The Connaghers Series Boxed Set Page 17

  Until Richard came home.

  Buddy recognized what kind of man he was, much quicker than I did. He growled at Richard whenever he raised his voice. He chewed on only Richard’s shoes. He started marking the house. I think Buddy was trying to protect me, but Richard saw only the mess. He took everything so personally, and his temper…

  I started to fear for Buddy’s life. I couldn’t protect him twenty-four/seven. I put him in the kennel more when Richard was home, but that’s no life for a dog. I couldn’t put him outside—he’s an indoor dog. He wanted to be with me, his family.

  We fought over Buddy more and more. Richard couldn’t stand that I loved a dog more than him.

  This shames me, Conn, but I let Buddy go. I let Richard take him to the local vet clinic and they found a new home for him. I tried to tell myself it was the best thing all around for Buddy, and I’m sure he is happy. He’s safe. Safe from Richard. Safer than me.

  I should have fought for my dog. But how could I, when I don’t fight for myself?

  If Richard only knew…how much more I loved you.

  ~ Rae

  Rae ripped up another section of shingle and tossed it to the bin below. The crew was making good time, but of course, she never called in anyone but the best. Randy swore he’d get the roof done today, as long as they didn’t find rotted plywood underneath. So far, so good. In fact, the shingles were in excellent shape.

  She gripped the asphalt tile in both gloved hands and twisted it. Still very strong, barely a few years old, she guessed. Strong winds likely pulled them up, and rather recently since there wasn’t any water damage.

  “Oh, yeah, we’ll be done by lunch, Rae.” Randy walked across the slanted roof as easily as a monkey in a tree. “The only damage is here on the front of the house.”

  “Right where we’d see it.” Rae mused. She had a nasty feeling that maybe a ghostly wind had done this damage. Was that possible? After last night… Goose bumps crawled down her arms despite the sweat dampening her brow. “Do you know if there were any bad storms in the last few weeks?”

  “I’ve been on Taneycomo fishing every single day I wasn’t on a roof.”

  “Let me know if you find any bigger issues, and I guess I’ll be thankful the job is small.”

  She climbed down the ladder and went in search of the electrician. She found Don in the basement putting his tools away. “Done already?”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.” The man laughed. “For an old house, the wires are in excellent shape. Most old houses are shot all to hell and are on the verge of burning themselves down, but this old gal is in tiptop shape. Somebody good came through here ten or twenty years ago and cleaned all the old wiring up.”

  “I saw lights dimming and flickering upstairs.”

  Don shrugged. “Might have been a power surge. Honestly, Rae, as much as I’d love to hand you a five- or ten-grand bill, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your wiring.”

  “Okay, thanks, Don.” She shook his hand, her mind whirling. The house was in tiptop shape with no electric problems and only minor roofing issues. So had the old lady gotten a bee in her bonnet and decided to spend forty grand a year on a fricking koi pond?

  Or had Miss Belle known exactly who she was when she called about a restoration job?

  Grim-faced, Rae went outside and around the house to track down the plumber. He was loading up his truck in the driveway. “Don’t tell me. Not a thing wrong?”

  “Nope. The toilets don’t even run too long, and not a single faucet leaks.”

  “The pipes groaned and rattled in the walls.”

  “Maybe it was a ghost.” The plumber laughed but straightened up when he saw the look on her face. “Sorry, but I gave the pipes a thorough check. I expected asbestos problems on the old lead pipes in the basement, or a leak, or something. But the house was completely renovated…oh…”

  “Ten or twenty years ago?”

  “Sure enough. The pipes have definitely seen some action, but they’re in fine shape.”

  Rae waved as he drove off, but her jaws ached from grinding her teeth. Damn that old biddy. She’d been duped, trapped, bought and paid for, long before she’d driven onto Beulah Land. Anger pulsed through her, but no matter how irritated and betrayed Rae felt, she couldn’t stay mad at the old lady.

  Not when Miss Belle had brought her back to Conn.

  That didn’t mean Rae wasn’t going to give the crazy old harridan a piece of her mind as soon as she tracked her down. She headed for the house and saw Conn pulling his sleek black car around in front. She walked over to the driver’s side as he rolled down the window.

  “I saw the plumber on the way out. Was his estimate that bad?”

  “What estimates? There’s nothing to be done. Nothing! The house is in perfect shape. A major renovation was done ten to twenty years ago. Other than a few cosmetic things, Miss Belle doesn’t need me here. She certainly doesn’t need to pay me such a ridiculous salary and hire me as a property manager.”

  “She loves me, Rae.” Understanding gleamed in his eyes. “Don’t let her fool you one minute into believing she’s just a crackpot. Miss Belle is one formidable lady, and when she makes up her mind to do something, she does it, come hell or high water.”

  She certainly knew where Conn got that attitude from. Lord help her if his mama was even worse as he said. The scope of what Miss Belle had pulled off was astounding. Did she really intend to open a B&B just to lure her grandson’s long-lost love home? The thought both appalled her and made her want to burst into tears and hug the old lady. “Why did she track me down five years after the fact?”

  “A few months ago, I had a job offer to move back to Texas. They offered me a nice position at Rice University in Houston. Mama was really pressuring me to come home.”

  “Why didn’t you go?”

  “I like it here.” He shrugged, a sheepish gesture that tugged at her heart. “And honestly, I still hoped I would find you. When I admitted as much to Miss Belle, she must have taken matters into her own hands. Don’t be angry, darlin’. Be thankful you weren’t an astronaut because then she’d have set out to run NASA single-handedly.”

  Laughing softly, Rae stroked his cheek. “You didn’t shave today.”

  “Thanks to Mason’s calculus exams he forgot to grade, I didn’t get a wink of sleep until dawn this morning. Since I wanted to get some shopping done before tackling my own grading stacks, I skipped it.”

  He rubbed his grizzly face against her hand, darkness creeping into his eyes. The shadow on his cheeks gave him an even more dangerous appeal. Rough abrading whiskers, still oddly soft against her palm, made her think of other sensations, other locations…

  “Put your thumb in my mouth.”

  Clenching her thighs together at the thought, she slowly did as he ordered. The wet heat of his mouth closed around her thumb, while her fingers stroked over the rough texture of his cheek. Eyes blazing, he sucked and licked and nibbled her thumb until she was on the verge of climaxing again.

  With a seductive little slurp, he let her go. “I’m going to do that between your thighs tonight.”

  She gripped the car door to keep from melting into a heap on the driveway. “You think so?”

  “I know so, darlin’. Assuming we can escape Miss Belle. Pop quiz.”

  Groaning, Rae leaned down and braced her arms on the door. If she was close, maybe she’d get a kiss before he left. “Mercy, Dr. Connagher! I haven’t had time to study yet.”

  “This one’s easy.” He retrieved a flat white box marked Victoria’s Secret, let her get a good look at it, but didn’t hand it to her. Then he tossed her white purse on top of the box. “You forgot something in my car the other night, too.”

  Stupid purse. That’s why she never carried one. She hadn’t even realized it was gone.

  She thought about him walking into that famous store, racks and racks of slinky sexy bras and underwear. What on earth might he have picked out? Had his eyes darkened,
the grooves between his eyes deepened, while he pictured her in each one?

  “Tell me what color these items in the box are, and you can have dinner at my place tonight. I swear I’m a better cook than Miss Belle. Otherwise, we’ll dine a la charred with her and you have to give me the letters you said you wrote to me.”

  Rolling her eyes, Rae replied, “White.”

  “Wrong.” He pushed the box into her hands so she had to stand up. Winking, he put the Mustang into gear and drove away.

  No kiss. No dinner at his place. And then it hit her. The letters.

  Bastard. He’d deliberately set her up.

  She trudged inside and up to her guest room. Flopping onto the bed, she set the purse beside her and opened the box, her stomach fluttering with anxiety. Exactly what did he expect her to wear?

  The box was stuffed with scraps of silk and lace in all colors. At the very bottom, she found the white she’d dreaded. She knew this was the pair he’d deliberately gone to get for her.

  At first glance, they weren’t too risqué: hipsters nearly cut like boxer shorts. However, they were made of lace, and she suddenly realized they didn’t have a crotch. Red faced, she noticed a note at the bottom of the box.

  Rae:

  The only correct answer would be your favorite color. Since I didn’t know what that was, you got everything that caught my eye. My message to you: It’s not all about my preferences. I want to make you happy. Wear your favorite color tonight and bring the letters.

  ~ Conn.

  Damn it. Now she was crying, too.

  Grabbing a tissue, she wiped her face and dragged out her old school laptop. The thing was a dinosaur, but it still ran fine as long as she stayed off the internet. She couldn’t print the letters; she couldn’t e-mail them to him, even if he would deign to read them online. Digging through the box, she found an old flash drive. Crossing her fingers it would still work—it did—she copied every letter she’d written to him without re-reading them. She didn’t have to.

  Those words were engraved on her heart.

  They told of every miserable moment, mistake, and guilty confession of erotic dreams she’d committed with him. Smiling through the tears, she decided he probably wouldn’t get much sleep tonight, either.

  She slid the memory stick into the purse and hoped she remembered to take it tonight.

  17

  As soon as Conn stepped inside Beulah Land, the stench nearly knocked him down. He didn’t have to ask what the horrid smell was. His stomach heaved.

  Miss Belle was cooking.

  Rae shut the door behind him and then stepped into his arms to bury her face against his chest. A hug, or did she merely need to block out the smell? “She won’t let me help.”

  He pressed his face against her shoulder bared by the spaghetti straps of the simple silk sheath dress. “Good Lord. Do you think she’ll let me sit like this at the table?”

  Laughing softly, she tightened her fingers at the base of his neck. “Your hair is still damp.”

  Had she noticed that he’d deliberately neglected to shave as well? He had a promise to uphold after all. “After grading Mason’s exams all night, I had to finish up mine this afternoon. I barely had time to shower before driving over.”

  “You smell good, but I wouldn’t have minded either way.”

  He straightened and took her hand, leading her to the stairs. “Did I show you my old room yet?”

  “You had a room here?” A loud clang from the kitchen drew her gaze, and Miss Belle’s sharp muttering drifted out. “I really think she needs some help.”

  “Trust me, darlin’, you don’t want to be in there with her right now without a Haz-Mat suit. I used to come up and stay for weeks at a time in the summer. All us kids did. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  They tiptoed upstairs like guilty teenagers, wincing at each loud squeak of the stairs.

  He led her down the hall and up the stairs leading to the attic. “Miss Belle knew I loved to read and my brother teased me about it, so she let me claim this room as my secret hideout. I’d hide up here for hours without anyone the wiser, reading Shelley, Shakespeare, Dickens, you name it.”

  The attic was dusty and crowded with furniture covered with sheets. His brother had only rarely come up here because the dust worsened his allergies. Allergies led to an asthma attack, something star athlete Victor would try to avoid at any cost.

  A small door led to Conn’s secret room. “Back in the old days, this was probably the nursery. On the other end of the storage area is the old servants’ quarters.”

  “Did they ever have slaves here?”

  “Not a one.” He opened the door for her and stepped back in time. Even as a kid, this room had been small, perched on the top of the grand house like a nest on a tree. The ceilings were so low that even Rae had to stoop to look out the window. “Great-Grandpa Healy came over from Ireland where he’d worked a scrap of land for the manor lord. He always said that was as close to slavery as anyone in his family would ever get.”

  A desk stood between the two dormer windows, and over in the corner was a twin-sized bed. The rest of the room contained shelves and shelves of books. The walls were covered with posters of knights, swords, and dragons. Smiling softly, she explored the room, trailing her fingers over his childhood treasures.

  She might as well have reached inside his chest and stroked his heart. Her eyes gleamed, a sweet nostalgia on her face. “I loved King Arthur too.”

  “Victor always teased me unmercifully, joking that King Arthur would have to teach me to defend myself.”

  A fierceness tightened her face. “Did kids tease you in school?”

  “Not for long.” Conn shook his head wryly. Victor might have teased him unmercifully at home, but if anyone messed with Conn at school, they had to deal with his big brother in a hurry. “I always tried wit first, but sometimes only a fist would stop the taunting. By high school, they knew well enough to let me alone. Besides, Victor and I played football, and we were soon heroes, even me, the geeky one who took a book on the bus to the games.”

  “What position did you play?”

  “Victor was the quarterback, and I was his receiver. We made quite a duo, took our school to the state champions Victor’s senior year. Texas is big on football, you know.”

  “What happened after Victor left?”

  Conn stretched out on his childhood bed, remembering the many nights he’d lain on this bed wishing he was as good as his brother, pushing himself harder so he wouldn’t be left behind. What he’d never realized until years later was that Victor would never have abandoned him or his family, even if it’d meant losing. Mama had certainly named him true: Victor had the heart of a champion. “He went on to college and played at Texas A&M. Victor made quite a name for himself before he blew out his knee. People projected them to win it all that year if he’d been able to play.”

  She turned from checking out the shelves. “What about you?”

  “I could play the game, but it wasn’t my passion, not like Victor. He was devastated when he couldn’t play any longer. It was like breaking Mozart’s hands so he couldn’t compose any longer, or blinding Monet.” Conn still remembered the look on Daddy’s face when the doctor had broken the news. Gut-wrenching grief. Not because his son couldn’t be the star quarterback any longer, but because he knew the blow it would be to Victor’s champion heart. “He lived and breathed football and he had a talent burning bright.”

  “‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,/ in the forests of the night.’”

  Conn smiled but sadness still weighed him down. Victor had used his drive to succeed, whether on or off the field. He’d bought a small television station barely keeping its head above water in Dallas, and now his station ran some of the most popular—and risqué—cable shows in all of Texas. Yet Conn still wondered if his brother had ever truly recovered from losing his dream.

  Rae knelt on the floor beside him and took his hand in hers, her fingers lightly st
roking over his knuckles, easing the sadness in his heart.

  “I never burned as brightly as him, not unless I talked about literature. My senior year, I really felt torn. I knew what I wanted to do, and I knew what Daddy and Victor expected of me, or so I thought. I’d won titles, too, broke records. I was fast and tall, and I had good hands.”

  She made a sound that made him laugh and roll over onto his side.

  “You like my hands, darlin’?”

  “Nobody’s got hands like you.”

  He couldn’t help but give her a very lecherous wink. “That’s what Victor said, too.”

  Lips quirked with amusement, she replied, “For very different reasons, obviously.”

  Nodding, he continued the story. “The big college decision came closer and closer, and I became quieter and more worried by the minute. I wanted to go to Southern Methodist and study English, reading to my heart’s content. But they have a shitty football program, and Texas A&M was already courting me. Hell, even University of Texas came calling, and Daddy and Victor both would have killed me before they let me join the Horns. Still, in my mind, I decided they’d rather I play there than not at all.”

  Even years later, he remembered the heart-wrenching decision he’d made after agonizing many a sleepless night, wrestling with his heart’s desire and his imagined duty. “Finally, I decided to go to Texas A&M and play ball with Victor. I put away my treasured books, and it was like cutting my heart out. I mourned, silently, or so I thought. I sat out on the porch with my tattered copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets, rocking in the porch swing for hours. Daddy came out and stood on the porch.”

  Conn smiled at the memory: his father standing tall and strong, a black mountain backlit by the homestead’s warm glow. Even on the verge of manhood himself, he’d imagined his father invincible. “Now Daddy was a hard, extremely quiet man. He never raised his voice and very rarely ever had to spank us when we were little, because he had that look, you know?”