Keepsake by Antoinette Stockenberg Read Free Book Online Page B

suddenly to a couple entering the room with their teenage son. "Welcome to Hastings House."
    Too late. The group knew they'd strolled into a fight, and no bright smile could hide the fact. The parents walked quickly through the room and then out. Their kid took a little longer, slowing down long enough to steal a burning look at Olivia's breasts.
    The boy reminded Quinn of himself just minutes earlier. Quinn had acted like a hormonal jerk then, and for all he knew, he was doing it still. It wasn't Olivia's fault that he had cut and run. And it wasn't her fault that she couldn't understand why. Their lives were night-and-day different. No mother, timid father, nomadic lifestyle, never a mattress to call one's own-—these were alien concepts to a woman raised in the lap of luxury by a doting mom and a powerful dad.
    Let it go, Quinn. Different worlds. Let it go.
    "Look... what's done is done. Water under the bridge," he said gruffly. "Maybe we ... well. Good night." He turned to leave.
    No, goddammit. He didn't have to run anymore, least of all from her.
    He spun on his heel and faced her again. She looked completely bewildered, which gave him back the advantage. With a smile that he knew women considered disarming, he said, "You're not married, are you?"
    "No!"
    "Why don't we have dinner? You can fill me in on the last half of your life."
    "Dinner? Huh. Dinner. That would be rather—"
    " Daring ?" he suggested, an edge in his voice.
    "I was about to say, that would be rather nice," she said, snapping open her fan, "except that I have to be here tomorrow night."
    "Ah," he replied, somewhat sheepishly.
    She seemed agitated, fanning herself with quick little strokes. Intrigued, he waited to see what she would do next.
    "Why don't we have lunch?" she asked with a brittle smile. "I could get away then."
    "Fine," he drawled, making a victory fist in his pocket. "We'll do lunch."
    ****
    He left, taking most of Olivia's wits with him. The encounter with Quinn Leary had left her completely unnerved. Her heart was hammering, her knees were shaking, and inside she was hot, hot, hot—hot enough that she found herself feeling downright grateful for the cold draft that wended its way from the front door and up her gown, fanning those oddly made drawers of hers.
    Oh, wow, this is unreal, she told herself. This is not normal. No man had ever affected her the way Quinn had just then. Flirting was one thing, banter another, but this was new, this was completely new ....
    She began to pace the length of the drawing room, trying to work out the tension she felt. In a reverie of wonder, she tapped her closed fan on the palm of her hand and shook her head as she marched up, then down, the parquet floor, ignoring the visitors who wandered through. The tourists assumed she was playing the role of a character from a Victorian novel, but the tourists were wrong.
    I don't have time for someone like him. I don't even have the inclination for someone like him. He's too proud, too prickly, too—much too—controversial. What would Mother and Dad say? They'd be appalled to have a Leary rubbed in their noses again.
    Seventeen years. Olivia remembered rushing home after the news of Alison's death and finding her mother sitting alone on the sofa and sobbing. Teresa Bennett, being a Bennett, had quickly wiped her eyes as soon as she saw her daughter. But Olivia, who wanted so badly to hold and be held, had blurted out, "She didn't deserve to die; she never hurt anyone," and burst into tears for her cousin, and then she and her mother had hugged and cried some more, but in secret—because wailing was not allowed in the Bennett household.
    The sad thing was, by the time of Alison's murder, Owen Bennett had had little contact with Alison's father Rupert. Olivia didn't know why the brothers had drifted so far apart, and she'd never dared to ask. Olivia's father had bought out her Uncle Rupert's interest in the mill, that much she knew. But she'd always had the