The Redemption Of Matthew Quinn

“Oh, yes! I forgot to explain about the bed.”

It did need explaining, he had to admit. A huge walnut four-poster, it dominated the central part of the room. It faced the picture window, and the sunlight exposed an elaborate jungle of birds and butterflies and snakes carved into every inch of exposed wood.

“I know it’s a little big for this place, but it’s a fantastic bed. Rumor is my great-great grandfather won it a hundred years ago in an arm-wrestling contest with the king of Tahiti.” She smoothed the soft white bedspread. “The king was only twelve at the time. Doesn’t really seem very fair of my grandfather, does it?”

Matthew smiled. “Or very smart of the king.”

She looked up. “That’s exactly what I’ve always thought,” she said happily, as if delighted to discover they shared a common outlook on something so important.

“Anyhow, it’s comfortable, which is why we’ve always kept it, even though it eats up all the space. But let’s see…other than this main room, there’s a kitchenette, which is pretty awful, and the bathroom, which, as I said, is fantastic. In fact, we used to wonder if my grandfather used to have assignations down here. Great bed, great Roman tub…and almost nothing else. Makes you think.”

He smiled. Sounded pretty good to him.

“Time for a full disclosure, I guess. The left burner on the stove won’t heat. You have to jiggle the handle to make the toilet stop running. The overhead light in here makes a hissing noise when it rains. And the faucet in the kitchen sink has a very annoying tendency to drip when you’re trying to sleep.”

She sighed, apparently having come to the end of her litany of drawbacks. “I’m sorry.” She gave him a tilted smile. “My only hope is, I figure it’s got to beat prison, right?”

Matthew had hardly been listening. He’d been looking out the window, enjoying the limitless expanse of blue sky and the way the green oaks and hemlocks seemed to swarm down the mountainside into the cozy hamlet of Firefly Glen. But her last sentence got his attention.

He turned around slowly. “Beat prison?”

“Oh, dear.” Natalie’s high brow furrowed and she twisted a curl in her forefinger. “Maybe I’m being stupid. I should have realized. You probably were in one of those country club prisons, weren’t you?”

For a second he didn’t know how to answer. Except for his parole officer, Natalie was the first person since his release to say the word “prison” in his presence. Everyone else, even his sister, had locked it away with other shameful words you’d never mention in polite society, like hemorrhoids or cannibalism or incest.

They meant well, of course. They pretended it hadn’t ever happened because they thought he wanted to forget. They just didn’t get it. Prison was a part of him now, burned into him like a brand. It had happened, all right. And he would never forget.

But now, as he heard Natalie Granville say the word so naturally, he realized that she wasn’t afraid of it. She didn’t think it made him dirty. He wondered whether it might be possible someday to talk to her about it. About the degradation and the panic, about the claustrophobia and the fury and the shame, and finally the creeping numbness that had come over him.

But what was he thinking? He squeezed his eyes shut hard, trying to force himself back to reality. He hardly knew her, for God’s sake. Maybe he was as crazy as she was. Maybe “Granville moments” were contagious.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that Natalie was watching him anxiously. After a second, she groaned and pressed her knuckles against her brow.

“Oh, this was so dumb! I’ve got ten bedrooms up at the house. I should have put you in one of them. It’s just that— I just thought you might like more privacy. More freedom. I guess I thought that, after prison, privacy would be more important than drippy faucets.”

He shouldn’t have waited so long to say something. Apparently he had lost the knack for normal conversational rhythms, along with everything else.

“No, it is,” he said quickly. “You were absolutely right. Privacy is more important to me right now than almost anything. This place is terrific.”

He had begun to notice little things. A fresh vase of Queen Anne’s Lace stood on the nightstand, probably picked from her own side yard. And beside the flowers she’d neatly arranged a couple of paperback mysteries, a pitcher of water and a crystal glass.

Welcome home.

“It’s beautiful. And trust me. Even with drippy faucets, it’s got prison beat by a million miles.”

“You mean it?” She wrinkled her nose again. “You don’t have to say—”

“I mean it. It’s perfect. In fact, it may be the most unselfish thing I’ve seen anyone do in about ten years.”

Still frowning, she studied his eyes earnestly. But her face gradually relaxed, and soon she was smiling that sweetly lopsided smile.

“It’s not really unselfish at all, you know.” She touched his hand. “I just want you to be glad you said yes.”

He looked down at her hand. Her fingers were small, tanned from working in the sun. Her short, unpolished nails were white crescent moons, feminine in the most simple and honest of ways.

Oh, hell. To his horror, a sudden, fierce sexual reaction shot through him. He eased his arm away and bent over his duffel stiffly. Damn it all to hell.

Had he really turned into such a pathetic cliché? Watch out, ladies. He’s a lonely, sex-starved drifter just out of prison…

Well, he wouldn’t let it happen, that was all. He made a silent vow to himself right there on the spot. He would not let it happen.

“It’s getting late,” he said firmly. “I’d better get to work. How about if I unpack, and then I’ll come find you, and you can tell me where to start?”

She might be naive, but she could take a hint.

“Okay,” she said, smoothing the bedspread one last time. “I’ll leave you alone. I’ll be in the kitchen when you need me. Big door at the back.” She fluffed the flowers and headed for the door.

But at the last second she turned around.

“Hey, wait a minute,” she said in a thoughtful tone. “When you said this was the most unselfish thing you’d seen anyone do in ten years…” She tilted her head. “I thought you said you were in prison for three years. Not ten.”

He didn’t turn around. “That’s right,” he said, unfolding T-shirts. “I was.”

“Oh.” He heard her chuckle softly as she figured it out. “Oh, I see. Well, then I guess it’s a good thing you came to Firefly Glen, Matthew Quinn. Obviously you’re way overdue for a fresh start.”

SHUCKING HER UNCOMFORTABLE business suit with relief— God, she hated wooing new clients— Natalie changed into shorts and T-shirt at lightning speed, then scurried down to the kitchen.

She surveyed her pantry thoughtfully. It wasn’t ten in the morning yet. Matthew had arrived so early he probably hadn’t had any breakfast. She intended to fix that. She’d make the best breakfast he’d ever seen.

As she gathered eggs, fresh fruit, whole wheat bread, sausage and homemade apple butter and plopped them on the huge kitchen island, she had to admit she might be overdoing things a little. She’d spent all day yesterday painting the pool house, hanging new curtains, washing windows till they sparkled. And now this feast, fit for a king, not a handyman.

But she wanted to treat him well. Something in his eyes told her that no one had treated him like a king in a long, long time.

Besides, she wanted to show him she was actually competent at some things. She wanted to assure him that she wasn’t as half-baked and hapless as she must have seemed when they first met.

She cringed, remembering the booze, the bikini, the wedding dress on the statue. Arms full of more food, she nudged the refrigerator door shut with her forehead. Heck, he probably thought she was nuts. Which was annoying, because actually, for a Granville, she was pretty darn practical.

Her nursery business was thriving, which took a lot of know-how. She made money. Heck, if she didn’t have this money pit to take care of, she’d practically be solvent.

And she was a darn good cook. She began to hum as she cracked eggs against her grandmother’s big stainless steel mixing bowl. Matthew would see soon enough that he hadn’t made such a terrible mistake after all.

When she heard the knock on the back door, she slid the egg-and-sausage casserole into the oven and rushed over to let him in.

“Hi,” she called out, licking apple butter from her fingers and then patting her hair, praying it wasn’t flying everywhere. “I hope you’re hungry!”

But the face on the other side of the door didn’t belong to Matthew Quinn. It belonged to Bart Beswick, the handsome young millionaire she had spent last Saturday not getting married to.

Right now, though, that handsome face was as sour as old milk. “Obviously you were expecting someone else,” Bart articulated icily, hardly moving his lips. “Who?”