By The Sea, Book One: Tess (26 page)

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
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.

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.