by Anna DePalo
And going to Connor’s place was a distraction. When they’d arrived that morning, she’d discovered that Connor’s “getaway cottage” was a two-story, wood-frame structure nestled in the woods, well back from the road. It boasted four bedrooms, two baths, a spacious kitchen, a living room, dining room, den, deck and, for good measure, a hot tub.
She tried hard not to think about the hot tub—and tried harder still not to think about the fact that her bedroom was next to his.
She looked through the sliding-glass doors leading to the outdoor wooden deck and watched Connor fire up the barbecue grill. Beside him, plates held some steaks and potatoes, ready for grilling.
Deciding it was time to put away her files for the evening, she rose and gathered up her papers, putting them in a neat stack on an end table.
When she got outside, Connor was nursing a beer and watching the rays of the disappearing sun twinkle through the branches of the trees.
He opened another beer and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she said, watching as he expertly used a long fork to turn the steaks. “You know, I could almost get used to having you cook for me, Rafferty.”
At his astonished look, she laughed. “But I suppose grilling is up there with manly pursuits like knowing how to open a beer bottle and programming a remote control.”
Seemingly despite himself, he chuckled. Closing the barbecue, he said, “You got that right, petunia. So for the rest of the evening, remember that I’m the one in charge and you’re the deputy.”
She rolled her eyes. “What do you mean for the rest of the evening? That’s what you try to convince me of every day.”
“Right, but with little success.” He nodded through the glass doors at the kitchen. “The rest of the stuff for dinner is in there.”
Tossing him a look, she nevertheless took the hint and went to the kitchen. She returned with plates, utensils, and napkins for the outdoor table. She also carried out the salad he’d left on the kitchen counter.
As she set the table, she cast him a surreptitious look. His faded jeans did little to hide a tight rear end. He wore his button-down plaid shirt open at the collar, where it revealed a small bit of the white undershirt he wore beneath. Overall, the effect was casual but sexy.
Until they’d actually sat down to eat, Allison didn’t realize how intimate it was to be having dinner alone with Connor, surrounded by the woods, eating food that he’d prepared. Despite that—or maybe as a distraction from it—the conversation flowed easily between them. They talked about the latest news, what the Boston Red Sox could do to make it to the World Series, and what qualified as classic rock-and-roll music.
As a result, by the time they were done eating, she was feeling pleasantly relaxed. So much so that she was able to say casually, “There’s one thing I never understood about you, Rafferty.”
“Only one?” He quirked a brow and sat back, looking amused. “What a letdown. I don’t even qualify as complex, misunderstood, or—better yet—tortured?”
She rolled her eyes. “James Dean was tortured, you’re just—” she paused to think for a few seconds “—inscrutable.”
“Inscrutable?” He rubbed his chin. “Okay, I guess that’s better than nothing. So, I suppose you’re going to enlighten me about what makes me ‘inscrutable’?”
Ignoring his mocking tone, she plunged ahead. “As I was saying, there’s one major thing I haven’t understood about you.” She took a fortifying sip of her beer. “It’s this whole South Boston business.”
His expression, she noted, became ever so slightly shuttered.
Nevertheless, because she wasn’t one to turn back once she’d started, she went on, “You leave South Boston, get a fancy degree from Harvard—with high honors in computer science, no less—and then, instead of starting the corporate climb at some cushy investment banking job, you wind up going back to South Boston to set up shop.”
He shrugged.
“Not only that,” she persisted, “but you choose an unglamorous area like security systems. Most people don’t go to Harvard just to come full circle.”
He sat back in his chair and studied her. “True, but things worked out well anyway.” He nodded around him to the large house and the surrounding trees. “Maybe, princess, it was all part of the master plan.”
She nodded. “Knowing you, I don’t doubt it. What I want to know is, what was the master plan?”
He looked amused. “You just keep probing until you get some answers, don’t you? Which is probably what makes you a great prosecutor.”
“Don’t try to sidetrack me with compliments.” She steeled herself against his flattery and leaned forward in her seat. “Why go back to South Boston after Harvard? One would assume you had every reason not to, particularly since your father was killed in the line of duty there.”
She knew from Quentin that Connor’s father had been a cop who had died when Connor was still a kid. She also knew Connor’s mother, a nurse, had died of breast cancer soon after his high-school graduation, leaving him parentless from the age of eighteen. It had all made her feel very sorry for Connor when she’d met him.
“Am I being cross-examined?” Connor’s tone was casual, but she sensed an underlying tenseness in him.
Knowing that she was on to something, she ignored his question and said, instead, “Tell me about your father.” She added, gentling her voice, “Please. I’d really like to know.”
He saluted her with his empty beer bottle. “Okay, princess, I see I’m not going to throw you off.”
She wondered if that were true. She got the feeling he was only going to give her an answer because he wanted to—and she also sensed she was on terrain that Connor didn’t ordinarily let people onto.
He was silent for a time, looking off into the distance before his gaze came back to her. “I was nine when Dad died. Tough age to lose your father—but no age is a good one. He was the assistant coach of my softball team and taught me the usual stuff: how to ride a bike, how to swim.”
He blew a breath, then continued, “My father had this thing about giving back to the community. Perhaps because he’d grown up as a working-class kid in South Boston himself and had gone on to become a cop.”
“Hmm,” was all she said. She’d finally gotten him going and she wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to get sidetracked by her commentary.
“Anyway, even though we could have afforded to live out in the suburbs, he wanted to stay in South Boston. He even angled his way to a job there.”
“In other words, he was into ‘community policing’ even before the term was coined,” she put in.
He nodded. “Exactly. He believed not only in police patrols, but police involvement in the community.”
“Getting to know people,” she supplied. “Coaching softball as a way to keep kids off the streets.”
He nodded again. “Right.”
She waited for him to go on.
He took a swig of his beer, then squinted into the distance as if he was trying to make out something among the trees. “One day the doorbell rang and I thought it was him, back from the evening shift. Instead it was the sergeant from his district, looking so serious I immediately got a queasy feeling in my stomach.” He shifted his gaze back to hers. “You can guess what came next.”
“How did it happen?” she asked softly. They’d known each other for years but this was the first time she’d felt comfortable enough to ask him about the circumstances of his father’s death. She ached for the boy who had opened the door to a nightmare so many years ago.
“He was responding to a break-and-enter. He caught one guy, cuffed him. What he didn’t know was the guy had a partner who was packing a .38 special.”
Allison flinched at the image he evoked.
Connor grinned crookedly. “You wanted to know, princess.”
“What I want to know is why you bury that story.”
“Ever combative and feisty, aren’t you?”
&n
bsp; She frowned. “Maybe, but there’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of in that story. I have no idea why you keep quiet about it. In fact—”
“In fact,” he finished for her, “people might have felt sorry for me and gone out of their way to help, is that what you were going to say?”
“Well, yes—”
“And that’s exactly what I didn’t want,” he said, his look almost combative. “That’s exactly how the people who did know—at my father’s precinct and in the neighborhood—did act.” His brows drew together. “I didn’t need their sympathy. It wasn’t going to bring my father back. And I sure as hell didn’t want anyone thinking I was trading on a tragedy.”
His words were startling. And, yet, they were in keeping with what she knew him to be: proud, tough, private.
“Curiosity satisfied, petunia?” he asked, rising with his empty plate. His tone wasn’t mocking, just matter-of-fact.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said simply, picking up her own plate and utensils and following him inside, where she deposited her load in the sink. “I can’t even imagine how hard it was for you and your mother.”
He leaned back against the kitchen counter, legs casually crossed at his feet. “Yeah, it was devastating for Mom. She went back into nursing to earn some money, but South Boston was all she knew, so that’s where we stayed.”
“You must have been lonely.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I was a terror. My father had been killed and I was mad as hell at the world. I fought, I skipped school and I took unnecessary risks. What finally turned me around was a combination of my mother and some well-meaning high-school teachers meting out tough love, and my own realization that I had a brain and I might as well use it in a way that got me somewhere.”
She went to perch on a bar stool. “Which brings me back to my original question. Why go back to South Boston after all that? You could have gone anywhere after Harvard, and you had every reason to.”
“Like I said, you’re tenacious.” He gave her a once-over with his eyes, then smiled at her scowl. “When I started my business, I was looking to keep overhead low. The neighborhood is changing, but the rent on a rinky-dink apartment in South Boston at the time was the right price. It was as simple as that.”
She nodded. Suddenly, turning down a cushy big law firm job for the DA’s Office while living in a townhouse in exclusive Beacon Hill didn’t seem like much of a sacrifice. “Every time I come across a profile of you in the newspapers or in magazines, they always mention that you headed back to South Boston to start your business.”
He quirked a brow. “You read all the bios of me, princess?”
She felt herself grow red. “Just when the only alternative is reading the instructions on medicine bottles.”
He grinned. “You don’t give an inch do you?”
“You don’t either,” she retorted. “Anyway,” she said, going back to the subject at hand, “Rafferty Security still has an office in South Boston, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, you could say that….”
His hesitancy puzzled her. She knew her information wasn’t wrong and the question had almost been rhetorical. “Well, what else would you say?”
He coughed, then folded his arms.
“Yeees?” she prompted. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he looked uncomfortable.
“It’s not really an office. It’s more like a community-relations clearinghouse.”
She frowned for a second, then laughed. “You mean you operate a charity there?”
He shifted. “That’s about right.”
The urge to tease was irresistible. “Don’t tell me the oh-so-tough Connor Rafferty has a soft spot. Or should I just call you Connor P.—for philanthropist—Rafferty?”
“We don’t call them philanthropists in South Boston, petunia.”
She cocked her head. “Oh, really? What do you call them, then? Benefactors? Charitable donors? People so rich they give their money away?” She was so enjoying this. “Face it, Connor, you’re just like those well-heeled do-gooders you dislike. You know,” she said, throwing his words back at him, “like those debutantes who organize charity auctions.”
He acknowledged her teasing with a raised eyebrow but then shook his head. “I wasn’t born rich. There’s a difference.”
Rather than argue with him, she asked, “What does this charitable organization do? And, by the way—” she held up a hand “—while I’m enjoying this enormously because I like tweaking your nose about your closet philanthropy, I’m delighted you’ve seen fit to try to do good in the world.”
“This ‘charitable organization,’ as you put it, sponsors programs for neighborhood kids.”
“Very good.” She nodded. “I’m just surprised you’re not doing something more tied to Rafferty Security’s line of business.”
He looked surprised for a second.
“What?”
“We are. Good guess.” He added, “We offer self-defense classes and classes on home security.”
“Ah,” she said.
“I can see that light bulb going on in your head.”
“Well, it does explain a lot after all. Your father was into giving back to the community and you grow up and move back to South Boston and set up a charity. Not only that, but your father died thwarting a burglary and you go into the security business.”
He shoved away from the kitchen counter. “Connecting those dots is easy, petunia. Just don’t read too much into it. I don’t.”
“Why? Are you saying your father’s death had nothing to do with it?” she persisted.
“What I’m saying is you ask too many questions,” he grumbled. “But, yeah, I’ll concede the influence.”
Despite his casual tone, she knew she’d finally penetrated a bit below the facade that Connor Rafferty presented to the world. She’d also gained some insight into the source of Connor’s protective instincts.
She really should give him some slack, she thought, even though she disliked the way he had come barging into her life. Having suffered one tragic loss, he was obviously protective of those close to him—and that protective instinct even extended to helping his former neighbors.
“What are you thinking, princess?” he asked. “I can almost see the wheels turning in that head of yours.”
She gave her head a slight shake, her lips curving upward. “It’s hard to believe, but I was feeling almost inclined to like you.”
He stared at her intensely for a moment, then said, “You should smile more often.”
Their eyes caught and held before she looked away, feeling suddenly uncharacteristically shy and awkward.
“What about you, petunia?” he said, leaning back against the kitchen counter and breaking the mood. “Your mother is a judge and you’re a prosecutor. Seems to me you’re just as guilty of some semi-conscious influences.”
She relaxed as they seemed to be back on safer ground. “Psychoanalyze away,” she said lightly, “but you should know the analogy doesn’t work well. If I’d really wanted to make my family happy, I’d have stayed away from prosecuting criminals at the DA’s Office and gone to some nice, comfy law-firm job.” She wrinkled her nose. “You know, doing non-profit law or some such, which would have dovetailed nicely with all those charity auctions I’m supposed to be organizing.”
He grinned, seeming to recognize the jab at him and his comment the night he’d shown up at her townhouse. “All right,” he said, folding his arms, “maybe I was too quick to judge.”
She gave him a look of mock skepticism. “You think?”
Ignoring her bait, Connor realized it was time to turn the tables on her. She’d probed and poked and made him realize and acknowledge more than he’d wanted to. He figured he was entitled to reciprocate. “Why do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Work at the DA’s Office when you clearly don’t have to, and when you could have gotten a cushier job, which your family clearly expected yo
u to do.”
She cocked her head to the side and contemplated him for a second, as if considering how much to divulge.
“Fess up, princess. You’re not the only one who knows how to be dogged with questions.” She looked deliciously delectable perched on the bar stool, her long legs encased in snug blue jeans, a cotton top outlining a pert and enticingly rounded chest.
“Would you believe me if I said a passion for justice?” she asked. “Before a late-life career in the law, my mother was the queen of those philanthropic charity benefits you’re so fond of. I guess some of that do-gooder stuff rubbed off on me and my brothers.”
“And yet, your family wasn’t thrilled by your choice of the DA’s Office.” Connor forced himself to focus on what they were talking about despite the weight that had settled in his groin.
She looked down as if to shield her expression from him, stretching out her legs as she did so, one of the mules she was wearing dangling from her foot. “You may have noticed they’re rather protective.”
“No more so than with you, the baby of the family and the only girl,” he finished for her.
She looked up, her eyes meeting his. “Exactly.”
He smiled. “Well, you sure as heck didn’t make it easy on them. From what I recall, you did a good job of rattling the bars of the cage.”
She gave him a meaningful look. “You’d know something about that, wouldn’t you?”
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Let’s make a deal to steer clear of that episode in the bar. I’ll admit it wasn’t one of my finer moments. I usually don’t deal in trickery.”
She looked somewhat mollified by his almost apology, but he couldn’t help adding, “Anyway, it’s not as if that night in the bar was out of character for you.”
“Oh?”
There was a wealth of meaning in that “oh” and, if he knew what was good for him, he should probably shut up now. Unfortunately, he was rarely one to shut up where Allison was concerned. “What about the year you started a campaign to get all the high-school girls to accidentally on purpose show up for class braless?” He grinned. “As I recall, it was the first time your school had to make a rule about underwear.”
