Take the Long Way Home (18 page)

Oh, yeah. She’d fallen, all right.

Undoubtedly, his hall-of-fame inauguration
today, or whatever the hell the homecoming ceremony was, had
reminded Quinn of his true identity. He was a master of the
universe, not someone who hung out with cat ladies and loners and
wounded souls. Just because Maeve could seduce him with a
cookie—well, what did that signify? She’d practically seduced Gus
Naukonen with a cookie, too. A couple of the cops who’d tried out
her cookies had looked more than a little misty-eyed after the
first bite. One little boy devoured a butterscotch blondie and
asked if Maeve could be his mommy.

There’s nothing more than
cookies between me and Quinn
, she told
herself as she locked down the cash register and shut off the
lights in the front room. She toured the kitchen to make sure
everything was in place for tomorrow’s baking, then trudged to the
back office to get her jacket.
Quinn is
just a fantasy, the guy every girl had a crush on.
Just because Maeve hadn’t been a part of the high
school’s cool clique—or any clique, for that matter—didn’t mean
she’d been immune to his appeal. He’d been gorgeous then. He was
gorgeous now. He’d been hot then. He was hot now. He’d been some
kind of hero then, and now.

And she, being a total fool, had gotten a
crush on him, all over again. And made love with him. And been
dumped by him.

Tears continued to stream down her cheeks as
she exited through the back door into the parking lot behind the
shop. The single light on a high pole above the lot illuminated her
car, sitting by itself on the cracked asphalt, looking as lonely
and forlorn as she felt. She buckled herself in, started the
engine, and wondered how she was going to survive the night. She
needed to get some sleep so she’d have the energy to endure another
long day tomorrow. She couldn’t lie awake for hours, sobbing and
moping and beating herself up for having handed her heart to
someone who, until barely a week ago, had never even smiled at her,
let alone said hello.

She could cuddle Cookie, if Cookie would let
her. Cookie might not allow that, though. Cats could be moody.

I can be moody,
too
, Maeve thought defiantly, wiping the
moisture from her cheeks.

She blinked to clear her vision, shifted the
car into gear, and pulled out of the lot. The thought of driving
home and spending the night alone and brooding didn’t sit well with
her. She wished she had a friend like Lacey in Brogan’s Point,
someone whose shoulder she could cry on.

She didn’t have any friends here, but she
did have family. That was why Harry had urged her to move back to
Brogan’s Point. When he’d died before he could hand her the deed to
the Torelli bakery building, he’d engineered the move from beyond
the grave.

He’d forced her to come back to Brogan’s
Point, where she had family. She might have taken the long way, but
she was home now.

She drove directly to her father’s house. No
lamps glowed through the windows, but the porch and driveway lights
were on. She remembered the many nights in high school when she’d
come home after having been out walking aimlessly or, when she got
older, driving just as aimlessly, grieving and fending off black
thoughts, only to find the house shrouded in gloom. Her father had
never left a light on for her. He might be asleep or out drinking,
but she’d been living in darkness back then, and she’d come home to
a house that as dark as her spirit.

She doubted her father had left the outdoor
lights on for her, but she pretended he had. She pulled into the
driveway, parked and raced up the front walk to the porch. She
wasn’t sure what she would say to him, how she would explain her
despair over Quinn’s failure to put in even a token appearance at
her store. But she believed that, unlike ten years ago, this time
her father would be here for her.

I need a
hug
. Surely that would be enough of an
explanation for now.

She rang the doorbell. No answer.

She rang it again. Silence.

Leaning her hips against the wrought-iron
porch railing, she blew her nose with the soggy napkin in her hand
and waited for the cold night air to clear her mind. Where might
her father be? Possibly at work, if he’d pulled a night shift, or
if a crime had been committed that demanded his particular
expertise. She didn’t want to march into the police station looking
for him, though, not given the shape she was in. His colleagues had
seen her bright-eyed and bustling during the day. She wanted them
to continue thinking of her that way—a businesswoman, a baker. A
successful entrepreneur, not a lovesick loser.

If her father wasn’t at the station house,
he could be at the Faulk Street Tavern with his lady friend. If Gus
couldn’t join them for dinner last night because Friday night was a
busy time at the bar, Saturday night would be busier. She’d be
there. If Maeve’s father wasn’t, then Maeve would look to Gus for
comfort. Bartenders were supposed to provide a sympathetic ear
along with the booze, weren’t they?

Atlantic Avenue was busier than usual, even
for a Saturday night. Maeve wondered if people who’d traveled to
town for the homecoming game were still here. Was there a
homecoming dance at the school? House parties? She had no idea. She
considered a high school football game a silly event to get so
excited about, but evidently, a lot of people didn’t share her
opinion.

She felt her eyes filling with tears again,
just thinking about that afternoon’s game and the man who had been
at the center of the excitement, the man she’d stupidly thought
might care enough about her to show his face at her own significant
event. Another rough swipe at her face with the saturated Cookie’s
napkin, and she wadded it up and tossed it onto the passenger seat.
She wedged her car into a narrow parking space, squeezed through
the open door without scratching the adjacent car, and entered the
tavern.

It was more crowded than Cookie’s had been
at its peak that afternoon. Every table was occupied. Every person
in the room seemed to be yammering at top volume, creating a
cacophony of voices that blended with a song booming from the
jukebox, something about a nervous breakdown. Maeve recognized the
band—the Rolling Stones. One of Lacey’s boyfriends had been a fan
of the Stones, and he’d played their music constantly while hanging
out at the house.

Dozens of people filled the square of
parquet at the center of the room, dancing. Waitresses wove
unerringly through the throngs, carrying trays loaded with drinks
and snacks. The music, chattering voices, clinking bottles and
clicking ice cubes, wove into a solid web of noise around Maeve’s
head. She felt oddly protected by it. She might be by herself, but
at least she wasn’t alone.

She hovered for a moment just inside the
entry, searching for her father. Then she spotted him, over at the
bar. Navigating across the room wouldn’t be easy—she lacked the
waitresses’ grace and balance—but by edging along the side of the
room, she was able to avoid bumping into anyone.

Gus noticed Maeve before her father did. She
and another bartender worked their side of the bar as if they were
actors in a film being run at an accelerated speed. They walked,
poured, served, and talked briskly and fluidly, filling trays,
filling orders.

Without breaking stride, Gus caught Maeve’s
father’s attention with a jerk of her chin and said, “Look who’s
here.”

He spun around on his stool and his face
broke into a smile. “Maeve! The star of the day!” He nudged the guy
on the stool next to his. “My daughter opened a new store today, on
Seaview Avenue, where Torelli’s used to be. Cookie’s.”

“Yeah?” His neighbor appeared intrigued.

“Best cookies you’ll ever eat. Homemade and
delicious. If Gus had to choose between marrying those cookies and
marrying me, she’d choose the cookies.”

He shot Gus a teasing look, who confirmed
his statement with a nod. “You got that right.”

Maeve’s father turned back to her. “I’m so
proud of you, Maeve,” he said. “I can’t help bragging a little. You
look wiped out, though. Here, take my seat.” He leaped off his
stool and helped her onto it, then gave her a spontaneous hug.

She hugged him back, hard. She wasn’t the
star of the day—that titled belonged to Quinn—but she needed to
know someone loved her. Her father’s joy at seeing her convinced
her she did.

Harry had been right. Family was
essential.

“Get her something to drink,” Maeve’s father
asked Gus. “What do you want, honey?”

“I don’t know.” She slumped on the stool,
fighting off a wave of sadness. Yes, family was important, and she
was grateful to have located her father. But in her dreams, she’d
been celebrating the end of her shop’s first official day with
Quinn. Fresh tears threatened, and she batted her eyes to keep them
from leaking. “A glass of wine, I guess. Red or white—I don’t
care.”

“You wine snobs make me crazy,” Gus joked.
“I just opened a nice bottle of Zin. How does that sound?”

“Fine, thanks.” Maeve would have been
satisfied with a glass of Two-Buck Chuck.

Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a good
idea, after all. The noise, the hubbub, the music—Elvis Presley,
now, yodeling about dancing in prison—closed in on her. She wanted
to be home, in her bed. With Quinn. She wanted to talk to him, to
confide in him. To make love with him, and then talk some more. She
wanted the intimacy she’d felt with him from the moment they’d
heard “Take the Long Way Home” spill out of the jukebox in this
very room, when she’d felt as if she and Quinn were the only two
people in the universe.

She wanted the impossible.

Gus handed her a glass. She thanked Gus
again, took a sip of the red wine, and felt it slide smoothly down
her throat. Closing her eyes, she heard not the din of voices
filling the tavern but her song, hers and Quinn’s. “Take the Long
Way Home” hummed through her brain, her gray-matter snagging on
snippets of lyrics she didn’t even know she knew.

You’re part of the scenery…

Lonely days…lonely nights…

What might have been…

A strong hand squeezed her shoulder. Her
eyes shot open and she saw that the hand belonged to her father. He
was boasting about her store to a guy standing near them, holding a
sweating brown beer bottle and listening intently. “Unbelievable
cookies,” her father was saying. “She’s got more talent in her
little finger than I’ve got in my whole body.”

What an exaggeration. His hyping of her
store and her alleged talent was flattering but also embarrassing.
She averted her gaze, and a flurry of activity near the entry to
the tavern caught her attention. The door opened, admitting a
jubilant group: three large, burly men, a gorgeous blond woman…and
Quinn.

Of course. The true star of the day,
accompanied by Ashley Wright, his beautiful girlfriend. A sharp
pain sheared through Maeve, and she gulped some wine, struggling
not to choke on it.

She swiveled toward the bar and closed her
eyes again. This time she heard not the song but Harry’s voice. She
pictured him, his sweet, weathered face, his genial smile, his
clean hands and buffed nails, his neat, dapper apparel. Despite his
polished grooming—and despite her inheritance—she still found it
hard to believe he’d been a billionaire. He’d been so accessible,
so friendly and frank.

Whenever his business had brought him to
Seattle, he’d always come to see her at the Stonehouse Café. She
would ask Lenny for a half-hour break, and if the weather was nice,
she and Harry would sit at one of the outdoor tables on the patio,
sipping coffee and munching on a few of her cookies. They’d talk
about all kinds of things—his recent travels, whatever trouble
Cookie had gotten into lately, his social life, hers. Their
conversations would roam, touching on politics, movies, the wistful
solitude he felt as a childless widower and the wistful solitude
she felt living three thousand miles from where she’d grown up,
where her father still lived.

The discussion that threaded through her
mind as she sat at the bar, clutching her glass of Zinfandel while
her father crowed to strangers about her new store, was the first
time Harry had told her he thought she should return to Brogan’s
Point.

“That’s not home,” she’d argued. “That’s
just a place where I got hurt.”

Harry had broken off a piece of his
honey-sesame cookie—one of his favorites—and nibbled on it. Then
he’d said, “When you get hurt, you get scars.”

She couldn’t argue with that.

“The thing about scar tissue,” he’d
continued, “is that it’s tougher than regular tissue. You know how
body builders get their strength? Their weight-lifting causes
little tears in their muscles. Then those tears heal, and the scar
tissue is stronger than the original muscle. All those little
tears, all those scars—that’s what makes them so strong.”

“Really? The muscles tear? I guess that’s
why we say people who work out are ripped.”

Harry had chuckled. “You may not realize it,
Maeve, but every hurt you’ve suffered has created a scar that makes
you stronger. Someday you’ll be strong enough to go home.”

“Someday, maybe.” She’d sighed. “That day is
a long way off.”

A long way, but she’d made it home. Her
father’s beaming, bursting pride in her, his affection, his
effusive hugs—it all convinced her she’d done the right thing in
returning to Brogan’s Point. She’d developed some tough scar tissue
from the wounds he’d inflicted on her, and she was strong enough
now to forgive him, to come to him when she needed someone. She was
strong enough to lean on him when she felt weak.

Quinn had torn her heart by not showing up
at the store today, and he tore it again by arriving at the tavern
in the company of his magnificent girlfriend. Those tears might
form scars, too, and make her stronger. But right now the tears
were raw, bleeding. Agonizing.