Take the Long Way Home Page 7

  “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.

  Chapter Seven

  So you think you’re a Romeo...

  The opening line of the song buzzed through Quinn’s head as he cruised south toward Boston. The expressway was nearly empty at this hour. His headlights shot two shafts of silver light onto the asphalt in front of him. Seventy-five miles per hour. He ought to keep one eye peeled for cops, just in case. He’d hate for the evening to end with a speeding ticket.

  So you think you’re a Romeo…

  Did he think that? Did he think that with one or two kisses, Maeve would melt in his arms?

  She very nearly had.

  Except that he wasn’t sure who’d been melting whom. She’d already set him on fire with that cookie. First the aroma, then the flavor. Then the kiss.

  He glanced at bag propped up in the passenger seat next to him. Less than an hour ago, Maeve had been in that seat. The Cookie’s bag was a pitiful substitute, but he knew he’d enjoy the cookies. Not as much as he would have enjoyed her, but he was no Romeo. He’d take what he could get—which, right now, was a dark brown cookie and what appeared to be an oatmeal cookie, given the color and the corrugated texture. He’d peeked into the bag before he’d started the engine, and he’d very nearly devoured both cookies after he’d pulled away from the curb in front of her store. But he was exercising willpower. He could wait. The cookies would be his treat once he got back to his apartment, a way to extend the evening a little longer.

  Before tonight, the last woman he’d had in that seat had been Ashley. Seated beside him, smelling not of baking cookies but of some exotic, no doubt expensive perfume, she’d remarked that since he was a doctor, he ought to be driving something a little fancier, a little newer. She’d told him she could put him in a Mercedes, or a BMW—if not a brand new car, something just off lease and still under warranty.

  Right. Like he had money for a Mercedes or BMW, even if it was used—or “pre-owned,” as Ashley put it. Like he had a place to park such a vehicle. He’d snagged a resident sticker for street parking in his neighborhood, but he wasn’t crazy enough to park a classy, pricy set of wheels on the street, where it could get sideswiped, vandalized, or buried beneath a mountain of snow in the winter.

  Strange that he’d known Ashley so long, known her so well—yet he’d felt more comfortable sharing a sloppy lobster roll with Maeve than he had the past few times he’d seen Ashley. Maybe that was because he knew Ashley so well. When he’d stopped being a football star, he’d stopped being good enough for her…until he became a doctor. Now he was good enough for her again. She had her rating system, and he’d obviously plummeted below the acceptable range when he’d abandoned his chance at a pro-football career, and then risen back up once he’d made a go of it with a prestigious medical career.

  He didn’t want to be rated.

  At that moment, what he wanted were delicious cookies, baked by someone who worked as hard as he did, who had earned everything she had. He wanted a woman who didn’t think he needed a fancier car. He wanted a woman who didn’t rate him.

  He wanted a woman who could set him on fire with one simple kiss.

  Maeve Nolan. The weird girl in school. The soft-spoken, doe-eyed woman who probably hadn’t been weird at all. She’d been grieving, and shy, and not plugged into the whole cool scene at Brogan’s Point High. She hadn’t been weird, but he’d been insufferable. He’d had his own rating system back then. If a person was in his social circle, popular and confident and revered by lesser folks, that person existed. If not, that person didn’t exist.

  He was a better person today than he was then—or at least he was trying to be a better person. He hoped there was a statute of limitations on high school behavior. He’d been so full of himself back then, believing his press, basking in adulation. He was going to get more adulation on Saturday at the damned homecoming game, and the thought made him queasy. He should have told Ashley not to put together that whole retiring-his-number ceremony, although she’d presented it to him as a fait accompli. He hadn’t really gotten a vote.

  He could have said no, though. He could have refused to go to the game. But how could he turn his back on the people who wanted to honor him? Ashley had organized a whole army of people behind this thing: his football coach, who was now the school’s athletic director, and the current football coach. The principal, Mr. Kezerian, who’d been old when Quinn had been a student there and was now ten years older—why couldn’t they have a ceremony to retire him instead of Quinn’s number?—and the Boosters Club, all those business leaders and over-the-hill athletes who poured money into the varsity programs at the school. According to Ashley, the current students still spoke Quinn’s name in a reverent hush. No one had ever come as close to big-time football as he had.

  But that was then. Couldn’t they all move on? Couldn’t they get over it? He had.

  Too late. He’d told Ashley he’d attend the homecoming game ceremony, and he wouldn’t renege on that commitment. He suspected, though, that he wouldn’t enjoy that experience anywhere near as much as he’d enjoy eating the cookies Maeve had tucked into that bag for him.

  ***

  “All right,” Maeve said to Joyce as they stocked the refrigerator behind the counter with milk, cream, bottled water and flavored iced tea. “I’m an ignoramus, I admit it, but just exactly how important is a homecoming game?”

  “You mean the homecoming game at the high school this weekend?”

  Maeve sighed. Even her punky employee, with her feathery platinum hair and the butterfly tattoo on her wrist, knew more about this special game than Maeve did. “Yes, that game.”

  “Well, I guess it’s a big thing if you care about football.”

  Which Maeve didn’t. She’d discussed it with Cookie over her morning coffee, and her cat didn’t seem to care much about football, either. The beast simply swished her tail, crunched a few kibble pellets between her tiny teeth, and then leaped onto the window sill to inspect the alley through the window.

  Maeve would have liked to join her. She felt as if a transparent layer separated her from the rest of the world—not glass but consciousness. While she went through the motions at the shop, organizing inventory and preparing her schedule, which would entail baking the crisper cookies on Friday and the softer ones early Saturday morning so they would be chewy and fresh when she sold them, she felt as if there was another Maeve inside the busy, efficient Maeve. A dreamy Maeve. A Maeve who couldn’t stop reliving Quinn Connor’s kiss.

  It had been everything she’d imagined kissing the golden boy of Brogan’s Point High would be like—except that he was no longer the golden boy of Brogan’s Point High. He was as different from his high school self as Maeve was from hers. She hadn’t been an emotionally overwrought teenage girl locking lips with the boy every girl in the entire school had a crush on. She’d been a woman, and he’d been a man, and they’d been…friends. Companions. Two adults who’d wound up eating a late supper together and then kissing each other good-night, as adults who went on dinner dates so often did.

  It all seemed surreal to her. Quinn might no longer be a superstar jock, but he still struck Maeve as pretty spectacular. His black hair and pale blue eyes, his tall, strong body, his smile—sometimes gentle, sometimes ironic, some
times self-mocking—all came together in such an appealing way, she could scarcely break out of her daze to get her work done. The fact that she hadn’t slept much last night—she’d been too busy reliving that kiss over and over—didn’t help.

  She could have happily spent the entire day perched on a window sill next to Cookie, staring out at the world and seeing nothing but her own sweet yearning. Who was she kidding? She might be a grown woman, but she felt like a goofy teenager with a crush on a football star. And maybe that wasn’t so crazy. This Saturday, Quinn was going to regress as well, resuming his persona as the football star he’d once been.

  Once he’d reverted to being a football star, with his beautiful former girlfriend by his side, would he want anything to do with Maeve? She didn’t want to believe he was that shallow, but who knew? In the spotlight once more, with fans lionizing him, he might remember that he still craved the spotlight and the glory, and that he had no use for a cat lady who baked cookies. He might remember that he was a doctor, and she hadn’t even gone to college. He was saving lives and she was making praline squares and butter-chip bars.

  She really had to forget about last night, break the damned layer of unreality she was gazing through, and get her head back in the game. A sports metaphor, she thought wryly. Perfect for the occasion.

  “So this homecoming game, it’s a big thing?” she asked Joyce.

  “My daughter’s only in middle school, so I don’t know what it’s like now. But when I was in high school, it was always a major game against a traditional rival. Lots of town people and alums would return for the game. The stands would be packed. Then in the evening, there was a homecoming dance. Big hoo-ha thing,” Joyce said with a grin. “New dress, manicure. You had to go. What was it like when you were at the high school?”