One Winter Wedding. Barbara Hannay

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СКАЧАТЬ “Anyway, this place wasn’t in the best part of town. I begged her not to go. I knew something bad was going to happen. But she went anyway. No one knows exactly what happened,” he added, the tension pulling at his shoulders revealing how much not knowing still troubled him, “but the police figured a mugging went wrong. Either my mom fought back or the guy panicked, and the gun went off.”

      “Oh, Connor, I’m so sorry.” Just as she feared, her heart ached a little more at the telling, and she longed to reach out to him, to comfort him. But she didn’t. This time it was her turn to twist her fingers together, strangling the desire to touch him.

      Because—despite his kiss—she still feared her touch wasn’t the one Connor wanted.

      But he never told Emily about his family. He’s telling you! Aching or not, her heart had the strength to argue, and Kelsey felt her resistance crumbling.

      “The guy stole her purse and wallet,” Connor went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “It took three days before the police figured out who she was.”

      “Didn’t your dad report her missing?”

      “He was on a long-distance drive. He didn’t know anything was wrong.”

      “But when your mother didn’t come home, someone must have tried to get hold of him. The people you were staying with—” As soon as she said the words, realization flooded Kelsey and her breath caught. “You were alone, weren’t you?”

      “My mom thought I was old enough to take care of myself, and it should have only been for a few hours.”

      Hours that had stretched into days.

      “Wasn’t there anyone you could call? A friend of the family?”

      “Probably, but hell, I was eight. My mom had told me she was going to be right back. Calling someone would have been like admitting something was wrong, admitting she wasn’t coming back. Ever.”

      Kelsey felt heartsick at the thought of the frightened, abandoned boy Connor had been. “You were so young. How did you get on without her?”

      “My dad and I stumbled along, but he always blamed my mom for dying. If she’d been happy with her life, if she hadn’t always been out looking for more and expecting something better, she’d still be alive. If she’d just listened to me. I could have—”

      Saved her. Connor didn’t say the words, but they rang in the silence and underscored everything he did. “It’s not your fault, Connor,” she insisted, and this time she couldn’t keep from reaching out and grasping his hands as if she could somehow heal the pain and guilt with her touch. “People make their own decisions, and you aren’t responsible for their choices.”

      “No, only for my own,” he agreed darkly, but tension tightened his hands into rock-hard fists.

      Her family was so wrong about Connor. He wasn’t out to ruin Emily’s wedding—he was trying to save her from a past he couldn’t possibly change. But Kelsey still wasn’t convinced Todd was the threat Connor thought him to be. After all, Connor’s gut reaction had pinned Matt to the restaurant, mistakenly seeing her ex-boyfriend as a physical threat. Wasn’t it possible Todd was as harmless as Matt, and Connor was looking through the eyes of the past and seeing a danger that wasn’t there?

      “I can’t imagine what that must have been like to lose your mother so suddenly.” So violently. “But don’t you think maybe that’s colored the way you see people?”

      “People like Dunworthy?” he asked with a wry twist to his lips. He pulled his hands out from beneath hers in the pretense of shifting to face her on the love seat. “I know you think I’m wrong about him, but it’s because of my past that I’m sure I’m right.” As if sensing her doubt, he asked, “Haven’t you ever met someone and instantly known the kind of person they are?”

      Thoughts of her first impression of Connor assailed Kelsey. The bad boy. The troublemaker. The man out to ruin Emily’s wedding and destroy Kelsey’s chance to prove herself to her family, to make her mother proud…But he was so much more than that.

      “Maybe once or twice.”

      “Like when you met me?”

      One corner of his mouth kicked up with the teasing comment, but the smile lacked full-force charm, his heart not in it. The emotional waters had gotten too deep, and Connor was clearly pulling back to shallower depths. And Kelsey almost wished she had stayed on the surface, wished she could still see Connor the way he wanted to be seen—cocky, self-confident, unbreakable. But she felt herself going under, caught by the pull of this man who was so much more than the rebel he played.

      Struggling to break free, she focused on the easy out Connor had taken and followed him to more solid ground. “I knew you were going to be trouble the moment I met you. Does that count?”

      “Talk about biased,” he murmured. “How many Connor McClane stories have you heard over the years?”

      “More than a few.”

      “More than a few hundred, if your aunt and uncle had anything to say about it.” The teasing tone stayed in his voice, but Kelsey could tell her family’s poor opinion of him still rankled. He was clearly out to prove the Wilsons wrong, but Kelsey suspected he had as much to prove to himself. “And here I’ve been a perfect gentleman.”

      “Well, not perfect,” she argued. But who wanted perfect? Perfect was for women like her cousins; Kelsey much preferred the real thing to Ken-like perfection.

      “I’m crushed. Señora Delgado will be so disappointed.”

      “Señora Delgado?”

      “Javy’s mother.”

      “How did you and Javy meet?”

      “We went to school together. Mrs. Brown’s sixth-grade glass.”

      “And you two became fast friends?”

      “Nah, we hated each other. I can’t even remember why. Oh, wait, it had something to do with a girl. We thought we were pretty hot stuff on the playground. Both trying to impressAlicia Martin. Unfortunately for us, she had a thing for older men.”

      “Eighth grader?” Kelsey guessed, playing along to maintain the teasing mood.

      “Worse. P.E. teacher. And man, the guy was old. Like twenty-five. Anyway, we bonded over a couple of cafeteria juice boxes, and I started hanging out with him at his mother’s restaurant. Before long, I was washing dishes and bussing tables. If the Delgados hadn’t fed me through most of junior high and high school, I don’t know what I would have done. Probably would have dropped out to work full-time if Maria hadn’t stopped me.”

      Kelsey knew the drop-out rate was horrible, especially in Arizona, but as much as she’d hated school, she never once considered not finishing. “How did she stop you?”

      “By telling me I should,” Connor said wryly. “She said anyone foolish enough to give up a free education didn’t deserve one.”

      Smiling at the woman’s use of reverse psychology, Kelsey said, “I think I’d like to meet her. Not every woman has enough СКАЧАТЬ