Keepsake (10 page)

Oddly enough, she couldn't remember much about the episode on the sofa. That part she had pretty much blocked out. "Probably because it was Quinn who called a stop to it," she explained, "and not me."

"Men don't normally do stuff like that."

"Well! Consider where we were."

"True. Can you imagine the look on
Rand
's face if he'd walked in on you? Or your father?"

Olivia shuddered, then bumped the fridge closed with her rear end. "It could easily have happened. I never thought to lock the front door. Thank God one of us had some sense. But I really believe that Quinn had other reasons for backing off—his father, for one."

"They were that close? Here, do the carrots."

"Very close. Which is surprising, considering that—except for being good-looking—they were nothing alike." Olivia rifled through a drawer and came up with a peeler, then pulled a carrot from the plastic bag waiting on the marble-topped island. "Francis Leary was a very quiet, very timid man. He was always hanging back in the shadows, although I think he never missed a thing. Actually, he—"

She decided not to finish the thought, but Eileen knew her too well. "Problem?"

Olivia focused on her peeling. "I feel guilty admitting it, but
... Mr. Leary used to make me uncomfortable. I suppose it's because I always feel hopelessly overbearing around shy people like him."

"Overbearing—you?" said Eileen, sprinkling raisins like fairy dust over the salad.

Olivia laughed, then threw a carrot peeling at her. "We can't all be the perfect balance of grace and restraint that you are."

Eileen lifted the peeling from the bib of her apron and dropped it on the others. "Which is why I refuse to get into a food fight with you, missy. I could never win."

They laughed together over the prospect of Eileen—Eileen!—hurling food in her immaculate, ultramodern kitchen, then wandered into a discussion of the pros and cons of marble versus granite counters before coming back, inevitably, to Quinn Leary and why he was in Keepsake.

"He's here because of his father, I'm sure of it," Olivia said. "I think he wants to vindicate him."

"And how would he do that?"

"I haven't a clue."

Eileen had heard about the effigy, of course. "I wonder how many shoes can fall before Quinn decides he's had enough and leaves."

"Don't say that! I
... I don't want him to," Olivia admitted. "Not yet." She took out eight platters from the birch cabinet. "Where are we eating? Dining or kitchen?"

"Dining, I think; those Chinese-red walls are so appropriate this time of year. We'll dress the table with the white poinsettias. Tell me this: What would you do if Quinn did pull up stakes and leave?"

"Hey! Bite your tongue."

"Interesting." Eileen pulled down the oven door of her Viking range
and peered at the thermometer stuck in the leg of lamb
. "You know what
? 
You sound a little desperate."

"Desperate!
Me
?
"

Eileen closed the door, stood up, and looked Olivia in the eye. "It's Saturday night and you're eating dinner with us. You do it often. Does that tell you
any
thing?"

"Hey! I've been
busy.
Two stores
!  W
ho's got time for the singles—"

"Hi-dee-ho, ladies." It was
Rand
, entering the kitchen from the adjacent three-bay garage.

Olivia turned to her sister-in-law. "Not a word," she whispered with a fierce look.

It was an unnecessary warning. Insulted, Eileen pinched her arm lightly as she passed on the way to relieve
Rand
of his cashmere muffler and suede jacket.

Pecking his wife's cheek,
Rand
said, "Something smells good."

"Tarragon leg of lamb. Because I love you so madly."

He laughed at that and said, "You know you're the only dish for me."

"You're in a good mood," Olivia said on her way out to the dining room. She was relieved to see it; maybe he was finally done sulking over Quinn's return.

"Am I? Why so many plates?" he asked his twin sister as she passed under his nose.

"Mom and Dad."

"Oh, hell.
Why!"

"You know why," said Eileen, sounding resigned. "To go over the plans, one more time, for the New Year's gala."

"Oh, great. And while you three women are trying to decide which napkins to use, I'll be stuck with Dad in the den. Just what I need. He's b
ound to grill me about the tax-
break negotiations. Don't I get enough of him at the mill all week? Is it too much to ask to spend the weekend in peace? I need a drink," he said, heading for the wet bar.

"Oh, it won't be as bad as all that," said Eileen in her reassuring way. "You have lots of time before the council votes."

"How do you figure? Dad's on the phone with
Mexico
every day. I think he's as much as made up his mind to move the mill out of Keepsake. The more the council dithers up here, the more likely it is that Dad's going to make a commitment down there. Then what? I don't want to live in
Mexico
. Do you?"

Eileen smiled and said reassuringly, "He'd never do that."

But Eileen didn't know Owen Bennett, not the way his daughter and son did. Olivia and Rand exchanged one of their shorthand looks. Olivia said, "He wants to keep the mill up here tax-free. Keepsake doesn't feel it can afford to do that."

"Keepsake can't afford
not
to do that," Eileen pointed out. "Owen's the biggest employer in town. He's the
only
employer in town."

"Let's not forget the
big-box
stores,"
Rand
said with obvious irony as he poured scotch over his ice. "Every day more jobs are moving into the area—so the council keeps reminding me."

"Not jobs that can support a family," his wife retorted. "Your father pays twice the wage that they do."

"Which is, of course, the problem," Olivia said. "He needs to stay competitive or he'll go under. I can sympathize with him," she added grudgingly, even though she didn't approve of her father's hardball tactics.

"He's got to demand less from Keepsake," her brother said before slugging down a good part of his drink. "It's no picnic going out there and trying to make his case."

"Of course not," Olivia said. "You're the bad cop. Dad's the good cop. When he thinks the time is right, he'll cut his demand by half and end up a local hero."

"Which leaves me what? The local villain? Sorry,"
Rand
said bitterly. "Been there. Done that."

It was an unmistakable allusion to the stupid, irrelevant, lost championship that seemed so much on everyone's minds again.

For one brilliant year it had all seemed to be coming together, and Keepsake had come down with a case of football fever the likes of which it had never known before or since. Everyone from the busboys at Jasper's to the nuns at St. Swithin's had joined forces and rallied around the Cougars.

But it all fell apart after Quinn ran away and
Rand
took over and dropped the ball—many times. The plain truth was,
Rand
had never been a very good quarterback, and after Quinn, he looked even worse. The season had ended up a disaster. There was no point in trying to deny the fact, so Olivia left the soothing to Eileen while she set the dining room table.

Part of her felt genuinely sorry for
Rand
. He'd never be able to crawl out from under the burden of the town's long
memory, and it didn't help his mood lately that her father really did seem to be making Rand the heavy: variance requests, DEM warnings, OSHA inspections—all of was being dumped on the huge walnut desk in Rand's big office.

Poetic justice? Olivia wanted to think so. She had put herself through a year of graduate school in preparation for a job of real responsibility in the mill, and look what had happened: Rand, who coasted to a bachelor's degree from Yale with gentlemen's C's, was made vice president of mill operations while Olivia, who graduated magna cum laude with an MBA from Harvard, was offered nothing at all.

And why? Because her father was convinced that she was going to fall in love, get married, and start nesting, leaving him in the lurch. Olivia was offended, she was angry, and she let her father know it in a way that left the two of them estranged for almost a year.

Her decision to start up Miracourt right under her father's nose had been made mostly out of spite, although she'd ended up truly loving the shop and was planning to open another branch nearer the city. Recently she and her father were getting along well enough to start up the outlet venture together, but even there
.
...

We'll never be close, not really. Not as long as he continues to believe the sun rises and sets on his number-one son.

Olivia sighed as she set out the silverware with scientific precision. She was prepared to work twice as hard as her brother to prove herself—but it would be nice if she could do it without getting an ulcer or giving up men.

Her thoughts rushed back to Quinn and were still lingering
there when the doorbell rang: h
er parents had arrived.

From upstairs she heard her niece shriek, "Grammy, Grampy!" and then the thunderous race down the steps between her and Zack for the front door.

Olivia popped her head around the corner to greet the arrivals, both of them hard-pressed to take off their coats because their grandchildren were hanging on like lemurs.

Kristin wanted hugs and kisses and Zack wanted his grandfather to play Nintendo.

"Not now, Zack!" said Owen Bennett, shooing him away.

Poor Zack was crushed; his grandfather never missed a chance to take him on in friendly, if fierce, competition.

Olivia glanced at her mother, whose hugs were being handed out with less than her usual abandon. She recognized the signs at once: Teresa Bennett was in tiptoe mode.

Uh-oh. Now what?

"Dad?" she said, giving him a quizzical look.

Behind him her mother shook her head in warning, then said to the children, "Well? Isn't anyone going to show me
the new kitten
?"

Zack and Kristin, easily distracted, dragged her upstairs, leaving Olivia to face down her father's wrath.

"I just got off the phone with Pete Vickers," he growled.

"And?"

"For starters, someone's trashed the trophy case in the high school," he said, brushing past her into the kitchen.

Her father wasn't a big man, but wherever he was, he made the room smaller. Even
Rand
—taller, more hair, three decades younger—seemed diminished by
hi
s presence.

Unlike Rand, who was dressed in Paul Stuart elegance from head to tasseled toe, her father preferred more functional wear: polyester pants that kept a crease, a shirt that didn't look stonewashed after half a dozen launderings, and—his one indulgence—a wool sweater from Scotland that would probably last longer than Dolly and all of her clones combined, or he wouldn't have bought it in the first place.

The phrase "Dress for success" meant nothing to him
. And yet no man that Olivia had ever known radiated more authority than Owen Randall Bennett.

Eileen took one look at her father-in-law, spun on her heel, and headed for the wet bar to fix him a drink.

Rand
's face was so carefully devoid of expression that
even Olivia couldn't read it. "Did you say someone trashed the trophy case?" he ventured.

"That's exactly what I said. Goddammit, this has gone far enough! I paid for most of those trophies, one way or another. Uniforms, bus trips, the new bleachers—Keepsake wouldn't even
have
a sports program if it weren't for me. I'll have his ass in a sling for this!"

Olivia blinked. "Whose?"

"Leary's, goddammit! None of the vandalism would've happened if
he
hadn't shown up."

Rand
was watching his father warily. Eileen was pretending to be in another county. That left Olivia, who was more than willing to carry the banner onto the field.

"That isn't fair, taking out someone's bigotry on Quinn!" she cried, rising up to her full five feet three inches. "I'm tired of—"

"Tired of
what
?" her father interrupted in a dangerous voice.

"Tired of having to repeat the obvious: Quinn didn't break any laws! He was free to stay or to leave back then, and he's free to stay or to—free to stay now. If he wants."

Her father's eyebrows twitched upward, another dangerous sign. "Since when are you his public defender?"