Keepsake (19 page)

"And, Dad
... Quinn," murmured Olivia, who seemed to have run out of steam just when her train had the summit in sight.

Back, back she rolled, under the outraged glare of her father, who had obviously been unaware of their presence until then. This wasn't some annoyed father telling his seventh-grader to get along home. This was a man at the top of his game, ready to do whatever it took to have his will enforced.

And he left Quinn cold. "Sir," he said, sticking out his hand. Let the man take it, or not. Quinn didn't really give a damn.

Owen Randall Bennett Senior chose not.

Fine. Quinn turned to Olivia, who looked utterly miserable. In one of those blinding flashes he got occasionally, he realized that she had brought him there not to make her father's life hell but simply to put Quinn back in touch with Keepsake. She was crazy, she was nuts, but her heart was so much in the right place that Quinn found himself wanting to give her old man the same black eye he'd given to Jimmy O'Malley.

He went one better. "Call me crazy," he said, slipping his arm lightly around Olivia'
s waist, "but I feel like danc
in'. Will you excuse us, sir?"

He ushered her past her stupefied father to the sounds of the Stones' driving classic, "Satisfaction." Perfect.

"Did I just get you disinherited?" he asked Olivia as they headed for the ballroom.

Her voice and smile were resigned as she said, "It wouldn't be the first time. I've been in and out of his will so often that his attorneys call me Rainmaker."

"Joke?"

"I got it straight from their secretary; she works at Miracourt on weekends."

"Oh, hey... I'm sorry, Liv.
Huh
. I didn't think people
actually did stuff like that. Not outside of mystery novels, anyway."

"Oh, I don't care anymore," she said, waving politely to someone going the other way. "The older he gets, the worse he gets. He tries to control everything and everyone.
Rand
is completely under his thumb, and so is my mother. I guess I'm the only holdout and it makes him crazy. I can understand why my mother has to put up with him, but I don't understand why
Rand
doesn't just strike out on his own. He hates working for my father."

They entered a forty-foot-long room paneled in wood carved in delicate garlands. The room had been designed for dances, but contrary to Quinn's boast to Owen Bennett, he had no desire to dance. For one thing, he didn't know how.

In any case, neither of them felt like rocking to the beat, so they simply stood on the sidelines, watching sexily clad women gyrate with their dates from the pages of
GQ.

"You know what I think
Rand
should be doing?" she asked, standing on tiptoe and leaning into Quinn's ear to be heard over the noise of the band. "He should be working with kids—teaching, or maybe even coaching. Of course, there's no money in that. Or status. My brother would rather be vice president of something he hates than be poorly paid doing something he loves."

Why the hell were they talking about
Rand
? He wasn't even there. "Got him all figured out, have you?" Quinn asked, without really caring.

"Of course I've got him figured out. He's my brother and I know what's best for him," she insisted. "You remember how he was: very emotional. He has that hot temper—but on the other hand, he can be very devoted. He relates to kids on their level, and they love that. And he gets to be the center of their attention, which
he
loves."

"I remember the temper," Quinn said, nodding. The day after an injured Rand Bennett found out that Quinn was replacing him as quarterback of the Keepsake Cougars, he went ballistic. Quinn could picture him still, hobbling around the locker room on crutches, ranting and raving about his injury. At the time, Quinn had actually felt guilty for being chosen as his replacement.

No more.

The band slid into a slow number, "Unforgettable," and suddenly Quinn remembered why he'd agreed to come: to be with Olivia. It was true that he wouldn't be outstrutting Mick Jagger at the fast stuff anytime soon, but he damn well knew how to hold a woman in his arms and move her slowly to his will.

"C'mon," he said, suddenly tired of her father, her brother, her mother, and every other Bennett on the planet. "Let's dance."

He took Olivia by the hand and led her onto what was now a crowded floor, and he drew her into his arms. Under the cover of a press of couples, he nuzzled her hair and inhaled deeply the sheer, intoxicating scent of her. Her body felt lithe and free and unbelievably well fitted to his, so much so that he knew it when her breasts lifted and fell in a sigh.

She snuggled her head on his shoulder, and he became aware that he'd never felt more content in his life. There was just something about her; it was like coming home. Home at last. He wanted only to hold her, to protect her, to have her forever in his embrace.

He closed his eyes, lost completely in the essence of her. If he were dragged from the Bennetts' house by thugs just then and shipped off to live alone on a rock in the ocean for the rest of his life, it almost wouldn't matter. He knew that he would always, always have that dance.

Live a moment completely
,
and you possess it forever. It was such a simple formula. How had he not thought of it before?

Liv... sweet Liv
, he thought, kissing the top of her hair.
I'm falling so much in love with you.

She lifted her face to his. "What did you say?"

He shook his head, not trusting himself to do justice to his feelings. They ran more deeply than words.

She snuggled her cheek back on his shoulder and they
drifted together on the magic carpet of the melody, and when the song ended, they floated down to the dance floor on the sound of their own sighs. Before Quinn could escape with Olivia from the next dance—a driving, pulsing, shake- your-booty number—he felt someone whack him soundly on the back in jovial greeting.

"Quinn Leary, for chrissake! Quinn!" he shouted over the music. "How ya doin'?"

He turned to face Mike Redding, the most irrepressible of his old teammates. More brawn than brain, but with enough personality and charm that no one seemed to mind much, Mike was the kind of guy who used to make the workouts fun and the losses easier to bear. He was just an all
-around, uncomplicated, regular
... guy.

"Hey, Mike," Quinn said loudly over the music as he shook his hand. "Howzit goin'?"

"Never better. I'm a sportswear manufacturer. High-tech stuff—hot-hot-hot. We can't make enough of it. Geez, I'm glad you came," he said, hugging Olivia with one arm as he latched onto Quinn with the other. "I heard you were back, but I didn't expect to see you
here,
for chrissake. This is great!" he said, whacking Quinn on the back again.

"You gotta come over to Buffitt's house tomorrow—not you, Livvy, of course. A bunch of us guys meet every New Year's Day to watch the bowl games. Buf
f
itt lives in a pigpen and doesn't care when we spill beer on the rug and knock over popcorn. It's great. No wives to hassle you with coasters, no kids running in front of the tube in the middle of a touchdown play.

"Ouch!"
he yelped, and turned to a blond woman half his size who had a thumb and forefinger hooked firmly into the back of his arm. "This is my wife, Mitzi."

Mitzi let go of him long enough to shake Quinn's hand. "Pleased to meet you," she said, "and don't you believe Him. He doesn't open the door of the rec room during a game unless one of us is showin' blood or guts."

"The first kickoff's at noon. Everyone pitches in twenty bucks and Buffitt takes care of provisioning. So what do you say?"

Quinn had hoped to spend the day with Olivia, but she was looking way too thrilled that someone was taking pity on him. Come to think of it, she might have set up the whole invitation. But
... no. She seemed too surprised and too damn pleased about it.

"Sure," he said. "It sounds good."

Another whack on the back and off Mike went with Mitzi, who glanced back at Quinn once or twice from curiosity on their way out of the ballroom.

"Happy now?" he asked Olivia.

"Yes, I am," she answered, preening. "This makes everything worthwhile."

Quinn had to admit, it felt good to be regarded as something more than municipal sewage for once. The plain fact was, he'd lived in half a dozen different cities and towns in his life, and Keepsake was the only place that he had ever considered home. He'd spent the biggest—and the happiest—chunk of his life there, and old memories died hard. It felt good to be back among people his own age with whom he shared a history.

Good enough that he almost forgot why he'd come back to Keepsake in the first place.

Quinn Leary had endured some fairly awful New Year's Eve celebrations in the past seventeen years, but the most dreaded one of all was turning out to be pretty good.

As it turned out, Mike Redding wasn't the only one from Quinn's past who wanted to renew old acquaintance. Over the next hour, a variety of people took the trouble to come over and say hello, and after a while, Quinn detected a pattern: all of them seemed happy with their lot in life. Teacher, nurse, musician, newly adoptive parents
...

"Obviously they're the kind who look forward, not backward," Quinn told Olivia during a quiet moment alone. They were sitting at a linen-topped table, sampling a plate of sophisticated nibbles that must have cost Owen Bennett a mill worker's annual wage.

Olivia bit into a double-stuffed mushroom and let out a moan of ecstasy that to Quinn's way of thinking was a complete waste of perfectly good passion. "Do you think the reverse is true?" she asked him as she wiped her fingertips on a tiny silver napkin. "Do you think the unhappy ones somehow blame and resent you?"

Quinn shrugged. "Coach Bronsky just walked in and he's spotted me. Check him out—what do you think?"

Olivia glanced up at the coach. "Ouch. He does seem to be sending savage looks our way. Now
there's
someone who should be wearing a mask." She added, "I wonder if he's been drinking."

"Does he have a problem that way?"

"Oh, yes. For years now. It started the year of the murder. He made a fool of himself on local TV after an especially disastrous game, and it's been downhill since. Most of the time he manages to stay sober on the job, but he has a real attitude problem. I have no idea why he's still coaching at the high school. He must know people in high places."

"Speaking of people in high places—here comes your father."

"Oh, no!" cried Olivia, cringing. "Here! Eat one of these! Look impressed! No! Look casual!"

Laughing, Quinn accepted the truffled lobster and then laid it back down on the plate. Sooner or later, this moment had to come. Quinn knew that Owen Bennett was well within his rights to ask him to leave. But the new Quinn, the mellow Quinn, was hoping that he'd be allowed to stay.

Bennett looked—for Owen Bennett—almost pleasant as he came up to their table. "I trust you two are having a good time?" he asked with a fixed smile.

"Very much so," said Quinn, and he, at least, wasn't being wildly ironic.

"Good. Olivia, I wonder if you'd excuse Quinn for a moment? I have something I'd like to discuss with him."

"Oh, Dad, please, don't. Really. Don't. It's my fault—"

"Now, now, you'll have him back in no time. Quinn? Would you do me the honor? I have an excellent collection of antique half hulls in my study," he added, which was relevant to absolutely nothing.

"My pleasure," said Quinn, standing up. He turned to Olivia and said, "Better not go near the shrimp; I remember you broke out in hives at the sophomore dance."

They'd been taking turns pulling out memories, like two kids showing off their baseball cards at camp. The hives reminiscence was new, and Olivia just ab
o
ut clapped her hands with joy at having that memory jogged. Anyone else might have remembered the event with a certain amount of embarrassment. Not Olivia.

Quinn gave her a quick, doting grin and then fell in with Bennett, who, between nods and smiles to his guests, chatted casually about the drive he was spearheading for a new Olympic-sized swimming pool at the high school.

The town of
Keepsake
, including the high school, belonged to Owen Bennett. That was the message implicit between the lines. Keepsake—and everyone in it—was his. He gave Quinn a sideways look as they walked. Did Quinn understand?

Quinn returned the look.
Yeah, yeah, got it—you're the Big Kahuna.

Too bad Olivia refused to make it unanimous.

The library was at the end of a roped-off, sentried hall, as far from the merriment as one could get. Bennett took a key from his pocket and slipped it into the keyhole of the massive, paneled door, made from exotic woods that would never again grow on the planet earth.

If Keepsake was Owen Bennett's world, then the library was his sanctum. Everything in it radiated power and prestige: the leatherbound books—all first editions, Quinn had no doubt; the antique spinning globe, roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle; framed, fawning thank-you citations tucked like second thoughts on the bookshelves; a fabulous model of a four-masted schooner in its own glass case; and, of course, the ships' hulls. They lined all four walls, a fleet of mastless yachts that weren't going anywhere—except maybe into a list of assets to be probated some day after Bennett sailed off into the Great Beyond.