A Light in the Window by Julie Lessman Page B

apparently sparking her own anger. “I may not know you , Mr. O’Connor, but I do know this neighborhood is littered with broken hearts and tarnished reputations at your hand, so if you’ll kindly return my portfolio, I won’t detain you any further.”
    She might as well have spit in his face. He stood paralyzed except for the white-hot fury that scorched through him, stunned at her blatant rejection. Once again, Christian piety at its very best—judging him, condemning him, telling him he would never measure up. Deemed imperfect by imperfect people. The leather portfolio burned in his palm like the angst burned in his gut, and he could hardly fathom that the one woman he longed to know condemned him just like his father. The very notion caused the blood to pound in his brain, and his response was swift, defiant and rash, determined to throw in her face all she obviously thought him to be. “Yes, I’ll return your portfolio,” he said with a strained whisper. “But first … you revile me as a rogue, Marceline? I’ll give you a rogue …”
    Flinging the attaché to the floor, he jerked her close with a sharp catch of her breath, temple throbbing as he silenced her protest with his mouth, stilling the lash of her arms with a steel hold. Fury pulsed through his veins as he took his fill of a woman who had cut him to the core, wounded his pride and spurned him as cruelly as his own blood. The stolen kiss of a rogue—just punishment for a woman who had stolen his heart, crushing it beneath the heel of faith in a so-called loving God.
    His trigger reaction had been prompted by revenge, but she tasted of peppermint and lilacs and a summer so warm, his anger flamed into desire, filling him with a fierce possession. “Marceline,” he rasped, voice hoarse as he cupped her face in his hands. “This is not how I meant it to be …”
    She lurched away, the stinging jolt of her slap vibrating his jaw till his teeth nearly rattled in their sockets. “How dare you!”
    He blinked, the strike of her anger diffusing his own and breaking the spell the kiss had cast. “How dare I?” he whispered. “How dare I do anything else, Marceline, but be all you’ve proclaimed me to be?” Throat constricting, he bent to retrieve the portfolio, the same sick feeling of shame shuddering through him as when he fought with his father. He held it out, and her hand quivered when she took it back with tears in her eyes, making him feel like the despicable lowlife she and his father believed him to be.
    He met her eyes with a look of grief that exposed him for the lost soul that he was. “My most humble apology, Marceline, for losing my temper and causing you pain.” Head bowed, he lowered his voice to a bare whisper. “And although the word of a man of my ‘ilk’ may mean nothing, you have it nonetheless, along with my abject sorrow.” He looked up then at the one woman he wanted more than any other, painfully aware his temper and pride had just cost him any chance he might have had. “You have my promise—I won’t bother you again.”
    Without another word, he turned and walked to the street, hands in his pockets and shame in his throat. He was giving up without a fight, he knew, something he’d never done a day in his life, but he’d seen the truth in her eyes—she despised him—and with just cause. One foolish slip of his Irish temper had sealed his fate, confirming once and for all to Marceline Murphy what his father so blatantly proclaimed—he was not a man to be trusted.
    Head down and heart heavy, he plodded toward home, giving up any hope of ever turning her head. But then maybe he was more like his parents than he knew, giving up on the things that mattered most—one’s children, one’s marriage, one’s self-respect. Somewhere an owl hooted, and the mournful sound echoed the despair and loneliness that had plagued him since he’d found his father in the arms of another woman at the age of ten, betraying both his