Take the Long Way Home (15 page)

He nodded. He’d done a rotation in oncology
in medical school, and he held oncologists in awe. They fought much
harder battles than he did. As an orthopedist, he helped people
heal. Too often, all oncologists could do was help people die. Like
Maeve’s mother, he imagined.

“She was diagnosed in April. They did
surgery. They did chemo. Then they did palliative care. By
September, she was dead. It was all so sudden, and those last
months were so awful for her. It’s a miracle my father wasn’t
fired. I guess he was getting his job done more or less. He wasn’t
doing anything else, though. He drank a lot. He cried a lot. He
disappeared a lot.”

“Disappeared?”

“I have no idea where he went. Down into
some deep, dark hole of depression, I guess. I’d come home from
school and he’d be out. I’d fix something to eat. I’d go out
myself. I’d come home. I’d shut myself in my room and drink, or
listen to death-metal, or cry myself to sleep. I’d go for days
without seeing him.”

Quinn tightened his arm around her, as if he
could protect her from the memories.

“I forgive him. It took me a while, but I
really do forgive him. Just because you forgive a person doesn’t
mean all the scars miraculously vanish.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry you went
through that. It sucks.”

Amazingly, his words
prompted another laugh from her. A sad laugh, but a genuine one.
She appreciated his sympathy. It wasn’t pity. It just
was.

“Enough about me,” she said. “Tell me why
your dinner was so irritating.”

It was his turn to laugh. “My dinner was the
opposite of yours. You came back to a place of sorrow. I’m coming
back to a place of glory. But I’m not that guy anymore. It’s like
another life. All these people are making such a big deal about the
person I used to be, but I’m a different person now.” He paused in
their stroll, gazing out at the iridescent foam edging the waves as
they crashed against the sand. “I’d much rather spend tomorrow at
your store, eating your cookies, than attending some ridiculous
ceremony at the football field.”

“I’ll save you some cookies,” she said.

“That won’t be necessary. I’ll get to your
store,” he promised. “As soon as the game is over, I’ll be there,
pigging out on cookies and telling everyone you’re a witch.”

“A witch?” She shot him a bemused look.

“All right—a magician. Those cookies are
magic, Maeve. They cast a spell.”

She snorted a laugh. The only spell her
cookies cast was to make people forget their diets and indulge
their sweet teeth.

He turned from the water
and eased her around to face him. “I feel so much more comfortable
with you than I do with those people from my past,” he admitted,
his voice low and halting. “I don’t know why that is, but I feel
like myself when I’m with you. With them, I’m supposed to be that
person I used to be. With you…maybe you
are
a magician. When I’m with you, I
feel like I’m home.”

He lowered his mouth to hers. She hadn’t
quite expected this kiss, yet it seemed inevitable, and she felt
ready for it. The caress of his lips against hers, the gently
possessive sweep of his tongue filling her mouth, the strength of
his hands resting on her shoulders—it warmed her, freed her, chased
the bitterness away. It made her feel as if she was home, too.

They kissed. And kissed. He angled his head
slightly. She leaned in. He moved one of his hands to her waist and
drew her tighter against him. Her breasts pressed into the solid
wall of his muscular torso. Around them the wind blew. Beside them
the surf whooshed and whispered. Above them the sky stretched
black, speckled with stars and that shimmering half-moon.

This was home. Not the house where she’d
eaten dinner, where her childhood bedroom existed intact and
undisturbed, a museum of her grief. Not the apartment she’d lived
in only a few weeks, more Cookie’s domain than her own. Not even
her store, where Joyce still slipped up occasionally and answered
the phone, “Torelli’s, may I help you?”

This
—Quinn’s arms, his body, his mouth hard and hungry against
hers—
this
was
home.

She wasn’t sure how long they’d stood on the
beach, devouring each other with kisses. But eventually, as if
they’d both received the same cue, they separated and drew in deep,
shaky breaths. Maeve’s whole body seemed to be on fire, her nipples
tingling, her legs trembling, her womb aching, her belly heavy with
a hunger that had nothing to do with food. She dared to look into
his eyes, and she saw the same hunger there.

Without a word, without having to ask or
answer, she took his hand and led him back across the street to her
apartment.

Cookie greeted them at the door. She wove
between Quinn’s legs, rubbing up against his shins. He gracefully
avoided tripping over her. Maeve didn’t know much about football,
but she imagined he must have been agile on the field, dodging
other players with the same grace.

After a moment, he bent over and scooped
Cookie up. His hands were large enough that he could cradle her in
one palm. He lifted her to eye level, as if introducing himself to
her. “I’m not a cat person,” he said.

He looked very much like a cat person at
that moment. “She’s in love with you,” Maeve said. “I can tell. She
doesn’t usually warm up to people.”

“Well, I’m sorry, kitty,” he said, even as
he rubbed his thumb along her ribs, earning a happy purr from her.
“The feeling’s not mutual.”

“She doesn’t believe you,” Maeve warned.

He laughed and lowered Cookie back to the
floor. She trailed him into the living room like a lovesick girl, a
feline version of all the girls back in high school who’d had
crushes on him.

He ignored Cookie, his attention riveted to
Maeve. Did she look like a lovesick girl, too? One of those
helplessly infatuated girls from their school days?

If she did, he didn’t seem to mind. He
gathered her to himself and kissed her again, digging his fingers
deep into her hair. “Where’s your bed?” he whispered.

Yes, she was lovesick. She was helpless.

Or maybe she was
home
. “This way,” she
said.

***

He hadn’t expected her to have a cat, but
now that he’d met the animal, it made sense. Maeve was a loner. A
sorceress. She’d bewitched him with her cookies. Why shouldn’t she
have a cat, too?

He wondered how she felt about dogs. He
couldn’t have one now, since he shared his apartment and put in
crazy hours, but once he was settled, working in a practice, living
in a house with a yard, he hoped to have a dog. Would she like
that?

Why was he even thinking of her in the
context of a house with a yard? He wasn’t feeling at all domestic
toward her right now. Mostly he was feeling horny as hell. Maeve
Nolan was bewitching him in a way that had nothing to do with
cookies.

Her apartment was modest, not much in the
way of fancy furniture or decoration. The same could be said of his
place down near Mass General, although the shared apartment had a
certain décor theme going for it: busy bachelor modern, complete
with empty pizza boxes stacked by the sink, shift schedules inked
onto a wall calendar from a pharmaceutical company, dirty sneakers
and dust balls lurking under the sofa. He and his roommates had a
big flat-screen TV fastened to the wall across from the sofa. If
they were lucky enough not to have a Sunday shift, they needed
televised football games to go with all those take-out pizzas.

No TV for Maeve, not even a small one in her
bedroom. She had a laptop there, hooked up to an external monitor.
If she watched TV, she must be streaming it over the internet.

There was only one show he wanted to watch
tonight, and it was the Maeve and Quinn show. He wanted to watch it
and live it, immerse himself in it. He wanted to sink so deep into
it, his life beyond that show no longer existed.

Other than her computer, her bedroom held an
old dresser too scuffed and dinged to qualify as an antique, a
closet, a single bed and a night table with a shabby lamp on it. He
had a double bed back in Boston—he would have preferred a queen,
but the double took up most of his bedroom. He wasn’t sure her
narrow bed would hold them both. She was slim but tall, and he was
a big guy.

The thought of taking her on that tiny bed
turned him on even more. No room for acrobatics. No room for fancy
choreography. Just sex, hot and hard and basic. Just the
essentials.

He pulled her to him. Kissing her was almost
as exciting as the sex would be. Everything about her was so
honest. Nothing frilly or phony. Nothing he had to interpret. No
games, no pretense, no bullshit. Satisfying her was essential,
because if he didn’t, she was not the sort of woman who’d know how
to fake it.

He glanced at the bed once more, measuring
it with his eyes. One of them would have to be on top—him or her,
she could choose. There was no room for rolling around once they
got started.

She shed her jacket and let it drop to the
floor. A sharp yearning sliced through him. Dropping her jacket
like that, instead of hanging it neatly in a closet, was one of the
sexiest things he’d ever seen a woman do.

Or maybe it was sexy because Maeve had done
it, and right now Maeve had him spellbound. She didn’t need cookies
to seduce him, he acknowledged. She just needed herself. Herself
and that jacket on the floor.

He went to work stripping off her clothing
and his. She offered some token assistance, but he did most of it,
as if the act of removing her jacket had exhausted her supply of
energy. Fine with him—he liked taking off her clothes, viewing her
bit by bit. Her narrow shoulders. Her delicate collarbones, their
hollows creating scoop-shaped shadows across her skin. Her breasts,
small but firm and round and so sweet, looking at them made him
groan. Her narrow waist. Her jutting hip bones. The small tuft of
hair between her legs. So many women shaved down there, but he
liked a woman who looked like a woman, not a little girl. He slid
his hand over that erotic fluff of hair. When he felt the wetness
of her arousal, he groaned again.

God, yeah. A woman.

His own clothes joined hers on the floor. He
was already rock-hard before she laid a hand on him, but then she
laid both her hands on him and he got harder. She kissed his chest.
She kissed his throat. She curled her fingers around him, those
magical fingers that could make cookies designed to reduce a man to
quivering lust, and with a few steady strokes she turned him into
her willing slave.

He lifted her off her feet, carried her to
the bed, and dropped her onto the mattress. Then he climbed on top
of her. She could be on top later. Right now, when he felt his
control slipping dangerously, he needed to cling to what little
control he still possessed. He needed to take her—and bring her
with him. He needed to bewitch her as much as she bewitched him,
even though he doubted that was possible.

He kissed her throat. He kneaded her
breasts, cupped them, pressed his mouth to each nipple in turn and
sucked until she moaned. Her hands scrambled up and down his back,
then settled on his butt, her fingers probing the muscles, pressing
him to her. He accepted the invitation, nudging her legs apart with
his knees, sinking between her thighs. Taking her.

She gasped and hooked her heels around his
calves. Her fingers dug deeper, guiding him. He was on top, yet she
still seemed to be the dominant one. All he could do was thrust,
rock her, fill her, complete this dance of mutual need.

He was burning inside, aching, reaching.
Shifting so he could rub up against her more effectively. Sensing
the rhythm of her hands, her body, her hunger. Making that rhythm
his own.

One final moan from her as her body arched
up against him, her eyes closed, her head falling back to expose
her throat. Her thighs tensed and then she shuddered. He felt the
spasms of her climax surround him, draw him into the darkness of
her, wrench the harsh heat of release from him.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then he slowly, cautiously eased onto his side, careful not to fall
off the bed, holding her tightly so she wouldn’t fall off, either.
He closed his arms around her and she snuggled close, melting
against him like butter on warm toast, soaking into him.

He wasn’t sure what to say.
As the haze cleared from his brain, he thought about not just what
had happened but what
hadn’t
happened. They hadn’t talked about love. They
hadn’t talked about a relationship. They hadn’t talked about
commitment, or even about tomorrow. They hadn’t talked about
protection.

Shit. Here he was, always judging his fellow
residents who ate unhealthy meals and sneaked outside to smoke
during their breaks. But he was as careless with his health—and
Maeve’s—as they were.

“It’s okay,” she said.

Had she read his mind?
Damn, but she
was
a witch.

“I was thinking about the condom I didn’t
use.”

“It’s okay,” she said again. “I’m safe.”

One thing she wasn’t was safe. Maybe in the
context of avoiding a pregnancy she was, but he was convinced Maeve
Nolan—modest, reticent, self-contained Maeve Nolan—was anything but
safe. She’d stolen his mind, hadn’t she? Stolen his will. Stolen
his heart.

His arms relaxed around her only enough to
allow his fingers to wander through her hair. It brushed against
his shoulder, cool and soft. A faint silver sheen from the moon
beyond the window spilled into the room.

So you think you’re a
Romeo
… The song filtered through his head,
not as blaring and bouncy as it had sounded coming from the jukebox
the first time he’d heard it, when he and Maeve had stared at each
other across the dance floor of the Faulk Street Tavern, but muted
and muffled, as if someone had wrapped the jukebox in layers of
wool. The song couldn’t be true, could it? He wasn’t a player, some
stud who wooed and seduced women, and believed he was God’s gift to
females.