by Caro Carson
“It was unrealistic.”
Her heart sank.
Another woman called to Connor from behind Delphinia. “The usual, but only a single. We’re going to be drinking champagne shortly. So exciting.”
Delphinia recognized the voice of Ruby, Dr. Marsden’s assistant. She masked her impatience as best she could and turned in her seat to greet her.
“Dr. Ray! You’re here. I didn’t see you. I, uh...” Ruby grabbed her drink the second Connor set it down. “Okay, bye.”
Delphinia turned back to Connor before he could move on to the next customer. “If it had ended with him choosing to never see her again, even if he thought it was for her own good, that would have been unrealistic. He couldn’t live without her.”
Connor shook off her words. “He was lucky she ever spoke to him again after the way he refused to listen to her.”
He served a few more drinks to other people, all friendliness and charm, but his gaze kept returning to something behind Delphinia.
She turned to see the new sheriff standing near the stage. The sheriff reminded me tonight just how easy it is to call me up in a database. It made her anxious. It must be worse for Connor.
“It’s okay,” Connor said to her quietly. Reassuringly. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
He’d said that last Thursday, too, right before he’d demolished Vincent’s scheme. It was downright sexy, the way he did that alpha-male pack-leader thing.
She sighed. “The heroine wanted him just as much as he wanted her, you know. Isn’t happily-ever-after a better ending?”
“Better than Romeo and Juliet?”
“No. Better than Othello.”
He stilled.
Her heart beat madly.
He leaned in, close. “When you said you read something interesting at work—”
Kristopher interrupted. “I need the storage room keys. Sorry, but this guy didn’t call ahead. He wants a dozen bottles of champagne.”
Connor handed him his keys. “Don’t uncork anything until I make sure he’s aware how much that will cost.”
Connor had a business to run. Delphinia needed to be brave and tell him she’d read his essay, and hope he’d agree to meet her after the pub closed. If Seat Two enjoyed the show, so be it. She pulled the folded paper out of her pocket as the crowd chanted, “So good, so good, so good.”
But Connor was frowning at the stage behind her. “I need to check on something. People have been coming in the main door and going straight into that first snug for the last ten minutes. Can you stay?”
“Of course.” She folded the paper quickly, but he looked back to her just before she stuffed it into her pocket.
“That paper. Is that—? Rembrandt. Let me explain. Bridget said they would be read in class this Saturday. I planned to be there. I was going to... Your parents?”
“What?”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the cowboy singer said into the microphone. “Is there a Delphinia Ray in the house? Let’s bring her up here, folks. A round of applause.”
Her mother and father materialized by her side. Delphinia could not have been more shocked.
Her mother gave her a peck on the cheek, her father put his arm around her, and the crowd closed in as her parents walked her up the stage’s single step. The cowboy with the guitar was grinning.
“I don’t sing,” she said to him urgently.
“You don’t have to, ma’am.” The cowboy stepped aside, and Vincent took his place and his microphone.
Delphinia thought she might be sick. She wanted to run, but her parents were there, Ruby behind them—and Dr. Marsden?
Delphinia focused on the faces closest to the stage. Dear God, so many of her colleagues were here, half of the English department. One of the city council members from the bridge meeting—no, two—and the shark couple were here. Joe Manzetti? She barely knew him—but Vincent wanted to repair his reputation with him. With all of them.
She turned back to Vincent to implore him under her breath. “Don’t do this. Please.”
Vincent spoke into the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, I need your help. Not long ago, right here in this pub, I lost the love of my life.”
The crowd murmured in sympathy. Vincent waved away their pity.
“No. I deserved to lose her. I’d spent the evening...” He shook his head like a sad puppy dog. “I’d spent months taking her for granted.”
He reached for her hand, but she put it behind herself.
He played it off by gesturing to her like she was a new car being given away as a prize. “You can see how beautiful she is, but I’m here to tell you that her heart is beautiful, too. She’s devoted to her students. Her family. Everyone who has met her loves her, and I’m no exception. I will never take her for granted again.”
“Thank you. That was nice. Good night.” Delphinia turned to go, but Vincent made a grab for her hand and caught it this time. The sharks were smirking. Ruby had her hands poised to applaud. Delphinia desperately whispered to Vincent one more time. “Don’t. Please.”
“This is where I need your help, ladies and gentlemen. I need to impose on your evening so I can make a public apology, so she’ll know I’m a changed man. I don’t deserve her, but she deserves this.” He pulled out a velvet ring box.
The crowd oohed and aahed. There was a smattering of applause from people who just couldn’t wait to cheer.
Vincent dropped to his knee, ring box in one hand, microphone in the other. “Delphinia Acanthia Beatrix Ray, will you marry me?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
There was such a thing as destiny, after all.
Delphinia hadn’t been able to escape this proposal, no matter how hard she’d tried. Vincent pointed the microphone toward her, so the crowd wouldn’t miss his moment of victory.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But no.”
Vincent turned white with shock. Close to the stage, everyone she knew stared at her in silence, appalled, even horrified. How could she do that to him?
But beyond them, the crowd began to boo, all the way back to the table by the window. From the loft above, the jeers of disappointment and disapproval rained down on her.
Her parents’ faces were the most heartbreaking of all. Their daughter, their pride and joy, was being booed. They were devastated.
Vincent came to his feet. The private look he sent her was pure, unadulterated hate, before he turned back to the crowd. A hundred people, friends and strangers, were packed tightly around the stage. Delphinia had no way to get off it.
Don’t panic. She looked for Connor behind the bar. He was walking away from seat one, but she knew, she knew, he was coming out from behind the bar to get her off this awful stage himself.
The boos died out swiftly as the sheriff walked onto the stage from Vincent’s end. He nodded at Vincent impatiently, then stood on Delphinia’s other side, sandwiching her between them.
Vincent raised the microphone once more and placed his hand and his ring box over his heart. “Please, everyone. No booing. Forgive her. She’s shy. I should have known she’d be scared.”
Liar.
“It’s one more thing I vow to be more sensitive to from now on.”
Liar.
“Sheriff, if you’d be so kind to clear the way, I think Delphinia and I need to go somewhere quiet, just the two of us.”
He set down the mic, then took her arm with a tender smile and a bruising grip.
Delphinia knew it would be easier just to go along, so she went—but only because it allowed her to get off the stage. The moment the sheriff got them down, she shoved Vincent away.
His arm was around her shoulders; he barely budged.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, Vincent. This is over.”
His concerned, loving look remained constant
for the public. His murmured words were for her ears alone. “Walk with me around that corner, until we’re out of sight of this crowd, and then I’ll let you go. It will be less embarrassing for me.”
“No. Let go.”
“You owe me this. Now walk.”
She was pinned to him by his arm, penned in with him by the crowd around them and the sheriff’s wide, uniformed back in front of them. Still, she raised her chin. “Make me.”
Vincent smiled.
* * *
Where did that ass think he was going to go with Delphinia?
Connor stopped halfway down the bar and backed up to the antique mirrors, so he could see which direction they were heading. The sheriff was easy to spot in the crowd. He was making his way toward the employees-only hallway, as if he had the right to go anywhere he liked in Connor’s building. Vincent was following him, keeping Delphinia tight against his side.
At first glance, it looked like Vincent had a protective hand on her upper back to guide her along, but her long hair covered his hand, and the angle of his arm didn’t look right. Hidden by Rembrandt’s brown hair, Vincent had to be forcing her along with his hand on the back of her neck.
Delphinia started to look Connor’s way, but she had turned only a fraction of an inch when she abruptly faced front again—but Connor had seen it, that distinct motion of someone’s head being jerked by the hair. Vincent was steering her by pulling her hair, goddammit—couldn’t they see?—the crowd was blind—
“Move.” With one sweep of his arm, Connor pulled the glassware on the bar toward himself, letting it all crash onto the floor on his side, which was all the warning his guests got to get off their barstools and out of his way. He vaulted over the bar, boots pushing off the mahogany, and was within arm’s reach of Delphinia before the customers’ shouts and screams added to the sound of shattering glass. He had Vincent’s arm in his grip before the music stopped. “Let her go.”
Vincent tried to jerk his arm out of Connor’s grip, which pulled Delphinia’s hair and pulled a yelp of pain from her, goddammit.
Connor slid his hand up to Vincent’s wrist, trying to avoid catching Delphinia’s hair himself. A hair-pull was one of the hardest, most painful grips to break. After his hospitalization in prison, Connor had gotten a buzz cut.
Vincent formed a tighter fist in her hair. Everyone around them was shouting—Delphinia was so clearly trying to hold her head perfectly still—and people could finally see what was really happening. They pointed, they yelled at Vincent, at the sheriff, who didn’t move to help.
Of course.
Vincent was a cornered animal, irrational as the crowd turned against him, snarling at Connor. “If you pull my wrist away, I’ll take a fistful of her hair with me.”
Talking with enemies only worked in movies, not in prison, and not when Delphinia was being hurt.
Vincent kept talking. “There’s nothing you can do without getting her hurt. Now back the hell up.”
Connor tightened his grip on the man’s wrist with one hand and landed a single blow with the other, an uppercut to Vincent’s chin that knocked his head back and knocked him out. Vincent went as limp as a dishrag, but Connor held him up by the wrist until Vincent’s fingers went slack, releasing Delphinia’s hair.
Then he dropped Vincent on the floor where he belonged and swept Delphinia into his arms, where she belonged.
The sheriff stepped over Vincent.
“Connor McClaine, you are under arrest.”
* * *
The flashing lights of the patrol cars illuminated the scene on the sidewalk.
The sheriff had made a big production of cuffing Connor’s hands behind his back while Delphinia’s parents held her and wept and apologized. At their feet, Vincent had come to. Nobody had jumped in to help Vincent sit up. Everybody had been more interested in following Connor and the sheriff out the main door. They were still filing out in a steady stream.
Connor leaned against the hood of the sheriff’s car and watched. He caught Delphinia’s eye as her mother continued to fuss over her. He could tell in a glance that Delphinia’s heart was breaking for him, that she was certain he was living his worst nightmare.
He wasn’t. The seconds it had taken to get to her while she was being hurt? Those had been far worse.
He’d dreaded these handcuffs for ten long years. Now he could shrug as he wore them, send a genuine smile to Delphinia to put her mind at ease, even wink at her. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.
He’d trashed his own bar. He was losing hundreds of dollars by the minute as customers poured out of the pub, thousands of dollars in the future weeks as the Tipsy Musketeer tried to entice them to come back. He’d given the sheriff the opening he’d been waiting for to advance his “tough on crime” agenda.
It didn’t matter.
He’d scale a mountain for Delphinia if he had to, because he couldn’t live without her. The devil could take everything else he owned—and take the sheriff to hell sideways, while he was at it.
Deputy Grayson arrived as backup, parking his patrol car headlight to headlight with the sheriff’s car in front of the pub. While the sheriff and Vincent spoke, Grayson gestured for Connor to walk over to his patrol car, then turned him around and jerked his wrists up by the handcuffs.
“This is a load of bull,” he said, as he fit his key into the lock and released one of the handcuffs.
Connor had to laugh. It should have been obvious to him all along: the deputies always spoke to Connor because they trusted him. This particular deputy had sided with him without question against the star football coach on this same patch of sidewalk.
Connor saw everything more clearly now. He’d been wearing dark sunglasses until Delphinia had come into his life and taken them off. His world was full of more brilliant colors than he’d ever guessed.
The sheriff was red-faced. “Cuff that man, Deputy Grayson, or I will charge you with ‘failure to obey.’ You know the policy.”
“Sure do. You want all participants taken in when an assault takes place in an establishment that serves alcohol. I’m just waiting on you to do it.” Grayson looked pointedly at Vincent. “All participants.”
The sheriff had no choice, not with fifty witnesses standing on the sidewalk. Vincent’s cut lip and undoubtedly killer headache probably hurt him less than being handcuffed in front of Dr. Marsden and his colleagues.
“Sorry about this.” Grayson put the handcuffs back on Connor, but with his hands in front of his body this time, a far more comfortable way to be restrained. Connor could still reach out and grab something dangerous, or he could swing an object like a baseball bat with both hands, so being cuffed with his hands in front of himself was a statement that the deputy didn’t believe he was a threat—and the deputy was betting his life on it. Connor looked for Delphinia, to see if she understood.
He didn’t have to look far. She came right up to his side and faced the sheriff across two yards of sidewalk.
“All the participants, Sheriff? Okay, then.” Delphinia crossed her wrists and held them out, ready for her handcuffs. “I started it. I shoved Vincent the second we were off that stage. That’s why he had to pull me by my hair to get me to follow you.”
Damn.
“I’m already in love with you,” Connor said. “You don’t have to be so spectacular.”
There were chuckles and murmurs in the crowd, a few oohs from satisfied romantics.
Ernie spoke for the other council members. “What kind of screwed-up policy is this? You’re arresting victims, Sheriff?”
“No, I am not. There’s an important difference between her and him.” The sheriff spoke loudly for the whole crowd to hear. “My policies keep this town safe. McClaine is a repeat offender. He’s a convicted felon.”
Funny how a crowd could fall so silent, Connor could hear the patrol car’s re
d and blue lights clicking off and on.
“Convicted of what?” Manzetti stepped forward, skepticism evident in his tone.
“Joyriding,” Delphinia announced. “He was in the back seat of a car that he didn’t know was stolen. Ten years ago. Ten.”
Fearless, she was. So unashamed of his past that it didn’t occur to her to perhaps not announce it to half the town. Rembrandt was going to keep him on his toes for the rest of his life.
In the silence, Delphinia’s mother came over and stood beside them. “He protected my daughter.”
Delphinia’s father clapped Connor on the shoulder and stood on his other side.
Manzetti strolled over to Connor, then turned to face the sheriff, too. “Seems safer over here.”
“He’s the best boss in the world.” Gina came out of the crowd.
Kristopher intercepted Bridget as she came running up the sidewalk. He apologized to Connor. “She would have killed me if I hadn’t texted her when Dr. Dee got called up on stage.”
One by one, people came to stand beside Connor—then behind him, then all around Grayson’s patrol car—person after person, until Vincent and the sheriff were left standing by his car, alone.
Everyone in the town of Masterson looked so damned beautiful in the flashing red and blue lights, Connor wished he could paint it to capture it forever.
“Who has a camera?” he asked no one in particular. “We’ll go back inside for a proper toast, but someone should take a group photo first. Mr. Murphy will need to see this to believe it.”
Everyone had a camera on their phone. In all the laughter as everyone took selfies in the flashing police lights in front of the Tipsy Musketeer, the fact that Connor was still in handcuffs got overlooked.
It didn’t matter.
“Come here and kiss me.” He reached for Delphinia with his bound wrists, hooking a finger through the belt loop of her jeans and giving her a tug. The crowd was loud, but Connor wouldn’t have cared if everyone could hear what he wanted to say to his one and only Delphinia. “It’s been a week since I was such a fool on the rooftop. I love you. I think I have from the moment I first saw you reading your book. I should have told you I loved you when you kissed me in the hallway instead of letting you run out that door, and we should have spent the last two weeks in bed together.”