Take the Long Way Home (9 page)

A tiny voice inside her
skull nattered that this was
Quinn
Connor
, the Adonis of Brogan’s Point High,
and she was Maeve Nolan, the school’s primo head case, and there
was no possible way it made sense for someone like him to put his
arm around someone like her. She silenced that voice by reminding
herself that they were ten years out of high school. Who they’d
been ten years ago no longer mattered. What mattered was now:
letting his long, muscular arm hold her close, letting his lean,
hard chest radiate heat into her. Feeling herself tucked
protectively within the shelter of his shoulder. Strolling step by
step with him, her sneakered feet keeping pace with his, her breath
matching his.

She was no longer in a boat, no longer at
sea. Walking the short distance to his car, she felt as if she were
walking home.

The long way home.
They moved in a straight line, strolling along the
sea-weathered planks of the wharf toward the loose gravel of the
parking lot, just a short distance. Yet the song echoed in her
head, serenading her with the truth that few journeys were direct,
that life was full of detours, that a person might think she was
heading one way when she was actually heading another, but no
matter which way she journeyed, eventually her path would bring her
home.

He unlocked his car and helped her onto the
passenger seat. When he stepped away she felt the chill of his
absence. She pulled the door shut but still felt cold until he
climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. “Fall is here,
for sure,” he said.

When in doubt, talk about
the weather,
she thought, wondering what
exactly she was in doubt about. “I’m not looking forward to winter.
It gets cold in Seattle, but nothing like
Massachusetts.”

“What made you decide to go to Seattle?” he
asked as he coasted out of the lot, his tires crunching against the
gravel.

“My mother had visited there once. She told
me it was a pretty city.”

“So you decided to move there, just like
that?”

She hadn’t lied to Quinn so far. No need to
start now. But she couldn’t quite look at him when she spoke the
truth. “I wanted to get as far away from Brogan’s Point as I
could,” she admitted, addressing her hands, which her folded in her
lap.

“You didn’t want to go to college?”

A sound escaped her, half a laugh and half a
snort. “That wasn’t even on my radar. I just wanted to get the hell
away. Life here was too sad.”

He shot her a quick look, then returned his
gaze to the road. “Well, you’re obviously a survivor. Some people
who think life is too sad take a different path.”

As a doctor, he probably saw what happened
to people who took that different path: losing yourself to drugs or
drink, jumping off a roof, obliterating yourself. She’d never
wanted that. She’d been raging and hurting, but she’d treasured
life, perhaps even more than most people. “I don’t think of myself
as a survivor,” she said, tossing the idea around in her mind
before she rejected it. “I’m just…someone who isn’t ready to die
yet.”

“Good.”

That one brief word warmed her the way his
arm had. She felt as if her insides were smiling, her guts. Her
soul. Yes, it was good. This conversation, while difficult, was
good. This evening was good.

They’d reached Seaview Avenue. All the
shops, including hers, were dark. She pulled her key from her bag.
“You need to come in so I can give you a few cookies,” she reminded
him.

“Twist my arm, why don’t you?” He shot her a
grin as he pulled to the curb and shut off the engine.

She unlocked the front door and swung it
open, causing the bell to jingle. A flick of a light switch
illuminated the overhead lights, three large hemispheres hanging
from brass rods fastened to the pressed-tin ceiling. She moved
around to the other side of the counter, snapped open a bag
imprinted with the Cookie’s logo, plucked a square of tissue from a
box, and slid three cookies into the bag: a mocha toffee, an
oatmeal walnut, and one of her childhood favorites, a peanut-butter
cookie with a layer of strawberry jam hidden inside. Her mother
used to call those cookies PB&J’s, just like the sandwiches
Maeve and all her friends used to bring to school in their lunch
boxes. She planned to rotate the PB&J cookies into and out of
her inventory as specials, since they were admittedly kind of
odd.

She circled back around to Quinn’s side of
the counter and handed him the bag. He reached in, pulled the
PB&J cookie out, and took a bite. His eyes widened with
surprise when he discovered the jam hidden inside. He chewed,
swallowed and grinned, his eyes bright with laughter. Had she
thought those beautiful blue eyes were icy? Tonight they were as
warm as the rest of him.

“Wow,” he said, extending his hand and
studying the cookie, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d
tasted. “If all your cookies taste this good, you’re going to have
trouble keeping up with the demand.”

“That would be a nice problem to have,” she
said, smiling.

He devoured the rest of the cookie in three
swift bites. “God,” he moaned. “That was amazing.”

She would have thought he was overstating
things, but his enthusiasm seemed genuine. He poked around in the
bag, then resolutely folded down the edge. “I’ll save these. I can
take only so much ecstasy at one time.”

He was definitely exaggerating, but in such
a good-natured way, she had to smile. Then, to her utter surprise,
he wrapped his arms around her, lifted her as if she weighed
nothing, and swung her around. “You are a freaking genius!”

A breathless laugh escaping her, she clung
to his shoulders so she wouldn’t fall. “I can bake cookies. That
doesn’t make me a genius.”

“Not just cookies. Phenomenal cookies!
Astonishing cookies!” He lowered her back to her feet, but his arms
remained around her waist. Her hands remained on his shoulders.
They weren’t as huge as she’d expected a football player’s
shoulders to be—although, of course, football players augmented
their shoulders with all those pads—but they were strong and broad
and sturdy, the sort of shoulders that could brace a woman in a
tiny, storm-tossed boat. The kind of shoulders that could keep a
woman from becoming dizzy, even after she’d been swept off her feet
and spun in a circle.

The kind of shoulders a woman didn’t want to
let go of, even though she knew she should. Even though she sensed
that the atmosphere was changing, that the heat emanating from him
might be dangerous, that the hunger that suddenly charged the air
had nothing to do with cookies.

Or maybe it did have to do with the cookies.
Maybe Quinn’s kiss was nothing more than a thank-you for the cookie
he’d just devoured.

She knew this kiss was going to happen an
instant before it did. In that instant, she thought she should stop
it. They might have shared a late supper, but they were still
virtual strangers. He was Quinn Connor, the local star, and she was
Maeve Nolan, the weird loner. She lived in a humble first-floor
apartment with a cat, and he was in a relationship with a gorgeous
blond woman whose father owned a string of auto dealerships.

But she didn’t stop him. In that one sharp,
crazy instant, she knew she wanted to kiss this man, who seemed far
more amazing than any cookie she’d ever created.

His lips brushed hers, tender yet not at all
tentative. More of his warmth spread into her at the contact,
intense warmth. Another graze, a little firmer, his arms tightening
around her waist as her fingers clenched his shoulders. Then he
tilted his head and locked his mouth to hers, eager, urgent.
Hot.

Their lips parted. Their tongues touched,
slid, tangled. Heat blazed through her, scorching her mouth, her
throat, her chest, her womb. She was on a boat again, the surface
beneath her feet soft and swaying. She smelled the aroma of sweet
baking and of clean, healthy arousal—hers and his. Her tongue drew
the taste of her cookie from his mouth.

And then she remembered Ashley, his
long-time sweetheart, the beautiful blond woman she’d seen him with
when their paths had crossed just two days ago and the jukebox at
the Faulk Street Tavern had played a haunting song about going
home. Quinn Connor’s arms felt like home to her right now, but they
weren’t her home. This home belonged to someone else.

She pulled back, and he relaxed his hold on
her. As he scrutinized her face, his smile faded. “What?”

“I can’t—we can’t do this,” she said, her
voice a raspy whisper.

He twined his fingers through her hair,
stroking it back from her face. “Why not?”

“You’re—you’re with someone else. In a
relationship.”

He frowned. “I am?”

“With Ashley Wright.” Maeve doubted Ashley
knew who she was, but she knew who Ashley was, just as she’d known
who Quinn was. Ashley had been queen to his king, after all.

He shook his head. “No, I’m not.”

“I thought—but you—”

“I’m not in high school anymore,” he
reminded her gently.

“But…” She drew in a deep breath. “You were
with her at the bar.”

“Yeah.” Apparently sensing that his and
Maeve’s hot little moment had passed, he let his hands fall from
her hair. “She recently found out I was doing my residency in
Boston. I’ve been there for two years, but I didn’t know she was
back in Brogan’s Point. Last I’d heard, she’d gotten married. And
then divorced. There’s nothing between us now but some old prom
pictures.”

Maeve considered his claim and decided she
didn’t quite believe it. She’d seen them talking and laughing at
the tavern, their heads bowed together. They’d looked like a
couple. They matched each other so well.

“She got this brainstorm about retiring my
number at the homecoming game on Saturday. They’re going to have
some kind of ceremony. I don’t know why I said okay, but she seemed
so gung-ho about it. So what the hell, right? If they want to
retire my number, they can retire my number.”

Maeve suspected she ought to know what he
was talking about. But she had no idea. “What number?”

“My jersey number. From my football
uniform.”

“Because you were a star?”

He rolled his eyes. “Something like that. I
set a bunch of records while playing for Brogan’s Point. Passing
yardage. Points scored in a season. I don’t know, a couple of
others. The whole thing is ridiculous, retiring a high school kid’s
number. But Ashley got a bug up her butt about it, and she’s
organized a whole ceremony.”

“At the homecoming game?”

“Yeah, during halftime.”

“The homecoming game is a big deal, I
guess.”

Another eye roll. “Lots of people come to
it. We play a major rival—I’m not even sure who Brogan’s Point is
playing this year. When I was on the team, we played Lawrence one
year, and Salem two years. Lots of alums return for the game. I
might have even come up for the game without the whole ceremony
Ashley’s put together. Once everyone at the hospital heard I was
going to be honored at the game, they scrambled the rotation to
make sure I got the day off. So now I have to go and have Ashley
parade me around the field.”

“Sounds like sheer torture,” Maeve said,
sarcasm filtering through her words. Quinn would be the superstar
once more, the king of Brogan’s Point. How utterly painful for
him.

“It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do
it,” he joked. “I guess you won’t be there, what with your store
opening and all. Trust me, you won’t be missing much.”

She didn’t suppose she would. She’d seen
Quinn Connor basking in the spotlight plenty of times in high
school. She didn’t need to see that again, ten years later. “So you
and Ashley…?”

“No.”

She let out a long breath. Maybe she did
believe him. But even if she did, she couldn’t help feeling that
she was so far out of his league—his and Ashley’s—that his kiss
couldn’t mean much. He’d been caught up in the moment. She’d been
caught up in it, too. They’d talked at dinner, shared personal
stories. He’d eaten one of her cookies. Harry always used to say
her pecan praline cookies made him swoon. Maybe her PB&J cookie
had made Quinn swoon.

His kiss didn’t mean anything. So it was
just as well that she’d stopped it when she did.

“Well,” he said. He gazed at her, a bit
wistful, a bit bemused. “It’s late. I’ve got an early rotation
tomorrow morning.”

“I’ve got another long day ahead of me,
too,” she said, lifting the bag with his remaining two cookies from
the counter and presenting it to him.

His gaze didn’t shift as he took the
cookies. With his free hand, he spun his fingers through her hair
one more time, leaned toward her as if he might kiss her again, and
then apparently thought better of it and straightened up. “Thank
you,” he said.

For the cookies? For stopping him, stopping
them both, when they might have wound up crossing some sort of
sexual threshold and making fools of themselves? If she didn’t know
what he was thanking her for, was she supposed to say he was
welcome?

Instead, she said, “Thanks for dinner.”

“The Lobster Shack,” he said, grinning.
“Great place. I’d forgotten how good their food was.”

He leaned toward her again, but only stroked
his fingertips lightly over her lips. Then he turned and strode out
of the shop, setting the bell to tinkling as he swung open the
door..

She watched him climb into his car, the
headlights flashing bright as he started the engine. He drove off,
leaving her alone in the silence.

Quinn Connor, she
thought.
She
and
Quinn Connor, kissing. What an odd thought.