Meghan entered the Creighton Falls Community Church with a headache and a cherry pie from the Price Chopper five miles toward Watertown. Brenda Wickley took the pie off her, whisking it away to the table creaking with homemade offerings, with a wink Meghan didn’t understand until her gaze moved over the crowd assembled for the annual town talent show and then screeched to a stop on a familiar dirty blond head. So Quinn Freeman was still in town, and more to the point, he’d actually come to the talent show.
He was sitting alone, leaning back in a folding chair, one booted foot resting on his other knee, looking relaxed and amused, as if he were just a little bit above it all. Meghan could see everyone around shooting him speculative looks, from the now openly gaping Brenda to the more discreet, darting looks of Hannah and Sam Taylor. Even Billy Kargas was eyeing him curiously. Quinn seemed to take no notice of anyone.
Meghan shrugged out of her jacket, the warmth of the room enveloping her with its stifling yet comfortable familiarity and the pulsing pain that had banded her temples for most of the day starting to recede a little. She’d grown up in this church, had attended awkward teenaged dances and family bingo nights, potluck suppers and endless talent shows, not to mention plenty of Christmas Eve and Easter church services.
A few people waved and others said hello, and Meghan smiled and nodded at them all, even as she started walking towards the seat next to Quinn’s.
He turned, his eyebrows rising as she sat down next to him. “Well, hello there.” Blatant male appreciation lit his eyes as his gaze roved over her. She’d never been one to gussy up, but she’d made a bit of an effort tonight, with eyeliner, a bright sweater, and skinny jeans. Unable to keep herself from preening a little under Quinn’s warm look, Meghan decided it had been worth it. No harm in playing a little. She could use the distraction. It certainly wasn’t going to go anywhere. Quinn was going to be out of here in a couple of days, max.
“I didn’t think you were planning to stick around.”
Quinn’s eyebrows arched higher. “It’s only been three days.”
“You must have got the estimates for all the work by now.” She’d sent hers in two days ago. “What’s keeping you?”
Quinn glanced away, leaning his elbows on the back of his chair. “Couldn’t miss the talent show, could I?”
“Trust me, you could.” Meghan settled herself in her chair, shoving her coat underneath her seat. “Although we locals love it. But doesn’t the Big Apple call you back?”
“Is New York City better than Creighton Falls, in your estimation?” he asked, a teasing glint in his hazel eyes. His mouth kicked up at one corner and Meghan’s insides sizzled. She didn’t know what she felt about Quinn Freeman as a person, but as a man he was definitely sexy. And she was not immune.
“Not in mine,” she answered, “but I thought it would be in yours.”
“Maybe you thought wrong.” He shrugged his own response away as he added, “In any case, I don’t live in New York.”
“You don’t? Where do you live then?”
Another shrug, the movement just as dismissive, as restless. “All over.”
“How’s that?”
He seemed reluctant to reply, his gaze on the makeshift stage at the front of the church hall. Billy Kargas was testing the microphone and the resulting screech kept him from answering for a few moments anyway. Finally he said, “I’ve been traveling around for the last couple of years, working where I can.”
“What kind of work?”
“Whatever comes my way. Bartending mostly.” He flashed her a quick smile. “Great way to see the world.”
So basically he was a bum. Meghan couldn’t deny that she was a little disappointed in Quinn’s answer, even as she acknowledged that she wasn’t all that surprised. He didn’t want for money, and from the moment she’d met him his lackadaisical attitude had pointed to a pleasure-seeking lifestyle.
“Must be nice,” she finally said, keeping her voice neutral.
“It’s been all right,” he answered, his gaze flicking away from hers. “What about you? How did you become a plumber?”
“I needed a steady job and plumbing seemed like the best bet.” She heard a slight edge to her voice and realized she wasn’t just disappointed in Quinn’s answer, she was envious. Envious of the freedom and opportunities he no doubt took for granted. “I did an online course when I was seventeen and then I apprenticed to a plumber in Watertown for a year before starting out on my own.” She’d been eighteen years old, the breadwinner for her and Polly. Not an easy time.
Quinn’s hazel gaze moved slowly over her. “And you’re successful.”
“I make ends meet.” Sometimes only just.
“What about your parents?” he asked. “Are they around? Do they help with Polly?”
“My mother’s out in Arizona, and my dad...” She hesitated, not wanting to criticize her father and yet... “He does what he can.”
“Must be tough,” Quinn said quietly and now Meghan was the one to shrug and look away.
“It is what it is. Polly works at a supermarket near Watertown. She’s not...” Meghan stopped, because she didn’t know how to finish that sentence. She’s not hopeless. She’s not completely dependent on me. I love her with every breath in my body even though sometimes it’s hard.
“Where is she tonight?”
“She’s with my friend, Janet, making cupcakes. Polly loves baking.” And Janet had been a godsend over the years, offering to have Polly over when Meghan needed a little downtime. Plenty of people in Creighton Falls had stepped up for her, and it did combat the loneliness and isolation that came with being Polly’s sole caretaker. Mostly.
Quinn raised his eyebrows. “Janet Pierce?”
“You know her?”
“Apparently she was my family’s housekeeper when I was little. I ran into her the other day. Didn’t remember her, though.”
“It must be strange,” Meghan said slowly. “For so many people to know you without you knowing them back.”
“Yeah.” He smiled wryly before nodding to Brenda, who was arranging the pies on a side table. “She knows me. She told me tonight that she changed my really messy diaper.”
Meghan laughed at that. “Almost everyone in Creighton Falls knows you or at least your family, although not quite in that capacity.”
“Do you?” Quinn asked abruptly. “I mean... do you remember... my family?” He held her gaze, and underneath the careless, easy attitude, Meghan sensed a hidden vulnerability that surprised her. Touched her too, if she was honest. He looked like he really wanted to know. Like he really needed to know.
“I remember the hotel being open,” she said slowly. “My dad used to do fishing tours for the guests there.” And now she was the one feeling vulnerable, as she recalled how simple life used to be. “I remember that your family hosted a Christmas open house for everyone in the town each year. We used to go along. Your mother gave every child a little present, wrapped up with a bow and everything.”
“Did she?” He sounded wondering. “I don’t remember any of it.”
“Nothing?” Meghan asked curiously. “Not even little snatches of things?” It seemed strange to have drawn a complete blank across the first six years of your life. She had plenty of memories from first grade: losing her front tooth, getting her first bike. Holding Polly as a baby, who had been born right before her sixth birthday.
“Nothing at all,” Quinn said flatly. His gaze had shuttered, his jaw going tight. “At least... until recently.”
Meghan wasn’t able to respond because the talent show was starting. Deciding the mood could use a little lightening, Meghan leaned over and whispered in Quinn’s ear. “Brace yourself for Creighton Falls’ astonishing talent. Trust me, we give The X Factor a run for its money.”
She hadn’t meant to lean quite so close, and her lips were practically brushing his ear. She could smell his aftershave and she had the absurd urge to bury her nose in the warm curve of his shoulder and take a big sniff.
Quinn slanted her a sideways glance, and she could tell from the slight tension in his body that he felt at least some of the same awareness that she did. “Oh? What should I look forward to, then?”
“Billy Kargas,” Meghan answered promptly. “He will render you speechless.”
His mouth curved in a smile, and now Meghan had the urge to kiss one quirked-up corner. She was close enough to see the glint of a five o’clock shadow on his jaw and she imagined running her fingers against it, feeling that scratchy-smooth sensation of skin and stubble. It had been a long, long time since she’d touched a man like that.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Hannah Taylor gazing at her with avid interest and regretfully she eased back. Flirting with Quinn Freeman at the town’s talent show was a very bad idea. Unless she wanted their marriage announcement in the local paper by tomorrow. Still, it had been fun, at least for a few minutes.
The first act had ambled onto the stage, three farmers with banjo, fiddle, and accordion. The resulting sound was at least lively, if slightly off-kilter, and Quinn gave Meghan a sidelong, knowing glance.
“I see what you mean,” he murmured.
“Just wait.”
The next act were three would-be ballerinas, the oldest one being only five. The youngest, a two-year-old named Chloe, ran off the stage and buried her head in her mother’s lap, refusing to go back on despite many urgings and a round of cheering from the audience. Then came Marie Czartoski, who had dreams, or perhaps delusions, of being an opera singer. She tried out for America’s Got Talent every year, and wrote up her experiences in the local newspaper. She had yet to get past the first round of auditions.
Half a dozen decent acts followed, and then Billy Kargas lumbered on, a tall man carrying an extra fifty or so pounds, wearing his best red plaid flannel shirt and denim overalls with green suspenders. Meghan had known Billy for her whole life; he’d had a boat, just like her dad, to run fishing tours for guests before the hotel had closed. For the last twenty years he’d been doing what her father did: finding odd jobs where he could and collecting welfare when he couldn’t.
Brenda Wickley was on the piano, banging out the basic chords for The Heart Will Go On. Only Billy would attempt a Celine Dion song. Meghan leaned over to Quinn again, just to breathe him in one more time. “This will really knock your socks off.”
Quinn nodded slowly, his eyebrows raised in expectation, his mouth curving, and Billy began.
Quinn kept his face pleasantly neutral with effort as Billy launched into his Celine Dion rendition. Quinn didn’t think the guy got one note right, but he certainly put his whole heart into it. Around him everyone was listening with rapt attention, as if Billy were the local Pavarotti, and it wasn’t until he saw someone suppress a wince that he realized everyone there knew how bad he was. They just didn’t want Billy to know it. And he felt a weird, unsettling tug of affection for this hometown of his that still felt like such a strange place, and yet one he might actually want to get to know.
He glanced at Meghan, and saw she was watching Billy as if entranced. She might have joked about him to Quinn, but he knew instinctively that Meghan would clap as hard as everyone else when Billy finished. She was an intriguing mixture of sharpness and courage, spiky defensiveness and heartrending vulnerability. He’d seen it in her eyes when she’d talked about her sister, her absentee parents. He felt it in himself.
Or maybe he was just becoming massively sentimental, because since coming back to Creighton Falls he’d felt... unbalanced. Until he’d stepped foot in that moldering hotel, seen the glint of the river, he hadn’t let himself think much about Creighton Falls at all. His family never talked about it. He didn’t remember any of it. He’d mentally drawn a line across the first six years of his life and moved on.
Or at least he’d acted as if he had. Pretended to himself he had. But coming back here was making him realize that he hadn’t, not remotely. That there were ghosts in his past, flirting with his memory, making him wonder and wish and grieve. All of which should make him want to hightail it out of this town as fast as possible, except he’d been stupidly reluctant to do that.
And so he’d taken his time to get a few more estimates; he’d ripped up a few carpets and torn off the wallpaper in the lounge just to see what was underneath. And he’d gone to sleep every night half-hoping for another dream about the hotel, half-afraid of what he might remember.
Billy Kargas finished with a screeching flourish, and the entire crowd clambered to their feet to give him a standing ovation. Billy beamed and suggested an encore, but Terence Mills, the minister of the congregation and emcee for the night, told him that they were sadly out of time.
Quinn didn’t think he was imagining the silent, collective sigh of relief that went up through the rows of folding chairs.
A couple more acts and the show was over. Terence asked for help folding the chairs before they dug into all the pie on offer. Quinn rose and began to fold his, reaching for Meghan’s, who shook her head and folded it herself.
“So how did you get roped in to coming to the talent show, anyway?” she asked.
“A woman stopped by to introduce herself and invite me. It was hard to say no, not that I wanted to.”
“A woman?”
“Hannah something...?”
“Hannah Taylor,” Meghan finished. “She’s new to Creighton Falls, but she loves this town.”
“I could tell. She asked me if I was going to reopen the hotel.”
“I guess everyone is asking you that.”
“Pretty much.” Quinn raked a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “I keep telling people, it’s not my decision to make.”
“Maybe it should be.”
He glanced at her, saw the defiant glint in her ice-blue eyes, and tensed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Meghan shrugged. “You’re the one here, aren’t you? You’re the one who is taking an interest. Why can’t you decide to keep it open?”
As if it were that simple. As if Adam or anyone in his family would listen to him for a moment. They hadn’t before. This doesn’t concern you, Quinn. Adam’s officious voice, his mother’s pleading gaze. Leave well enough alone. No, nobody in his family wanted him sticking his nose in the family business. His mother might have asked him to get a few estimates, but it was akin to throwing him a bone. She didn’t want him wrestling Adam for control, which was what any bid for more responsibility would end up being.
He shook his head as Meghan continued to stare at him challengingly. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“Why not? Or do you have another bartending gig in Bali to go to?”
He jerked back, stunned and more than a little insulted by the scorn he heard in her voice. So she thought he was a pretty useless playboy. She wouldn’t be the first, and Quinn knew he hadn’t done much to contradict the assumption. He’d long ago learned there was no point.
The chairs had all been folded and put away, and people began to migrate towards the table on the side that was laden with pies. Quinn and Meghan fell in with everyone else, and it wasn’t until he’d helped himself to a slice of apple toffee pie that he said in a low, terse voice, “Just because my family has money doesn’t mean everything is easy.”
“I never said it was,” Meghan answered as she reached for a paper plate.
“Everyone here seems to think I can snap my fingers and make things happen.”
“Maybe because that’s how it used to be.”
“Yeah, well, it’s different now,” Quinn said, and he heard the anger in his voice. “I’m different.” And without waiting for her reply, he went off with his pie.
Meghan watched Quinn shovel his pie into his mouth as if he were starving, wondering what he’d meant when he’d said I’m different. Different from whom? His family? His father? This town?
She watched, bemused, as locals started to circle him; everyone wanted to know what was going on with the hotel, and by coming to the talent show, Quinn had marked himself as fair game. It was open season on a Freeman.
And open season on her too, she realized, as Brenda sidled close to her. “You and the Freeman boy were looking pretty cozy there.”
“It’s work, Brenda. He asked for an estimate on replumbing the hotel.”
“Heard you gave him the replumbing estimate two days ago.”
Was nothing secret in this town? Meghan sighed and speared a forkful of lemon meringue. “There are still details to be discussed.”
“So he is thinking of staying around?” There was no disguising the glee in Brenda’s voice.
“No...” Too late Meghan realized she’d started a dangerous rumor. She needed to haul it back asap. “No, Quinn’s just fixing it up so the Freemans can get the best price for it. That’s all, Brenda, honestly.”
Brenda fixed her with a glittering, gimlet stare. “Quinn, is it?”
Meghan groaned and rolled her eyes. Sometimes this town felt way too small.
It was getting late, and Janet liked to go to bed early, so Meghan decided to call it a night. She called out a few goodbyes, tossed her paper plate into the trash, and headed out into the darkness.
It was a cold, clear night, and Meghan tipped her head up to the star-scattered sky and breathed in the sharp pine-scented air, grateful, in that moment at least, for the simple, rustic beauty of her hometown. She loved Creighton Falls, always would, even if sometimes she felt stuck.
“Meghan.” She tensed as she heard Quinn’s voice behind her and she lowered her head to see him emerging him from the church, his hands jammed into the pockets of a parka. She wondered if he was still angry with her, but as he came closer she saw the insouciant glint in his eye, the teasing curve of his lips. Seemed like Quinn had already moved on.
“So, you escaped,” she said.
“By the skin of my teeth. Brenda Wickley should work for the CIA.”
“She’s tenacious.”
He shifted where he stood. “I’m not used to a place where everyone wants to know your business.”
“Welcome to Creighton Falls.”
“Yeah, well.” A pause, and the air felt electric. The tiny hairs on Meghan’s arms prickled, and not with cold. With expectation. She’d been trying her hardest to deny it, but she’d felt the pull of attraction, of longing, toward this man ever since she’d clapped eyes on him. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“You are?” She tried to squelch the irrational disappointment she felt. Stupidly, despite her baiting earlier, she’d thought he might stick around a little longer. “Why?”
“Nothing else to do here.”
Which is what she’d told him before. “Okay.”
Quinn shifted his stance, his gaze turning even and measured. Calculated. “I know the place is a wreck, but do you want to come back to the hotel with me?” Meghan’s startled gaze flew to his as he paused deliberately. “For a drink?”
She didn’t have a lot of bedroom experience, but she’d been around the block enough to know what Quinn was suggesting, and it wasn’t just a friendly nightcap.
She licked dry lips, her heart starting to hammer. No one had ever propositioned her so blatantly before, unless you counted Todd Cybalski’s invitation to go fishing with him, with a loud guffaw and a gesture to his crotch. Charming.
“But you’re leaving tomorrow.”
He lifted his chin, his intent gaze never leaving hers. “Exactly.”
So a one-night stand. No strings, no promises, no emotion. Just the sheer physical pleasure of the thing. And Meghan knew she was tempted, maybe more than she should be. No one was outside; they could leave now, walk to the hotel, and she could sneak back later to her truck with no one in Creighton Falls the wiser. They could explore this attraction, work out some stress in the best way possible. Or so she supposed. It had been a long time since she’d been even close to naked with a man.
Quinn raised his eyebrows. “Well?”
“I have to pick up my sister.”
“Can’t you be a little late?”
She licked her lips again and hitched her bag higher on her shoulder. “How late?”
He shrugged. “You tell me.” His smile was slow and wicked as he murmured, “A lot can happen in an hour.”
Heat flared through her and images danced in her mind. Images of Quinn Freeman’s golden skin, his kissable lips, his perfectly defined chest. Then her stomach cramped and she started to feel sick. What the hell was she thinking? Having a quickie in an abandoned hotel with a stranger?
Was that what her life had become, that all she could do was snatch a moment’s fleeting, sordid happiness? Or maybe an hour of it.
Quinn must have seen the change in her expression, felt her withdrawal, for he slid his keys out of his pocket and jangled them in his hand. “Maybe not, eh?” he said, and started to walk away.
Meghan stared at his retreating back in both shock and outrage. It was so easy for him, both the picking up and the discarding. The fact that he could walk away so easily, whistling as he went, made her realize she’d been right to refuse his offer.
Not that he’d actually given her a chance.
“Have a nice life, Quinn Freeman,” she called, and his stride slowed for a second. “Since I most likely won’t see you again.”
He turned his head so his face was in profile. “You too, Meghan O’Reilly,” he said, and then he kept walking.
Meghan watched him walk all the way across the green and into the hotel before she turned around. She let out a gusty sigh, her breathing forming a puff of frosty air, as she battled a dozen different emotions. Annoyance. Outrage. Anger. Hurt. And disappointment, because now that he was gone, she almost wished she’d taken Quinn Freeman up on his offer.