by Caro Carson
Rembrandt! Here!
“Yeah, I sent her an email, and she said she could meet me here.” Bridget took her script out of her backpack with a defiant flourish. “It’ll be just me, Kristopher and her, because I didn’t tell anybody else. It might be good for him to see how old she is compared to someone his own age.”
Connor was knocked speechless for a second. “That woman didn’t do a thing to you, and you’re trying to make her part of some petty revenge game. You’re nineteen. She’s a professor. You need to send her another email and tell her thanks, but no thanks, and apologize for taking up her time.”
“Too late. She’ll be here any minute. She said she was looking forward to it, so chill. I’m not pissed off at her. I don’t even care what Kristopher thinks anymore, not after the way he treated me at the party.”
All of Connor’s pseudo-big-brother instincts kicked in. “What happened at the party?”
“Nothing. I thought he liked me, because he followed me the whole night, until I figured out he was babysitting me. Every single time I talked to a cute guy, he’d walk by and hand me a bottle of water and tell me to hydrate, like he was my dad or something. I hope he eats his heart out while Dr. Dee and I are working together on a speech about eating his heart out. Get it?”
It sounded like Kristopher had been jealous. The protective way he’d shown it at the party restored some of Connor’s good opinion of him, but Bridget’s attitude sucked.
Bridget held up her script. “I really do want her help. She’s, like, my favorite professor I’ve ever had, so far.”
Connor crossed his arms over his chest so he would neither explode nor wring her neck. “You like her, but you’re making her waste her time and even her gas to drive here from BCC. It was rude of you to ask. I can’t believe she said yes.”
Why did she say yes?
Bridget shrugged, but she looked a little embarrassed, finally. An embarrassed Bridget was a defensive Bridget. “She’s not coming from BCC. She was just our sub last semester. She teaches at Masterson. She can walk here from Hughes Hall, if she wants.”
A professor at Masterson University. When he’d stood on the roof and wondered where Delphinia was, the answer had been that perfect green square and blue fountain. So near, and yet so very far.
“It’s not like professors have that much to do,” Bridget said. “They teach like one or two hours a day. It’s not like she’s going to get fired or something for leaving her office hours early. Her dad’s the dean of my college.”
Of course he is.
If Connor’s coffin weren’t already nailed shut, that would have done it. Dear old Dad would just love a high school dropout for his brilliant daughter.
“Her mom’s something big, too. Like the person in charge of the whole English department.”
Of course.
“They’re all named Dr. Ray. That’s why I know they’re related. Everyone does. It’s not like I’ve been creeping on her or anything.”
Which meant Bridget had definitely been creeping on her. What else did you learn?
Bridget waved her script toward the stage. “I’ve got to memorize this. You want me to unlock the front door while I’m over there?”
Connor checked his watch. “Ten more minutes.”
Unlocking the door ten minutes before opening time wouldn’t normally faze him, but now he wanted those ten minutes to get his head on straight. The warning was good, at least. He’d be ready to do what he needed to do. Be polite. Offer her a drink. No leaning into one another. No eye-gazing. He’d be her biggest mistake. Ten minutes.
“Will do,” Bridget called back on her way to the stage. “I told Dr. Dee to use the employee entrance if the pub wasn’t open yet, so she’ll just go around the back if it stays locked.”
“You did what? Damn it, Bridget, where’s your head?”
“What’d I do now?”
“She’s already doing you a huge favor, and you told her to go into the alley to use the back door?”
“Well, yeah, it’s better than making her stand outside on the sidewalk, isn’t it?” Bridget had reached the front door, and she strained to look this way and that through the gold lettering and etched swirls. “I don’t see her out here. She could have just not gotten here yet.”
“Or she could be standing in the goddamned alley.” Connor quickly strode the length of the bar, around the corner, down the hall, past the storeroom. The storeroom might be a reminder of a stark place where he’d once lived, but the alley was the actual place where Connor had lived some hard, hungry days huddled by a dumpster. He didn’t want her there. He couldn’t stand the thought of her there.
The day he’d been released from prison, he’d had only the clothes he’d been wearing the day he was arrested. That was fine with him; most of the guys had been released early and wore ankle monitors. Not Connor. He’d served every day of his full sentence, so he got a check for one hundred dollars from the state and a voucher good for a bus ticket back to his county of residence.
He wasn’t going back to that county.
No one had been waiting for him at the prison gate. He’d never had a father. His mother had checked out of his life for good when he was fifteen. And his friends? They’d ditched the stolen car and run for it while Connor had been following the cops’ orders. He’d gotten out with his hands up, only to be thrown to the ground to eat a mouthful of asphalt as two cops handcuffed him. His friends hadn’t been caught.
Connor had walked out of the prison and kept walking.
The check-cashing place had charged him a fifteen-dollar fee. He’d bought burgers and fries at the first fast-food franchise he came to, so he didn’t feel guilty about adding handfuls of their ketchup and sugar packets to the sad sack the state had provided to hold his few possessions: comb, toothbrush, the art history book—the librarian had given him permission to keep it—with the GED certificate tucked inside the cover, where it wouldn’t get wrinkled.
He’d walked to a cheap motel, where he’d taken the longest, hottest shower of his life and then catnapped his way through the night, waking at every unfamiliar sound. It had been no more and no less restful than being in prison, but by the bed there’d been a ceramic table lamp, a breakable item, beautiful in its fragility. It could be smashed into sharp shards for weapons, and yet he was allowed to be in the hotel room with it, unsupervised. Prison was over.
The next morning, out of money, he’d started walking across Texas. He’d hit the interstate two days later, out of sugar and ketchup packets, and hitchhiked as far as a truck stop. He’d seen a car with Masterson Musketeer window stickers, approached the driver, a guy who was his age, and asked for a ride. Wedged into a rich kid’s car that was stuffed with an entire dorm room’s contents, Connor had arrived at a gas station on Athos Avenue.
Connor hadn’t eaten in days. He could have slipped the twenty-dollar bill into his pocket, the one the rich kid had casually stuck in his sun visor. It would have been easy to palm a candy bar at the gas station, but Connor had been scared to break any law. Another cop, another set of handcuffs, and his whole nightmare would begin over again. He’d rather starve.
He’d stayed on alert in the alleys, catnapping through a few more nights. In the dumpster behind the Tipsy Musketeer, he’d had some luck: a half-dozen sourdough rolls that were stale but not moldy. He’d had one stuffed in his mouth and was shoving the rest into his pants when the employees-only door had opened. He and the old man had stared at each other.
Mr. Murphy had extended a hand. Connor had thought he wanted his rolls back. His instinct had been to run, but he hadn’t known if the police would come after him for stealing trash. Before he could decide, Mr. Murphy had reached for his arm to tug him up the single step. Come in, come in. No man eats like a rat at my pub. Spit that roll out. We have Irish stew, hot.
It had been the lowest, hungriest da
y of his life when Connor had eaten out of a dumpster. Then Mr. Murphy had opened the door, and it had become the day he was saved.
Connor reached the employee entrance and yanked the door open. There she was, a step below him, looking small and lost with the dumpster looming behind her.
“Rembrandt.”
“I was just about to knock.” She sounded nervous. “I didn’t want to just barge in, even though—”
“Come inside.” He didn’t wait—he couldn’t wait—for her reply. He just took her by the arm and pulled her up the single step and through the door.
The hallway was crowded, the dolly behind him, cardboard boxes of napkins and coasters stacked three-high down one of the walls. To close the door, he had to pull Delphinia closer. They took another half step together as he shut the door, shuffling in sync. The awkward little dance elicited an awkward little chuckle from her.
His heart was pounding again. He hated that she’d been in that alley. She had a lovely life, a professor’s life. He didn’t want her living his. “Don’t ever come here like that.”
Her nervous smile faded. “I’m sorry. When Bridget asked where we could meet, I suggested it. You’d said I should come back again, but... I guess you don’t want us using your stage all the time.”
It took him a second to realize he’d been too intense. “I mean if the doors are locked, knock on a window. I’ll let you in.” She felt healthy and warm under her soft burgundy sweater, not shivering from hunger, from low blood sugar, from dehydration. The reality of her body, the normalcy of her presence, pushed his memories back into the past where they belonged. He gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “Because yes, you should come back. Anytime.”
I’m losing my mind, anyway. Might as well get to look at you.
“So, it’s okay to come, you just don’t want me using the friends and family entrance?”
“I don’t want you in an alley with a dumpster,” he said, careful not to sound angry this time. “The main entrance is the friends and family entrance. This is the door we use to take out the trash.”
The door opened inward with a swoosh. Kristopher walked in. “Hello.”
Connor and Delphinia shuffled a few swift steps back, together.
“What are you guys doing back here?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly, sounding as guilty as if they’d been caught doing something a hell of a lot more fun than they had.
That was interesting. What had she been thinking about while he’d been thinking about dumpsters?
She hastily backed away from Connor to put another inch of space between the two of them.
Well, well, well. Delphinia the Professor had been thinking about something better than he had. Not anything innocent, either. That blush looked like she’d been checking out his tattoo again.
Hell, yes. But that thrill of triumph died immediately. If she’d come to check out the bartender and pick up where her hungry eyes had left off Tuesday evening, then he was in trouble.
“Let me get you to the part of the pub you should be in.” He turned to lead the way. As he let go of her arm, he fought a bizarre impulse to slip his hand down her soft sleeve to interlock their fingers.
Only a minute in her presence, and he was losing his mind. Less than an hour ago, he’d had to rehash for Mr. Murphy the reasons he could not run for office like a regular citizen.
Connor paused by the utilitarian stairs that led up to the third floor and gestured for Kristopher and Delphinia to keep going. “Have a good rehearsal.”
Connor headed up to his apartment, as desperate to lose himself in a good book as if he were a prisoner all over again. It was the only way he could block out everything surrounding him—or anyone two floors below him.
He’d told Mr. Murphy there was no woman. He was going to keep it that way.
Chapter Nine
Juliet Capulet was less foolish than Delphinia Ray.
For starters, Juliet had known her crush’s name. Delphinia had been acting like a love-struck teenager since Tuesday, no matter how much she tried to employ logic and reason. She was obsessed with a man whose name she’d never asked.
The email from Bridget Murphy had given her the perfect excuse to return to the pub and fix this insanity. If she saw her alpha male in person again, well aware of the difference between science and magic this time, she would prove to herself that there was nothing there. It was a trick of hormones. An influence from a novel. She would see him, be no more impressed by him than she would be by any other reasonably attractive man, and she’d be able to return to her regularly scheduled life.
Then he’d reached out and pulled her through the door, up to his strong chest, and it had taken two seconds for her to feel the magic.
It had taken him two minutes to hand her off to his employee and leave.
She might as well be the nerdy ugly duckling and he the handsome high school quarterback who didn’t know she existed—something which had never actually happened to her. She’d skipped the lovesick teenager phase while she was busy being the academic pride and joy of the Drs. Ray. It frankly sucked to finally go through the love-struck phase when she ought to be fretting about turning thirty.
She’d tried to pretend everything was normal while tutoring Bridget and Kristopher. She’d had them sit in the snug with her, both of them, and they’d flipped through their books on the little table and talked about the plays. Delphinia’s radar was definitely not to be trusted. She’d thought Kristopher was flirting with her on Tuesday. Today, he was polite to the point of formality. He’d even called her Dr. Ray instead of Dr. Dee.
Unlike Tuesday, a few people had come into the pub. Since the sexy, sizzling bartender was gone, Kristopher had left to take care of the customers. Bridget had thanked Delphinia for coming—several times, with an almost comical emphasis on being so aware that she really had no right to ask her, but she was such a good professor, so she really appreciated her time. Then she’d left in whirlwind of college-sophomore energy, off to conquer something or someone else.
Delphinia’s energy level was nonexistent in comparison. She had no desire to walk back to Hughes Hall, where her sturdy desk sat on sturdy, institutional carpeting. She’d rather sit in an Irish snug and admire the patina of the wood floor and feel sorry for herself.
Alone.
Not with a bartender who’d invited her to come back but hadn’t actually cared if she did. Not with a law professor who invited her to places she couldn’t refuse to go.
She didn’t want to anger Vincent again, not after Tuesday. When she’d come downstairs in her most modest dress, they’d made their late entrance into the library. Joe Manzetti had already left. No matter how many sweethearts Vincent had thrown her way, she’d had the horrible feeling that if she’d been a door, he would have kicked her.
She didn’t want to think about it. From her book bag, she took out the newest edition of the textbook for EN313, an advance copy which the publisher had given to the English department. She’d planned to review it this evening at home to determine what had changed from the current edition. She could do that here, instead. She stacked the new Victorian on top of her old Shakespeare, then took off its cellophane shipping wrapper.
As the book’s spine flexed for the first time, the glue made a distinctive crackling sound. There was a joy in being the first to open a new book, to separate glossy pages and smell that fresh ink and paper. She smoothed her hand over the title page before turning it, hoping for something new.
A man in a black neck scarf that looked like it was choking him stared up at her from the book. It was the same photo of John Ruskin that had been in every prior version of the textbook, that had been in every version of every compilation of Ruskin’s essays that she’d ever read. Ever.
How foolish of her to hope for anything new. The man was dead. It wasn’t like somebody would discover a new
photo of him any more than they’d discover a new essay or letter or sketch.
She closed the book. She was not going to require next year’s students to purchase this edition. If they could buy a used one from this year, let them.
She was such a rebel. So wild.
With all the defiance her inner puppy could muster, she turned sideways on the bench and stretched her legs out. She crossed her ankles and made sure her gray skirt was tucked around her knees, then she pulled out her paperback. She wanted to get back to her lone wolf and his mystified heroine. Their kiss had changed something. The heroine was getting more rebellious by the page. Delphinia smoothed her hand over the hero’s bare torso, a moment of anticipation, then she opened the book.
A Greek god walked right past her snug.
He stood at the front door and looked out for a minute, hands on hips, an impassive god surveying his world. He looked so supremely confident, or rather, so comfortable with himself and that perfect physique, so capable. And yet, she still imagined a sense of loneliness about him. He was both an ancient god and a modern wolf without a pack.
His expression wasn’t so impassive after he watched the street for a minute. He was displeased by whatever he saw.
She was not displeased by what she saw. Instead of jeans and a tight T-shirt, he’d changed into semiformal attire, the most common dress for events at Dumas House. He wore black slacks, a crisp, ivory dress shirt, and a black suit vest. Without a tie or jacket, he gave those semiformal clothes a sexier appearance, like he was about to strip off the rest of them. Or perhaps he’d already stripped them off to do something less civilized, and just hadn’t finished putting them back on again yet. Either way, if he walked into her parents’ soiree, the ladies would all drop their wineglasses.
Science.
He watched the street outside. She watched him. He undid the button on his cuff and started folding the material back, casually exposing one strong forearm. He unbuttoned the other sleeve and started cuffing it back, too, as he turned away from the door.
