Keepsake (12 page)

Olivia pulled into the drive, genuinely disappointed that Quinn's truck wasn't there. She would have enjoyed seeing the look on his face when she dumped the box in his arms. Unwilling to leave the trophies at risk on the wraparound veranda, she decided to go around to the back and leave them there instead. With an effort, she slid the heavy box out of the back of her minivan and lugged it up the half dozen steps to the small back porch.

She dropped the box with a thud next to the door, then in an attack of conscience, peeled off the green bow that she had mockingly stuck to the cardboard and stuffed it in her coat pocket. Just because Quinn Leary possessed no apparent Christmas spirit, it didn't mean that
she
had to go and get snotty about the season. She was halfway down the steps when she realized that music was coming from inside the house. Nuts. Mrs. Dewsbury must be at home. Olivia couldn't very well skulk away like a Keepsake vandal, so she came back up the steps and knocked dutifully at the back door.

"Door's open!"

He was home.

Nuts!

Annoyed that he didn't have the courtesy to come to the door for her, Olivia opened it herself and peeked around it into the kitchen. She was prepared for many things—for embarrassed glances, awkward hellos, muttered excuses—but she wasn't prepared for the sight of Quinn Leary up to his elbows in flour, rolling out pie dough on a pastry board.

"Uhhh... hi," she said, wracking her br
ain for an excuse to be there.

"Hey," he said in greeting. He looked surprised, but hardly sheepish.

Quinn Leary was a stonemason. The realization came home to Olivia, big time, when she took in the heavily muscled arms that were working the rolling pin. Quinn's chest, clad in a navy T-shirt dusted with flour, was definitely the chest of a stonemason. His hands, thickly veined and doughy-fingered, were the hands of a stonemason. Even his waist, tucked all around inside his jeans with a big baker's towel, had the taut circumference of a man who didn't sit around on his duff all day.

So why did he give off the irresistibly warm vibrations of a Julia Child?

"Is
... is Mrs. Dewsbury around?" Olivia asked stupidly, trying not to gawk.

"Nope. She's gone off to
New Hampshire
with her son for the holidays. You just missed her."

"Are you—?" Olivia fluttered her wrist at the row of empty pie shells waiting on the counter. "Subcontracting, or something?"

Quinn laughed out loud at that, and all of Olivia's hostile resolve slid away on the sound of his mirth. She was ready to fill the pies, sell the pies, buy the pies, eat the pies—whatever it took to hang around him for just a little bit longer.

"I'm baking these for Father Tom's Christmas dinner at the church tomorrow," he explained, still chuckling at the notion of being mistaken for a professional pie man.

God, his teeth were white. It was so nice to just stare at them. "Can I sit down?" she asked.
To stare at your teeth and everything else?

"I'm sorry—sure, pull up a chair. My hands—"

"Are all sticky." Olivia wondered what it would be like to lick the raw dough off them and immediately blushed down to her ankles. She cleared her throat and said, "You seem pretty good at that."

"Yeah," said Quinn, rolling out a fat edge to match the rest of the circle. "My dad couldn't stand seeing excess harvest go to waste. He was always bringing produce home from the job and doing something or other with it; I guess I learned by osmosis. I also put up a pretty mean jar of preserves," he added with a grin.

He looked unbearably attractive to her. "A stonemason who bakes," she said a little giddily. "
Women must line up outside your door
."

Aaackk! Wrap your arms around his knees and cling to him, why don't you?

Mercifully, he pretended not to have heard the fawning remark. "So how come you're looking for Mrs. D.?" he asked as he somehow slipped the circle of dough from the floured board to the pie pan, where it lay draped over the sides like ivory Ultrasuede.

"Who?" she asked.

"Mrs. Dewsbury?"

"What about her?"

He brought those terrifically sexy brows down in a squint of puzzlement and simply waited. Clearly he thought that Olivia had purposely removed one of her oars from the water so that she could row her boat in circles for a while.

"Because—your car was gone!" she blurted out, which made absolutely no sense at all, even to her.

"Yep," he said, expertly fitting the dough to the pan. "I gave up the rental and bought myself a new truck. It'll be delivered this afternoon, with any luck."

That made no sense, either, unless...

"It sounds as if you plan to stay awhile."

"Yep." He took up a knife and began cutting away the extra crust.

"And that's because—?"

"Yep."

Shit.
Because of what?

He gave her an annihilating look that was clearly intended to put her out of her misery. "Because of you," he said matter-of-factly as he crimped the edge with his thumb and forefingers. "Among other reasons."

Because of you.

Among other reasons.

She kicked away the "other" and clung to the "you."

"Then why haven't you called?" she demanded, regaining her footing on the slippery slope of their cryptic conversation.

The heartstopping smile turned serious. "I assume you know how I've been spending my spare time?"

She looked away and said, "Yes. Up to no good."

"Mm. I figured you'd hear, sooner or later." He carried the pie shell over to the side counter and laid it next to four other ones waiting for fillings, then came back to the table and scooped another ball of dough from the huge, very old cracked bowl he was using.

"Did you have to go that route, Quinn?" she almost begged to know.

For an answer, he said, "I guess it won't surprise you to hear that I ran smack into a brick wall at the D.A.'s office."

"Well, what did you expect?" she asked, disappointed that he was disappointed. "The courts don't go to lengths like that to prove someone is innocent, not if he's no longer living. Not if he's not in jail. Why
should
the district attorney do anything?"

"How about because it's the right thing to do?" Quinn suggested, sprinkling flour on the pastry board and slamming the ball of dough just a little too hard onto it.

Olivia didn't know what to say to that, especially since part of her agreed with him. But she wanted him to understand all sides of the scenario, so she said, "The thought of
... of doing something like that to Alison hit my parents very hard, Quinn. I can only imagine how my aunt and un
c
le felt if they heard. I know it's just a scientific procedure—"

"That's all it is," Quinn said flatly.

"—but this is
Alison,"
Olivia argued softly. "Someone real. Someone we all knew. The same Alison that you helped out in geometry. The same Alison you played badminton with during our family picnic that time."

"That
one
time."

"But still."

"Obviously I don't see this the way you do, Liv."

She watched in disheartened silence as he worked quickly, almost impatiently, to form the last pie shell. In his haste he tore the circle of dough as he transferred it from the board to the pan. He let out a sound, the barest hint, of exasperation and started over. The second crust went smoothly; she could see that he was focused on the task. It was the Quinn she remembered—cool, deliberate, unflappable. A star at everything he did, even pie crusts.

He broke the awkward silence by saying, "How is it that you don't know how your own aunt and uncle feel?"

"Our families aren't on speaking terms anymore," she said forthrightly. "They were strained even before Alison's death. You didn't know that? I guess we were better at keeping up appearances then. You have to remember,
reality shows
hadn't been invented yet and people still had a sense of decorum. It was a different age."

"Oh, to have it back again," Quinn said in a wry, musing voice.

"In any case, the rift is an open secret nowadays—and really,
what's
the big deal? Every family has people in it who don't talk to one another," she said, carefully sweeping all the loose flour into a pile with the edge of her hand.

"You don't sound very resigned to it," he said, which she thought was perceptive. He took a pot of filling—pumpkin, by the look of it—from the stove to the counter and began glopping it into the first pie shell.

"To be honest, I don't
even know why they're not speak
ing," Olivia admitted with a sigh. "My parents have always refused to tell me. It's about money, I'm sure. My father's brother went through his inheritance in no time; right there is a cardinal sin."

"Doesn't sound like much of a reason to me," Quinn said, glancing at her between fillings.

She shrugged, uncomfortable with the notion of talking about other people's spending habits. She'd been brought up never to discuss either money or sex, and she was feeling a vague but very definite unease talking about her aunt and uncle. Especially her uncle.

"I do see my aunt in church now and then," Olivia said in her own defense. "I try to get a conversation going, but
... she never has much to say."

"You go to church?" Quinn asked her.

"Once in a while. Why? Do I strike you as the heathen type?"

He smiled. "Maybe a little."

Heathen
apparently meant "nymphomaniac" in his mind. It was the only possible explanation for the look he was giving her.

Dropping her gaze from his, Olivia splayed her hands against the edge of the table and self-consciously studied her neatly trimmed nails. Had she ever had flour under them? She was fairly sure not. She felt a sudden, very bizarre surge of regret. Flour and church and kids—she didn't have time for any of them. What a disaster she was as a woman so far. Her life had been all about the store, the store, the store. She was like her father, with his obsession with the mill, the mill, the mill.

Her head shot up. It was true! She was
exactly
like her father: driven, controlling, and inflexible. It was the most depressing thought she'd had in a long time.

She stared glumly at Quinn, as at ease in the kitchen as he was on a gridiron, and wondered how
he
had managed to turn out so well. "You're amazing," she said, watching as he slid the three pumpkin pies into Mrs. Dewsbury's oven. "I wish I had your
... your range of interests."

Quinn said dryly, "O
h, yeah—I'm a regular Renaissance man." He set the timer and said, "Three down, three to
go."

"More pumpkin?"

"Two apples and a mince."

Now that he said so, she did smell other wonderful aromas wafting from the stove. It shocked her, how oblivious she was to everything but his presence.

She made herself look at something besides him. What she saw was wainscoting nubby from a dozen coats of paint and cupboards that couldn't be more plain. A fridge that was old, a stove that was older. Dotted sheer curtains yellowed with age. A countertop buried under clunky mug racks and jugs jammed with utensils that Mrs. Dewsbury couldn't possibly need, gifts from grandkids, perhaps. A kitchen, in short, that was worn and mussy—a little like Mrs. Dewsbury—but a room that resonated with lifetimes of living. It made Olivia feel lonely somehow.

"Is there anything I can do?'' she offered. "Peel apples or anything—?"

Very patiently, he said, "They're peeled. They're
sliced
. They're ready to go."

"Oh
!  And here they are
," she said
, staring into a bowl of them in front of her.  By now she was completely rattled.

She had the feeling that he wanted to say something, but that he was holding back out of simple politeness.
 
Let me finish the damn pies.
That's what she decided he wanted to say. Well trained, Olivia stood up; she was determined to exit before she was asked.

"I should be going," she said, pushing her chair in and undraping her coat from the back of it. "It's Christmas Eve and I have a million things to do."

"Yeah, me, too," he muttered, taking a bowl from the fridge.

He didn't sound very happy with her. Was it because she had turned away from the burning look he'd given her?
Had
he given her a burning look? Who knew? When she was
around him, her instincts bounced around like bullets in a spaghetti western.

She had her hand on the doorknob and was about to wish him a merry Christmas, but instead she turned and blurted out, "What do you plan to do?"

"After the pies?"

"I mean, now that the D.A. has refused your request to reopen the investigation."