She thought about how much she’d wanted to go to college and how hard that would have been under the circumstances he described. Resentment very well could have festered and torn them apart. She nodded. “A definite possibility.”
“Again, because of the house we got a second chance. We’re older and wiser and can put those painful lessons to good use.” The intensity in his eyes was like a touch. “Unless I completely messed us up and you don’t love me.”
She laughed but there was no humor in it. “Love is not the problem. It’s what made me bring up a legal parenting plan.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I knew I was in love with you but we only agreed to work together to build your relationship with Emma. Nothing more. Nothing personal. I knew if I spent too much time with you, you’d figure out what I was feeling. You would be able to see that I didn’t keep my word and hate me for it.”
“That could never happen.” He took her hand, as if the need to touch her was too much to resist.
“I’m not so sure. I was afraid of losing what little we had. And I wanted you in my life, no matter what.”
“Done. I’m here. You’re not getting rid of me,” he promised.
“But what convinced you to buy the house?”
“Your mom.”
Shelby blinked up at him. “No way.”
“Way.” He grinned. “She said I should stop being a stubborn ass and tell you that I’m in love with you.”
She was almost afraid to ask but had to know. “Are you?”
“I am crazy in love with you, Shelby Lynn Richards. And I want you to marry me and move into my new house. Please.” He looked a little nervous, a lot hopeful. “I want us to be a family. You, me and Emma. What do you say?”
“I love you, too.” She moved close and turned her face up to his.
He pulled her into his arms and pressed his mouth to hers. She wasn’t sure how much time went by before they came up for air but it was without a doubt the best kiss she’d ever had.
“So, this whole family thing,” she said, “our daughter might have something to say. We should talk to her—”
“I say yes.” The little eavesdropper jumped out from behind her car. “You should marry him, Mommy.”
“I guess we have permission,” Luke said, pulling Emma into the circle when she moved closer. “And we’ll all live happily ever after in the house next door.”
“On one condition,” Emma said. “Can we change the color of the walls in my room?”
“I will repaint them in any shade you want.”
“Okay,” Emma said. “We’ll marry you.”
“Yes, we will,” Shelby agreed. “The sooner the better. I’ve been waiting ten years for you to ask.”
Shelby never dreamed she could be this happy. There’d been a lot of bumps along the way which made this moment even more satisfying. In ten years they’d never fallen out of love with each other. All it took to bring them together was a daughter on his doorstep.
* * *
Don’t miss Teresa Southwick’s next book, part of the latest Montana Mavericks continuity in October 2020!
And for more secret baby romances, check out these great Harlequin Special Edition books:
For the Twins’ Sake
by Melissa Senate
The Soldier’s Secret Son
by Helen Lacey
What Makes a Father
by Teresa Southwick
Available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Bartender’s Secret by Caro Carson.
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The Bartender’s Secret
by Caro Carson
Chapter One
The first time he saw her, she was reading a book.
Connor McClaine’s customers often read books in his pub. The Tipsy Musketeer was located roughly twenty yards from the edge of Masterson University’s campus, so it wasn’t unusual to serve a hand-drawn Guinness to a student who was studying Socrates or sociology.
This reader was...different.
In the quiet of the Tuesday afternoon lull, Connor took his time polishing the pub’s antique brass taps as the woman turned another page. There was an intriguing grace to the motion of her index finger, a simple touch of light pressure on the paper, a slide to the left to reveal two more pages full of black type.
She fell still once more. Only her eyes moved as she devoured the fresh lines. Her hand didn’t waver as she held the book with its pages tilted toward the window. The Texas sunshine was constant, golden, steadily illuminating the deep brown of her hair, the dark wood of his pub’s floor. The ivory pages of her book reflected the light up to her throat, so the picture she made had the kind of otherworldly illumination one saw in paintings. She made a beautiful picture.
Traditionally, Irish pubs were dark shelters from a harsher outside world, and the Tipsy Musketeer, despite being located in Central Texas, was as traditional as an Irish pub could be. For relief from the often desertlike heat, the Victorian-era building’s heavy shutters had kept out the sunlight for over 130 years. But its proprietor now was Connor McClaine, and he’d once been forced to live for precisely 180 days in a building with no windows, so the Tipsy Musketeer’s green shutters were now fastened open—permanently.
Their shade was no longer necessary. The building might be historic, but its air-conditioning units were modern and efficient. It had taken most of the past ten years, virtually his entire adult life, but Connor had brought this building to a place where he was assured there would always be windows and light and breathable air. He had everything he needed, as long as everything stayed as it was—his pub, his life, unchanging.
The reading woman stayed just as she was. Unchanging. A work of art.
Connor moved from the brass taps to the mahogany bar, polishing as he drank in the shades of whiskey in her hair. One hundred shades of brown—that was how many different colors Rembrandt had used to paint a woman’s hair. Connor had read that in an art history book he’d found on the wrong shelf of a prison library. He’d wanted to see a Rembrandt in real life ever since.
Here she was.
With one graceful fingertip, she turned the page, read another line.
She laughed, a single squeak of surprise.
Connor stopped in mid-stroke, startled that a work of art had made a sound. She continued coming to life, setting the book down, resting her elbow on the table, her chin on her hand. Her smile lingered over something she’d read, a humorous twist she’d hadn’t expected. Connor had a burning desire to know...
To know...
Not her, of course. He already knew women like her—educated, peaceful, lovely. Women who lived calm lives. Women who’d never been denied windows and daylight. Women who were out of his league, fortunately for them.
He didn’t begrudge them their lovely lives. They’d done nothing to hurt him, after all, and the world would be a grim place if everyone had to come from the same darkness he had. There was only one common denominator between Connor and this woman: he could read whatever she read. He could share that one piece of a lovelier, lighter life.
What was she reading?
She was in his establishment. He could step out from behind the bar, walk over to that table and ask her if she needed anything. He’d see the book cover. He’d know something about her. If he read that same book later, he’d know a lot more about her. He’d try to guess exactly which page, which paragraph had made her laugh out loud.
Her smile faded. With one finger, she pushed the book a few inches away from herse
lf.
Ah, he knew more about her already. He understood that feeling. A book could carry him away to another place, putting him in a different mood—a better place, a better mood. But always, the book would end, and life would resume. Depending on how bad life was at the moment, the return to reality could feel like a hangover, the price one paid for a brief escape. When books had let him escape a windowless prison, the hangover had been vicious.
Connor turned away from the picture-perfect woman and pitched his polishing cloth in the laundry bin with last night’s bar towels. She was not a painting for him to analyze. She wasn’t here for his viewing pleasure. But her hair was whiskey and her throat was lovely, and he could ask her that most basic question of bartenders everywhere: What’s your pleasure?
He wanted to know.
He rested his forearms on the bar and waited, savoring the moment as he watched his living Rembrandt, imagining he understood how she felt. She’d glance his way any second now. What’s your pleasure?
“Connor, save me.” A different woman stuck her head in his line of sight, a teenager who read books only when required to by her teachers. For the ten years he’d known her, Bridget Murphy had read only school assignments, and for ten years, Connor had been pushing her to do her schoolwork. She’d been nine when the previous owner, Mr. Murphy, had hired Connor, who’d been a miserable nineteen. Bridget had always gotten in the way when Connor had been learning the ropes, but she was the niece of Mr. Murphy. Connor had always figured she had more of a right to be at Murphy’s Tipsy Musketeer than he did. In any case, Connor would never say a bad word against a Murphy.
“Just shoot me,” she said.
“Tempting, but I can’t do both. Shoot you or save you? You have to decide.”
Bridget plopped herself onto a barstool, the one directly between himself and the intriguing woman, blocking his view. That was Bridget. She would have made a perfect pest of a little sister, had Connor had a family. With a dramatic groan, she plunked her red head on the bar.
He spoke to the top of her head. “A word of advice. When you turn twenty-one, two years from now, and you can legally drink, be sure to avoid cheap booze at wild college parties, or else you’ll get a hangover that feels exactly the way you’re feeling right now.”
“Devil take ye and yer best dog,” she muttered into the burnished wood, in a fine approximation of her great-uncle’s Irish brogue. “If you’re so sure this is a hangover, you could make me one of your hangover cures.”
With Bridget’s head out of his way, Connor could see the woman again. She was entirely back in this world now, tucking her book into a cloth book bag. Any second, she’d look at him.
What’s your pleasure?
“Pretty please?” Bridget popped her head up, blocking his view again.
Connor came just that close to growling in annoyance.
“What? What I’d do?”
“Nothing.” Connor began making a hangover cure, glancing toward the woman in the window as he did. She’d stood and was heading toward the restrooms, book bag on her shoulder. Her chiffon skirt swished around her knees with each step. Connor scooped ice into a glass and watched as her hair turned from glowing mahogany to nearly ebony as she moved out of the sunlight.
“Who was that?” Bridget asked.
“Who?”
“That woman whose butt you’re checking out instead of saving me.”
Connor poured tomato juice into the glass and shrugged. “A customer. I’m not checking out her butt.” I’m checking out the swing of her hair.
Bridget turned around to check out the now empty table. “Yeah?”
And her legs.
“Your customer doesn’t have a drink or anything.”
“I haven’t asked her what she wants yet. She’s been reading.”
Bridget rolled her eyes as only a college drama major could. “People can drink and read at the same time. You could’ve interrupted her. She might have appreciated it.”
“She was reading intently, the way your professors want you to.” He added three dashes of Tabasco to the glass.
“Intently? You were watching her read intently? That’s so weird.”
And a fourth dash.
“You were watching her walk away pretty intently, too.”
“I said she was reading intently. I wasn’t watching her intently as she read. Syntax, Bridget. It matters.”
“Syntax, Bridget,” she repeated, in an admittedly fine approximation of his patronizing tone. “You should be an English teacher, not a bar owner. You’d meet more women who read intently, instead of the kind that get drunk and try to jump your bones. How does a bookworm proposition you? ‘Hey, hottie. Let’s get naked and talk about literature.’ Does size matter when it comes to books?”
Connor tossed Bridget a lemon wedge. “Suck on that.”
“Hey—”
“It’s good for you. Vitamin C.” He squeezed two more lemon wedges into the glass, gave it a stir, then slid it across the bar with just enough force that it stopped in front of Bridget.
She glared at it. “You forgot the vodka.”
“That’s for alcohol-induced hangovers. Since you’re underage, I know you weren’t drinking alcohol last night, so you don’t need it this afternoon.”
“Uncle Murphy says you need the hair of the dog that bit you.”
“I’m not losing my liquor license by serving vodka to a college sophomore. Drink your juice.”
The woman who’d been reading walked back into the main pub area. She’d look his way any second now, maybe even stop at the bar to get a drink to carry back to her table.
What’s your pl—
“Hey, boss.” This time a young man stuck his head in Connor’s way, speaking with all the energy and volume of a college student who was not hungover. “Everyone’s on their way. A few texted they’d be late, but they’re still coming.”
Kristopher Newell was a junior at Masterson and one of Connor’s bartenders. The state of Texas didn’t require bartenders to be twenty-one—employees could serve alcohol at eighteen, as long as they didn’t drink any—but Connor required it. Kristopher had bused tables for a full semester, an eternity for a college student, until he’d turned twenty-one and Connor had let him move behind the bar. Like Mr. Murphy before him, Connor appreciated good employees and took care of them. No revolving door here, even in a college town. Not until they graduated and moved on to the rest of their lives, diplomas in their hands.
“How’d your test go?” Connor asked. Taking care of his employees meant being sure they had their priorities straight.
Kristopher’s buoyancy dropped a notch. “Pretty well. Not as well as I’d hoped. But hey, if I ace this Shakespeare thing, it’ll balance out.”
There was a small stage in one corner of the pub, used by countless musicians since before Connor had been born. This afternoon, it would be used by students to rehearse a theater course assignment. Connor had offered it up, because it was one way he could ensure Kristopher and Bridget actually practiced for their Shakespeare project. The pub was usually empty between the lunch crowd and happy hour on a Tuesday in March, anyway.
But not this Tuesday. The woman by the window had come here to read. Maybe Miss Rembrandt had hoped the pub would be an oasis away from the students who thronged every other business on Athos Avenue. Generally, it was; the Tipsy Musketeer checked IDs. It was common knowledge around campus that this pub would serve the bread but not the beer to those under twenty-one, so the Musketeer drew an older clientele: the professors rather than the students, the coaches rather than the athletes, the university president rather than the fraternity president.
She didn’t strike him as a college student. She was young, but not nineteen. Ms. Rembrandt, then. College students could be any age, but Masterson University was a traditional campus, with a football stadium
and red-bricked dormitories. Most Musketeers were kids who entered straight from high school and graduated four years later at an outdoor cap-and-gown affair. It was very likely this woman had come into the pub seeking a student-free zone.
She stopped at the same table and pulled her book out once more. When Connor took her drink order, he’d warn her that a dozen college kids were about to arrive and start emoting in sixteenth-century English.
If you’re brave enough to stay, your drink is on the house. What’s your pleasure?
“I’ve got this.” Kristopher jogged over to Ms. Rembrandt. “What can I get you?”
Great. Connor had hired the most conscientious, eager twenty-one-year-old in town. Kristopher wasn’t even on the clock until five.
Kristopher’s enthusiastic What can I get you? was less evocative of an earlier time period than What’s your pleasure? which Connor had picked up from Mr. Murphy, along with the man’s string of Irish curses that all began with “the devil.” Mr. Murphy had a long and creative list of things he wanted the devil to do.
Connor had every excuse to gaze at Ms. Rembrandt now, because he was waiting for Kristopher to turn and relay her drink order. Any second now. If Kris stopped monopolizing the woman’s attention.
She had an energy about her. Her navy sweater and that light blue skirt were not as sedate as she’d probably intended them to be. When she reached back to the table and slid her book behind herself, her sweater hugged her curves.
Her smile was more than polite; it was genuine. Then she laughed, a bright sound that filled the space between them. He saw the light in her face, heard bright light in her voice. Connor sucked in a breath. He wanted to know...
To know...
He didn’t want to know what book she’d read. He wanted to know her. He wanted to know where she was from, what she was doing, where she was going.
He could make small talk as easily as he made cocktails. He could find out all about her.
It would lead to nothing.
This pub was a fantasy world. An Irish pub needed a publican, an owner who treated everyone as if they’d arrived as welcome guests to his own home. It was the role Connor had taken over from Mr. Murphy when he’d bought the business.
Daughter on His Doorstep Page 21
