Page 30 of Daredevil Lady and the Mysterious Millionaire (The Hidden Hearts Collection #3)
Ten
R ory awoke from a deep, dreamless night with a headache niggling behind her eyes, oppressed by the feeling that something was wrong. Her mind yet fogged with sleep, she remembered that she had gone to bed troubled, but her thoughts were not collected enough to recall what that trouble had been.
Whatever it was, it had sent her to sleep hugging her pillow as she always did when beset with some worry.
Even now that downy cushion was crushed close to her breasts.
Thrusting it away from her, Rory rolled onto her back, rubbing the haze from her eyes.
She blinked at the sunlight streaming across the oak railing at the foot of her bed.
The morning was well advanced past sunrise judging by the sounds emanating from the sidewalks below.
She had left her window open a crack, allowing the clatter of passing horse carts to invade her bedchamber, the shrill voices of children marching off to school, shouting and scuffling, the milkman cursing at Finn MacCool for nipping his ankle again, Miss Flanagan hollering back it served Mr. Peaby right for forgetting her second bottle of cream.
Just the normal Monday hubbub on McCreedy Street. Why then did something seem so different? There was always enough noise on a workday to wake the dead.
Or Zeke.
Rory sat up with a start, memory flooding back to her. That’s what was unusual. She was not alone in her apartment. Zeke Morrison had spent the night on her sofa and was likely still lost in slumber.
She must have been crazy, insisting that he stay. Yet when she recalled that hollow look in his eyes, she realized she could have done no differently.
In truth, part of her regretted she had not led him to the warmth of her bed, cradled him in her arms and offered him comfort.
Comfort, Aurora Rose Kavanaugh? A stern voice echoed in her head, sounding like the old nun who had taught her her catechism. Are you sure that was all you wished to offer him?
Rory refused to answer that question, even to herself.
She scrambled out of bed and pulled a dressing gown over the white muslin of her nightgown.
She shouldn’t even be thinking about such things as having Zeke in her bed.
Hadn’t she come close enough to being a sinner last night?
Recollection of what had nearly happened with Zeke upon the sofa should have shamed her.
She should have been grateful Tony arrived when he did, interrupting Zeke’s lovemaking.
Instead she felt curiously bereft. It was like hearing the opening notes of some lilting melody, only to have it cut off and being left yearning, wondering whether she would ever hear the rest of that haunting refrain.
What romantic nonsense. Rory tried to give herself a swift mental shake as she reached for the comb on her nightstand, tugging it through her tangle of curls, Nonsense it might be, but she still felt angry at Tony for his intrusion, dragging Zeke’s sister to Rory’s flat, setting off that confrontation.
Zeke Morrison is a bad man.
How childish and how spiteful Tessa’s words had sounded.
Yet no matter how it was worded, the woman’s warning was not so different from those that Rory had repeated to herself.
Hadn’t she tried to run away from Zeke, determined never to see him again?
Tessa’s accusations should have reinforced Rory’s own qualms about the man.
Instead they had had the opposite effect.
Rory had wanted to spring to Zeke’s defense.
She sensed that Zeke had been brutalized enough in his life without his stepsister pouring acid into old wounds.
Strange that someone like Zeke, so street-toughened, so ready with his fists, should have stood so helpless against the mere cut and thrust of a woman’s tongue.
Stranger still that Rory should feel so tenderly protective of a man large enough to crush her slender frame with one blow.
But the thought of being alone with him in her flat no longer frightened her. It disturbed her in an odd shivery kind of way, but it didn’t frighten her. She caught her heart racing as she contemplated slipping into the parlor, rousing him from sleep.
They had never eaten supper last night. She bet he’d be hungry. She derived immense satisfaction from the thought of leading him into her tiny kitchen, bustling about getting the coffee ready, setting before him a plateful of eggs and toast.
She pictured him sitting opposite her, his hair mussed, his jaw shadowed with a night’s growth of dark beard.
He would regard her over the rim of his cup with that languid manner of appraisal that set all her skin a-tingle.
Maybe their hands would meet. Maybe, just maybe, he would feel like talking, opening that locked vault that was his heart.
This domestic scene in her imagination grew so strong that Rory slipped eagerly into a pair of carpet slippers. She was still forcing her heel into one as she limped through the bedroom door and down the short hallway.
She tiptoed beneath the arch that led into the parlor. “Zeke?” she called softly.
Her gaze tracked to the couch, and she frowned to see the coverlet tossed upon the floor. The pillow bore the indentation made by his head, his coat was flung over the chair, but the tiny parlor was empty.
Somehow Rory knew there was no use searching for Zeke in the kitchen or tapping upon the door of the narrow closet that comprised her bathroom.
He was gone.
Disappointment washed over her, and for a minute, she just stood, staring at the vacant sofa as though if she looked long and hard, she could conjure out of thin air the solid frame of muscle that was Zeke.
Eventually she was roused from this gloomy contemplation by a clacking sound. The side window had been left flung wide open, and the brisk morning breeze was causing the curtains to billow out, knocking against the etagere, threatening to dislodge some of the knickknacks.
Rory moved to close the window. As she struggled to do so, she glanced into the street below.
Perhaps he had only stepped out for a moment to— to what?
Pet Finn McCool? Pass the time of day with Miss Flanagan?
Foolish thoughts. There was no one down there except a mother pushing a perambulator, some clerkish-looking male sprinting past her, obviously late in catching the horsecar uptown.
Rory forced the sash closed and drew the drapes. “Well, Mr. Morrison,” she murmured. “It would seem this time it is you who has run away.”
Run away from her? That hardly seemed possible, not after the determined way he had been pursuing her, tracking her to her own part of town. More likely it was memories that he fled, those ghosts of the past that forever seemed to be looking over his shoulder.
Damn Tony anyway and Tessa too. She took an angry pleasure in imagining the tongue lashing she would give Tony the next time she saw him, her thoughts interrupted only by the sound of a knock at the door.
“Oh, the devil!”
Rory wondered who could be plaguing her at this early hour. But hope stirred within her. Yes, it just might be the devil, with his wicked dark eyes and lazy grin.
Rory rushed across the room and flung the door open.
But it wasn’t Zeke come back to her, full of apologies and explanations. It was only Tony, shuffling his feet, looking awkward.
“Uh, g’morning, Rory.”
“After all the trouble you caused last night, Tony Bertelli, I don’t have much to say to you.” She tried to shut the door in his face.
He jammed the heel of his hand against the frame, preventing her.
“Aw, come on, Rory, please. I ain’t here to fight with you anymore. I only want to tell you I am sorry.”
She hesitated, but she could see that he meant it. The hollows beneath his eyes told her that he’d had a bad night, Tony who always slept with the imperturbability of a granite boulder.
Not that he didn’t deserve to pass a sleepless night after what he had done. But how could she keep her heart steeled against him when he stood twisting his cap in his ungainly hands, looking at her so wistfully?
Grudgingly, she stepped back, allowing him to enter.
He stepped inside the door, making no move to come any farther into her parlor, shuffling his feet as uncomfortably as any stranger not sure of his welcome—Tony, her friend, her brother, the kid from the next block, the boy whose heart she was breaking.
A small sigh escaped her. “Oh, stop acting like such a goose, Tony. I’m not going to bite you.”
“No? The look in your eyes when you opened the door reminded me of Miss Flanagan’s dog.” He tried to smile, but his joke fell flat. He took in a deep breath. “I am sorry about what happened last night. I shouldn’t have brought that woman here.”
“Indeed you shouldn’t have. You caused a great deal of upset.”
“You’re telling me!” Tony rolled his eyes. “That Miss Marceone cried all over my jacket the whole way home. She told me some more about how Morrison stopped her from marrying. Mother of God, that fool woman was going to run off with Marco Duracy.”
Apparently the name conveyed something to Tony, but Rory merely shot him a blank look.
“Marco Duracy? You never heard Angelo talk about him? Well, see, Angelo knew this fellow from down on the docks whose uncle’s third wife’s daughter?—”
“Oh, Tony, please.” Rory groaned. “It’s too early in the morning for this. Just make your point.”
“Anyway, this Marco Duracy was a real worthless piece of—” Tony broke off, with a cough. “He was a bounder, lazy, good-for-nothing. Mean tempered. I wouldn’t let any sister of mine get within a mile of him.”
“Then perhaps whatever Tessa might say, Zeke’s actions were justified.”
“Maybe. But it doesn’t make me like this Morrison guy any better. There are still some things about him that are real doubtful. But I didn’t come here to get you all riled, talking about him again.”