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, sometimes 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?”
Maeve shrugged. She’d been whatever the opposite of school-spirited was. “I never went to a game. Or a dance.”
“Aw, you poor thing,” Joyce said, but her tone was bright with laughter. She clearly didn’t think Maeve had missed much. “High school dances are awful. Someone’s always breaking up with someone. Girls are in tears. Boys are drunk. Someone spills something on your new dress. Pfft.” She fluttered a hand through the air, dismissing the entire notion as if it were nothing more than a dust mote she was brushing away.
“Well, here’s what I’m wondering,” Maeve said, doing her best to shake her head clear of the haze Quinn’s kiss last night had left behind. “Saturday is opening day for us. Can we promote Cookie’s at the game? All those people—not just the students but the locals, and the returning alums. Maybe they’ll want a cookie before the game, or afterward.”
Joyce stopped filling the napkin dispenser on the counter and gave Maeve a thoughtful look. “They’ve got a snack bar at the stadium, so during the game, anyone who wants a snack will buy it there. They used to sell the absolute worst hot dogs in the world. Boiled instead of grilled.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “But before or after the game…why not?”
“Do they have programs? Maybe, if it’s not too late, I could buy an ad.”
“They never used to have programs,” Joyce told her. “They’d just hand out a sheet of paper with the Brogan’s Point roster on one side and the opposing team’s roster on the other. I don’t know if that’s changed.”
Maeve pondered the situation. “Maybe we could print up some fliers and hand them out to people arriving for the game. Except we’ll be here, working…” More thought. “We could hire some kids to hand them out. Or pay them with cookies.” She needed to watch her bottom line. She’d budgeted for one staffer—Joyce. Not a team of kids. What was the minimum age for workers, anyway? Could she hire middle-school students, like Joyce’s daughter? Her daughter might have friends. What were the legalities?
Her father might know. He was in charge of enforcing the law, after all.
She pulled her cell phone from the hip pocket of her jeans, then hesitated, her thumb poised above the screen, and contemplated the implications. Turning to her father for advice was something she hadn’t done in a decade. More than a decade—once her mother had died and her father had fallen to pieces, she’d realized she could no longer depend on him for anything. The man had been unable even to put together an evening meal. Or eat one. Maeve had cooked a decent dinner a couple of times—grilled chicken or minute steaks, baked potatoes and green beans—and he’d just picked at the food, lavishing much more attention on the glass of whisky beside his plate. She’d given up, lived on soup from cans and salads, asked him for grocery money when she needed it, and, when he was off on a bender, experimented with one or another of the cookie recipes in the loose-leaf notebook she’d found in the cabinet above the stove.
He’d been useless. Grieving, of course—she couldn’t blame him for that—but he’d had a daughter who was also grieving, and he’d completely abdicated. When she’d told him, the day after graduation, that she was leaving, his eyes had misted up, but all he’d said was, “I don’t blame you.”
So now, all these years later, did she really want to pick his brain?
She couldn’t think of any other brain to pick. Sighing, she speed-dialed his number.
He answered almost immediately, delight filtering through his gruff voice. “Maeve?”
“Hi, Dad. I’ve got a question. You know there’s a homecoming game at the high school on Saturday. Is there any law against handing out flyers about my store’s grand opening there?”
That she’d rushed into the purpose of her call without pausing for small talk or how’ve-you-been’s seemed to take him aback. He was silent for a moment, and then said, “Not as far as I know. The school might have some rules about it, but there’s no law.” He paused, then added, “To be on the safe side, I wouldn’t distribute anything inside the stadium. But lots of people will be crowding around the gate to get in. You could probably hand something out there.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea?” Her throat clenched and she had to force the question out. She wasn’t sure if she was asking for his advice or fishing for a compliment.
“I think it’s a great idea,” he said, gratifying her more than she’d expected. “We always have a patrolman stationed at the gate when there’s a game. I can tell him to let you alone.”
“It won’t be me handing out the fliers,” she said. “I’ll be at the shop. I was figuring I’d get some kids to hand them out.”
“Good idea.”
Damn. His approval shouldn’t make her so happy, but it did.
“So you’ll be officially open on Saturday?”
“Ten a.m.”
“I’ll stop by.”
“I’ll give you a freebie,” she said.
“No need.” She heard him inhale a deep breath. “Any chance I can get you to come for dinner before then?”
She’d called her father for advice and it hadn’t destroyed her. Maybe she could eat dinner in his house without being destroyed, too. “I don’t know. Tomorrow doesn’t give you much time to plan, and Friday’s the night before the opening. I’ll be kind of nervous.”
“All the more reason to come. You don’t want to be worrying about fixing dinner the night before your big day.”
She wouldn’t have worried about fixing dinner. She would have satisfied herself with some fruit and cheese, or a cup of yogurt. Or her old standby, soup from a can. “Okay,” she said. “But I can’t stay late.”
“Of course not. Listen, honey, I’ve got to go. Come around six on Friday. We’ll see you then.”
We. His girlfriend would be there, too. Probably not a bad thing, Maeve thought. Gus could be a buffer. She could dilute the tension, like ice cubes in hard liquor. And she had been the woman who’d put Maeve’s father back together again. If Maeve’s life was truly in Brogan’s Point now, Gus Naukonen was going to be a part of it.
She disconnected the call, stuffed her phone back into her pocket, and allowed herself a brief shudder. Then she squared her shoulders, smiled at Joyce, and said, “Let’s design a flier.”