Never Say Never Again Read online

  A loud thunderclap sounded overhead, startling Bronte. She laughed nervously, not daring to look at Connor. “Boy, does that ever seem like an appropriate exclamation point.” She ran her palm down the length of her jeans, feeling oddly out of sorts. “I didn’t even find out in a particularly interesting way. I was humiliated, yes, but who wouldn’t have been? Given that we’re in the same line of work, it was inevitable that his other life would eventually collide with mine.” She recalled the night that had happened and wanted to wrap her arms around herself. “I’d gone to a charity event hosted at the national art gallery by a prominent D.C. attorney. And there was Thomas with his wife.” She moved to tuck her hair behind her ear. Only her hair wasn’t long enough to tuck. She smiled to herself without humor. “And that’s the end of that story.”

  “You were serious about him?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought I was. But now…I’m not sure if it was my heart that was broken or just my inflated pride.”

  What she was sure about was that she never wanted to feel that vulnerable again. That exposed. And though she trusted her instincts about Connor’s innocence, she didn’t dare extend that trust to her heart. To love him was an emotional risk she couldn’t afford to take, though she was growing more afraid that it might already be too late.

  Silence fell between them. It stretched on, drawing Bronte’s nerves taut. Why didn’t he say something? Tell her she’d been a fool for falling for a married man? Point out how dumb she’d been for having ended up a cliché? She shifted uncomfortably on the couch, fighting the urge to ask him what he thought.

  His voice was so quiet when he spoke she nearly didn’t hear him. “I was there when my mother died.”

  Bronte swore her heart stopped midbeat. “What did you say?”

  She recalled the other night in her kitchen. When she’d asked him about his mother. How she died. He’d told her he didn’t want to talk about it. And in the ensuing silence, she’d shared her own mother’s unfortunate circumstances. She’d done it to break the ice. To let him know that no matter what had happened, he wasn’t alone. That everyone had some incident from their childhood that changed their entire lives.

  Foreboding spread under her skin.

  Connor pushed from the couch and stepped to where a radio rested on the bare mantle above the fireplace. He turned it on and flipped through the stations until he came to a weather report.

  Bronte stared at his back, watching him make normal, everyday movements, but knowing that there was nothing normal about what he’d just shared.

  She found her voice. “How old were you?”

  He didn’t respond. He merely made a show of listening to the announcer report on the storm passing overhead. Distantly, Bronte heard the tinny voice telling listeners that it had blown in quickly, and had initially been expected to pass just as quickly. But the system had stalled over the area. Local residents were being instructed to be on alert for severe weather throughout the night.

  Finally, Connor shrugged, the movement revealing the tension coiling his shoulder muscles. “I don’t know. Nine? Ten, maybe.” He rubbed the back of his neck, drawing her attention to his wide hand and long, tapered fingers.

  Bronte’s heart contracted in her chest. God. He had been about the same age as she was when her own mother was injured. Only she still had her mom. Connor had lost his.

  She tried to imagine her life without her mother in it…and couldn’t. Her head spun with all the possibilities—for both her and the man looking so alone across the room from her. What kind of man would Connor have been had his mother lived? Would he be married by now? With children of his own? Would he be in law enforcement? Or would his mother have encouraged him to take a different career path? Maybe on to law school? Or perhaps he might have followed in his grandfather’s footsteps and resurrected the old McCoy farm Sean had told her about when she arrived earlier that evening.

  “Nobody knows,” he said, luring her away from her thoughts, “that I was there when it happened. Not even Pops.”

  Bronte’s chest tightened unbearably. She wanted to go to him. Pull him into her arms and hold him tightly. But she was afraid that if she did, he might not continue. And he needed to. She knew without him telling her that this was something he’d kept bottled up for far too long.

  But it took superhuman strength to stop herself from getting up from that sofa and crossing to him.

  “We knew it was coming. Or rather, Pops knew. The rest of us suspected.” His voice grew rougher, more hesitant, yet held a tender note of determination. “In the months before, she was in bed a lot. And Pops took her to the doctor at least three times a week. But they never told us anything. Never revealed she had a savage, then untreatable strain of breast cancer. And we were too afraid to ask.” His chin dropped to his chest. “That morning she seemed to be feeling better. She’d gotten up to fix us breakfast, just like she always used to. And for a few sweet hours, it was almost like things had been before, you know? Almost. Pops went off to work. We went out to play….” His eyes held a faraway expression. “Then one minute she was calling me in from the old barn…the next she collapsed to the kitchen floor.”

  A hot, scalding tear slid down Bronte’s right cheek, but she barely noticed it.

  Connor rested his forearm against the mantle, his back still to her, rubbing his thumb along the length of his brow line. “Later, the coroner said it was a brain aneurysm likely brought on by the stress of her deteriorating condition. Nothing I did, nothing I could have done, could have saved her.” He dropped his head. “After I realized that she was…all I could think of to do was to keep the boys from finding her. Prevent them from seeing her like that…so still…so white…in the middle of the kitchen floor.” His voice caught and he cleared his throat. “I kept them outside until Pops got home. Five hours later.”

  Five hours later?

  “Oh, God,” she murmured, forgetting why she’d thought it important to stay on the couch and rushing to him. She curved her arms around his waist, crushing her front to his back. Pressing her hand to his chest and resting her head against his shoulder.

  She tried to imagine that brave little boy that had watched his mother die. That ten-year-old whose thoughts had not been of himself, or the tragedy he had witnessed, of what it would mean to him to lose his mother. Instead his four younger brothers had been this boy’s concern. A single, solitary, admirable boy who had managed to hold a family together when one catastrophic moment could have torn them irreversibly apart. She clamped her eyes tightly closed. No matter how broad and capable his shoulders now, they hadn’t always been that way. Yet he had still carried the weight.

  He caught her hands in his and held them tightly against his pounding heart. “I’ve never shared that with anyone, Bronte. Hell, I’m not even sure why I told you.”

  She rubbed her tear-soaked cheek against his shirt, her heart breaking for the injured adult she even now held.

  “I’m glad that I’m the one you told,” she murmured, catching her bottom lip between her teeth, tasting the tears there, trying to staunch them but knowing it was a hopeless battle.

  She couldn’t be sure how long they’d stood there like that, just the two of them, in that big old house that used to be his grandparents’. The only sounds the beating of their hearts, the drone of the radio announcer’s voice and the spring storm raging outside. Her holding him. Him holding her hands. Time seemed to stand still. The courage he’d shown by sharing what he had reached out to her even more solidly than his hands. Wrapped itself around her heart. Told her that whatever may have remained of the barriers she had so carefully erected after Thomas’s betrayal were now completely demolished.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, Bronte became aware that the radio announcer had signed off and a new program had begun. A lineup that included music. Old big band tunes. Recognizable pieces, with horns and strings and touching, sweeping orchestral movements. She increased the strength of her embra
ce, holding Connor so tightly her arms ached. As though if she held tight enough, long enough, they would become one rather than the two that they were.

  Slowly, he lifted one of her hands from his chest and pressed it against his jaw line. She reveled in the feel of his stubble against her sensitive fingertips. Wondered at the generosity of this man. The kindness of his heart, his spirit.

  A hauntingly familiar composition drifted from the small transistor radio. Her heart seemed to expand to the point of bursting. Someone To Watch Over Me.

  She realized then that that’s what she’d always wanted, and what Connor needed. Not in a physical sense—rather, they both needed someone to stand guard over their souls.

  “Come here,” Connor said quietly.

  He gently caught both of her wrists and tugged her to stand in front of him. Suddenly, inexplicably Bronte felt exposed…stripped completely naked of all pretense as she hesitantly lifted her gaze to his. Until she glimpsed that same honesty, that utter vulnerability, in the depths of Connor’s eyes.

  She didn’t realize how alone she’d felt until that very moment. Not until she felt the almost audible click of connection that bonded her with the man now tenderly grasping her shoulders, looking at her as if she was all that mattered in this life, telling her with his eyes what words could never hope to convey.

  “Bronte O’Brien, will you dance with me?”

  Tears gathered anew and she laughed at the absurdity of the quiet question. Had it really been just a few days ago that they had both stood in that hotel ballroom during Kelli and David’s reception? When she’d revealed she’d never danced? When she’d suspected that he preferred not to dance?

  Yet now here they were, just the two of them, her right hand in his left, moving slowly to the music, their feet somehow finding the way—just as their hearts were beginning to.

  Connor groaned and released her hand. She gasped when he pulled her more fully into his embrace, still somehow managing to match the rhythm of the song.

  All too soon the piece ended. They stood completely still. His chin resting against her hair. Her nose tucked into the soft folds of his shirt.

  Then she took a deep breath, closed her eyes and said quietly, “I think you should turn yourself in to the authorities.”

  She felt him stiffen in her arms. She immediately grasped his arms, hating that what she’d said had broken the magic of the moment, but needing to say it anyway. She stared up at him desperately.

  He blinked once, then again, as if unable to believe she’d just said what she had.

  “It’s the only thing you can do, Connor. Don’t you see? By evading arrest, you look even guiltier.”

  She watched his throat as he swallowed. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “Let’s not argue over words. You make yourself look guilty, period.”

  His gaze swept from her right eye to her left. “And my turning myself in isn’t going to change that.”

  She ignored the regret gathering in her stomach. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it won’t. But then again, maybe it will. At the very least, if you turn yourself in, you’ll look like a man who doesn’t have anything to hide.”

  “I’ll look like a man guiltier than hell.”

  She grasped his arms with both her hands, determined to get him to listen to her. “Do you trust me, Connor?”

  He avoided meeting her gaze.

  “I’ve been with the U.S. attorney’s office for four years. I see cases like yours on a daily basis,” she whispered, amazed she could speak past the emotion clouding her throat. “Don’t you see? Running never accomplishes anything. It only makes things worse. You piss off the attorney in charge. You tick off the police trying to arrest you. And you go into the situation with two strikes already against you.” She swallowed, unable to tell if she was getting through to him. “You turn yourself in, maintain your innocence, and you start everyone thinking, ‘Hey, maybe this guy’s telling the truth.’ You make them wonder. Something that will never happen if you go the other way. When they catch up to you, and they will, they’ll be so pumped up on adrenaline from the challenge, so high on having caught the big, bad criminal, they won’t hear a single thing you have to say.”

  The muscles under her hands bunched again, although she suspected it was for an altogether different reason this time.

  “Let me help you, Connor. I can do that. I have pull at the office. I’ll make sure we don’t contest your request for bail. You’ll walk into that holding cell only to turn around and walk back out.”

  He appeared ready to pull away. She held tighter.

  “You have my word on that, Connor.”

  He finally met her gaze. The intensity in his eyes nearly made her turn away, it was so difficult to look at.

  Oh, how easy it was for her to tell him to turn himself in. She wasn’t the one who would have to be stripped of everything that was familiar to her, including her clothes. She wasn’t the one who would be locked in a tiny cell. She wasn’t the one who was going to be treated like the very criminals she’d spent her life prosecuting.

  She shuddered, but forced herself to hold his gaze. No matter how difficult, she felt strongly that this was the right course of action to take. There were no other options.

  “Okay,” he said so quietly, she nearly didn’t hear him.

  She blinked. “What?”

  He was the one who looked away. “I said, okay. I do trust you. If you think this is the thing for me to do, then I’ll do it.”

  Never before had Bronte felt so entrusted. Neither had she ever felt so scared.

  His gaze flicked back to her face. “But I’m not going to do it tonight.”

  She blinked. “Why?”

  “Because tonight neither one of us is going anywhere.” He freed one of his arms from her grasp and curved his hand around the back of her neck. “Tonight we’re going to finish what we started last night and the night before that—hell, what began years ago in college.” He slanted his mouth softly against hers. “Tonight I want you to help me create something to help see me through the days to come.”

  He gently pulled her closer to him. Bronte all too willingly went. Her eyelids fluttered closed. Her mouth went dry. Her heart beat an erratic, anticipatory rhythm against her rib cage. When her lips finally touched his, her breath rushed from her lungs on a sigh.

  She knew in that moment that she’d gone to all the trouble to find him, drove all that way to talk to him, as much for this reason as to ask him to turn himself over to officials.

  He blindly maneuvered her back to the couch to sit. She immediately scooted closer to him, straining to press her chest against his. Like so many things in their blossoming relationship, this had been a long time coming. It went back further than just the kiss they’d shared in the park the night of Kelli and David’s wedding reception. It went back further than when they met again in that bar over the pool table. The foundation for this moment had been laid way back in that class when she had purposely sat in front of him and felt his gaze on her as surely and potently as his touch.

  She moaned, trying to get closer still. Connor deepened the kiss and grasped her hips, planting her firmly in his lap as she curved her hands under his arms and dug her fingers into the hard planes of his back. Never had she felt a man so solid. It was more than just his height or the size of his muscles. It was the entirety of the man himself. The soft reflection of herself in his eyes. What he’d had the courage to share with her. And though she had nothing to fear, she felt incredibly safe there in the cradle of his arms, felt somehow…complete. Like she’d lived her life missing half of herself, and now she had found it.

  He cupped both of her breasts in the palms of his hands. She gasped, breaking contact with his mouth in order to pull in a needed breath. She absently rubbed her cheek against his stubbled one as his thumbs traced circles around her throbbing nipples. When he rolled the tips between his fingers, a bolt of lightning so much like the ones brightening the
stormy skies outside struck low in her belly, leaving fire burning in its wake.

  She tunneled her hands into the hair at the nape of his neck and closed her eyes. “Don’t you dare pull away this time, McCoy. Don’t you dare….” Even his earlobe seemed as tough as the rest of him as she pulled it between her teeth and gently bit down.

  He grasped her shoulders and drew her in front of him, staring into her eyes. “I couldn’t if I wanted to, B. I couldn’t if I wanted to.” His expression was fierce. “But I need to say something, Bronte, need to tell you something. This…our being together…making love…it won’t change anything. You need to understand that I…” He dragged in a breath. “Kids are so vulnerable. Needy. It’s amazing how easily you can screw up their lives. I’m a perfect example of that. My brothers, Jake, Marc, Mitch and David, are perfect examples of that. That’s why I never want to have any. Never want to get married. Ever.”

  Bronte’s heart thudded painfully against her rib cage as she smiled up at him tremulously. “Well, then…I’ll just have to take what I can get, won’t I?”

  He stared at her for a long moment, as if gauging her honesty. Then he groaned and captured her mouth in a kiss that was as deep as the fathomless green of his eyes. Bronte liquefied against him, covering him like a second skin as he pushed her back against the cushions, simultaneously thrusting her shirt up, and her jeans down. Not even bothering with the button, he burrowed his fingers between the soft material and her flesh, not stopping until his fingertips rested at the top of her damp curls. Bronte wriggled beneath him, growing impatient, fearful that, despite his words, every moment that ticked by increased the chances of his pulling away again.

  She fumbled for the front of his jeans, then switched to hers, moaning when she yanked down the zipper, giving him freer access to her throbbing parts. She spread her legs even as she tried to yank down the suddenly constraining material and he slid his fingers between her slick flesh, stroking her back and forth, back and forth until she was afraid she’d never be able to draw another breath again.