A Heart Revealed (4 page)

Emma paused, hands immersed in the soapy water as she rinsed out the bloody rag. “What happened two weeks ago?” she asked with a pinch of brows.

“Nothing—
yet—
other than she’s been coming into the store more times in a week than I’ve seen her in the last year. You know, the same thing as before—smiling, flirting . . . browsing.” He cuffed the back of his neck, his usual easy smile suddenly flat. “Now I ask you, Emma, why in tarnation does a twenty-two-year-old woman with a rock on her hand the size of the Blarney Stone and a wedding a month away need to browse in a hardware store?”

Emma blinked. “I don’t know, maybe she’s on the hunt for the perfect wedding gift for her fiancé.” She wrung out the wet cloth, her curiosity as piqued as Sean’s.

“Yeah, a length of rope and level so she can keep him in line.”

She cocked her head. “Maybe she knows he needs a particular tool. Is he handy?”

One blond brow jagged high. “Handy? The only thing handy about J. Chester Connealy is his bankroll. The man wouldn’t know a pliers from a wrench, which certainly explains how Rose locked him into this marriage. She can squeeze a man in a death hold tighter than any woman I’ve ever seen, and the poor guy probably never saw it coming.”

Emma gave him a patient smile. “I’m sure he’s in love with her, Sean. After all, men are not prone to put a ring on a woman’s finger unless they are.”

“Yeah, well, I wish he’d hurry up and marry her then. Every time she comes in the store, I get this queasy feeling. Like she’s sizing me up more than the inventory.”

“Could be your imagination, you know.” Emma worked her lip to temper her smile, but the tease slipped out in her tone. “Or maybe a bit of panic due to a deathly fear of females.”

He studied her, lips pursed. “Maybe. But either way, Rose Kelly makes me downright nervous. Always has. From the moment her father brought her into the store at the age of fifteen, she’s had this . . . this way around me. Staring at me, asking me questions, buzzing around, closer than a shadow.” He shivered. “And when she cornered me in the supply room two summers ago and kissed the daylights out of me, well, you can certainly understand why I’m just a wee bit skittish when it comes to the boss’s daughter.”

“Yes . . . yes, I completely understand.” She hesitated. “Well, I guess you could always pray about it, you know.”

A haze of color whooshed into his tan cheeks as he stood up tall, obviously uneasy with the idea of praying anywhere but at the dinner table and mass. He swallowed hard and grabbed the bucket from her hand. “Uh . . . I’ll get fresh water for you, Emma, but you go right ahead and give it your best shot, okay?”

“Oh, no you don’t,” she said, wrenching the bucket back. She nodded at his sisters and mother as they exited the storage room. “You better finish helping the men or you’ll be taken to task for loafing.
I’ll
get the fresh water.” Her gazed flitted to the blotches of blood on the floor. “Mmm . . . and a mop too, come to think of it.”

He nodded and started toward the men before turning halfway with a jag in his brow. His smile slanted off-kilter. “And about the prayer, Mrs. Malloy, feel free to give it your all. But I’m giving you fair warning—if Rose Kelly gets within a hairbreadth of me before or after she strolls down that aisle, I’ll be looking to level some blame, you hear?”

He strode away and she found herself shaking her head with a smile, not blaming Rose Kelly one little bit—the man had way too much charm for his own good. She hefted the bucket in her hand and shot a glance over her shoulder while he casually strolled across the room. “Oh, I hear you, Sean O’Connor,” she said with a quirk of her lips. “And let’s hope the Almighty does too.”

“We done yet?” Sean wiped the sweat from his brow with the side of his upper sleeve, the throb from his arm a perfect match for the throb in his head—the one connected to Mr. Kelly and the layoffs he’d threatened that morning. He scanned the hall where tables had been stored away and recital chairs now filled a room that sparkled and shined with soap and lemon oil, and would give anything if he could just go home and sleep for days. But that wasn’t an option, not when he had three employees and an employer depending on him to staunch the red ink. No, he needed to study the books until he came up with a way to keep the store in the black. And not just to eke out a profit like he’d managed to do the last few years of these, the worst of economic times, but enough black ink to carry Mr. Kelly’s other store as well.
And
its shiftless manager. Sean’s lips settled into a grim line at the thought of Mr. Kelly’s nephew, Lester, whose work ethic was nonexistent . . . kind of like Mr. Kelly’s compassion during these lean times. The crease in Sean’s brow deepened as he jerked at his tie, yanking it loose like he wished he could do to Mr. Kelly’s tightfisted greed.

“Well,
you’re
done, anyway.” Charity folded her arms, lips pursed as she studied her older brother. “Somebody needs to go home and take a nap, I think. You’re starting to worry me, Sean, with that permanent scowl.” She placed a hand to his forehead, gaze squinted. “You’re not getting sick, are you?”

He swatted her hand away with a roll of his eyes and then forced a tight smile. “I’m fine. Just a little crabby because I have to go back into work, that’s all.”

“A
little
?” Mitch lifted a trash can overflowing with rose limbs, wadded decorations, and miles of paper streamers. One edge of his mouth crooked up. “You’re starting to make Collin look like a good sport on the court.”

Faith’s husband, Collin, stretched with a groan, muscled arms high overhead as he shot his brother-in-law a lopsided grin. “Or you every day of your life.”

Chuckling, Charity stood on tiptoe to brush her lips against her husband’s. “Come on, Collin, Mitch isn’t
that
bad. Every other day at the most.”

Mitch’s eyelids thinned to a glare. “Hey—shouldn’t you be back in the kitchen washing dishes? Your mouth is liable to get you into trouble, little girl.”

Clasping her hands behind her back, Charity rolled on her heels with a gleam in her eyes. “Nope, Lizzie, Mother, and Faith have everything under control, I assure you. Besides, I’m waiting for Emma to get back with a clean bucket and rags so I can help her wipe down the walls and chairs.” Her gaze shifted to Sean. “
And
get the crab to go home.”

Sean ignored her jibe. “I’ll leave when the work’s done and not before.”

“Well, then, you better get busy, O’Connor, because here’s the soap and rags.” Pete strolled up and clunked several buckets onto the floor, then handed out rags all around. “Stole these from sweet Emma Malloy, who got waylaid in the hall. Figured she’d be awhile.”

“What do you mean ‘waylaid’?” Sean honed in on Pete with a razor-thin stare.

Pete glanced up, rag in hand. “I don’t know, some guy she knows, I guess . . . or at least I hope she knows him the way he’s hanging all over her.”

“What?” His body went stiff and his headache kicked up a notch. “Are you sure it wasn’t some drunk who stumbled up from the speakeasy?”

“I don’t know, maybe. Hey, wait . . . where ya going?”

Sean bolted for the door, not even bothering to answer Pete’s question. He couldn’t if he’d wanted to, not for the thickening of his throat and the blood pounding in his brain.
Waylaid . . . drunk . . . hanging all over her.
Fury pulsed in his veins as he thought of sweet, innocent Emma.
So help me, if that bum lays a hand on her . . .

He turned the corner and saw them, a single shadow at the end of the hall, two people twined as the drunk swallowed her up in his arms. Something he hadn’t tasted in a long time poisoned his tongue like bile, and in several fatal clips of his pulse, he descended on them, ripping the drunk off Emma and slamming him to the wall. “Keep your filthy hands to yourself,” he shouted, his temple throbbing with rage. “She’s a married woman, you lowlife.”

The guy shoved him back, and Sean’s anger flared like bacon grease on a gas stove, dousing all reason. He fisted the man’s shirt and rammed him again. Emma screamed when the man’s body thudded with a loud crack, buckling against the wood-slatted wall.

“Sean, stop it!” Terror rang in her voice, but he dismissed it, slinging her hand away when she tried to hold him back.

The drunk retaliated with a curse and another angry shove, and like a pin pulled from a grenade, Sean’s temper detonated in an iron-fisted punch that doubled the man to his knees.

Emma’s scream barely penetrated his brain.

“Get up, you coward,” Sean hissed, hands clenched at his sides.

The man peered up, trailing the back of his wrist across the blood on his lip. His eyes burned with anger as he lumbered to his feet. “You’re either unhinged, stupid, or both—”

Heat scorched through him, and he was vaguely aware of someone jerking his sleeve. “Sean, stop!” Emma cried again, but he ignored it.

With a harsh grunt, he plowed the man’s jaw with his fist. “Nope, just a man who defends women from drunks like you.” The instant his knuckles connected with skin, something snapped in his brain, unleashing a rage so dark and sinister that it seemed to own him. The same rage that had compelled him to give up boxing at Pop Clancy’s gym at the age of sixteen, despite Pop’s contention he was a natural in the ring. “Killer instinct,” Pop had called it, and the very words had twisted Sean’s gut, forcing him to walk away forever. It was that rage that had gotten him in trouble as a boy. And during the war, the same rage that had almost ruined him as a man. And now, like hard-grain alcohol in the bloodstream of a drunk, it took control again, suffocating everything but the driving need to avenge, the need to defend, the need to kill . . .

“Sean!”

His brother’s shout couldn’t pierce his stupor, but the impact of Steven’s hold did as he gripped Sean from behind and jerked him back. “What the devil are you doing?”

He didn’t know. All he knew was for several awful moments, he’d been in a hell worse than anything he’d experienced during the war, a place where demons took control and rational thinking was as cold and comatose as his body felt right now. Chest heaving, the air burned in his lungs as he stared, his vision clearing to see Emma bent over a man with blood on his face.

“Martin, are you all right?” Her voice was broken, scared, a woman who’d witnessed too much brutality in her own life. “Steven, please—can you help me get him up?”

Sean extended a hand and Emma flinched away, her face as pale as the battered man on the floor. “No, please—Steven can do it.” The fear in her eyes sliced through his heart like the rose thorns had slashed through his skin, and when she spoke, her shocked disapproval choked the life from his soul. “You’ve done more than enough.”

“I’m sorry, Emma, but I thought he was bothering you—”

She spun around, heat replacing the coolness in her gaze. “He was
hugging
me, Sean,” she rasped, the sound as foreign as the judgment in her eyes. “An innocent thank-you from a friend for getting him a job with one of my suppliers.”

“Emma, I’m sorry . . .”

“Don’t tell me, tell him.”

He swallowed hard, the shame in his throat as thick as the disgust in Martin’s eyes. “Martin, I . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—”

“No, you sure didn’t.”

“Please—I’d like to make it up to you—what can I do?” The anger had fled, leaving him steeped in remorse and grateful there was no one else in the hall to witness his shame.

Martin acknowledged Steven when he helped him to his feet, then leveled a hard gaze on Sean. “You can get out of here and leave me alone.”

Sean nodded and stepped back to make room for Steven as he assisted Martin to the door.

When his brother brushed past, his eyes were troubled and his voice low. “Are you crazy? What were you thinking?” he whispered, and Sean looked away. But not before he saw the damage he’d done in Emma’s eyes. Shock. Disbelief. Apprehension.

Fear.

What
had
he been thinking? That maybe, after all these years, his rage had finally been laid to rest? That his worst memory was dead and gone, nothing more now than his worst nightmare? But he’d been wrong. He stared at the trio as they disappeared down the hall, his body numb and his mind even worse.

His worst nightmare. He sagged against the wall and put a hand to his eyes. And God help him . . . he was wide awake.

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