"Door prize?'' asked Quinn.
"You've kept your sense of humor. Excellent. I hate to see a grown man whine."
"Au contraire,'' Quinn said, rocking on the heels of his patent-leather shoes. "Lately it's been nothing but blue skies for me."
Bennett's face, itself a mask of civility, twitched into a sudden scowl. He wasn't a big guy, and that was unfortunate. Quinn was so used to facing a formation of tank-sized brutes on the football field that he found it hard to take a single, smallish, sixty-five-year-old man very seriously, patriarch or no.
Except for the money. The money, Quinn took very seriously indeed. If Owen Bennett could come up with that many thousands just to get Quinn to stop buzzing around him and his family, think what he'd be willing to pay if the stakes were really high.
"This money is to buy you a ticket back to California," Bennett said, twitching his lips into a thin smile. "I'll triple the amount if you make it one-way."
"Gee, I dunno," said Quinn with a bland look. "The airlines really penalize for that."
"How much do you want, you son of a bitch?"
The profanity was just a colorful expression, Quinn knew, but it sent a sharp surge of resentment through him. Who the hell did Bennett think he was talking to?
"Sir," Quinn said, leaning on the desk with the flat of his hands. "I don't think we're communicating real well here. That's my fault, I'm sure. You're a Yale grad, I have a GED. But let me just take another shot at this."
He picked up the envelope and tossed it nearer to Bennett's side of the desk. "I don't want your money. I don't need it, and I don't want it. All I want is to prove my dad's innocence. Now, that strikes me as a mission that any father can endorse. I understand your concern about having Alison exhumed. I understand it. But with the trail to the real murderer paved over and cold, I don't see any other way to exonerate Francis Leary. Can't you comprehend that?"
He stared hard into Owen Bennett's blue eyes, trying to find some hint of who the man was. It was like trying to see water through the ice pack at the North Pole.
Quinn was surprised by Bennett's next remark. "Whoever murdered Alison didn't necessarily get her pregnant. Have you thought of that?"
"I have."
"And?"
"You have to start somewhere."
There was a long, deadly pause. Quinn had the sense that Bennett had played a wild card and was regretting it.
"You're doing this out of respect for your father," Bennett said, taking another tack. "All right. But has it occurred to you that Alison had a father as well? Don't the living deserve some consideration?"
"Your brother Rupert, you mean. In your opposition to the idea of DNA testing, are you speaking for him?"
Quinn knew that he wasn't; the brothers weren't speaking, period.
"Don't underestimate a father's love for his child," Bennett said gruffly, looking away. "Let it go, Quinn," he said, turning back to face him. "I'm telling you, let it go."
Something in his answer touched Quinn. For the first time in seventeen years, he actually felt an inkling of generosity toward the man.
"Look," he said quietly, "I'll go see Alison's parents. I'll explain what I'm doing, why I'm doing it. If they have a problem with it, I'm sure they'll let me know. But I won't see an attorney about pursuing this until I've talked to your brother and his wife. You have my word on that."
It was half a loaf. Bennett, who could buy any bakery he chose, didn't look impressed. Quinn shrugged. It was the best he could do.
"Where does my daughter fit in?"
Quinn shrugged again, but this time he was faking the nonchalance, and he had the flushed cheeks to prove it. "That depends on her," he said.
"Touch her, Quinn, I'll make your life hell."
Lucifer himself couldn't have said it with any more confidence. Quinn nodded slowly, as if he were poring over a menu and couldn't decide between the fish and the chicken. "All righty," he said at last. "That seems clear enough." He gave Owen Bennett a guileless smile and said, "I assume our work here is done?"
"You know the way out."
Presumably he meant out of the library, but Quinn wouldn't have been surprised to find two bouncers on the other side of the door, waiting to lift him by the elbows and chuck him all the way to upper Main.
He turned the key and let himself out, relieved to find the roped-off hall clear except for the security guard at the far end. Nevertheless, he made his way back to the party weighed down by feelings of dread.
I'll make your life hell.
It wouldn't be the first time. If Owen Bennett had rallied to his gardener's defense all those years ago instead of tossing him out on the street without having seen a scintilla of real evidence, then Francis Leary wouldn't have panicked and run, and God only knows how all of their lives would have turned out.
I'll make your life hell. So big deal. There was nothing new in that.
More to the point, though, would he make his daughter's life hell also? If Bennett was as prone to cutting people from his will as Olivia said he was, then .... Shit. Quinn's Catholic upbringing would never let him handle that kind of guilt. He could sooner mug an old lady than be the direct cause of Olivia's disinheritance. On the other hand, Olivia seemed to be pretty good at getting herself disinherited, so maybe he was worrying about nothing.
There was another aspect that bothered Quinn more than all the rest: He had a strong sense that Owen Bennett was protecting someone. Who it was and why he was doing it—that, Quinn couldn't say. Considering that he was estranged from his brother, Rupert, Owen Bennett seemed pretty damned solicitous of the guy's feelings. Why was he bothering?
That's what Quinn had to find out.
He went back to the table he'd been sharing with Olivia, but she was no longer there. The party had reached critical mass, and the buffet area was filled to overflowing with swarming, hungry guests. There wasn't room to swing a masked cat. The din was horrific. Suddenly Quinn had a headache the size of Rhode Island. It couldn't have been from the champagne, which was anything but cheap; he just wasn't used to this kind of crush. The scene was too contrived and stagy for his laid-back, outdoor tastes. He wanted to get away, to have a moment to puzzle out the nuances of the interview in relative peace and quiet.
Where the hell was Olivia?
He turned and found himself staring into the masked face of a blond aristocrat whom he had once idolized and then overthrown. Rand Bennett—he'd know him anywhere. When they bumped into one another in town the day after Quinn's arrival, Rand had looked both startled and contemptuous. Not tonight. The brilliant blue eyes that gazed through the black mask at Quinn were still contemptuous, but this time they were overlaid with suspicion.
"Evenin', old man," said Quinn in a dead-on imitation of some pompous geezer he'd overheard earlier.
Rand ripped off his mask. Underneath it his fair-skinned face was flushed, not with anger, but from the cold—another fashionably late arrival, apparently.
"What's the deal?" he said in a sneer. "Has my sister got you so whipped that you're letting her use you to get at my dad?"
In a reflex of anger, Quinn started for Rand's throat, then thought better of it.
"I guess I am," he answered with a lazy smile. "Does it show?"
"You—!"
Rand's own lunge ended abruptly when someone pulled him back.
"Are you crazy, Rand? You'll screw up everything!"
Quinn wouldn't have known the man's face behind the big Phantom of the Opera mask, but his booming voice was a dead giveaway: Police Chief Vickers.
Rand twisted his shoulder from the chief's grip and muttered, "Just keep him out of my way, then!"
He stormed off without a backward glance, leaving Quinn to wonder exactly what it was that he was in danger of screwing up.
"Just keep pushing it, Leary," said the chief, and then he, too, walked off—toward the roped-off wing, Quinn noticed with interest.
Quinn watched him swing one leg, then the o
ther, over the velvet rope and then head for the far end of the hall. Reporting for duty? It wouldn't surprise him if the little white envelope ended up finding a home that night, after all.
It was a depressing, disturbing pattern: Everyone around Quinn seemed to be in on something that he was not. He felt a little the way he had back in fifth grade, when Rand and his friends built a tree house on the estate and pulled up the ladder the one time Quinn had ventured to come near.
Rebuffed and embarrassed, he had kept his distance after that. But he didn't embarrass as easily nowadays, not after what he and his father had gone through.
"Oh, Quinn! Oh good, you're alive!"
He turned to see Olivia with a half-ironic, half-sorrowful look on her unmasked face. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said, pressing her hands together in prayerful apology. "Will you ever forgive me?"
He was so happy to see her that he thought, Forgive you? Oh, yes, and walk to the end of the earth for you besides.
"Hey," he said in laconic dismissal of the fuss she was making. "No big deal. What do you say we blow off this shindig? I think they're out of party hats, anyway."
"God, yes, let's go."
As they made their way through the guests to retrieve their coats, he found himself wondering why he assumed that Olivia wasn't in on what he now regarded as a conspiracy. Why was it that he suspected everyone of harboring secrets but her?
Because look at her face, you moron. Look at her face.
He did, and what he saw was the face of an angel. Maybe not the best-behaved angel in the universe, but certainly one of the best intentioned. Quinn didn't often trust his instincts, but in this instance, they were far too powerful to ignore. And besides, he was falling for her, and he could never fall for someone he didn't trust.
He handed the hatcheck girl his ticket and they waited as she went off in search of their coats. Olivia explained that her mother had tracked her down and had taken her upstairs not to read her the riot act, but to say how sorry she was that it was never going to work out between Quinn and Olivia.
"She said that?" Quinn said, surprised.
Olivia nodded. "You have to understand, my mother's biological clock is ticking."
"Your mother's clock. Uhhh, I don't get that."
"She loves—and I mean, loves—babies," Olivia said with a shrug. "She wants them around while she's young enough to enjoy them."
"Now that's something I never would have considered," he said, trying to seem thoughtful and wise. Holy shit. Considering that he and Olivia hadn't even been to bed yet—were all mothers so Machiavellian? Having been raised without one, Quinn really didn't have a clue.
Olivia smiled and said, "Don't panic. I'm only telling you this so that you know where my mother is coming from."
"Uh-huh. Sooo ... what did you say?"
"What could I say? I told her that clock or no clock, with you or without you, I wasn't ready to—excuse me. Miss?" she said as the hatcheck girl handed them a single wool topcoat. "I had a long black velvet cape?"
The girl, young and bored and no doubt grieving that she had to work on New Year's Eve, shook her head. "Nope. This was it."
Quinn said with a smile, "You can't really miss it. It has a red lining. Why don't you try again?"
Big sigh. Back she went. They waited. She returned.
"Nope."
"Do you mind if I look?" Quinn offered.
She had no objection, and he went through every coat on every wheeled rack in the room. He came back out just in time to hear the hatcheck girl say to Olivia, "Now that I think about it, there was a guy in here earlier, poking around. I assumed that he came back to put away his gloves or something. Do you think he stole your cape? Why would he steal it?"
"You know," said Quinn, gritting his teeth, "the whole point of a hatcheck girl is to check on the hats."
"I know that, sir," she said with sullen courtesy.
"Oh, never mind, Quinn. It'll show up somewhere. I'll be warm in your car," she said, but she was shivering already as the nearby doors opened and closed.
Something felt very wrong. The cloakroom was filled with furs, and any thief worth his salt should have gone for one of them, not some funky cape.
"Can you describe the man you saw?" he asked the sulking help.
"No. I only saw him from the back. I couldn't even say if he was wearing a mask, but he was definitely wearing a tux."
"How did he get out of the room without you seeing him?"
"Is this an inquisition?" she huffed.
"Quinn, let it go," Olivia said, clearly anxious to leave.
Fed up himself, Quinn took his coat and wrapped it around Olivia and said, "I'll bring the car around myself."
When he pulled up, Olivia was waiting outside, looking waiflike and lost in his big black coat. Her face brightened when he pulled up, and he felt a surge of odd, unexpected triumph. She was throwing her lot in with him. Olivia Bennett, Princess of Keepsake, was about to take up with Quinn Leary, the gardener's son. Him!
How could he not feel triumphant?
Chapter 14
As they drove away from the estate, he could see Olivia's spirits begin to rise. She didn't ask Quinn about the meeting with her father, and he didn't offer to fill her in. Maybe she knew that Owen Bennett tended to be free and easy with his checkbook whenever things got sticky. If she didn't, then someone else was going to have to tell her. It sure wasn't going to be Quinn.
In any case, by the time the Mercedes began the steep climb up the hill to her townhouse, Olivia seemed to have shaken off her jittery mood and had become, once again, the warm and alluring woman who'd had him going around in circles of lust and longing for the past few hours.
In the hall she dumped his coat over a tall-backed chair and slipped off her shoes, then said, "Turn around."
Puzzled, Quinn did as he was told. When he turned back to her, he saw a pair of gray pantyhose lying on top of his coat. Good news: there wasn't a whole lot of clothing left on her body. Bad news: why had she made him turn around?
Glancing at a small brass clock on the mantel, Olivia said, "Not long to midnight. I'll make tea."
More bad news. He'd been thinking wine.
"Fine with me," he lied, and he followed her into the kitchen. He watched her put on a kettle, taking satisfaction from the sight of her moving, unbound, in that silvery, clingy dress. She was as fluid as liquid mercury, and probably as tricky to hold.
"Too bad I never got the chance to meet Eileen," he said, trying hard to keep his hands off those hips as she glided barefoot past him. "She sounds like someone I'd like to know."
"Eileen would never come with Zack having a temperature," Olivia said as she took out two mugs. "Frankly, I was surprised to see Rand there; he worries about the kids as much as she does. They're incredibly dear to him."
She added, "I suppose he felt obliged to put in at least a token appearance. New Year's Eve means a lot to my mother. My father proposed on New Year's Eve."
"A time for new beginnings," Quinn agreed, hoping fervently that this was one of them.
She brushed his sleeve as she reached for the tea canister. He turned and brought his arm around her, flattening his hands on the counter on either side of her. Penned in like that, she might have turned skittish, or even hostile.
No siree. "Hey, aren't you cramped in that monkey suit?" she asked, reaching up to his bow tie. With ease she undid the knot, then tossed the strip of black cloth on the counter—and furthermore, went on to undo the top three studs of his shirt.
Good news.
"All better," she said lightly.
"Much better," he said, lowering his mouth to hers.
Their lips met, their tongues touched. Her arms came up around his neck and he found himself sliding his hands along them, simply to savor the soft, smooth surface of her skin. He was used to working with stone—hard, rough, resistant—and she was everything that his work was not.
Liquid mercury she may have been, but she was t
urning him into a puddle of molten iron as he deepened the kiss, pinning her in his arms, all the while listening to the shriek of his blood roaring through his veins.
"Boi-ling," she murmured.
"Oh God ... you bet."
"I mean—" She pointed limply toward the stove. The chrome kettle, spouting steam, was doing it with a vengeful screech.
He let her go, reluctantly, and she filled the poppy-red mugs. After that she set them with symmetrical precision on a small wood tray. She put a cobalt blue plate between the mugs. She laid two spoons, like a pair of oars, one on each side of the tray. And then, very carefully, she began carrying the tray out of the room.
"Should we think about tea bags?" he asked at last.
"Oh! Those. Right," she said, frowning into the mugs of boiled water. She looked up at Quinn and the frown remained. "You. Into the living room and stay there until I bring the tea."
Quinn smiled and took himself out of her sight, convinced that he was about to experience the best New Year's Eve he'd ever had. He tossed off his jacket—the place was nicely warm—and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Free from the distraction that was Olivia, Quinn was able to focus on the efficient majesty of her townhouse. It wasn't large, but all the glass sure as hell made it look spacious. During the day it probably seemed twice as big, because the floor-to-ceiling windows would bring much of the outside in.
He was standing at one of those bare, oversized windows, looking out into an unnervingly black landscape, when Olivia came in with the tray and set it on a glass-topped table in front of a sinfully deep-cushioned couch.
Quinn stayed where he was, thinking now about that blackness and about the missing cape. Who took it, and where was it now? More important, where was he now?
"I found some cookies that are hardly soggy at all. Come sit. We don't have much time until they drop the ball," she said, flipping through the channels with her remote.
He walked back to the sofa and sank into a cloud-soft cushion beside her. The TV was broadcasting merriment from Times Square, but his mind was in computer mode now.
Keepsake Page 14
