by Caro Carson
He joked, instead. “Is this an ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ kind of thing?”
“Yes. What’s your favorite book?” She hadn’t picked up on the innuendo, or she was deliberately ignoring it. She really wanted to know what his favorite book was.
He looked into her eyes, fell under her spell, and told her the truth. “A textbook like this one. It’s an art book I found lying at the back of some library shelving when I was...younger. It was covered in years’ worth of dust, but when I opened it, the color pages... I felt like I’d walked into some kind of oasis. The librarian let me keep it, because it had been missing for so long, it was no longer in the catalog system. I couldn’t believe no one had noticed that a book like that had gone missing. I looked at the paintings for a week before I got around to reading the text. Then I had to look at all the paintings again, once I’d read about the subjects and the techniques.”
“That sounds magical. Don’t you love books?”
He wouldn’t say he felt magic right now. He felt pain, actually, an unfamiliar pain, the vulnerability of revealing something so personal. He needed a little vulnerability of hers to balance his. “Your turn. What are you reading today?”
Her smile disappeared as she pressed her lips together.
It’s not easy, is it?
“Go ahead,” he said. “You can tell me.”
“It’s a novel.”
“Is it, now?” He sounded like wise, old Mr. Murphy. Not the most seductive way to speak to a woman, but this wasn’t anything like flirting. She felt vulnerable revealing her book. He understood.
“It’s a romance. A paranormal. She’s human, but he’s a shape-shifter. They come from different worlds, but...well, it’s a romance. They’ll be together in the end.”
“How do you know? Are you one of those people who reads the last page first?”
“Oh, never. I know it will end that way because that’s the only right way for two people in love to end up. Together.”
“Romeo and Juliet couldn’t live without each other, so they ended up together. I suppose that’s romantic.”
“They ended up dead together. That is not a romance. It needs to end happily-ever-after together, every time. I wish real life could be that way.”
“I see.”
It was a childlike wish, that happily-ever-after. Parents wouldn’t disappear when kids needed them. Mr. Murphy wouldn’t get pneumonia. No one would ever be hit by a car. Everyone who broke the law would be caught, instead of one guy taking the fall.
Connor couldn’t dwell on the injustices of the world. These were his precious minutes with the most intriguing woman who’d ever walked into his bar.
“Actually, I don’t see,” he said. “You’re still hiding the book. We had a deal.”
“I said I’d show you mine if you showed me yours. You didn’t show me anything. You merely described to me how magnificent it was.”
She spoke with a perfectly straight face, but she had to be making that sexual innuendo intentionally. Didn’t she?
Her exaggeratedly innocent blink gave her away. “Men always claim theirs is magnificent, so...”
He burst into laughter. “I believe you said it was magical. That’s a new one for me.”
She laughed with him. “What’s your art book called? If you don’t remember, then I’ll know you haven’t really read it over and over.”
He shouldn’t tell her, but she’d come back to see him. She’d made him laugh. It would reveal far too much, but he told her the truth. “My favorite book is called Rembrandt: Passion in Full Color.”
Her eyes widened. “Rembrandt? But—oh.” She spoke in that breathy voice a woman used when a man touched her just right.
“Your turn, Rembrandt.”
Neither of them was laughing now. This still wasn’t a flirtation. He didn’t know what it was. Unintentional seduction, maybe.
She was silent for an eternity before she took a deep breath. “My book is called A Mate with Destiny.”
The silence was profound, sexually charged, emotional. Everything felt profound, that he should call her Rembrandt, that she should be reading about two lovers’ date with destiny—
Wait a minute.
“A...mate? A Mate with Destiny?” Connor sat back, but he rubbed his jaw so he wouldn’t laugh. “With a title like that, you know I’ve got to see it.”
“You can’t judge a book by its cover. Or its title.”
He held out his hand, palm up. “It sounds magical.”
She slapped the book into his hand with a huff.
Finally, he got a good look at the blue cover. He kept looking in a kind of numb surprise, while his brain rearranged a few preconceived notions about genius professors.
“It’s really very good,” she said defensively. “Very atmospheric, lots of mysterious lakes and fog under the moon.”
He tapped the cover. “This guy is ripped.”
She tried to grab it out of his hand, but he was too quick.
“I’ve got to read this.” He turned his shoulder to her and opened the book, smiling unguardedly now at this unexpected side of Delphinia.
She came out of her seat a bit as she made a more determined grab for it, but her fingers only grazed his wrist.
“Is he supposed to be a wolf?” He flipped to another random page. “He’s a wolf.”
“Give it back.” There was a desperation to her voice. No laughter, no friendliness—only panic.
It chilled him. He handed her the book immediately.
She practically hugged it to herself. “I just... It’s just that I haven’t finished it yet. And it’s not that recent, so it might be out of print, so if I lost this copy, I wouldn’t ever know how it ends. I usually finish a book once I get more than halfway into it, and—”
“Delphinia—”
“It’s not really mine. I borrowed it, really, and I should put it back on the swap shelf when I’m done.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself. It’s your book. You wanted it back.”
She stilled, looking surprised he’d said that.
She wouldn’t be surprised if she knew the real him. If he’d learned anything in prison, it was how important possessions could be—and how harrowing it was to have someone take yours, someone bigger and stronger than you were. Someone more vicious.
“I’m sorry, very sorry.” He barely recognized his own voice. He never spoke this gently, but he didn’t want her to think he was some kind of brute. “I didn’t realize how much you didn’t want me to see it.”
“I’m overreacting.” She pressed her thumb into the groove of a carved rosette and scowled at her own hand. “I don’t know why. It’s been a long week, I guess.”
He wanted to cover her hand with his own, so she couldn’t scowl at herself.
He had no more right to touch her than he had to touch her book. “Don’t apologize for fighting for something you love. That book means something to you.”
“It doesn’t mean anything to me.”
He knew that wasn’t true. The first time he’d laid eyes on her, she’d been absorbed by it.
She pressed the pad of her thumb harder into the edge of the carving. “It doesn’t even make me happy.”
That could be true. She’d looked so very unhappy Tuesday. She was so unhappy now.
It was time for him to go, because she was unhappy, and he didn’t know what to do or what to say to make it better for her. He wished he did—and because he was wishing such an unfamiliar kind of wish, he needed to get back to work, back to real life, back to bartending and customers and the kind of temporary happiness his pub provided. Everything with Delphinia was too unfamiliar.
He scooted his chair back, a scrape of new wood over old, but he didn’t leave.
“It makes me want things
I shouldn’t want.” Her voice had taken on a harder edge.
He tried a bartender’s smile, a little friendly charm, hoping to interrupt this sudden, fierce misery she was directing at herself. “It makes you want what? A wolf?”
“Yes. Exactly that.” She cut her gaze from the carving to him. “It makes me want a lone wolf in my life. A man who’s so strong and capable that he doesn’t need anyone else. But he wants someone else. Their eyes meet across a crowded room, and the attraction is instant. It’s destiny.”
The intensity of her words made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It was almost a challenge. He couldn’t run away now. He’d been conditioned years ago to never be the one who backed down—but to never be the one to antagonize, either. Pouring fuel on a fire got one burned, so he returned her fierce gaze with a carefully blank one of his own. And waited.
“I know the book cover is sexy. Their relationship is sexy, but there’s so much more to it than sex. The reason it’s sexy is because they belong together. It’s an intense kind of love, the kind you scale mountains for, the kind you’d give up everything for. They’re soul mates.” She frowned at the cover as she riffled the book’s pages at a corner with her thumb, a few quiet zips, before she set it on the table. “But it’s only a book. That’s not really how love goes.”
It wasn’t? That had to be one hell of a book, then, because she’d sounded pretty convincing.
She slid the Shakespeare out from under Selections and reloaded her book bag. She pulled the strap onto her shoulder and sat on the edge of the bench, ready to leave, but she didn’t get up, just as he had not. They were sitting at a right angle to one another, so as she looked straight ahead, out of the snug, out to the world she would return to at any moment, he looked at her profile.
She stared, unblinking, at the empty stage. “I’m seeing someone.”
Too many emotions made his heart pound too hard, as if he needed to fight, as if there were something to fight for. But he was a bartender; he’d learned not to interrupt folks at his bar. He kept listening.
“Love isn’t a struggle,” she said resolutely, addressing the stage. “It’s simple, really. Most people meet someone who suits them, someone they work with, or someone who knows the same people they know. Someone who lives where they live.”
His hands were in fists.
Of course she’s seeing someone. Of course.
Fists were useless.
She looked down at her own smooth hands, her own unscarred knuckles. “Your lives are already running along the same course. You fall into step without any effort or angst or drama, and the next thing you know, you’ve been dating for half a year, and those colleagues and families are looking forward to the next step. It’s simple, and it’s nice, and it’s real life. I need to stop reading books that make me want something more.”
But you want more. She deserved more. He also knew more was not a man with a criminal record who had no idea what her career involved, who her friends were, where she lived—or what she needed to be happy.
She stood, so he did, too. They both stepped toward the open side at the same time, but there was no awkward, shuffling dance. They simply stopped and faced one another, nothing between them but air and emptiness.
“I don’t know your name, Mr. McClaine.”
“Connor.” My father never called me Connor McClaine, not that I can remember...
“Connor McClaine,” she said.
For a moment, the sound of his name spoken in her voice filled the empty space.
But only for a moment. “I need to get back to campus and let you get back to business, too. You’ve been very generous about the stage, but I won’t impose on you again. I think Bridget and Kristopher are through with me.”
“You’re welcome back at any time.”
“But use the main door?” She made a sad attempt at a smile.
“All my friends do.”
He didn’t have any friends, not really. He had Mr. Murphy, his mentor and lifesaver, a man old enough to be his grandfather. Otherwise, he had acquaintances. Customers. Business associates, from the city council members to the students he employed to the delivery drivers who stacked boxes three-deep in the back hallway, which forced people to stand close together.
But no friends.
Now that Delphinia was leaving, it occurred to him that he would have liked to have become friends with her. He might have adjusted to that unfamiliar closeness as they’d shared a book.
I’m seeing someone. He’d absorbed the one-two punch of those three words without flinching. Disappointment couldn’t hurt him. If it could, he wouldn’t have lived to see twenty.
“Have a good weekend,” she said.
“You, too.”
She walked out the door and out of his life.
It was automatic for Connor to turn back to the snug and push in the chairs, putting things in order for the Friday night crowd. Delphinia had left the new textbook on the table for him, so easily giving away something that had come so easily to her. He picked it up, and there it was, the book with the blue cover. She’d left that, too.
That book had cost her something. A piece of her heart.
But she’d said she hadn’t finished reading it yet. As much as he wanted to believe she was the kind of person who gave away things she valued, she’d only left it behind in the hope that she’d leave a little of her pain behind when she left his pub. Everyone tried to leave their pain behind them when they left the pub.
The sound of screeching tires blew his thoughts apart. Not again—
The sickening crash of impact, this time. She just walked out there—
He was already yanking open the front door when a woman screamed.
Chapter Eleven
His heart stopped at the sight.
A car was crumpled around the lamppost in front of his pub. Its front tires were on the sidewalk, its engine still running, steaming. Beside it, Delphinia was on her hands and knees.
His heart must not have stopped, because he could run.
“Delphinia.” Other bystanders scattered as he dropped into a crouch beside her, putting his hand on her back, ducking to see her face. “Are you all right?”
“It wasn’t me,” she said, but he’d just glimpsed a twisted bicycle and knew that. “It wasn’t me.”
A few feet away, a young man managed to sit up with help from bystanders. His bicycle helmet was still on, but his clothes were torn, and the exposed skin was raw and bloody. He held his arm and rocked in pain.
Connor felt Delphinia take a deep, deliberate breath under his hand. She was okay. It wasn’t her. He could go check on everyone else now.
He stayed at her side.
He looked up at the gathering crowd. “Who called 911?”
“I did,” a young woman answered. Another man, too.
“Good. See if you can turn off the car.”
The driver had run to the cyclist, loudly telling everyone that there’d been no way he could have stopped in time, and the cyclist hadn’t been using the crosswalk. Two women put themselves between the driver and the cyclist.
The cyclist’s backpack had gone flying. Papers blew along the crosswalk. A book had landed open. Its pages fluttered as traffic started moving again, driving around the crumpled car and twisted bike.
Connor pointed at a young man who was just gawking. “Get his books together for him. The ambulance will be here in a second.” The sirens were already close.
“It wasn’t me,” Delphinia said under her breath, still on her hands and knees, looking at the sidewalk.
Connor rubbed her back as police and ambulance arrived at the same time. “Let’s get out of the way.”
She nodded. He could stand from his crouch easily, but she had to get up from a more awkward, crawling position. She picked up one hand and shook it.
He wasn’t going to watch her crawl; he slipped his hands under her arms and lifted her to her feet.
She held up her hands between them and looked at her palms. They weren’t just dusty from the sidewalk. They were bright red from a hard slap on the concrete.
He moved closer, until the backs of her hands rested on his chest. He kept his hands under her arms, as if he might lift her in the air over his head, like every couple in TV reality shows. In reality, he didn’t want her to drop to the ground if her knees gave out.
Or the devil could take him for a liar. The reality was that he needed to hold her unbroken ribs between his palms and feel her breathe, so his own breath would return to normal.
“Are you sure you weren’t hit?” He’d never been more grateful to look into a woman’s eyes. She took another intentionally deep breath, her ribs expanding between his hands.
“I jumped back and lost my balance and tripped, that’s all.” She sounded more confident, more like herself. “My reflexes are not exactly catlike.”
“Your reflexes must be fantastic. You’re standing here, talking to me.” He had to fight his own reflex, which was to squash her against his chest, scraped hands and all.
He let go of her. Wanting to feel a woman breathe wasn’t an acceptable excuse to hold her on a public sidewalk.
The paramedics wheeled a stretcher to the cyclist. The sheriff’s deputy was a familiar face from the bar, Deputy Kent Grayson. When he spotted Connor, he came to him first. Why the hell did cops always want to talk to him?
“Did you see it happen?” Deputy Grayson sounded hopeful, but Connor shook his head.
“I did,” Delphinia said, but she frowned at the lamppost. “Or not really. I heard something, and I turned, but the car was already coming at me. I don’t know how I got out of the way.”
“Wait here,” the deputy ordered her. “Don’t go anywhere until I can get your statement.”
“No,” Connor said, a reflex. He was not leaving her out here on the sidewalk for the next hour. “She’ll be inside my place.”