by Caro Carson
This made Connor a sheepdog, not the wolf of Delphinia’s book. But game wardens captured rogue wolves. Sheepdogs remained free. That mattered.
Vincent tried to go through him. Not the sharpest animal in the barnyard.
“Not tonight,” Connor said. “She’s going home with her parents.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Just the bartender. It’s almost closing time. Let me see you out.” He gestured toward the door and herded Vincent out. He watched through the etched glass until Vincent passed the lamppost, then Connor turned around to get back to his business, back to the one thing he had left that still mattered.
He stopped short. The sheriff was blocking his way. Badge, holster, handcuffs—Connor’s reaction was visceral, but he didn’t back away. This was his bar, his private property, damn it, but the flash of anger had to be controlled. Fists were useless.
“You managed to avoid being introduced to me,” the sheriff said.
“Likewise. Busy evening.” Connor extended his hand now. “Connor McClaine. I own the Tipsy Musketeer.”
The sheriff shook hands with a bone-crushing grip and didn’t bother to give his name in return.
Connor returned the grip, resisting the temptation to overpower it. “But you already knew that.”
The sheriff did not let go. He put his other hand over theirs, one of those two-handed sandwich handshakes that usually meant a very warm, very enthusiastic greeting. It was odd, wrong for this situation. Danger. Pay attention.
The sheriff abruptly pushed up Connor’s cuffed sleeve, exposing the purple tattoo.
Connor jerked his arm free, but the sheriff had seen what he’d wanted to see. “Ward, cell block number, state of Texas. Big fighter. Proud of yourself there, were you?”
“Ten years past.”
“I know all about it. I run the names of everyone I might meet through the database before get-togethers like tonight. You’re a felon with a liquor license. Judging from the love affair everyone had with you and your bridge tonight, nobody around here knows who you really are. Let’s make sure we don’t do anything to endanger that.”
A common bully, which was all this sheriff was, wouldn’t stop until he was told to stop. “If you want to threaten me, Sheriff, be specific. Otherwise, I need to get back to running my business.”
“Fair warning. Bar fights will now result in arrests, every person, every time. Bouncers, owners, doesn’t matter to me. I’m no pansy like the old sheriff. Voters want a sheriff who treats criminals the way they deserve to be treated. It’ll be easy to win the election, once I make an example of a few troublemakers.”
“You’ll be busy at other places, then. You’ve got bigger problems than an Irish pub. The only reason your deputies come here is for some caffeine during a long shift. It’s on the house for law enforcement, of course.” The more puffed-up the sheriff got, the more relaxed Connor stayed, if only to enrage the man by not playing his game. “Did you need anything else? Coke in a to-go cup?”
After a long moment, the sheriff put on his cowboy-style hat. “I’m watching you.”
Connor held his ground. If he gave this type of man an inch, he’d take a mile. The sheriff had to walk around him to go out the door.
Connor hated the victory. It would only add to the sheriff’s grudge, but caving in would only have emboldened the sheriff. There was no safe move, no way for Connor to win.
There’d been a moment earlier, as everyone had shaken Connor’s hand and thanked him, when Mr. Murphy’s prediction had seemed possible. Why wouldn’t the city let Connor be on the ballot? As a council member, he’d be respectable enough to be seen with—to be the proud boyfriend of—a professor like Delphinia, despite the criminal record he had and the education he didn’t. He could build a life with a woman whose very laugh would guarantee there would always be light in his life.
The sheriff had come out of nowhere tonight like a sucker punch in a prison chow hall. Nothing would ever change. It didn’t matter who was elected, who came, who went, who was just passing through. Any sheriff who came to Masterson in the next fifty years could be worse. Any mayor could try to revoke a liquor license to force him out. Anyone who wanted to take what Connor had would always have a felony record to bludgeon him with. If he had a wife, a family, they’d get bludgeoned, too.
There’s a lot in this world we cannot change, lad. Best to focus on what you can control. Get back to work with you now. Connor crossed the floor with the intention of heading to the storeroom. He had a bar to replenish.
But when he walked around the corner, he veered into the VIP booth and shut the door. He needed a minute, one minute to hide from the world. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the wood.
The devil hadn’t taken Vincent Talbot to hell sideways this evening. He’d taken Connor.
* * *
Something was wrong.
Delphinia knew it the moment their eyes met. She’d come back to the VIP booth to wait until she was sure Vincent was gone, but Connor had already been in it, waiting just for her.
Maybe. When she shut the door behind herself, he crossed his arms, or rather, his wrists, putting the bulk of his arms between them, keeping space between them. It reminded her of the way he’d stood with his wrists trapped in his T-shirt, after their kiss—their one kiss.
It was a crime that she’d kissed this man only once in her life.
Her radar was spinning madly in every direction. He’d freed her from a volatile situation, but he didn’t want her? He did want her, he must. He’d known she’d still be in the pub right now, alone. He’d arranged it that way. Maybe.
“My mother wasn’t in the ladies’ room. Did you know they’d already left for the night?”
“Yes.”
Euphoria was like a drug in her veins. He had known he was stranding her here, with him.
“Vincent didn’t know,” he said. “It was the easiest way to get him to let you walk away.”
“That, and you standing between us, ready to stop him if he tried to stop me again.” She was resolved to stay firmly grounded in facts and reality, but the cold way Connor had said Let her go had been a hair’s breadth from bared teeth and raised fur.
She didn’t need to scale a mountain. She only needed to cross a foot of flooring to smooth her hands up the sleeves of that ivory dress shirt, over the Celtic M that she knew lay underneath. The backs of his crossed hands pressed into her soft stomach, because she pushed close to him. With her high heels on, she only needed to slide her hands over his powerful shoulders and up his neck to cup his face and tilt his head down an inch. As she closed her eyes to kiss that beautiful mouth, she felt the muscles in his jaw clench under her thumbs.
Fact: the last time she’d kissed him, he’d said no.
“May I kiss you?” she whispered against his lips.
He kissed her. Softly, gently, lips against lips. Her heart beat harder, waiting for more, wanting his tenderness to be a prelude to passion, when, with a little push of his mouth against hers, he lifted his head.
She opened her eyes.
Courteously, he reached around her to put his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll drive you home. I’m not any better for your reputation than Kristopher, but you can’t walk a mile dressed like that.”
“Connor.”
He opened the door.
“Connor, I don’t want you to drive me back to my house.”
He hesitated, but she knew, she just knew, he was going to come up with some pedantic transportation solution, as if he didn’t know what she really meant.
She had no patience for polite pretenses, not tonight. Not ever again. “I don’t want to go home tonight any more than I wanted to grade papers the other day.”
His expression was so aloof. Should he answer the mortal?
She’d give him
the real question to answer. “Why won’t you kiss me?”
He frowned, a brief movement of that perfectly, beautifully nicked eyebrow, her reminder that he was only a man—
“I just did,” he said.
—and she was going to kill him for pretending he didn’t know what she meant.
“You know, when you said you regretted kissing me, I thought my instincts were all wrong,” she said. “For two days, I tried to convince myself that what I knew was true wasn’t true. But my instincts are good. You like me as much as I like you.”
He shut the door and pointed toward the top of the partition walls around them. “This snug isn’t as private as you might think it is.”
She stepped closer, right into his personal space. “Like isn’t the right word for this. You want me as much as I want you. So why won’t you kiss me? Really kiss me?”
“That kiss was real.” His breathing wasn’t any more steady than hers. “But yeah, I’m stopping this from going farther. You’re on the rebound. The bartender is fun and available, but I’m only available for so much.”
“Nothing about kissing you has anything to do with a rebound.”
“You walked in here tonight on another man’s arm. You’re dressed to impress another man.”
“I was thinking of you while I got dressed, but it wasn’t a nice feeling. I wanted you to think I looked beautiful, because if you were going to regret kissing me, I wanted you to really regret it. I wanted you to eat your heart out.”
He almost smiled, a lift of one corner of his mouth.
“It was an adolescent wish. I didn’t think I’d actually see you tonight. The restaurant was out of town. But when I walked into your bar—”
“I ate my heart out. Believe me.”
“No, that’s not it.” She couldn’t force that loose piece to stay inside any longer. It was no longer jagged. Now that she was with Connor, it was a molten liquid that came pouring from her heart. “I’d been so afraid. I didn’t know what Vincent was going to do, but when I walked into your bar, I thought ‘thank God, I’m with Connor now.’ But it wasn’t because you wouldn’t let a woman, any woman, be hurt in your bar.”
He raised a skeptical eyebrow at that. “You stood in this booth and specifically asked me to protect you. The bouncer is no more available for a rebound fling than the bartender.”
“It’s not about bouncers and bartenders. It’s about you. You’re the reason I could breathe again, once I saw you. It was because you saw me. You see me. You notice me, you talk to me. You have from the start, so when I walked in tonight, I stopped feeling afraid, because when I’m near you, I’m not alone.”
The truth filled the space between them.
She kissed the corner of his mouth that had smiled so briefly. “Being with you is not a mistake. It’s magic.”
He didn’t let go of the doorknob, but with his other hand, he cupped the side of her face, running his thumb over her cheek with infinite gentleness. “This, whatever this is between us, is still a mistake. You want love stories to end happily, together forever, but that’s not possible here. I’m not the man for you.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s not a matter of belief. I know it for certain. I could prove it to you.” His thumb stopped. A grim resolve touched the corners of his mouth. “You’ll never believe me unless I do. Will you come with me? There’s something I need to show you.”
Chapter Twenty
Delphinia had no idea what Connor wanted to show her, but he climbed the stairs in grim silence. On the third-floor landing, he opened the door and stepped aside for her.
She walked right into a fantasy world.
White bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling on every wall, custom-made to frame the windows. The books upon them were an explosion of color. The spines of compact paperbacks stood between fat textbooks. Hardcovers, soft covers, every type of book, every single color—a joyful chaos contained in neat white rectangles.
She turned in a slow circle. “Did you build these?”
“Mr. Murphy didn’t mind. I was only renting his spare bedroom, but he let me keep my books in his living room. I built one or two bookshelves a year, as I needed them.”
“You lived with Mr. Murphy?”
“Until the stairs got to be too much for him.”
A piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Bridget had said Connor had helped her with her schoolwork. He hadn’t just worked at the pub. He’d lived with her uncle. No wonder they seemed like they were family.
“These are all yours? Have you read them all?”
His gaze glanced off her.
“You have.” She trailed her fingers over the spines, stunned. Fiction, nonfiction, popular paperbacks propping up classic works, all kinds of books shelved in no particular order. “You read everything.”
“Not enough. I’ve never read Ruskin.”
“But you’re going to now, aren’t you? Because I gave you a textbook you haven’t read yet. When I gave it to you, I had no idea—”
“This isn’t what I wanted to show you.” He looked down at his arm or his hand or his sleeve, at something, frowning, tense—motionless.
His hand was empty. She placed hers in his.
He closed his eyes, but his fingers closed around hers.
“I’m going to bring back A Mate with Destiny for you,” she said. “You should read more happy endings.”
That broke his stillness. He led her into a modern-industrial kitchen, not an interior designer’s creation, but the real thing. The exposed ceiling revealed Victorian ironwork, including a ladder that was bolted to a weathered brick wall that must have been the original exterior of the building. “Can you climb a ladder in heels?”
Delphinia stepped out of her shoes, and they climbed up to the roof.
The city looked lovely in lights. She walked out to the middle of the roof to try to take it all in. The roof felt hard and smooth under her bare soles. She felt grounded, connected to everything, even as she tilted her head back and lost herself in the vast night sky above them. She was happy she was in her best dress, happy that pearls were in her hair when the stars were out, happy that Connor would share something so wonderful with her.
But when she turned to say so, she saw that he hadn’t moved far from the ladder. Gym equipment was set up there, under an awning. He stood with one hand on a heavy punching bag that was hanging from chains, shaded from the moonlight.
Fact: he wanted to show her why they were a mistake.
“Do you see your house?” he asked.
She looked to the north. The fountain was lit up, too perfectly blue. She followed her daily path from Hughes Hall down a gentle slope to the stadium, dark tonight, then over several blocks. The trees and streetlights blurred together in the distance, but the four dean’s houses were among them.
“That’s your life,” Connor said.
“For now. I found out tonight that my father won’t authorize a faculty apartment for me, so I’ll have to move off campus.” The solution was obvious now. “I’m going to. I should have done that sooner.” But she was watching Connor out of the corner of her eye.
He was looking at his arm. Then he clenched his fist and threw one punch at the body bag, a ferocious release of force. When the gods used all their strength, it was fearsome.
The look on his face was anguish, not anger. “You can put your furniture anywhere you want, but you belong to the university. You earned your place there. You have stability. Respect.” Connor shook out his right hand, then held out his arm and cuffed his sleeve one turn more. “That’s your life. This is mine.”
Delphinia was baffled. “What’s wrong with your life? This is an amazing place to live.”
“All of this, everything I have, I only have because of Mr. Murphy. I was lucky, and he was kind. Nothing more.” He
held his arm out to her. “This is what Connor McClaine earned on his own.”
She was glad for the excuse to walk back to his side, to touch him as she took the arm he held out. In the light that came through the ladder’s hatch door, she barely made out some faded purple letters, a number, a squiggle of an upside-down triangle.
“I was given this tattoo on night one hundred and seventy-nine. I was released from prison on day one hundred and eighty.”
The world stopped. It was only the two of them for a suspended moment, then she came crashing back to this new reality.
“Prison. Oh, Connor.” Delphinia wanted to ask why, when, for what, but she didn’t. After every sympathetic Oh, Delphinia, her mother would ask a question that implied she’d done something to cause her misfortune. Did you quarrel with Vincent?
So she ran her palm over Connor’s forearm in silence. The ugly little letters felt no different than the beautiful M. It was all skin, all part of Connor.
“I was stupid at nineteen. I got in a car with a couple of guys I shouldn’t have been friends with. The car was stolen. I didn’t know riding in a stolen car was a felony, but it wouldn’t have mattered to me then. I thought I was tough. I went to prison and found out I wasn’t.”
The shaky triangle was supposed to be the shape of Texas, then. “I had no idea prisoners were tattooed by the state. That’s obscene. I’m so—I’m so angry they did that to you.”
“Texas doesn’t tattoo inmates. The inmates tattoo the inmates. Sometimes. It was considered an honor on the inside.”
“They respected you.”
“For what, Delphinia? For what? The first month that I was in the state prison, I got jumped. A lot. You never knew when it was coming, or why. One beating landed me in the infirmary for two nights.”
Her knees felt weak. Connor, beaten so badly he had to be hospitalized—she held his other arm, too.
“When I returned, someone newer was the target. He was skinny, scared. I sat in the chow hall and watched them surround him. They started eating his food off his tray, and I...”