The weight of her body was warm and comforting, and he selfishly held on to her for as long as he could before sliding their bodies apart. He found the door to the master bathroom easily enough, taking care of the condom as quickly as possible before killing the lights and returning to Harlow’s bed.
“Hey,” she said. She’d slipped into a bathrobe, some silky thing with flowers that was so pretty and so perfectly her, and Connor had to smile.
“Hey.” He replaced his boxer briefs, then sat next to her on the bed. Even in the shadows, he could sense Harlow starting to retreat back into the composure she wore like a suit of armor, so he did the only thing he could think of to stay in the moment, just a little bit longer.
He pulled her close and held her.
19
Harlow wasn’t exactly a rookie in the bedroom. She might be more focused on work than anything else, but she’d still slept with enough men in the past to consider herself moderately knowledgeable.
But what had happened tonight with Connor had gone so far above and beyond anything she’d ever expected or experienced. The impulse. The intensity. The raw, primal emotion that had gone with all that want. The way her breath had caught, hard and deep in her chest, when he’d called her beautiful.
And then, afterward, when she’d been unsure of what to say or do—a rarity that had left her feeling vulnerable as hell, thank you very much—he’d done the one thing that could put her at ease.
And even though Harlow knew she should’ve felt even more vulnerable in his arms than under his body, she hadn’t.
She’d felt right.
“Uh oh,” Connor said, padding over to the spot where she sat at her kitchen table. God, there was something about a man in jeans and nothing else that should be against the freaking law. Especially when ink and muscles were involved. “You look lost in thought.”
“A little,” Harlow admitted, because there was no point in lying. “But also hungry.”
“Now that, I can fix.” He put a plate on the table between them, stacked high with thick, golden-brown pancakes, and she had to laugh.
“I can’t believe you just whipped these up. So impressive,” she said as he parked himself across from her, reaching for the empty plate in front of her and placing three pancakes in the center before passing it back.
Connor sent a glance over the softly lit room. “In a kitchen like this? Kinda hard not to be.”
Harlow looked at the top-of-the-line appliances, sleek granite and shiny subway tiles, and gave up a smile. “The broker talked me into it. The kitchen is the heart of the home, and all that.”
She thought of the kitchen in her parents’ house just outside of Remington, with its high ceilings and copper fixtures and chandeliers that should’ve looked stuffy, but instead just looked chic. The space had been built with catered events in mind, and her father had hosted dozens of them over the years. Yet somehow, her mother had managed to make the room warm and inviting, her small, signature touches everywhere. She’d made Harlow countless peanut butter sandwiches at that butcher block island, then sat right beside her at the table as she ate. Even that one time when Harlow had been a junior in college, and probably far too old for PB&J, but heartbroken over some idiot ex-boyfriend whose name she couldn’t even recall now. Her mom had simply made her a sandwich and let her cry it out.
Harlow stuffed the memory, and the pang that accompanied it, way down deep in her chest, where it belonged. “I’m not really here enough to take proper advantage of the space, I’m afraid. The coffee maker is the only thing that really gets a workout.”
“That’s a crime,” Connor said, filling his own plate with pancakes.
She shrugged. “Long hours are part of the job. I don’t really mind.”
“You honestly love what you do, don’t you?”
He looked so comfortable, so wide-open and at-ease sitting there in her fancy kitchen, of all places, that her answer slid right out.
“I do. In truth, I can’t remember ever wanting any other career.”
Connor buttered his pancakes, then added a big dollop of blueberry jam she hadn’t even known she’d had lurking in her pantry. “Oh, come on. Not ever? What about when you were ten?” he teased.
“When I was ten, I organized the fourth grade bake sale from start to finish. I wrote a comprehensive business plan with a clear division of labor, cost-to-income ratios, market analysis…the whole nine yards.”
God, the way his jaw had dropped was too much. “You’re kidding.”
“I am,” Harlow said with a smile that felt as good as it tasted. “But you should’ve seen your face.”
“I’m a little envious, actually,” Connor said a minute later, and even though Harlow had been lost in the hearty-sweet deliciousness of her pancakes, she lowered her fork in surprise.
“Of me?”
He nodded. “Of the fact that you always knew what you wanted. I didn’t figure that out until much later.”
They were bordering, Harlow knew, on a prickly subject. Connor had been a rising star in Remington University’s business program before his father had been indicted. He’d done internships at his father’s company just as she’d done at Davenport Industries. She didn’t remember much else, and the few articles she’d been able to till up after his relationship with Duke had become so rudely public had been vague, other than to say that Connor had been his protégé, then quietly disappeared after the indictment.
But he didn’t seem uncomfortable. In fact, he looked completely relaxed, his shoulders loose and his expression self-assured, and Harlow’s curiosity got the better of her mouth.
“So, what did you want to be when you were ten, then?”
Of all the things she expected he might say, “My father”, wasn’t one of them.
Well, shit.
Connor realized the uncut truth was going to come out of his mouth only after he’d spoken it, and from the look on Harlow’s face, she was just as shocked to hear his reply as he was. But, funny, the secret he’d kept for so long didn’t feel quite so big or bad when he gave it voice, especially to Harlow.
His version of this story had never been told. He’d been sure he’d leave it buried forever, because under the dirt was where it belonged. But leaving it buried meant he’d have to haul that shit around forever, and sitting here, talking to Harlow in the warmth of her kitchen, didn’t just feel good. It felt safe. Like if he told her, she’d understand.
And so he surprised himself again and kept talking.
“I should probably start by apologizing to you,” Connor said, causing her shoulders to meet the back of her chair.
“Apologizing? What on earth for?”
Under different circumstances, he might be warmed by the fact that he’d managed to slip past her composure to elicit such pure, pretty emotion in her eyes.
But he was mid-apology, and he meant to go the distance properly, so he said, “For not being more honest with you when we started working together. I had good reasons for staying quiet about Duke being my father.” His gut tightened as he thought of them. “But that doesn’t change the fact that it made our start at the clinic difficult, not to mention rightfully pissed you off. For that, I’m sorry.”
“Connor,” she said softly, but without a trace of gooey sympathy, and hell if that didn’t make him want to confide in her all the more. “Yes, I was mad at the time, and no, the situation with that ass Mattigan wasn’t ideal. But all of that is so far behind us. You and I both want the same thing for the clinic. I know that now. You’ve proven it.”
Something he couldn’t quite name flickered through his chest, making him lean toward her. Harlow had left the overhead kitchen lights off in favor of a smaller fixture over the nook where they sat, and between the soft glow and the shadows filtering in from the larger living space behind them, Connor felt an odd sort of comfort that pushed more words right out of him.
“I came back here on purpose, you know.”
Harlow’s b
rows creased, her confusion plain. “Back…?”
“To Remington,” Connor clarified. “After I retired from the Air Force. I could have gone anywhere—globally, even. But I didn’t.”
“Do you have other family here? Your mother?” she asked after a beat, and while his biological family was far from his favorite topic, he guessed his parentage was no longer a secret, so he shrugged.
“No. My mother and I aren’t close.”
At that, Harlow stiffened—the very slightest of movements, and if Connor hadn’t been trained to the teeth to notice everything, he’d likely have missed it. Damn it, of course mothers were a sore spot for her. She’d only lost hers a couple years ago.
He continued with care. “I’m her and Duke’s only child. But Duke isn’t an easy man to be close to. They got divorced when I was twelve, and he fought for full custody of me. He likes power.”
It occurred to Connor that he was talking about Duke in the present tense, even though he hadn’t spoken a syllable to the man in ten years. That didn’t matter, though. Duke believed what he wanted, regardless of reality, and he was never changing. I didn’t steal that money, Dannyboy. I earned it.
“Power isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Harlow offered quietly. “There are a lot of influential people who don’t abuse theirs. Some even use their authority for good.”
Connor couldn’t help it. He scoffed. “Trust me, Duke’s not one of them. I’m not sure my parents’ marriage was ever much more than a business transaction, anyway. At least, to him. My mother’s father owned a tech company. Not huge, but big enough to bankroll my old man when he was starting out. And to help Duke make a lot of connections he wouldn’t have, otherwise.”
“Wow, that’s…” She paused, probably searching for a word that was at least passably polite, but he let her off the hook.
“Totally smarmy and something only a miscreant would do?”
“Kind of, yeah.” Harlow bit her lip.
“It’s okay. I learned a lot about him in hindsight,” Connor said, sliding his plate aside for the time being and holding on to their eye contact as he continued. “Duke’s pretty short in the soul department, obviously. I mean, I’d always known he was pretty cutthroat when it came to business. Yeah, there were times that made me uncomfortable deep down, but he always glossed over those questionable moves, saying that was just how the game was played. ‘That’s business’, he’d tell me. ‘Sometimes, shit happens. Gotta grow thicker skin’,” Connor mimicked in Duke’s slick Southern accent. “I was his protégé, and he was wildly successful. Of course, I believed him.”
It was a tidy version of the truth. Connor hadn’t just believed his old man. He’d fucking worshipped him, every one of Connor’s puppet strings being skillfully pulled in the exact way Duke had intended. His father had manipulated him with ease, and Connor had been too blinded by devotion to see it.
Christ, what a fool he’d been to trust so heedlessly that he hadn’t seen the truth that had been right there in front of him the whole damn time.
“What changed?” Harlow asked, and hell if the answer wasn’t so easy and so wildly layered with thorns, all at once.
“Duke was indicted. At first, I thought the charges were bogus. That the FBI had it out for him because he was rich and ruthless about his success.”
Bitterness flooded Connor’s mouth. He’d been so sure that his father had been getting a bad rap, so certain Duke hadn’t been bleeding thousands of retirement funds dry.
So wrong. “But then I talked to him. He’d just posted bail, done the whole ‘no comment’ song and dance with the press, met with his attorney. I told him not to worry. I knew he was innocent. And Duke got this...righteous look on his face, and do you know what he said?”
The words were there, curving into Connor’s ears after all this time. “He said, ‘Innocent? Hell. I didn’t steal that money, Dannyboy. I earned it’.”
A gasp crossed Harlow’s lips. “Oh, my God. He admitted that he was guilty?”
Connor laughed, short and bitter. “That’s just the thing. He never believed he was guilty of any wrongdoing. Duke took that money, sure, but he really felt like he was entitled to it, that the whole thing was just another smart business move he’d brilliantly engineered.”
“He denied it when I pushed, of course,” Connor continued. “Told me I’d misunderstood and I still had a lot to learn about business. But I learned everything I needed to know about the way Duke does business, right then and there. All that fast-talk, all the subtle insinuations that I wasn’t smart enough to know what I was talking about, it was just a self-serving cover for manipulation and lies, and he’d fucking mastered it. I knew he would get away with what he’d done. Just like I knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.”
“Okay, but the FBI had enough to indict him,” Harlow semi-argued, the loose sleeve of her robe flapping around her slender wrist as she added a hand motion to make her point, and Connor felt her indignation, he really did. “You could’ve gone to them. If you’d told them what Duke said, surely it would have counted for something.”
His heart sped up, his pulse pressing faster in his throat, but he’d come this far. Clamming up now would be pointless.
“You don’t think I did?”
She blinked slowly, looking totally stunned, and of all the things he could’ve said to crack her composure, Connor hated that it had been this. “You—”
“Went to the FBI’s Remington branch that same day.” Hell, he remembered the polished linoleum, the beep of the metal detectors, the utterly shocked faces of the agents who had come to greet him, all as if he’d just been there an hour ago.
“I knew it probably wouldn’t matter,” Connor said. “There was no proof of his confession, and he had the best defense team in the city on his side. But I still told them what Duke had said. And the prosecutors told me what I already knew.”
Harlow’s breath released on a slow exhale. “It was your word against his, and he’d covered his tracks so well, no one would ever be able to find concrete proof he’d stolen that money.”
Bingo. “And Duke had never clearly stated he’d done anything wrong. The prosecutors couldn’t do anything with what he’d said to me, even though they wanted to, and we all knew Duke was too smart to say it again with how I’d reacted, so a wire was pointless. The FBI said they’d build their case and get him anyway, but I knew they wouldn’t, just like I knew Duke was guilty as sin. So, I did the only thing I could.”
“You left,” Harlow said, understanding flickering through her eyes in the soft daylight now edging past the window blinds. “That’s when you enlisted.”
Connor nodded. Funny how the move, so impulsive at the time, had ended up being the thing that had saved him.
“I couldn’t continue as a business major. Even if I’d wanted to work for a big company—which at that point, I didn’t—who would have me? The military was the only place I could think to go where no one would give a shit about my last name, or who my father was. The Air Force agreed to let me finish my degree while I was enlisted, so I jumped at the chance.”
Harlow studied him carefully, head tipped, gaze keen. Christ, she was beautiful. “And you decided to become a medic while you served. That’s a pretty interesting choice.”
Yeah. The irony of the fact that he’d gone into the same profession as all of the people his father had ripped off and ruined wasn’t lost on him, either. “I did my BMT…sorry, Basic Military Training,” he elaborated when her brows pulled together in confusion, “then technical training came after that, and I earned the rest of the credits for my undergraduate degree that way. But I realized I was a good fit for medicine pretty quickly, so when I qualified to train as a flight medic, it was a no-brainer. I loved every second.”
“Not enough to make a lifelong career of it, though,” she observed. Jesus, he thought with a smile. She was probably astute in her sleep.
“I wasn’t big on the idea of becoming an of
ficer. Active-duty tours take a lot out of even the best airmen, so after six years, I came back here.”
“Another interesting choice,” Harlow said, but Connor shook his head.
“It was my only choice,” he corrected, the conversation coming full circle. “I learned a lot in my six years away, and I changed even more. I loved the Air Force, but I knew I had to come back to Remington eventually. I just…”
He broke off, wanting to be sure he chose the words that would do the most justice to what he’d felt. To what he still felt. “I could never get all those names out of my head, you know? The list of people Duke had stolen from. They were medical professionals. Hard-working people. Part of this community, earning their living like everyone else. And no matter how badly I wanted to, I couldn’t make that right.”
Connor’s throat tightened, but he pushed the rest through. “But what I could do was come back here and serve the city my father harmed the best way I knew how. That’s how I do business. I help people.”
He pushed back to look at her. He’d never told anyone other than the federal prosecutor about the conversation he’d had with Duke—hell, a mere month ago, less than ten people in the world even knew they were related. But Harlow needed to know this, above everything else.
He didn’t just want to prove his worth. Right now, in this moment, he wanted to prove his worth to her.
So he said, “All I’ve ever wanted to do is give back a little bit of what my father took from the people of this city. So, when I tell you that I will do all that I can to make the clinic successful, I mean it. I’ve never told anyone my reasons before, but…that’s why I’m here to help the people of Remington. No matter what it takes.”
Harlow looked at him with that bright, beautiful stare that saw every damn thing he’d hidden for a decade. But rather than say anything, she simply pushed back her chair, moved over to him, and slid into his lap to cup his face between her hands.
Between Me & You: An Enemies to Lovers Workplace Romance (Remington Medical Book 3) Page 19