frowned. “Yeah. He thinks he owes me, but the truth is, his family bailed me out when I was a kid. Nothing I’ve done would be enough to repay them.”
Despite the explanation he’d promised earlier, Connor’s voluntary statement caught Kelsey off guard, surprising her almost as much as his kiss. She shook her head and protested, “Just because I spilled my guts doesn’t mean you have to—”
“I want to,” he interrupted. “I should have told you about my past last night, but I haven’t told anyone since Señora Delgado pried it out of me as a kid.”
“You—you didn’t tell anyone?” Kelsey prodded.
You didn’t tell Emily?
His penetrating gaze read into the heart of her question, hearing what she hadn’t asked, and he vowed, “I didn’t tell anyone.”
And suddenly Kelsey wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Listening to what he had to say seemed to take on a greater significance because Connor wanted to tell her, to confide in her, something he’d never told Emily.
Without saying another word, Connor stepped forward, his long strides erasing the distance between them. He caught her hand and led her over to the love seat her friends had surprised her with. She’d been overwhelmed by their generosity. The sofa would be the perfect place for her soon-to-be-married couples to sit side by side and decide floral arrangements, wedding invitations, dinner menus.
But as soon as Connor sank down onto the love seat, she decided it would be the perfect place for her to curl up in his arms, the perfect place to kiss him and never stop. The masculine-feminine contrast sent a slow roll of awareness through her stomach as he settled back against the rose-covered cushions. In faded cotton and rough worn denim, he should have looked out of place; instead, his broad shoulders and wide chest looked far more comfortable and inviting than the floral chintz ever could.
Swallowing, she folded onto the couch beside him, one leg bent and angled toward Connor. He stared straight ahead, keeping his silence, and Kelsey sensed his thoughts drifting back to a past he’d purposely chosen not to face…until now.
Taking a deep breath, he said, “My father was a truck driver. Eighteen-wheeler. He worked hard, drank hard. He was…strict.”
The tension in Connor’s shoulders and the way his hands tightened into fists gave a clear definition of the word. Her heart ached for the boy he’d been, a boy she could picture so easily. Dark hair that was too long, a body that was too skinny, and a gaze that was too old. She could see him in her mind as if, somehow, he’d been there all along.
Crazy, she thought, but she felt she knew him so well. And now that Connor was willing to give out answers, did she dare ask more questions? Could she risk getting to know him even better?
In the end, no matter the potential danger to her heart, Kelsey had to ask. Not because she needed to hear the story…but because Connor needed to tell it. “And your mother?” she asked softly.
One by one his fingers unclenched then slowly laced together as if cradling something precious. “She was a dreamer. She was always…looking for something. Always hoping for a better life, only she never found it. I was eight when she died. She’d been taking art lessons, or maybe it was a dance class. I can’t remember.”
Connor cleared his throat. “Anyway, this place wasn’t in the best part of town. I begged her not to go. I knew something bad was going to happen. But she went anyway. No one knows exactly what happened,” he added, the tension pulling at his shoulders revealing how much not knowing still troubled him, “but the police figured a mugging went wrong. Either my mom fought back or the guy panicked, and the gun went off.”
“Oh, Connor, I’m so sorry.” Just as she feared, her heart ached a little more at the telling, and she longed to reach out to him, to comfort him. But she didn’t. This time it was her turn to twist her fingers together, strangling the desire to touch him.
Because—despite his kiss—she still feared her touch wasn’t the one Connor wanted.
But he never told Emily about his family. He’s telling you! Aching or not, her heart had the strength to argue, and Kelsey felt her resistance crumbling.
“The guy stole her purse and wallet,” Connor went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “It took three days before the police figured out who she was.”
“Didn’t your dad report her missing?”
“He was on a long-distance drive. He didn’t know anything was wrong.”
“But when your mother didn’t come home, someone must have tried to get hold of him. The people you were staying with—” As soon as she said the words, realization flooded Kelsey and her breath caught. “You were alone, weren’t you?”
“My mom thought I was old enough to take care of myself, and it should have only been for a few hours.”
Hours that had stretched into days.
“Wasn’t there anyone you could call? A friend of the family?”
“Probably, but hell, I was eight. My mom had told me she was going to be right back. Calling someone would have been like admitting something was wrong, admitting she wasn’t coming back. Ever.”
Kelsey felt heartsick at the thought of the frightened, abandoned boy Connor had been. “You were so young. How did you get on without her?”
“My dad and I stumbled along, but he always blamed my mom for dying. If she’d been happy with her life, if she hadn’t always been out looking for more and expecting something better, she’d still be alive. If she’d just listened to me. I could have—”
Saved her. Connor didn’t say the words, but they rang in the silence and underscored everything he did. “It’s not your fault, Connor,” she insisted, and this time she couldn’t keep from reaching out and grasping his hands as if she could somehow heal the pain and guilt with her touch. “People make their own decisions, and you aren’t responsible for their choices.”
“No, only for my own,” he agreed darkly, but tension tightened his hands into rock-hard fists.
Her family was so wrong about Connor. He wasn’t out to ruin Emily’s wedding—he was trying to save her from a past he couldn’t possibly change. But Kelsey still wasn’t convinced Todd was the threat Connor thought him to be. After all, Connor’s gut reaction had pinned Matt to the restaurant, mistakenly seeing her ex-boyfriend as a physical threat. Wasn’t it possible Todd was as harmless as Matt, and Connor was looking through the eyes of the past and seeing a danger that wasn’t there?
“I can’t imagine what that must have been like to lose your mother so suddenly.” So violently. “But don’t you think maybe that’s colored the way you see people?”
“People like Dunworthy?” he asked with a wry twist to his lips. He pulled his hands out from beneath hers in the pretense of shifting to face her on the love seat. “I know you think I’m wrong about him, but it’s because of my past that I’m sure I’m right.” As if sensing her doubt, he asked, “Haven’t you ever met someone and instantly known the kind of person they are?”
Thoughts of her first impression of Connor assailed Kelsey. The bad boy. The troublemaker. The man out to ruin Emily’s wedding and destroy Kelsey’s chance to prove herself to her family, to make her mother proud…But he was so much more than that.
“Maybe once or twice.”
“Like when you met me?”
One corner of his mouth kicked up with the teasing comment, but the smile lacked full-force charm, his heart not in it. The emotional waters had gotten too deep, and Connor was clearly pulling back to shallower depths. And Kelsey almost wished she had stayed on the surface, wished she could still see Connor the way he wanted to be seen—cocky, self-confident, unbreakable. But she felt herself going under, caught