Now, Connor grimaced. Why he should be recalling such childish memories was beyond him. It didn’t make any difference now, anyway.
Slowing, he searched the dirt road for the turnoff leading to the old place. There. There it was. He turned in, grimacing when his front right tire bounced off an obstruction he couldn’t see. He drove a good half a mile before the house emerged from the tangle of trees.
And spotted Pops’s car sitting right out front.
He drew to a stop, staring at the new sedan. Damn. He hadn’t expected his father to remember his old hangout. He glanced into the rearview mirror, considering backing out. But with his lights having swept the house and the car in front of him, he would come off looking like the coward he was.
The last person he wanted to face now was Pops. He had enough on his plate without having to pile his difficulties with his father on top of it.
He watched as Sean McCoy walked down the two front steps and came to stand in the middle of his highlights. He shaded his eyes with his hand, looking straight at him.
Connor drew up to park next to the sedan then got out of the SUV.
“Pops,” he said.
“Connor.”
He stood directly before his father. His father looking at him. Him looking at his father.
“We’ve been worried,” Pops finally said.
Connor shifted from one foot to the other and crossed his arms. Of course, “they’d” been worried, not him. Not strictly his father had worried about him.
He tried to shake off the feeling. Not liking how…juvenile it came off.
“So have I,” he said.
He brushed past Pops on his way to the front of the house. He couldn’t make out much in the dark, but did notice that Sean must have lighted a lamp. It shined like a warm beacon inside the otherwise deserted structure.
“Liz and Mitch came out and cleaned the place up a little this afternoon. Brought some stuff,” Pops said quietly from behind him.
Connor tensed. How many people knew he’d be coming out here?
Rather than go inside the house, he instead turned, put his bag down and sat down on the steps, running his hands over his face, then gazing at his father. “What are you doing here?”
Pops strode over, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jeans as he walked. “Kelli’s friend, Bronte, called this morning. She wanted to know where you might have gone.” He shrugged. “Aside from your apartment and the house, I couldn’t come up with a single alternative—until I remembered how you used to come here when you were younger.”
Connor considered him from under his brows, trying not to show his surprise. Bronte had called his father? Heat filled his stomach and his palms suddenly itched. He slowly rubbed his hands together. “That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”
Sean stood stock still for a moment. Then he sighed and moved to sit next to him. Connor moved over to give him room. “You always did need me to spell things out for you, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, well, maybe it’s because you didn’t do a whole hell of a lot of that when it was important.”
“And now’s not important?”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
“No, I’d say you are.” Sean leaned back. “When were you planning on calling me? Let me know what was going on?”
He’d used the word “me” rather than “we.” Not once, but twice. Connor stared out into the darkness of night. All traces of the sun were completely gone and the stars were disappearing one by one under the blanket of encroaching clouds. The wind had also begun to pick up, ruffling through his cropped hair and causing him to shudder. “Honestly…I don’t know.”
Sean nodded. “I know. You would have called once you thought you had things in hand.”
Connor snapped to look at him.
“And since you haven’t called, that means circumstances are as bad as they look.”
“It can’t get much worse than being wanted for murder.”
“No, it can’t.” He felt his father’s gaze on him in the darkness. “So what are you planning on doing about it?”
Connor’s stomach twisted.
“Have you contacted an attorney?”
“I don’t need an attorney.”
“Of course, you don’t. Because getting one would make you look guilty, wouldn’t it?”
He hated that his father knew him so well.
“What does Bronte have to say about the situation?”
Connor straightened. What should he tell him? That Bronte thought he was guilty of having intimate relations with a witness? And that, by extension, she very well may believe him guilty of murder? But that none of that made any difference when it came to her wanting him?
He ground his back teeth together.
He felt Sean place a hand on his shoulder. He was torn between the urge to shrug him off and the need to lean into the touch from his father. “I know I’m probably the last person you want to talk to about this, Connor. And I can’t tell you I’m exactly sure why that is. I know I’ve made mistakes in the past—”
Connor’s hmmph cut him off as he caught sight of a flash of lightning in the far southwestern corner of the sky.
Pops slowly removed his hand. “But promise me something—if you can’t talk to me, promise me you’ll talk to someone. One of your brothers. An attorney. Someone. I know you want to believe yourself invincible. But even the best need help every now and again. It doesn’t make you a weaker man. It makes you human.”
Connor said nothing.
How many times in his life had he wished his father would seek him out? Talk to him, one-on-one, man to man? How many times had he sought his father out, needing advice on what to do with one of his brothers? And how many times had Pops been wallowing in the contents of a whiskey bottle?
Oh, Sean no longer drank. Hadn’t for years. But that didn’t change the fact that he once had. Or that he had abandoned his sons to his eldest son’s care after the death of his wife.
Pops got up. “I’m here, Connor. That’s not something I’ve always been able to say, but I’m here now. All you have to do is pick up a phone.”
He stood there for a long moment, then turned toward his car.
“Pops?” Connor found himself saying.
His father stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“Thanks, you know, for coming out here.”
He discerned his father’s nod as he continued on toward his car.
For a long while after Pops had pulled away, Connor sat staring in the direction he’d gone. How easy it should have been to get up, drive to the house and lay everything out on the table. Handle things the way he always demanded his brothers face difficult matters. But if there was one thing that the past year or so had proven, it was that each of them still felt…alone, somehow. Apart from the others. Too much had gone unsaid. Too many ghosts haunted their pasts.
No, not too many ghosts. One ghost. The ghost of their mother Kathryn Connor McCoy.
He finally hauled himself up off the steps. Gazing one last time toward his SUV and the road Pops had taken, he turned around and climbed the two stairs to the cement porch of his grandparents’ old house. The light still shone in the window, but he was suddenly filled with the urge to turn around and head back into the city. To go to Bronte’s. To ask her to be that someone Pops had mentioned.
He dragged his steps to a stop, the rising wind whipping around him wildly. But what could she possibly do to help? The Pryka case was no longer hers. In fact, she worked at an office that was, for all intents and purposes, his enemy. It was her co-workers currently seeking him out for arrest. It was her co-workers who believed him every bit as guilty as the charges implied. And she might very well believe the same right along with them.
Maybe it was exactly for that reason that he couldn’t get her out of his head. If she did believe him responsible for Robbins’s death, she would have had him arrested by now. He knew that as surely as he knew the
earth would continue to turn. The fact that she hadn’t…well, that said something, didn’t it?
Yeah, it said that she was confused by her attraction to him.
Just as he was confused by his attraction to her.
Turning the doorknob, he stepped inside the only place he had left to go. The house he had escaped to countless times when he was younger. Had claimed as his own personal safe haven.
And stopped dead in the middle of the foyer.
One very refreshing Bronte O’Brien, dressed in baggy jeans and a snug-fitting top that accentuated her small breasts, got up from the old sofa in the living room and stood looking at him expectantly.
9
BRONTE HAD ALWAYS SCOFFED when she’d heard the description “her heart was in her throat.” After all, it was a physical impossibility, wasn’t it? But as she stood there, in the middle of that old, dusty house, anticipating Connor’s response to finding her waiting for him…well, she felt as if something was stuck in her throat. And that something very well could have been her heart.
She watched his face intently. His surprise was plainly visible. But it was the other expression that made the object in her throat dip way low in her belly. He appeared…relieved, glad, almost pleased to see her.
She smiled tremulously. “Hi,” she said, feeling utterly stupid.
“Hi, yourself.”
At least fifteen feet separated them, but they could have been standing face to face judging by how very close she felt to him at that very moment.
She cleared her throat. “I hope you don’t mind. You know that I called Kelli asking where you might be.” She gave a quiet laugh. “How was I supposed to know that I’d hear from every last McCoy mere minutes later?”
“My brothers…called you?”
She nodded. “Your father first. He was very worried. Told me about this place.” She glanced toward the door. “Is he still here?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
She turned around and picked up a thermos from the table behind her. “I, um, thought you might like this.”
He eyed the metal container as though it might hold the secret to his existence. “Please don’t tell me it’s soup.”
Her smiled widened. “Coffee. Colombian. Extra strong.”
He groaned as she opened the thermos and poured out a healthy portion. He was next to her in a few strides and accepted the cup from her.
“Talk about cheap dates,” she said.
His gaze met her across the cup.
“Bronte…”
She lifted her chin as she screwed the top back on the coffee. “What?”
“About last night…”
She slowly sank into the sagging couch behind her, noticing that he chose to continue standing. That was okay. She supposed she deserved to be at a physical disadvantage after what had happened between them. “Look, Connor, I don’t know how else to go about this but just to come right out and say it.”
“That would have been my advice.”
She gave a small smile. “What I’m trying to say here is…well, I really don’t know what to believe.”
“You watched the tape.”
She exhaled, glad he was making this somewhat easier for her when it was probably the last thing he should be doing. “Yes.”
He finally sat down on the couch beside her, planting his forearms on his thighs. “Doesn’t look very good, does it?”
She slowly shook her head, finding words impossible with him sitting so close.
“I don’t get it.” He looked at her squarely, the weighty shadow in his eyes drawing her in deeper. “I know for a fact that I didn’t go into that house that afternoon. Yet even I thought that was me going in and out of there on that tape.” He clasped his hands tightly together. “There has to be some kind of rational explanation. But if there is, I certainly can’t find one. I wasn’t even on duty.”
“Have you tried finding anyone who could verify your alibi?”
His grimace would have been endearing had it not been so fateful. “No. I only had a few hours between David’s wedding ceremony and the reception.” He shrugged tightly. “I was feeling wound up so I drove out to a piece of abandoned farmland a half hour inside Virginia that Marc and I used to use for target practice, and squeezed off a couple dozen rounds. The closest house is more than a mile away.”
“You were alone.”
“Alone.”
The word held significance beyond his lack of a compelling alibi. It described how he looked right now. Alone. Lost. A man who had lost his anchor and was trying desperately to find shore.
Bronte looked down, mildly surprised to find her hand resting against his forearm. The contrast of her pale, freckled fingers against his tanned, hair-peppered skin fascinated her. The muscles beneath her fingertips bunched, then relaxed, as if she offered more than a simple touch. It was as if she’d offered him a lifeline.
His voice hummed with emotion. “Why did you seek me out, Bronte? After last night…”
She withdrew her hand, immediately noticing the loss of his warmth and suppressing a tiny shiver. She glanced out the curtainless front windows, noticing the flashes of lightning, feeling a distant rumble of thunder rock the house. The first drops of rain pinged against the pane as she swallowed. “Last night you gave me a lot of food for thought, Connor.” She rubbed her arms with her hands. “You were right. We…I had no business encouraging a sexual relationship. Not without knowing what I thought. How I felt.”
She sensed his tension next to her. “And now?”
She gave him an anxious smile. “Now…well, I’m still not all that clear on how I feel beyond that I want you.” She turned toward him more fully, pulling her knee up onto the couch. “Everything inside of me is screaming that you’re just not capable of doing the crime you’re accused of.”
The uneasiness in his eyes melted into gratitude. “Despite the evidence against me.”
She smiled. “Maybe because of it.”
He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “How do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Everything looks just too neat somehow. Too clear cut.” She propped her elbow on the sofa back and leaned her head against her hand. “I learned early on to be suspicious of a good thing. You know that old saying if something seems too good to be true, it probably is?”
He nodded.
She quietly cleared her throat again. “Anyway, what I mean about the easy conviction is that there’s no such thing. There’s always something, you know? Some element that clouds the issue. A witness that steps forward and puts the defendant somewhere else. A missing weapon. Fingerprints that don’t belong to the victim or the defendant. Piddly little details like that. Something that a good defense attorney can latch onto and use as a get-out-of-jail-free card.” She turned one hand palm up. “But in your case, it’s almost like you got caught holding the smoking gun by a hundred witnesses.”
He grimaced. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“Sorry. I warned you that I’m not known for subtlety.”
“I know. And that’s one of the things I admire about you.”
Bronte’s throat closed around the words she was about to say. She blinked at him. Not because she was surprised he felt that way, but because he’d said the words aloud.
She’d sensed many things about Connor McCoy since first crossing paths with him in college. But she’d come to know many more details about him in the past few days.
He was a man to whom emotion of any kind didn’t come easily. He felt deeply, but was loathe to acknowledge those feelings, which then, in turn, made them that much more acute. His word was his bond. If he said something, he meant it—to an astronomical, exponential degree. Truth and honesty meant more to him than freedom. It was what made him such a damn good U.S. marshal. And what made him such a fascinating, rare man.
And it was exactly the reason she was convinced he could never have killed Melissa Robbins.
She smil
ed at him, taken aback by the moisture in her eyes. “You better watch out, McCoy, or I might think that you’re trying to change the subject.”
“Maybe that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”
She threaded her fingers through her hair then looked down at her jeans. Long, quiet moments passed with nothing but the sound of the rain pelting the window and an occasional rumble of thunder.
“Tell me about the guy.”
She raised her eyes. “Pardon me.”
He cleared his throat. “The first time I came to your house, you’d said you were coming off a bad relationship.” She noticed the way he fumbled over the last word. He left out that she’d also said she wasn’t looking for another relationship. “Who was he? And what made it bad?”
She moved until she was sitting straight again. What did she tell him? Considering everything else going on, she supposed the truth in this instance couldn’t hurt—aside from her, that is. “Um…what can I say? The relationship itself wasn’t bad. The ending was.”
“They usually are.”
She smiled. “Yes, I guess you’re right there.” She watched the thunderstorm through the window for a long moment. “He was an attorney. I was an attorney. We seemed to have a lot in common.” She glanced at him. “That’s why I said yes when he proposed.”
Connor’s brows slowly raised, then he looked pointedly at her bare ring finger.
She rubbed the area self-consciously with her thumb. She hadn’t even told her best friend what had happened between her and Thomas. Still, she found she wanted to tell Connor about it. Needed to unload the weight that had been resting on her shoulders for much too long. “The only problem is, Thomas neglected to tell me something that drastically affected our future together. A fact that I feel so stupid for not having seen myself.” She briefly bit on her bottom lip. “You see, he was, um, already married.”
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