by Caro Carson
She could only wait, hanging on his every word, hanging on to him.
“I snapped. I started wailing on them. Fists. Feet. Beating them off with a meal tray like they were a pack of rabid dogs. I fought, really fought, for the first time in my life.”
“You still defend other people.”
“I wasn’t defending anyone. I was furious at—I don’t know. Inmates get a skimpy lunch, and I wanted everyone to sit and eat what little they had, just shut up and eat and get through the day. I wanted some sense of order. To get it, I learned to be vicious. For the rest of my time, the guards looked the other way, as long as I was keeping their troublemakers in line.”
“That’s how you got that scar on your eyebrow? Defending someone?”
“Don’t look at me like I’m a hero. I wasn’t some kind of Robin Hood, protecting the innocent and weak.” He jabbed his finger toward his eye. “This? I was siding with a man who’d held up a gas station at gunpoint. That skinny, scared guy in the chow hall? He’d set his mother’s house on fire. I was sick of the violence, so I became the source of the violence. That’s all.”
He looked away from her, glaring at the night, at the city lights—but not at her.
Delphinia knew she’d never been wrong, not for a minute, not about anything to do with Connor McClaine. That first day, she’d known he was a lone wolf, looking through a window at the world without being a part of it. Now, she knew why.
“It’s hard to imagine you living like that, once upon a time. You’re so warm to everyone now. You’re generous. Everyone loves you. Your employees, your customers...” She ran her thumb along his cheekbone with as much gentleness as he’d shown her. “Me.”
He covered her hand with his own, but only to stop her from touching him. He lowered her hand and let go.
“You might think you’re falling in love with me. You’re not. You’re in love with the owner of the Tipsy Musketeer. He’s a nice guy. Generous? You watched him get a bridge to protect students—but that’s not why I’m doing it. I want that bridge because I hate the sound of those tires screeching. I don’t want to scrape a human being off the pavement, because I don’t want that image stuck in my brain. I’m not a hero. I’m selfish.”
“That’s not selfish. Any decent human being doesn’t want to see someone hurt.”
“But I used to hurt people. Don’t you see that?”
“You hurt others and others hurt you. For one hundred and eighty days, you survived. It’s incredible, the way you turned your life around after that.”
He’d already started shaking his head before she could finish her thought.
“You need proof, or you’ll never believe me,” she said, using his own words. “That bridge is proof. Most people just hope nothing bad happens, or that they’ll at least not be there when it does. Not you. You’re doing something about it. You put your time into it. Your own money. You have the charisma to get others excited about your vision, and you’re using that to prevent more disasters. That makes you a very rare kind of person.”
“You sound like Mr. Murphy. You both overlook the fact that I have a criminal record.” Connor’s hands tightened on her arms, holding on to her as she was holding on to him. “It’s not common knowledge. I don’t think Bridget even knows what I did before I came to the Musketeer, but it’s a matter of public record. The sheriff reminded me tonight just how easy it is, how easy it always will be, to call me up in a database.”
“How did he—”
“It’s a punishment I will never escape. I could get pulled over for something as simple as a broken taillight anywhere, in any city or state, and the cop would know as soon as he ran my driver’s license that I am a felon. I guarantee they’d ask me to get out of my car. They’d pat me down, just to make sure I wasn’t armed. They could handcuff me, detain me, while they waited for the dispatcher to check if any warrants were out for my arrest, because most criminals remain criminals. That’s what would happen at a routine traffic stop. Can you imagine what would happen if I were involved in a fight?”
Connor in handcuffs. It would be an unjust humiliation.
“Don’t worry about me,” Connor said, as if she could erase from her mind the picture he had painted. “I don’t break the law, ever.”
“I don’t, either. Am I allowed to kiss you yet?”
“No, you’re not.” At last, he let go of her arms and drew her against his chest, wrapping his arms around her to hold her close to his heart. But as he pressed his face into her pearl-dropped hair, he laughed a little. It was not a good laugh. It sounded resigned, hopeless. “Ah, Rembrandt. Can’t you imagine your parents’ reaction if you brought a felon home to meet them?”
“They’ve already met you. They like you.”
His chuckle died. “Don’t. You’re only being stubborn now. I’m not the man who fits into your life. I didn’t even graduate from high school. I passed the GED test years later. Guess where I passed it. One guess.”
“In prison?” Incredible. This intelligent, well-read man had not graduated from high school. “I have so much respect for you. I’m speaking as a teacher. It’s superhuman to be able to concentrate on a major test in a dangerous, unpredictable place.”
Against her hair, she could feel him shaking his head no. “The library was safe enough. That was the only reason I studied. I learned to love the library really quickly.”
“So, we come full circle. Books are magical.”
He was silent. She closed her eyes and wished the moment would never end: his arms wrapped hard around her, his cheek resting heavily against her hair.
“We agree on that much,” he said. “Come on, I’ll take you back where you belong.”
* * *
Connor shepherded Delphinia out of his home—or he tried.
She was looking at the bookshelves again, and she didn’t care if he nudged her in the direction of the door. It didn’t work when the person hoped he’d pick them up.
“Where’s Rembrandt?” she asked.
Right here. He thought of her, a reflex.
But she was scanning the shelves. “I want to see it. I hear it’s magnificent.”
She was magnificent. She was still teasing him, unbowed, uncowed, unintimidated by him. Her enthusiasm for his pub and his life, for his books, for him was genuine, no matter what he told her about his past or his future. She was a magnificent temptation.
He needed to get her out of his house.
He stood by the door, ready to grab his pickup truck’s keys from their hook beside it, but Delphinia walked down the longest wall, fingers trailing over his books, looking for the one that meant the most to him, the book whose title had revealed too much of his feelings toward her.
“I thought this was random,” she said. “But they’re shelved in the order that you read them, aren’t they? The paperbacks get more yellow with age toward that corner. My gosh, Connor. You built a bookcase or two every year, to hold the one hundred books you read that year. How could you think you’re uneducated?”
She didn’t seem to need an answer, and since he’d already told her he was a dropout, he watched her in silence, cataloging her appearance as she cataloged his books. Her makeup had faded, but her cheeks were touched with rose from the cool night air. A few pieces of her hair had come loose from the rooftop breeze, or from the dangerous way he’d buried his face in her hair as he’d held her. She was still barefoot. As she touched his books with one hand, her fancy black shoes dangled from her other.
Some man was going to have the privilege of seeing her like this, late in the evening after a full day at work, for as long as they both shall live.
Maybe Connor wanted to watch her a little longer. Maybe he wanted to fantasize that she belonged to him, and this was how they’d live together. Maybe he just didn’t want to say goodbye for one more minute. Whatever it was, it made him sa
y, “Rembrandt is on the far left, bottom shelf.”
She set down her shoes as she crouched low and found the book, the very first one all the way to the left. She looked at the cover for a moment, at the crumbling plastic with which the library had protected it, at the letters stamped across the sun-faded cover art, TDCJ. She must know they stood for Texas Department of Criminal Justice. She sat down on the floor, right on her backside in that elegant dress, and opened the book.
“Oh.” The colors inside were still vivid, even from where he stood. “Oh, it’s beautiful.”
It was something, watching this woman touch the pages he’d learned by heart more than ten years ago. He couldn’t have pictured a woman like her back then, but here she was, a teacher who cared about her students, a scholar who was passionate about Shakespeare, a woman who appreciated whiskey and who made him smile every time they were together.
So, this is love.
“This is where it starts?” she asked. “Rembrandt is the very first book you put on the first shelf?”
She was as clairvoyant as Mr. Murphy. Connor needed to get her out of here. He held out his hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet. Her shoes and his book lay on the floor. He picked up her shoes and left the book, then took her hand and walked her to the door.
“Now, I’m your Rembrandt,” she said. “I want to be the start of something good, too.”
Loving her made it easy to choose to do the best thing for her. “This is the end. Put your shoes on. It’s time to go.”
She knew he meant it; he could tell it in a glance as she stepped back into her shoes.
“Well, then.” She pressed her back against his door. “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?”
Chapter Twenty-One
“You’ll regret this,” Connor whispered, mesmerized by the color of Delphinia’s lips.
“No, I won’t.”
She thought he was talking to her.
He was going to regret this kiss more than any other, but he had to kiss her again, one final taste. If he maintained control, if he didn’t let it go too far, he could hold her just a little longer.
She kissed him. Her mouth was warm as her tongue tasted his, an intimacy, a joining. This much, he could allow himself. He closed his eyes, kissing her back. Just this, no more. She breathed in against his lips.
“Stop it,” she hissed, her mouth an inch from his.
He opened his eyes.
She looked furious, which confused him. I’m following the rules, I’m in control, I don’t have to set you aside, not yet.
She pushed herself into him. Crazy to think it, but she was like a boxer before a match, intimidating an opponent, chest against chest, trying to back him into a corner. “Stop trying so hard not to kiss me while you’re kissing me. You’re telling yourself no, not me. You’re not really kissing me the way you want to.”
Her fierce confidence was a turn-on in itself. “If I kiss you the way I want to kiss you, it won’t stop there. We’ll want more. We’ll start pushing clothes out of our way. It won’t be enough, and we’ll make love.”
“Of course we will.” She shoved against him, pressing bodies that were already together even more tightly together, breasts pressed to his chest, bare feet between boots. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel this, too.”
He couldn’t give in, couldn’t back away. “I’ve got a body, you’ve got a body—if there’s anything a body wants, it’s to feel the heat of someone else. Bare skin against bare skin soothes a need.” He shifted his stance and pulled her to stand with his thigh pressing between hers. “A body against another body feels better than it can ever feel alone. It’s warmer, it’s safer, to be with somebody. But that’s all it is, Delphinia. Skin wants to feel skin. That’s all.”
“It’s more than that.”
“More than sex? It’s not.”
“I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you, and don’t you dare say that you have ever, ever fought so hard to resist touching anyone as hard as you’re fighting, right this second, to not touch me. You want to kiss me. Me. You want my body, my skin, I know it. You know it.”
“It wouldn’t change anything for me. But you—you’ll believe you’re in love with me. I seem to have that effect on women between the sheets.”
She gasped at his arrogance.
Good. Let her recoil from him. “You’ll imagine you’re in love with a man who doesn’t exist. If you really knew me, you’d be disappointed. You’d be unhappy. I don’t want you to be unhappy. Ever.”
“What am I going to find out that’s supposed to horrify me? That you have a criminal record? That you had to fight while you were in prison? That you didn’t graduate from high school? I know that already. I know you are that one-in-a-million person who didn’t quit when life was unbearable. You won. You just don’t realize it, not yet.”
Her words evoked some new, unfamiliar emotion, pushing him to the edge of somewhere he hadn’t gone before. Danger. Pay attention.
“I didn’t know you back then, Connor.”
“Exactly.”
“Think about that. Everything you experienced in prison was already a part of you before I met you. I only know who you are now. I keep seeking you out, because I want to be with the man you are now. I feel happier when I’m with you.” In his arms, she softened. The fight was over, or so she believed. “If you take me to bed, it won’t make me fall in love with you. I’m already there.”
Good God—he kissed her. He kissed her hard, up against the door, like he owned her and her love, like her body was meant for his. She loved him. She’d said it first. Before they had sex, not after—but there were rules to the game.
He didn’t break rules. If a girl thought she was in love with him before they slept together, then he didn’t sleep with her. He wouldn’t take advantage of her heart, wouldn’t leverage her emotions to get sex. But this was Delphinia. His Rembrandt, who had one hand buried in his hair and one hand on his backside, pulling him into her body.
Selfishness overwhelmed him. Who cared that she was naive, what did it matter that she’d end up worse for knowing him?
As he was drowning, losing the will to battle this burning need to carry her to his bed, he slammed his hand against the wall, seeking the jagged edge of his truck keys.
He pressed them into her hand. “Take my truck. Keep it as long as you need it.”
He held her against him, shuffled a step back to make room as he opened the door, then he pushed her through, shut it, and saved her.
* * *
“Dr. Dee? Hey, hi. Wait up.”
Delphinia turned away from the etched-glass door as Bridget came toward her at a jog.
“The pub’s closed on Mondays.”
“I know.”
What could she say? She’d kept Connor’s truck parked—hidden—in the detached garage at Dumas House all weekend, waiting for him to come and get it, to come and see her.
He hadn’t come. He’d rather lose his truck than see her again.
I’m here to salvage my pride. I have his car keys and A Mate with Destiny in this little bag. I’m going to slam them down on the bar dramatically and leave.
“I came to speak to Connor about...about using his pub for my class. The history of the place is...historic.” So much for her professorial vocabulary.
“He’s not here. I came to get a ride to see Uncle Murphy, but his truck is gone.”
“I just brought it back. He loaned it to me.”
“Seriously? So, could you give me a ride to Uncle Murphy’s place? It’s, like, only halfway to BCC. Kristopher’s meeting me there. He’s going to read Othello with me, since my new professor already gave an assignment on it, and it’s due Wednesday.”
Bridget said this with a Connor-like, charming wink. Delphinia had walked into the BCC Shakespeare class on Saturday m
orning to find that Bridget was her student once more.
“Besides, if you want to know the history of the pub, my uncle knows everything. You’d make his day. Please?”
Connor wasn’t here. Delphinia would have to wait to do her pride-salvaging thing. In the meantime, she could meet the man who saw Connor the way she saw him. You sound like Mr. Murphy, Connor had said under the stars.
“Sure, I’ll give you a ride.”
* * *
“Shoot. I left Othello in the truck. I’ll be right back.”
Bridget abandoned Delphinia in the pastel hallway of the assisted living facility, not five steps from Mr. Murphy’s door. It was open. At least half the apartment doors were open down the hall, as if the apartments were front porches and the hallway was Main Street.
From Mr. Murphy’s door, Delphinia heard an unexpected voice. Connor was here, and he was reading Shakespeare, and oh—he read with all the right inflection.
“I did tell her the story of my life, from year to year, even from my boyish days. I spoke of most disastrous chances.”
Othello, act one, scene three. Connor had once been charmed by her bar trick.
“Her tears, when I did speak of some distressful stroke that my youth suffered...”
Othello, an outsider, had eloped with a nobleman’s daughter. Her father claimed she’d been kidnapped. The authorities demanded that Othello explain how it was possible for his sweet, sheltered wife to have fallen in love with a man as battle-hardened as he was. “She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her, that she did pity them.”
“I don’t get it.” That sounded like Kristopher. “She fell in love with him because he told her how hard his life had been when he was younger?”
“It could be wiser,” a man said in an Irish brogue, “to say she loved him because he was a strong, good man despite those hardships, or so I’d be thinking.”