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By The Sea, Book One: Tess

Page 19

by Stockenberg, Antoinette


  "Yours isn't over."

  "His is."

  "Yes, but you said .... Well, I'm glad it worked out. It was an awkward time."

  "Awkward?"

  "That's the wrong word," she said quickly. "It was ... horrible, I guess I mean. For everyone."

  "So people keep telling me. A girl is killed, my father is blamed, our lives are upended, and what do I hear? I'm the Grinch Who Stole Homecoming."

  "Well, in all honesty, we haven't come even close to a championship since," she said with a bland look.

  He snorted. He remembered that about her now—her irreverent sense of humor. She was much less straightlaced than the rest of her clan, and that always had made her an interesting opponent. He jammed his hands in his parka pockets and rocked back on his heels. "So. Which of the Ivy League schools ended up rolling out the thickest red carpet?"

  Smiling at the compliment, she said, "I decided to go with Harvard."

  He waved a hand airily at her getup. "And this would be—what? A part-time job to pay off your student loans?" he quipped, fighting hard not to resent her. Harvard.

  He watched her flinch and then recover. "As it turns out, my dad was able to scrape together the tuition. But I did borrow money to get my MBA. Is that any comfort?"

  "Not much," he said through a tight smile. "So what do you do to pay the mortgage?"

  "I own a shop in town, Miracourt ... on York Street? I sell high-end fabrics—interior, and some apparel."

  He nodded. "Oh, well sure, a fabric store. It's logical, with your father owning a textile mill and all."

  "My father has nothing to with Miracourt!" she said sharply. "It's entirely mine, bought and paid for with my own money."

  How wearying, he thought: an heiress who insisted on making her own way. Not him. If someone had been willing to hand him a fortune, he'd have been more than willing to spend it.

  In the next breath she confessed, "I do have another, larger store-—a mill-end outlet—that my father is involved with."

  Even more wearying: an heiress who was conflicted about her family's wealth.

  A new batch of visitors, awed and deferential, tiptoed in behind him and began to ask questions in hushed, respectful voices.

  It's someone's front room, folks, not the Vatican, Quinn wanted to say, but he, too, was affected by the somber personality of the place, so he took himself over to the balsam Christmas tree that presided over the other end of the room and spent some time inhaling its fragrance while Olivia fielded inquiries.

  He overheard all kinds of illuminating tidbits from her about pocket doors, Austrian chandeliers, coffered ceilings, and imported delft tiles, but mostly it was the sound of her voice that kept him rooted to the spot. He loved hearing it, loved the way it spoke in whole sentences free of Valley-speak and New Age clichés. It had an old-fashioned, finishing-school ring to it that blended perfectly with the scarlet gown.

  And her laugh! It was the burbling of a brook, flowing and tinkling along its banks but never overrunning them. All in all, he was mesmerized. He felt like some lowborn character—who was it, Heathcliff?—in an English novel. He wasn't sure if he had the era or even the character right, but he damn well had the mood right. He felt... unequal, to all this. As if he were there, cap in hand, to announce to Madame that her carriage was ready.

  And, boy, it pissed him off.

  The visitors moved on and he moved back in, reclaiming his right to converse with the Princess. He'd paid his four bucks. He was entitled.

  "What about you, Quinn?" she said, turning her attention right back to him. "Where did you end up getting your degree?"

  If he'd needed a splash of cold water, that was it. "A degree?" He said wryly, "I decided to pass."

  Clearly she didn't get it. "Are you serious? You could've pursued any kind of scholarship you wanted. Academic, athletic... Notre Dame came looking for you!"

  "Did they ? Well, they never found me and neither did anyone else. But then, that would be the whole point of living in hiding, wouldn't it?"

  Chastised, she lowered her gaze from his and said simply, "Yes."

  He felt like a shit, beating her over the head with his unrealized promise. He was doing it because he knew that, more than anyone else, she would feel the waste of it.

  Apparently he was right. Her head came back up and she looked him in the eye and said, "You didn't have to run, Quinn. You ended up throwing it all away, didn't you? College, a career, inevitable prestige. You could have done anything you wanted to do, been anything you wanted to be."

  "Maybe I wanted to be a fugitive," he said coldly.

  "But you weren't a fugitive. You were a fugitive's son. That wasn't as glamorous, surely?"

  He remembered now that she had a damn sharp tongue. Annoyed, he said, "If I'd been after glamour, I would have gone to L.A."

  "What were you after? I've always wondered. Fame wasn't enough? You had to turn it on its head and go for infamy, too?"

  "What the hell is that to you?" he countered, amazed at her bluntness.

  "I'll tell you what it is to me. I grew up with you, Quinn. I thought we were friends."

  "Friends? Isn't that pushing it a little?"

  "All right," she said, coloring. "Intellectual comrades, then. Call it what you like. I can't tell you how shocked I was to learn—from the police swarming our grounds, no less!—that you had run off. Without saying boo, without a note, without a hint. I was so dismayed... so hurt..."

  "Christ, it's always about you, isn't it?" he said, remembering that as well. "You know what? I was wrong. You haven't changed, either. You—"

  "Hiii,'' Olivia said suddenly to a couple entering the room with their teenage son. "Welcome to Hastings House."

  Too late. The group knew they'd strolled into a fight, and no bright smile could hide the fact. The parents walked quickly through the room and then out. Their kid took a little longer, slowing down long enough to steal a burning look at Olivia's breasts.

  The boy reminded Quinn of himself just minutes earlier. Quinn had acted like a hormonal jerk then, and for all he knew, he was doing it still. It wasn't Olivia's fault that he had cut and run. And it wasn't her fault that she couldn't understand why. Their lives were night-and-day different. No mother, timid father, nomadic lifestyle, never a mattress to call one's own-—these were alien concepts to a woman raised in the lap of luxury by a doting mom and a powerful dad.

  Let it go, Quinn. Different worlds. Let it go.

  "Look... what's done is done. Water under the bridge," he said gruffly. "Maybe we ... well. Good night." He turned to leave.

  No, goddammit. He didn't have to run anymore, least of all from her.

  He spun on his heel and faced her again. She looked completely bewildered, which gave him back the advantage. With a smile that he knew women considered disarming, he said, "You're not married, are you?"

  "No!"

  "Why don't we have dinner? You can fill me in on the last half of your life."

  "Dinner? Huh. Dinner. That would be rather—"

  "Daring?" he suggested, an edge in his voice.

  "I was about to say, that would be rather nice," she said, snapping open her fan, "except that I have to be here tomorrow night."

  "Ah," he replied, somewhat sheepishly.

  She seemed agitated, fanning herself with quick little strokes. Intrigued, he waited to see what she would do next.

  "Why don't we have lunch?" she asked with a brittle smile. "I could get away then."

  "Fine," he drawled, making a victory fist in his pocket. "We'll do lunch."

  ****

  He left, taking most of Olivia's wits with him. The encounter with Quinn Leary had left her completely unnerved. Her heart was hammering, her knees were shaking, and inside she was hot, hot, hot—hot enough that she found herself feeling downright grateful for the cold draft that wended its way from the front door and up her gown, fanning those oddly made drawers of hers.

  Oh, wow, this is unreal, she told her
self. This is not normal. No man had ever affected her the way Quinn had just then. Flirting was one thing, banter another, but this was new, this was completely new ....

  She began to pace the length of the drawing room, trying to work out the tension she felt. In a reverie of wonder, she tapped her closed fan on the palm of her hand and shook her head as she marched up, then down, the parquet floor, ignoring the visitors who wandered through. The tourists assumed she was playing the role of a character from a Victorian novel, but the tourists were wrong.

  I don't have time for someone like him. I don't even have the inclination for someone like him. He's too proud, too prickly, too—much too—controversial. What would Mother and Dad say? They'd be appalled to have a Leary rubbed in their noses again.

  Seventeen years. Olivia remembered rushing home after the news of Alison's death and finding her mother sitting alone on the sofa and sobbing. Teresa Bennett, being a Bennett, had quickly wiped her eyes as soon as she saw her daughter. But Olivia, who wanted so badly to hold and be held, had blurted out, "She didn't deserve to die; she never hurt anyone," and burst into tears for her cousin, and then she and her mother had hugged and cried some more, but in secret—because wailing was not allowed in the Bennett household.

  The sad thing was, by the time of Alison's murder, Owen Bennett had had little contact with Alison's father Rupert. Olivia didn't know why the brothers had drifted so far apart, and she'd never dared to ask. Olivia's father had bought out her Uncle Rupert's interest in the mill, that much she knew. But she'd always had the feeling that there was more to the split than a difference in business philosophies.

  In any case, the attendance of Owen and his family at Alison's funeral did nothing to breech the growing rift between brothers. After the murder, the rift became as wide as a canyon and stayed that way.

  Olivia pushed away all of the memories; all of them were bad. No, Quinn was out of the question. He was too bound up with the worst period of her family's life for Olivia ever to be able to take him seriously. True, there was that box of stuff she'd been keeping all these years. But after she returned it to Quinn, that would be it. The town could deal with him any way it liked; it had nothing to do with her.

  "Are these parquet squares the kind you buy at Home Depot?"

  Olivia turned to the young couple who were linked arm in arm and studying the drawing room floor. "No," she said with a gracious smile, "they're Burma teak, and their value is priceless."

  ****

  Quinn drove home in a state of near bliss. He'd gone on the Candlelight Tour for no other reason than to keep a high profile, and he'd come away with a date with the Princess.

  Socially speaking, of course, he was a frog. He knew it, and it made the promise of taking her out all the more gratifying. Dating Olivia was something he never would have dared try back in high school, which was undoubtedly the reason he had enjoyed trouncing her in the classroom every chance he got. He had enjoyed it even more than trouncing her brother on the field.

  But it was all such kid stuff. What a jerk he used to be. He laughed softly to himself as he drove his repaired rental past St. Swithin's Church, past the bank, past Town Hill with its lit-up tree. Had he grown up? He hoped so. He hoped that his reason for wanting to be seen in Keepsake with Olivia on his arm was not because she was a royal and he was a commoner, but because she was smart and funny and, okay, knock-down gorgeous.

  But he really wasn't sure.

  A MONTH AT THE SHORE Prologue

  Antoinette Stockenberg

  " An addictive, captivating story of love, family and trust."

  -- Romance Reviews Today

  Laura Shore has fled her humble past on Cape Cod and made a name for herself on the opposite coast. But when she returns and joins forces with her two siblings to try to save Shore Gardens, the failing family nursery, she finds that she hasn't left the past behind at all. Kendall Barclay, the town's rich son and her childhood knight in shining armor, lives there still, and his hold over Laura is as strong as ever. Like a true knight, he's attentive, courteous, and ready to help -- until a discovery is made that threatens the family, the nursery, and Laura's deepening relationship with him.

  Prologue

  The day after eighth-grade graduation was the best and worst of Kendall's life.

  He was minding his own business, which happened to be tracking down a snowy owl that had been sighted in a woods just outside of town, when he heard boys' voices farther up the trail.

  He was sorry to hear them. He didn't want to be caught with a pair of expensive binoculars around his neck and looking for birds, so he got back on his bike with every intention of leaving the way he had come: quietly. As he pedaled off, the voices got more shrill—whoops and yelps, the sounds of small-town kids on the warpath. He would be fair game for them, he knew from experience, so he picked up his pace.

  And then he heard the scream. It was a girl's cry, frightened and angry at the same time, and it sent chills up his back and arms. He slammed on the brakes so violently that his bike skidded on the soft path and went out from under him, falling on top of him and scraping across his pale, thin legs.

  He righted the bike, but his hands and legs were shaking as he mounted it again and set off in the direction of the scream. Part of him was hoping and praying that it was all just fooling around; but part of him knew better.

  He found them in a clearing next to the trail where he knew kids liked to hang out drinking and smoking—and, he had always assumed, having sex. Four boys had a girl cornered.

  She was standing in front of the campfire rocks. Ken couldn't see her very well because she was shielded by the four boys. They were practically shoulder to shoulder, but one pair of shoulders stood higher and broader than the rest: they belonged to Will Burton, the doctor's son, a bully who had squeezed more than one allowance out of Ken on a Friday afternoon. Will's younger, red-haired brother Dagger was there, too, and two other kids that Ken didn't recognize.

  "Hey!" he yelled at their backs, almost before he could think about it.

  They all turned around at the same time, surprised and therefore pissed. But Ken wasn't looking at them, he was looking at her. He was stunned to realize that she had breasts; how had he never noticed that? She was clutching her torn shirt to herself, but he could see her dark pink nipple. Instantly he looked away. When he looked back again immediately, he saw that her face was all flushed and her cheeks were wet, and he felt desperately ashamed.

  "Leave her alone," he said in a voice filled with fury.

  Will Burton just laughed. "Ooh, I'm scared. What're you gonna do? Run and tell your daddy?"

  The other boys snickered and approached him as he stood astride his bike.

  He could have taken off. He didn't, because he wanted her to make a break for it. But she stayed right where she was! He couldn't believe it. She wasn't moving. It was like she was hypnotized or paralyzed or something. She was looking straight at him and nobody else. He was ashamed in advance for what he knew was going to happen to him.

  He became aware of the crack of branches underfoot as one of the boys he didn't know took up a position behind him. Instinctively he glanced over his shoulder at him. At the same instant, Dagger Burton grabbed his binoculars out of his bike basket.

  Dagger turned away and aimed the binoculars straight at her breasts while Ken and the others remained in their standoff. Everything seemed to go on hold while Dagger did his thing.

  "Shit, I can't see anything," Dagger said after fiddling with the adjustments. "Everything's blurry. I must be too close."

  Stupidly, Dagger began backing away from her in an attempt to get in better focus.

  So that left three.

  "Leave her alone," Ken said, controlling the quaver that hovered at the back of his voice. "Get out now, and I won't tell anyone."

  Will Burton was only a year older than Ken but just then seemed twice his size, minimum. He snorted and said, "Who's gonna make me? You—Skinnykenny? What a dork."


  Ken tried to make his voice sound strong. "Leave her alone." But his voice broke and the last word came out like a hiccup, and everyone laughed, except her, of course.

  He didn't dare look at her; he was so totally mortified. For her, for him, for both of them. He was rich and she was poor, but at that moment both of them were equals.

  Hulking Will Burton waited until the snickers died down, and then in a voice that was way calmer and deeper than Ken's, he said: "Dork."

  It was true. Ken was a dork; he knew he was a dork. But there was something about being called one in front of her that made something inside of him snap. He threw down his bike and went wading into Will Burton: head down, arms flailing, landing punches half in the air. But he made contact, too—for the stolen allowances, for the snickers, and mostly for that exposed nipple, which he knew was now burned into his memory for life. He hated them all, hated them for their contempt for anyone who wasn't as cool as they were.

  They punched him and kicked him and he tasted his own blood, but still he kept flailing. His eyes were shut, so he couldn't tell if she was taking off or not. Before he could get the chance to look, he felt a hard whack on the back of his head—he was pretty sure, from his brand-new binoculars.

 

 

 


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