. The setting was impossibly romantic. Quinta took it all in, the mathematician in her calculating the odds of something like this ever happening to her again.
Alan Seton, like the rest of the Pegasus sailing crew, wore cream-colored flannels and a blue blazer, the more easily to stand out from the black-tie guests. The night was warm. He took off his jacket and threw it on the stone balustrade, then loosened his tie.
"I suppose I should be grateful that I don't have to wear a monkey suit," he said with a sigh. "You look extremely fetching, by the way. I found myself staring at you before I knew who you were."
"And after you found out?" she asked, not at all coyly.
"I did a double-take."
"Because?"
"Because you're a kid, or supposed to be, and you're not anymore, that's all." He laughed softly, more to himself than to her. "I don't think you understand how deeply ingrained a certain picture of you is in my mind. In my mind you'll always be wearing ratty jeans and have your hair in ... in bangs, I think," he said, struggling to translate his vision of her into words. "You symbolized something to me that night of the accident, something very special—a kind of life-must-go-on-attitude that carried me through some hard decisions. I think you still have whatever it was I saw in you, except that the wrapping is fancier now."
He reached up and with the lightest possible touch lifted a strand of her hair and let it fall over her forehead, the way she let it do years ago. "There. You wore it something like that, he said softly. "Not so pulled back."
"I was a child," she whispered, faint with pleasure.
"And now you're not. I know." He swept her face with a searching look, as if he were making sure of it; and then he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her on her lips, in a gentle, almost melancholy acknowledgment of her womanliness.
To be kissed on a starry balcony at a ball is not the same as being kissed on the steps of your front porch. She held her breath, afraid to move, afraid to think. If God were in His heaven, Alan Seton would never let go.
Instead, he drew from her and said murmured, "Why did I do that?" He was as much amazed as she was. "What a dumb thing to do."
"It wasn't that bad," she whispered, suddenly crestfallen.
"Ah, Quinta ... this isn't the time; certainly not the place." He looked around quickly. "I have no right to take your life out of your hands and pass it on to the media. Forgive me."
"I passed a piece of your life on to the media," she reminded him promptly. "And I'm not sorry."
"My life's fair game," he said with a crooked smile. "But yours—yours is precious to me."
"If it's so precious, why didn't you ever call or write?" she blurted out.
"I did write."
"To my father."
He laughed a short, bemused, frustrated laugh. "What was my relationship to you then? Friendly Dutch uncle?"
"Friend. Period," she shot back.
He repeated the word after her: "'Friend.' I don't think I have any of those."
"You mean you don't have time for any of those."
He grinned. "What a little scold you are."
She colored, then replied, "It comes from living with my father." It was her greatest fear: that she'd live out her years as an unmarried nag.
"I think you're the best thing that could happen to your father. He'd be crazy to ease you out," Alan added, lifting his hand and tracing her lips with a feather-light touch of his forefinger.
"Who says he's—?"
"Darling," came a voice behind Quinta. "People are beginning to grumble. I hate to tear you away, but the dog-and-pony show really must go on."
Quinta turned guiltily away from Alan and to see Mavis Moran, an iceberg on fire, smiling at them. There was no question in Quinta's mind that her father's gossipy speculations about the two were right on the money. So: she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Feeling very much like Cinderella at 11:59 P.M., she mumbled a flustered good night and left them on the terrace.
An Excerpt from KEEPSAKE
Wonderful, witty, humorous writing
--The Romance Reader
KEEPSAKE ... a postcard-perfect town in Connecticut. When stonemason Quinn Leary returns after seventeen years, he has one desire: to prove his father's innocence of a terrible crime committed when Quinn and Olivia Bennett, town princess, were high-school rivals. Class doesn't matter now but family loyalties do, and they're fierce enough to threaten the newfound passion between two equals.
*****
Olivia Bennett had small, slender feet—she was pretty proud of them—but this was ridiculous. There wasn't a foot on the planet that could comfortably fit into the Victorian French-heeled shoe she was trying to wear. The handmade shoe was just one of a vast array of historically accurate reproductions that made up the evening ensemble she had committed to wear in her stint as guide on the Candlelight Tour.
"I feel like Cinderella's evil stepsister," she growled, jamming her foot into the narrow shoe. Which wasn't a shoe anyway—it was an instrument of torture, tight and stiff and with an outrageous tip that surged a good three inches past her big toe.
She threw up her hands in frustration and collapsed back on her white slipcovered tub chair. "I can't do this."
Eileen was standing over her like a maid-in-waiting who wasn't quite sure of her job description. "Maybe you'll get used to them. Try standing up."
"It's this stupid corset!" Olivia said suddenly, grabbing at the stiff, steel-boned vise that was responsible for her current Barbie-doll look. "What was I thinking?"
"What did you expect? It's French."
"Well, screw the French! I'm not wearing it!" She began tearing at the half-dozen front hooks with a viciousness that she normally reserved for pickle jars.
"H
old it right there, mademoiselle. You're the one who talked all the guides into wearing period getups."
Olivia sighed and tucked one of the wandering bust enhancers back into place. Her wool drawers itched. Her chemise was too tight. The petticoats were heavy. But Eileen was right—dressing for the period had been her idea.
"Bustle, please," she said grimly.
Eileen let out a little sigh of sympathy.
After some fumbling, they belted the elaborate wire framework onto Olivia's behind. Feeling like a bronco saddled for the first time, she resisted the urge to try to kick the thing off and said through gritted teeth, "Okay—the gown."
Eileen's response was a radiant smile. "This will make it all worthwhile." She fished the padded hanger out of the taffeta gown and slipped the dress over Olivia's upraised arms. Olivia disappeared in a swishy cloud of scarlet iridescence, then emerged from a low-cut bodice that was unquestionably more European than American.
The color scheme was as bold as the plunge of the neckline: a swath of bright scarlet draped up toward the outlandish bustle to reveal a purple skirt beneath, with silver-gray passementerie looped around the cuffs, the bodice, and the hem. The heavily beaded braid caught and refracted the light from the recessed spotlight above, rimming Olivia in glittering highlights.
Eileen stepped back with a startled look. "My goodness, that's daring."
"Oh, I don't know. The only thing daring about this outfit is the crotchless drawers," Olivia said, squirming in annoyance. "It's December, for pity's sake. These damn things give a whole new meaning to the expression 'freezing your buns off.' "
Laughing, Eileen said, "Well, think about it. How on earth would anyone go potty, once she was rigged in that getup?"
"Trust me, I don't intend to find out. Start buttoning; I've got to be there in half an hour. Thank God women from that era didn't go in for makeup. I'd be pummeling herbal extracts into a pot of rouge about now."
"All right, here we go. Suck it in, Miss Bennett."
Several painful moments later, Olivia was tightly skinned in scarlet. She had achieved the desired hourglass shape at last. The curves she exhibited, though not her own, were definitely spectacular.
She said in a breathless gasp, "I think I'm going to pass out."
"The things we do for !ove," Eileen said, amused. "Honestly, I wish we'd featured you like that on the flyers we posted around town. The Keepsake Preservation Society would be rolling in dough after this fund-raiser."
"Shoes! What do I do about shoes? Even assuming I could take more pain, I'd fall and break my neck if I went wearing these in the snow." Olivia kicked them off, furious for ever agreeing to be part of the Candlelight Tour. It would have been better to write out a check. She had inventory to stock, she had orders to place—what was she doing pointing out crown moldings and fruitwood étagères to the hoi polloi?
Volunteering seemed like such a better idea at the time.
Swishing over to her closet, she yanked open a white louvred door and pointed to the shoe rack on the floor. "Take out the black Reeboks for me, would you?"
Eileen was scandalized, but she did as she was commanded, even tying the laces for her immobilized sister-in- law.
"All right, let's see what it all looks like," said Olivia, striding over to the full-length mirror.
"Smaller steps! Smaller steps! Your sneakers show."
They stood together in front of the mirror, these two best friends turned relatives: Eileen, tall and thin and blond and oh-so-Connecticut; and Olivia, shorter, darker, and somehow, despite the elegance of her wardrobe, just a little bit gypsy. Olivia was very conscious of the contrast. She wasn't especially bothered by it—she looked vaguely like her mother, whom she had always considered truly beautiful—but she was definitely aware that she did not have "the look."
She shrugged and said, "I guess I'll do."
"Do? You look fabulous," Eileen insisted. "That creamy skin, those natural curls, those bedroom eyes—what man could resist you?"
"Apparently they make the effort," Olivia said dryly.
"It's your fault. Why do you go everywhere with Eric on your arm?"
"Eric is very presentable."
"Eric is gay!"
"My mother likes Eric."
"What mother wouldn't? But it's keeping you from meeting the man of your dreams."
"I don't dream about men, I dream about fabric." Olivia frowned in the mirror, then grabbed a tube of lipstick from her dresser and ran it lightly across her lips.
"Okay, I'm ready," she declared. "Point me to the drawing room."
*****
Hastings House was built in high Victorian style for a man who, quite simply, loved wood. In 1882, Mr. Latimer Hastings bought a lumberyard just to have first crack at the boards, then spent the next two years in close company with an architect and a construction crew, milling, shaping, and carving those boards for his house on upper Main. The house became an obsession, and more: It became his reason to exist. It wrecked his marriage, it alienated the neighbors, and ultimately it became a bone of contention between his heirs.
It was a nightmare to maintain, with its curved piazza and its multi-gabled roofline, but it was something, really something, to see. Keepsake was nearly as proud of Hastings House as it was of the Bennett estate, higher up the hill. Most people knew they'd never get the chance to poke their noses in the Bennetts' dining room; but this year they could get a fairly good idea, for a mere four dollars, of how the Bennetts' dinner guests lived.
So they paid and they poked. Despite the biting cold and windy weather, the Candlelight Tour was enjoying an excellent turnout. Keepsake was a historic town with an active Historical Society backed by a mayor who understood the dollar value of tourism. Besides, the cause was worthy: The proceeds of the Candlelight Tour were split between St. Swithin's soup kitchen and free art courses for Keepsake's children.
Olivia felt at home in the heavily carved, overly ornate drawing room of Hastings House; when she was growing up she'd been a guest there several times. Standing straight as a board (she had no choice) near a crackling fire, she greeted each new visitor on the tour as graciously as Mrs. Hastings herself might have done before ultimately dumping her husband for another man with a simpler house.
It was fun. Olivia hadn't expected to enjoy playing the part of a Victorian socialite, and yet here she was, flirting and having a great time. Playing at flirting, anyway. The pain of being laced into a state of dizziness had ebbed, replaced by the novelty of being the object of men's gapes and women's furtive looks. It was definitely a first for her.
"Either I've just discovered my true calling as an actress, or there's something to this corset business," she said, laughing, after two women she knew well expressed open amazement at the difference in her demeanor.
The women wandered out and another group wandered in: Eric and several of his pals, all of them history and architecture buffs. Olivia knew that one of them was an actor, so she poured it on, hamming it up outrageously until the men moved on, still laughing, to the next room.
And then there was a lull.
****
Quinn had heard voices in the room ahead of him—several men and a woman—who sounded as if they were having a damn good time. He was jealous; it had been a while since he'd laughed out loud. But by the time he escaped the clutches of the Victorian gentleman whose job it was to explain the Victorian library, the group had left the drawing room, taking their raucous laughter with them.
They left behind them a woman.
Her back was to Quinn, whose first impression was of a mountain of scarlet material bunched on top of a purple skirt. He saw that she wasn't tall, and yet her posture somehow made her seem so. She had dark hair, tied in a knot at the nape of her neck—without much success, Quinn could see; ringlets seemed to be escaping even as he stood unnoticed behind her.
She was standing in front of the fire with her hands extended to catch its warmth. He couldn't blame her for feeling cold:
Her back and shoulders were as bare as any red-blooded man could hope for. The sight of her had sent his genitals lurching beneath his corduroys, and almost immediately he realized why.
She had the most impossibly beautiful figure he'd ever seen. He had no idea that in an age of protein and aerobics, women could still look like that: beautiful back and shoulders, tiny, tiny waist, flared and intriguing hips. It was an old-fashioned fantasy, a heart-wrecking dream—and it was as erotic as all hell. He might have stood gazing at that hourglass shape forever if she hadn't turned around with a start.
"Oh, I'm sorry; I didn't hear anyone come—Quinn?"
He blinked. He knew the voice, knew the eyes, he definitely knew the voice... He blinked again in disbelief. In a moment of complete, humiliating weakness his let his gaze drop down to her cleavage. Was it possible?
"Liv?"
"Who else?" she said, with a wary smile. "You look the same."
"You don't," he said, stunned.
A couple walked in just then with questions poised: Was the price firm? Would the owner take financing? Had he had any offers? Olivia explained with dazzling grace that she was not the realtor—Good Lord, did she look like a realtor?—and then the couple left.
Olivia turned her dark-eyed gaze back to Quinn. "I heard you were back. Somehow I didn't expect to run into you here, though."
He took it possibly the wrong way. "Yeah, well, you know how it is when you throw an open house. Riffraff's bound to get in."
"Oh no! Is he here?" she said, rolling her eyes.
He chuckled. "Okay, I suppose I deserved that."
She shook her head. "You haven't changed, have you? I'm ... I'm sorry about your father," she added. "I know how close you were."
Sympathy from a Bennett? No thanks; it felt too much like pity. "We did all right," he said, "once we got out of Keepsake. We had a good life."
By The Sea, Book One: Tess Page 18