Keepsake (9 page)

And the smell was downright fragrant: Quinn could swear it was coming from the wallpaper. Whereas before the cottage had had a kind of bland, rental quality to it, now it could probably hold its own in the pages of
House Beautiful.

Quinn gave the poofy, flouncy fabric over the windows a wary nod and asked, "Your work?"

Olivia laughed and said, "No, my tastes run to simpler treatments than that. But my mother's a big fan of Mario Buatta; she made all her decisions based on his gospel. Lucky for her she comes from a family that can snag deep discounts on fabric."

There were miles of it, florals and stripes and plaids everywhere Quinn looked. To him it was overwhelming, but what did he know? "That easy chair looks familiar," he ventured.

"Well, okay, that
is
from before," Olivia confessed. "It's been slipcovered."

"My dad used to like to read in it," Quinn said quietly. He tried to picture his father sitting in the chintz-covered chair with a book about Frederick Law Olmsted on his lap, but he came up empty. The room belonged to women now.

Quinn turned to Olivia, who was watching him with an intensity that surprised him. Again the color sprang to her cheeks. Again he took heart.

"You're right about this place," he mused. "I feel as if we're standing in some parallel universe. Everything's the same—and yet it's not the same at all." On a whim, he
touched
her cheek
lightly
with the back of his fingers and said softly, "Especially you."

She didn't pull away, but her lashes fluttered down in a gesture that struck him as both shy and seductive at the same time. What was it about her? She was driving him quietly crazy.

She said, "And yet you're just the same as I remember."

Quinn shook his head. "No. Not the same at all. Seventeen years ago, I wouldn't have dared do
... this," he said, lowering his lips to hers in a kiss. It was lightly given, the kind of kiss a very cool quarterback might give a slightly geeky classmate—but it left Quinn's heart pounding wildly in his chest.

He pulled back, as if he'd got a mild shock, and repeated with wonder, "Not the same at all."

Somehow Olivia didn't seem nearly as self-conscious as he was feeling. Those long, thick eyelashes fluttered back up, revealing eyes that were dark, dancing, forthright. She didn't say a word, only lifted her arms around his neck and pulled him back for another kiss—this one hot, hard, and wet.

Sacked!

But not for long. Still reeling, Quinn felt a rush of testosterone and saw a sudden vision of the end zone in his mind's eye as he caught her in his arms. He was determined to score. His mouth claimed hers with a roughness that was not him, and yet when he felt her gasp, then yield to it, he knew that she was as willing as he was able. He backed her against the sofa and she crumpled into it, lying on her back, legs bent at the knees, her feet on the floor. He fell on top of her as if she were a loose ball that he didn't want anyone else, ever, to possess.

"Liv, Liv, where have you
been?'
' he said in a muffled voice as he kissed her throat, nipping, tasting, then soothing with more kisses. He was wild to have her, then, there, anywhere. He gave no more thought to her parents up the hill than he once had to fans in the bleachers; he was focused solely, strictly, and very irrationally,
on the soft, sweet-
smelling body that was arching restlessly beneath his own. His hand ran up the outside of her leg, but outside of her legs was not where he wanted to be.

Good God, son, what are you doing?

Quinn's head shot up. His father's voice was too loud, too clear, to be ignored. He very nearly said "Dad?" but then he realized it was the house. Chintz or no chintz, the gardener's cottage was so bound up with Francis Leary that part of his soul was still drifting through its rooms.

"Oh, damn," Quinn murmured. He lifted his weight from Olivia and propped himself up on one elbow.

"What?'' she said. Her eyes, huge, took on a tragic cast.

"Nothing," he murmured, gently raking her hair away from her face. She was so beautiful, so vulnerable just then.

So utterly seducible. "This is not the best place," he said at last.

"It's fine, sure it is," she argued, still breathless.

He could see streaks of green in her eyes. How had he never noticed before? "You're so beautiful."

She gave him a rueful smile. "I can tell."

"If we were anywhere else
..." He traced her reddened upper lip with the tip of his finger. "I asked you before if you were married, but
... are you seeing someone?"

"Seeing someone?" she said, a little blankly. "Do I act as if I am?"

He couldn't believe it. For Olivia Bennett not to be claimed, not to be taken—well, he just couldn't believe his good luck. "Plan to see me, then," he whispered to her. "Often."

She snapped back into focus. "You always were a cocky son of a bitch." The palms of her hands were flat against his chest. She used them to push him away, but not so violently that he had to consider it a rejection. It was more like a gesture of miffedness.

She sat up alongside him and raked her fingers through the curls of her hair—which remained exactly the same as before—and then she straightened her sweater and stood up. "I have absolutely no idea why that happened," she announced.

Oh, yes; definitely miffed. Quinn refrained from reminding her that she was the one who had trumped his kiss with one that had left them both senseless. He said with a shrug, "I assume you have to beat men off with a stick every day."

Her response to that was a wry smile, but he could see that her humor had improved. "C'mon," she told him, taking his hands in hers and pulling him up from the sofa. "I promised you a surprise."

"And, boy, I got one."

"Not that, dope." She began pulling him toward the bedroom, the bedroom that used to be his.

Flirt, imp,
femme fatale
—she was all of those and yet none of those. Completely bemused now, Quinn let her drag
him along. One thought, and one thought only, possessed him: If I can just channel all that energy of hers into sex, somewhere safe
...

"Surprise!" she cried, gesturing toward a three-board bench at the foot of the bed.

He stared at the bench in a state of amazement. There, polished to sunshine brightness, was arrayed every trophy and citation he'd ever won. His father had cherished them until their nighttime flight out of Keepsake, and Olivia apparently had appointed herself keeper of the flame. Quinn hadn't thought about the awards in seventeen years. Now, here they all were, lined up like golden ghosts to mock his thwarted ambitions:

STATE ALL-STAR FOOTBALL TEAM

CHAMPION DEBATE TEAM

STATE ALL-STAR FOOTBALL TEAM

FOR HIGHEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MATH

MVP, KEEPSAKE COUGARS

MVP, KEEPSAKE COUGARS

DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT, LATIN STUDIES

"Pretty impressive," she said, beaming.

"Uh-huh."

Quinn picked up the biggest trophy, an ungainly, gaudy tribute to his prowess in Latin, of all things. He'd taken the course as an extracurricular activity because he thought it would help him in law school. But that was before he became disillusioned with the concept of due process.

He put the trophy back down and glanced at Olivia, who was standing alongside him with a proud look on her face, her arms folded across her chest in a self-satisfied way that he remembered well.

"So," he said, turning his back on the bench, the bed, and her. "Wanna have those sandwiches now?"

"Exhu
m
e her? Are you insane?"

Quinn Leary sat in Chief Vickers's office with thighs apart, his fingertips making contact across the divide there. His broad shoulders hulked forward in a relaxed, almost insolent way as he contemplated the dumbfounded police chief. Quinn wasn't exactly enjoying the encounter, but he wasn't exactly in pain.

"It seems like the obvious solution. They say my father murdered Alison because she was carrying his baby and had threatened to tell the Bennetts. I say that's horseshit. A DNA test ought to settle the matter once and for all."

He reached into his pocket and came up with a plastic film canister that he tossed on the police chief's desk. "Here. A snip of my father's hair. I can tell you where to find more," he said dryly, "if you need to verify that it's his. The sooner we resolve this, the better. I plan to stay in Keepsake awhile, and—let's face it—you can't afford too many more episodes like those trashed trophies. Sooner or later, someone is going to get hurt."

Vickers barely glanced at the container. "Who told you about the trophy case? We're not letting that out."

Quinn shrugged. "It's a small town."

Someone had broke
n into Keepsake High and spray-
painted all the football trophies in the trophy case. Worse, they'd smashed in a
l
l the team photos, many of them signed. Quinn had heard it from Mrs. Dewsbury, who had heard it from the janitor's sister—but Vickers didn't need to know that.

The chief rocked back in his chair. After a thoughtful pause, he said, "What do you really want, Quinn? Why are you here?"

Quinn nodded at the container sitting on the desk blotter. "I told you: to clear my father's name."

"What difference does it make? He's dead."

"It makes a difference," Quinn said, almost wearily. "You're a son. You're a father. How can you not get it?"

"Suppose we leave my family out of this."

The chief's son Kurt had been one of Quinn's teammates: a fullback with good potential but with a chronic need to walk on the wild side. Quinn had heard (again from Mrs. Dewsbury) that after he and his dad
fled
Keepsake, Kurt Vickers had turned from alcohol to serious drugs—another casualty blamed on Quinn. The list kept getting longer.

Quinn said, "How do I make my request official?"

The chief snorted. "Not by bringing it here. Take it to the D.A. if you feel a burning need."

Quinn stood up and took the plastic container back. "Okay. That's what I'll do."

He was halfway out the door when Vickers said, "Francis Leary did it, Quinn. You just can't bring yourself to believe it, that's all. But the evidence is there. Alison confided to a friend that she thought your father was a hunk. He was seen staring at her just a little too keenly. The rope that hanged her came from his potting shed. Fibers from it were found in his truck. No one could corroborate his alibi for the time of death. And last of all, he ran. Innocent men don't run."

"I repeat:
horseshit.
That's not even decent circumstantial evidence, and you know it."

The two men locked gazes. Pete Vickers, lifelong townie, son of a policeman, father of a drug addict, the only active member of a police detail that would never live down the Keystone Kops reputation that Quinn's father had foisted on them—and Quinn himself, first stirring the pot, now lighting the fire beneath it.

Vickers spoke first. "Go to hell."

Quinn's eyebrows lifted in tacit acknowledgment that he might be headed that way. He sighed and said, "See you around, Chief," and walked past the dispatcher's desk and out to his truck.

****

"I'll never be able to eat pastrami again," Olivia told Eileen over drinks on Saturday. "It was unbearable, sitting
in his truck
and trying to chew."

"And he didn't take his trophies, after all that?"

"No," said Olivia glumly. "I went back yesterday and boxed them all up again."

She was still traumatized by the disastrous date. What had happened? She'd spent the last day and a half trying to figure it out. This much she knew: She was deeply attracted to Quinn, and he had seemed just as interested in her.

"Almost as interested, anyway," she said. "There was incredible electricity. It started at Hastings House
... the way he just
looked
at me!"

"The corset," Eileen said as she tore Boston lettuce into a salad bowl.

"That's what I thought, too, at the time. I mean, really, what was not to like? He'd have to have been married, buried, or holy not to react. But the next day—you know what I wear to work—he was just as interested, if not more. Eileen, I'm telling you, something clicked. I don't remember ever enjoying myself as much with a man. Or as briefly, dammit."

"
The
corset."

"No
,
kismet." Olivia slid off the island stool in her sister-in-law's designer kitchen and ambled over to the Sub-Zero fridge.

"When we were strolling down
Main
," she said thoughtfully, "something changed in my life. I've never felt it before. It was like
... what was it like? Like I was a lock, and someone was turning a key in me." She smiled a faraway
smile as she poured more tonic over her gin. She could still feel his arm linked through hers, still see the dimple on the right side of his face when he grinned.