Keepsake by Antoinette Stockenberg Read Free Book Online Page A

paid for with my own money."
    How wearying, he thought: an heiress who insisted on making her own way. Not him. If someone had been willing to hand him a fortune, he'd have been more than willing to spend it.
    In the next breath she confessed, "I do have another, larger store-—a mill-end outlet—that my father is involved with."
    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