Chapter Four

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Conn woke up when small pieces of ceiling plaster fell on him.

" What the hell? " He sat up, shaking the plaster off his head. Still sleep-startled and half wondering where he was, he scanned the dark room.

It was still night. A storm had broken; he could hear the rain against the windows. He was in his bedroom. Awake.

He thought he heard a familiar shriek. He scowled up at the ceiling. What was she doing now?

He looked down at the dusty bedding.

Cracking the plaster, that's what she was doing.

He threw back the covers and chalky bits of the ceiling bounced like craps dice on the wooden floor. He stood and took a step. Chips of plaster jabbed his bare feet and crumbled like sand when he walked on them. Muttering, he dusted off his feet and staggered over to the next room.

He looked at the clock. It was three in the morning.

Frustrated, he leaned one shoulder against the wall and stared at the floor. He needed some sleep. Not much. Just a few consecutive hours. She was going to make his life miserable, living above him like this. He could see it coming.

There was a loud banging against the wall upstairs. Even the dead couldn't sleep through that. Behind him he could hear the patter of plaster on his bedroom floor. His hands itched with the need to wring her damn neck. Conn took a deep breath, then stood there for a moment, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

The noise continued. Muffled, but it continued. The gaslight shimmied and rattled. That was it!

He grabbed a pair of trousers and pulled them on, buttoning them as he moved toward the door. Once in the hall, he ran up the stairs, glared at her door, and then pounded it with his fist.

He waited, rocking on his feet in anticipation.

But there was nothing. He hammered the door again and waited. All he got for his effort was some more noise. He pounded on the door so hard, they could've heard it in the Bronx. " Open this damn door! "

Nothing.

He knew she was in there. An eternal minute passed. Maybe he was scaring her, which was not a smart move. He leaned toward the door. " Nellibelle? "

Nothing.

He drummed his fingers against the doorjamb. He took a deep breath for patience. " Miss Austen? " He paused, then called out. " Eleanor? " He pressed his ear against the door and listened.

For just a second he thought he heard her. It sounded like she was shouting from miles away. Something cold and wet pooled under his bare feet. He looked down, instinctively stepping back.

Water seeped out from under the door. He tried the doorknob but it was locked. He rattled the handle, then, without another thought, he stepped back and rammed his shoulder against the door.

It flew open with a loud crack.

A good inch of water flooded the hall. The floor inside the flat was soaked. He walked in and looked up. From all over the roof panes hung soggy women's clothing.

Not clothing, exactly, but underwear. Water dripped onto the floor from drenched black cotton stockings. More water poured from a couple of those thin corset cover things women wore that always took forever for his big hands to unbutton.

Staring up, he moved to the center of the room. A pair of white lacy bloomers dropped on the floor in front of him like a sodden flag of surrender.

" Nellibelle? "

A muffled call for help came from deeper inside the apartment. He looked around, then crossed room. " Where the hell are you? " He peered around the corner, but then heard something behind him and turned around.

That oak cabinet with the stupid and useless bed shuddered like it was alive. A voice came from deep inside it. " Help! Help! "

Swearing, he crossed the room and jerked open the doors. The bed fell forward so fast he had to jump backward so it didn't hit him.

It banged against the watery floor with a loud crashing splat. Nellibelle bounced up off the mattress with a shriek. Her tangled mass of wet hair flew outward; it looked like floating black spaghetti.

Momentum made the front legs of the bed frame collapse.

Before he could move, she hit the slumping bed again and rolled down the mattress. She landed on the wooden floor with a hard wet thud that made him wince.

He moved to her side and hunkered down. " Are you all right? " He reached out tentatively and touched her shoulder.

She shifted slightly.

He heard a choking sound. " Nell? Uh… Eleanor? Are you crying? "

" Yeeeeeessssssss! " she wailed all curled up in a pitiful wet ball.

He scooped her into his arms, and water dripped down to his hands and onto the soaked floor. He held her tightly against his chest, and she turned into him as if she were trying to hide, sobbing the whole time.

He patted her back a little tentatively. " Don't cry. Okay? "

She cried harder, then slid her damp arms around his neck. She buried her head against him.

He could feel her, every soft feminine inch of her. He had to remind himself just who he was holding in his arms. He looked down at her and saw nothing but a small woman with a mass of hair that hung past her butt. Her bare feet poked out of the hem of her nightgown. They were pink and narrow and looked as soft as she felt. He studied the back of her head, then spoke to it because he couldn't see her face. " Tell me where it hurts. "

" All over. " Her words were muffled against his shoulder and neck.

He rubbed her back with one hand, making soothing circles to stop her pitiful crying. " If I'm going to help you, then I need you to be more specific. "

" Okay. " It was barely a whisper. She said nothing more, just hiccuped against him as she tried to catch her breath.

" Please. Tell me, sweetheart. What hurts the most? "

The silence dragged on. Finally he felt her take a deep quivering breath, then she muttered, " My pride. " She tightened her arms around him and began to cry all over again.

Eleanor's pride was still smarting a few hours later. She was wearing a huge flannel nightshirt with sleeves that came to her knees and sitting on the most dangerous place she could think of—Conn Donoughue's bed.

Bed. The word was enough to make her want to crawl in a hole and never come out. That whole cabinet fiasco was so embarrassing. She felt foolish. What a goose! All that silly crying. She'd never done that before. Whenever she was around him, she was not herself. That was the trouble with love. It made you act in the most irrational ways.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized that love was a lot like the winter weather. It came at the worst time and made your life as difficult as possible.

Emotions were so hard to understand. Like the way snow and ice always fell, then melted. There was no reason why, it just did. Love was the same; it just smacked you right in the face for no logical reason at all. You could ask yourself why forever, but that didn't change the fact that you loved the person you were destined to love. And it seemed, she was destined to love Conn Donoughue.

To make the whole thing even worse, he had been really kind to her. A perfect gentleman.

She drew his brush through her hair with hard quick strokes that hurt, a handy way of punishing herself. Her scalp was tingling and felt abused, but she kept brushing through her long straight hair, more out of nervousness than need or self-anger.

Heat swelled from a corner woodstove that crackled with burning splits of live oak. The brush stilled in her hand. She watched the sparks from the fire and realized that for the first time she'd awakened that night, she was actually nice and warm.

He strode back in the room balancing a tray and set it down on a table. He picked up some ice wrapped in a towel. " Let me see that ankle again. "

Reluctantly she stuck her foot out from beneath the flannel shirt. Her ankle was so swollen and purplish gray that it looked like it belonged on a circus elephant.

Conn stood next to the bed, looking every inch the giant they called him. But he leaned over and placed the wrapped ice on her foot with such gentleness, she couldn't believe it. He made a point of tucking it around her ankle in the exact place it ached. She was so stunned, she ended up just sitting there staring at his wonderful hands.

" That should bring down the swelling, " he told her.

" Thank you. " She couldn't look him in the eye. She was half afraid he would be able to read her thoughts.

" Here. "

She looked up.

He was holding out a blue earthenware mug. " It's soup, not poison. " She could hear the smile in his voice.

She took the mug with two hands and looked in it.

" Go on. Taste it. "

She slowly raised the mug to her mouth and took a tiny sip. Frowning, she looked down at the mug, then glanced up and took another bigger sip.

He was smiling at her. No cynicism. No double meaning. Just a sincere amused smile.

" It's good. "

He crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against a nearby wall. " My grandmother always gave me a mug of soup in the winter. After I came home from work. "

" You worked? " The minute she said the words, she wanted them back.

He laughed.

" I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I had assumed boxing was your only profession. "

" I didn't start fighting until I was eighteen. Before that I worked in a carriage factory. "

" Really? " She took a drink. " For how long? "

" Eight years. "

She choked on the soup. " You worked in a factory when you were just a little boy? "

" I was never a little boy. "

She subtracted the years. " Ten is too young to be working. "

" We were poor. By then it was just my grandmother and me. If I didn't work, she would have had to. She was all Irish, still had a brogue. The only job she could have possibly gotten would have been as a scrubwoman. She was seventy years old. "

She could hear the tenderness in his voice as he spoke about his grandmother and told her how she had raised him after his parents died when he was a baby.

" She wasn't afraid of hard work, and neither was I. She didn't like it at first, but I had fought so hard to get the job, and I'd already been working there a week before I told her. She gave in, mostly I think because it was an honest job. No one took advantage of me. Within a couple of years I was bigger than most of the men, so I never had any trouble. "

He straightened. " I guess I'd better let you get some sleep. Tomorrow I'll have some of my friends help me, and we'll see if we can fix the roof. "

She searched for the right words, but could only say, " Thank you. " She paused, then added, " For everything you did. The cabinet, the soup, the ice, and the bed. The shoulder to cry on. I'm not normally like that. I… well, I haven't been very—You and I are usually not—"

" I know. You don't have to say it, Nellibelle. "

She wanted to tell him how very much she hated that name, but she just couldn't bring herself to destroy this moment.

" When we're around each other, it's almost like we're in the ring together. You come out punching. "

She was quiet for a second, then had to admit, " I do, don't I? "

" Yeah, you do. "

" But you don't make it easy on me. " She sat up straighter and saw him break into a smile.

" No. I don't. "

She laughed then, too. " I think that's the first thing you and I have agreed on since—" She cut off her words. It would be a mistake to mention that horrible dinner together and what happened afterward.

He knew exactly what she meant. She could see it on his face. She felt her own flood with color.

He didn't speak, thank God. Didn't tease or give her a knowing smile. He just nodded.

She stared at her hands, folded in her lap. Then she gave him a direct look. " Thank you, again. For all you did for me tonight. "

" Sure. It was nothing. " He turned and left the room.

She flopped back on the bed with a huge sigh. She stared up at the dark ceiling. He was a nice man. Under all that bluster and cockiness, he was a good person. Kind. He loved his grandmother. He had honor and scruples, even when he was ten. Who would have thought it?

The lamp went out, and she could hear him settle in on the sofa. She reached over and turned down the gas lamp. Then she lay there.

It was almost too quiet. She could hear nothing but her own heartbeat, which sped up. He was there, just around the corner. And she was here, sleeping in his bed. She turned on her side, then sat up and adjusted the ice and drew the covers over her.

Her head sank into his feather pillow. She turned her face into it and breathed in. Conn. It smelled masculine. She turned and grabbed the other pillow, hugging it to her chest, and she curled onto her side, then closed her eyes.

" Nellibelle? "

She resisted the urge to moo. She flopped over on her back. " Yes? "

" Don't think I'm some kind of hero or anything. "

What was this all about? " Why not? "

He was quiet.

Of course he was somewhat of a hero in her eyes. He'd rescued her—a damsel in distress. She smiled.

" You still awake? " he called out.

" Yes. "

" I have a confession to make. "

" What? "

" I knew the roof leaked. "

A moment later she heaved the pillows across the room.

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