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 herself. 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.
****
At three in the morning, Father Tom was lying in bed with a brutal case of heartburn. He shouldn't have done it; shouldn't have had the blessed beer with his pepperoni pizza. He had yielded to temptation, and now the devil was claiming his due. The priest shifted onto his side, prompting an ineffectual burp.
It tasted like popcorn. Another temptation yielded to, but who could watch a episode of Mystery! without popcorn? It wouldn't have been right. The priest sighed and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of his bed. The two antacids he'd popped into his mouth before lying down for the night hadn't done a thing; maybe Pepto would help. He reached for his flannel robe and slipped into his sheepskin slippers, then padded sleepily down the hall in search of relief.
I'm getting old. Old and soft and lazy.
What kind of example was he setting for his parish? He, the driving force behind St. Swithin's soup kitchen, now had a pot of his own. He rubbed his belly in disgust. Tomorrow he would walk a mile before mass, and no dessert. And it'd be a cold day in hell before he'd order green peppers on a pepperoni pizza again.
By the glow of the acrylic angel night-light—a present from his grandniece—Father Tom took the bottle of pink liquid from the medicine cabinet, then filled the dosing cup. He downed it the way he used to do his bourbon when he was a young man, tossing it to the back of his throat and swallowing hard.
He washed out the plastic cup and inverted it over the bottle, then returned it to its shelf. And then, because he was loath to lie right down again, he stood a moment at the window of his bathroom and stared out at the lighted Christmas tree on Town Hill. It gave him pleasure to see it—one of the perks, he liked to tell everyone, of having his living quarters within spitting distance of the hill. In summer there was the bandstand; in spring, the Easter-egg hunt. Everything nice about Keepsake happened right across the road from where he lived and served God. (The good Lord willing, he would live through this heartburn to serve Him still.)
Father Tom was about to return to his bedroom down the hall when something ... something caught his eye that wasn't quite right. The priest had a keen eye for pattern and symmetry. If the candlesticks on the altar weren't exactly equidistant from one another, he'd rearrange them before he could even think of saying Mass. So he knew: something was out of whack.
He stared at the town tree.
Yes, there it was, on the left side. Something long and shadowy and unlike anything else on the beribboned tree. How odd. He'd have to take a closer look in the mo
rning. He began to head back to his bedroom, but then, because he was Father Tom and quietly obsessed with maintaining some sense of order in a disorderly universe, he detoured into the front hall and took out his overcoat from the closet there.
He slipped the coat over his robe, then stepped out of the rectory, catching his breath in the cold night air. His slippers dragged on the rock salt spread over the brick path to his residence; he began to walk on tiptoe, trying to minimize the damage to the deerskin soles. He stepped to the sidewalk ... then to the curb ... then to the middle of the empty road.
Salt-melted slush oozed through the seams of his slippers the minute he paused.
No matter. Father Tom was oblivious to the wet and the cold as he stared in shock at the effigy hanging by its neck on a length of rope tied to the Christmas tree. The effigy was the biggest ornament on it: a life-sized figure roughly shaped from a pair of stuffed pantyhose, a wig of blond hair, and a varsity jacket from the high school. The jacket bulged grotesquely at the stomach. Even Father Tom understood that the effigy was meant to depict a pregnant student at Keepsake High. A hanged, pregnant student at Keepsake High.
With a groan of dismay, the priest resisted an overwhelming impulse to cut down the figure and instead ran back to the rectory, where he had to look up the number of the chief of police before punching it in with a shaking hand. God in heaven. God in heaven. Don't let this be so. It was the most fervent prayer Father Tom had ever sent skyward, and the one most doomed to go unanswered.
Chapter 5
"The straw in the pantyhose came from the manger. That's what offended me most."
Returning from yet another trip to the hardware store, Quinn walked in on that bizarre remark, made by a priest he remembered vividly from the old days: Father Thomas Tomczek, one of Quinn's biggest fans and an ex- quarterback himself.
Mrs. Dewsbury had set a plate of defrosted Danish on the kitchen table and was shaking her head in distress as she poured coffee into a delicate china cup resting in a matching china saucer. Hostess and guest both saw Quinn at the same time; neither offered a welcoming smile.
Quinn, who'd been feeling pretty good about the lunch date looming on his horizon, automatically toned down his spirits to match their mood. He stuck out his hand to the priest and introduced himself as if they'd never met.
"Son, I may have got old, but I haven't gone senile—yet," the priest said with a wink at Mrs. Dewsbury. "How've you been?"
"Pretty good, Father," he said, which was the truth. He added, "Am I interrupting something?"
The burly, bald priest fixed his pale green gaze on Quinn. "Not at all. You're the reason I'm here."
Quinn didn't like the sound of that. He nodded and pulled up a chair.
"I was telling Mrs. Dewsbury that we had a bit of excitement on Town Hill," the priest began, taking up the dainty cup with a ham-sized grip. He sipped and gave Mrs. Dewsbury a thumbs-up with his other hand, then continued. "Someone hung an effigy of Alison on the town's Christmas tree in the middle of the night. They used a basketball to suggest ... well, a pregnancy. It was crudely done, but effective."
Quinn bit off the curse before it passed his lips and confined himself to saying mildly, "Shouldn't any effigy have been of me? I thought the figure was always of someone hated and despised."
Father Tom smiled grimly and said, "True. But this made the same point in a much more sickening way."
"This makes me so angry," said Mrs. Dewsbury, banging the table with her teaspoon to show how much. "It will ruin the holiday for sure."
"Who knows about it?" Quinn asked the priest.
"Probably everyone, by now. I called Chief Vickers—who told me it wasn't the first expression of someone's displeasure that you're back," the priest added in his laconic way.
"It probably won't be the last," Quinn conceded. Mrs. Dewsbury was right: The whole town would be demoralized by the vicious act. Oddly, Quinn felt both admiration and contempt for the brazen perpetrator.
But mostly contempt. "It seems to me that whoever did it took a ridiculous risk," he told the priest.
Father Tom shrugged. "Why? There's no real law against it. And say someone did catch him in the act—"
"He'd just be stating what a lot of people are thinking. That they'd like me out of their town." Quinn sucked in air and blew it out again in thoughtful silence.
The priest helped himself to a prune Danish. "If you can believe it, they stole the straw for the effigy's stockings from the creche we set up in front of the church. There was poor baby Jesus, lying in the hard wood manger with nothing to keep him warm. I like to cried when I saw that."
That was the thing about Father Tom: Despite his formidable size, he could weep over a statue left in the cold. It was the reason why everyone loved him.
"I'll say one thing," the priest added. "Whoever did it had b—nerves of steel."
"Do you have any idea who could be doing these things, Quinn?" the widow asked, looking more tentative than he'd seen her before. "Any idea at all?"
Quinn said with a tight smile, "I don't want to brag, but I can think of a dozen people who'd be happy to heat up the tar, and another dozen who'd be thrilled to carry the feathers."
Despite his concern, the priest was amused enough to chuckle. Not Mrs. Dewsbury. "Quinn Leary, you're coming with me to my son's house for Christmas. You will celebrate the holiday with us—with people who like and respect you."
Quinn couldn't resist a smile. "They don't even know me."
"It doesn't matter." The widow gave Quinn a look of pure affection, then turned to the priest and said, "Father, this man is an angel from heaven. You have no idea. My son adores me—but my son is in finance; hammers and screwdrivers frighten him. Gerald wants to pay handymen to do the work, but he knows I won't accept that. With Quinn, it's different. He makes it easy for me to take advantage of him."
Touched by her declaration, Quinn nonetheless stuck to his guns. Though he would never admit it to the widow, he had no intention of leaving her beloved house unguarded and vulnerable while she was away.
Sensing an opportunity, Father Tom jumped in with an offer of his own. "You're welcome to join us at the church for Christmas dinner, Quinn. You can mash the potatoes, serve 'em, eat 'em, or all three; we don't stand on ceremony. Everyone with nowhere special to go is invited."
Quinn accepted at once. "I'll not only serve dessert, I'll bring dessert," he added. "How many pies you need?"
"Oh, that's not—six would be fine."
"Done," he said with a smile.
He had the perfect excuse to remain behind on Christmas.
****
Quinn replaced a worn-out faucet and corroded trap in the first-floor bath in plenty of time to shower, slap on some aftershave, and head out to his rendezvous. It would be his most provocative gesture so far: having an elegant lunch in town with one of its best-known citizens. Whoever hated—or feared—Quinn enough to hang an effigy on the town Christmas tree was bound to go apoplectic over that one. Quinn felt grimly satisfied that all was going according to plan.
More or less.
He kept coming back to Olivia. She hadn't been part of his original plan, which was to flush out whoever had the most to lose from seeing him return to Keepsake. Over the years, and especially during the last few weeks, he had thought about Olivia, naturally, but mostly it had been in terms of nostalgia: she'd been part and parcel of his youthful drive to excel.
But last night? Last night he'd been much more focused on her laugh and her eyes and her ... well, not her IQ, in any case. And today as he ditched his rental in the town parking lot behind the bank, he didn't care if her last name was Bennett or Sinkelheinkenschtein. He simply wanted to be with her again.
He had it all worked out. They would have lunch at Entre Nous, an intimate bistro that had caught Quinn's eye. It was the kind of place you took a woman like Olivia Bennett. They'd linger over a bottle of wine, laugh about the spelling bees, and with any luck he'd line up another da
te—this time at night, by God.
Whistling a soft tune, he made his way down wet sidewalks and slushy streets until he found her shop. The brick building once had been a single-truck fire station, so it had a funky kind of charm. With its slate roof pitching steeply toward the street and its big front window divided by dozens of small square panes, it looked like something out of a children's fairy tale. Quinn was especially glad to see that they'd kept the original door, carved with the initials K.F.D. in elegant Victorian script.
He pulled open the heavy green door, jangling some bells above it, and stamped his hiking shoes on a mat inside the threshold. There were a couple of customers in the shop, and a fresh young thing cutting material from a bolt of cloth, but ... no Olivia. It rocked Quinn, the wave of disappointment he felt. Then he spotted her hurrying down a narrow open staircase that ran alongside one wall. She grinned and waved, and like a deep-keeled sailboat that's taken a knockdown, Quinn felt himself righting again. The whole thing couldn't have lasted more than five seconds. He found the intensity of it pretty damn scary.
In the bright sun that poured into Miracourt, Olivia looked night-and-day different than she had in the candlelight of a drawing room—not as overtly seductive, and yet no less appealing. Chalk it up to the fuzzy sweater and flowing skirt she wore, but somehow she seemed more... straight up-and-down. More normal, more wholesome, more approachable. Or maybe it was her eyes or the way she smiled. Whatever it was, she looked glad and it made him feel good.
"What do you think?" she asked, turning half way round.
"Very nice indeed," he answered under his breath, and then he realized she meant the shop.
The shop was nice, too. He didn't know much about fabric—zip, to be precise—but he knew enough about rich people's taste to know that the stuff around them appealed to it.
"What does the name mean?" he asked, just to have something to say.
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