The Bartender's Secret (Masterson, Texas Book 1) Read online

  She didn’t strike him as a college student. She was young, but not nineteen. Ms. Rembrandt, then. College students could be any age, but Masterson University was a traditional campus, with a football stadium and red-bricked dormitories. Most Musketeers were kids who entered straight from high school and graduated four years later at an outdoor cap-and-gown affair. It was very likely this woman had come into the pub seeking a student-free zone.

  She stopped at the same table and pulled her book out once more. When Connor took her drink order, he’d warn her that a dozen college kids were about to arrive and start emoting in sixteenth-century English.

  If you’re brave enough to stay, your drink is on the house. What’s your pleasure?

  “I’ve got this.” Kristopher jogged over to Ms. Rembrandt. “What can I get you?”

  Great. Connor had hired the most conscientious, eager twenty-one-year-old in town. Kristopher wasn’t even on the clock until five.

  Kristopher’s enthusiastic What can I get you? was less evocative of an earlier time period than What’s your pleasure? which Connor had picked up from Mr. Murphy, along with the man’s string of Irish curses that all began with “the devil.” Mr. Murphy had a long and creative list of things he wanted the devil to do.

  Connor had every excuse to gaze at Ms. Rembrandt now, because he was waiting for Kristopher to turn and relay her drink order. Any second now. If Kris stopped monopolizing the woman’s attention.

  She had an energy about her. Her navy sweater and that light blue skirt were not as sedate as she’d probably intended them to be. When she reached back to the table and slid her book behind herself, her sweater hugged her curves.

  Her smile was more than polite; it was genuine. Then she laughed, a bright sound that filled the space between them. He saw the light in her face, heard bright light in her voice. Connor sucked in a breath. He wanted to know...

  To know...

  He didn’t want to know what book she’d read. He wanted to know her. He wanted to know where she was from, what she was doing, where she was going.

  He could make small talk as easily as he made cocktails. He could find out all about her.

  It would lead to nothing.

  This pub was a fantasy world. An Irish pub needed a publican, an owner who treated everyone as if they’d arrived as welcome guests to his own home. It was the role Connor had taken over from Mr. Murphy when he’d bought the business.

  It was a role he never stopped playing, even after the pub was closed. If he accepted the invitation of a woman who’d lingered until quitting time, he knew she expected him to be the same man in her bed as the man she’d flirted with among the mirrors and mahogany. It was better for him to be that man, best to keep the fantasy intact.

  The real him wouldn’t be so welcomed by women, nor so successful in business. Connor kept his secrets. Nothing exotic or intriguing, merely that he was an ex-con, a common dropout who’d gotten caught riding in a stolen car at nineteen. Joyriding was a felony in Texas. He’d stood in handcuffs before a judge and pled guilty.

  That felony conviction still affected his life. It always would. He hadn’t been able to get a driver’s license for almost two years. He hadn’t been able to take over for Mr. Murphy until enough years had passed that the government would allow him to apply for a liquor license. He’d had to publish his intent to get the license in the newspaper twice, to give the public time to object to a convicted felon operating a bar in their town.

  Nobody had objected. Connor doubted many had read the single sentence in the local newspaper. That was best for business. Nothing about his past suited the image he needed to maintain as the proprietor of the Tipsy Musketeer.

  Nothing about the real him would be interesting to a woman who looked like a Rembrandt and smiled like the girl next door. He could get to know her, but the most that might come of it was a warm night in her bed as her charming bartender.

  Bridget polished off her juice, gave Connor one more dirty look, in case he wasn’t aware how she felt about its lack of vodka, and headed toward the stage. The main door was close to it, and the cluster of guys who walked in were unmistakably students, thinking nothing of hollering Yo, Kristopher across the room.

  Connor kept an eye on Ms. Rembrandt to see how she’d react to the student invasion. The second Kristopher looked toward his friends, she groped around the table behind herself until she grabbed her book and stuffed it into her bag. She asked Kristopher something. He gestured toward the door, and she headed for the exit.

  That was it. She was leaving.

  Connor tapped a stainless-steel keg with the toe of his boot. It sounded like there was next to nothing left in it. He ducked beneath the bar to disconnect the line to the empty keg. He heard the door open and close, more raucous students coming in as she went out. Customers came and went all the time. It didn’t matter.

  But it felt like it did.

  Connor pulled out the keg, then tilted it on its edge to roll it out from behind the long bar, stopping under the ornate iron chandelier that had been converted from candles to kerosene to gas to electricity. It still amazed him that he lived here now, surrounded by beauty that had lasted more than a century. When he finished a book, the hangover was no longer terrible, because Connor didn’t dread returning to this world.

  But Ms. Rembrandt had not enjoyed returning to hers. She’d smiled at Kristopher. She’d laughed—God, that bright laugh—but Connor had seen that moment of sadness. He should have talked to her. He was a bartender, after all. Hangover cures were part of the repertoire.

  Doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t have led to anything, anyway.

  No, but he could have discovered the title of the book with the blue cover, the one she’d stuffed into her bag like she’d stolen it. He would have known her, then, in his own way.

  Devil take it to hell and back. Twice.

  Connor hefted the keg to chest height and headed for the storeroom, leaving his fantasy of a beautiful world behind.

  Chapter Two

  The first time she saw him, he was carrying a keg.

  Why Delphinia found this so fascinating, she couldn’t say, although it was a fairly rare occurrence in her life to see a man hefting a stainless-steel keg—in fact, she’d never seen a man heft a keg anywhere, ever.

  The sight stopped her dead in her tracks. The keg wasn’t light; the muscles in the man’s arms bulged in hard curves as he lifted it high against his chest. As he walked away from her, the strong flex of his back and shoulder muscles were apparent beneath the snug, black T-shirt he wore. Snug jeans, too. She watched him until he disappeared around a corner.

  He did not look like most men she knew. She was a professor, and in her corner of academia, the male professors were studious and svelte. The students she taught tended to be, too. Not many jocks took upper-level elective courses in literature. But that man? His body looked like the kind of bare male torso one saw on a titillating cover designed to sell a racy paperback.

  Kind of like the one she’d just stuffed into her bag.

  “Here’s your ice water, Dr. Dee. You’re sure you don’t want a lemon slice in it?”

  Delphinia forced her attention back to Kristopher, the student she was here to help. “I’m certain, thank you. Plain is good.”

  She hoped he hadn’t seen her checking out the bartender’s body. At least she was certain he hadn’t seen her novel. She’d gotten that off the table and back into her bag without anyone seeing her do it.

  She shouldn’t have to hide any book, but her parents were going to be horrified when she got the courage to tell them she’d begun teaching Shakespeare to drama students on the side. If her parents heard that Dr. Delphinia Ray, their progeny and prodigy, had been caught reading a mass-market paperback at a bar this afternoon, they’d probably disown her.

  “It’s not three yet, but a lot of us are here alrea
dy.” Kristopher looked around. “Bridget’s here somewhere. I saw her when I came in.”

  Bridget received a special mention, did she? In the middle of the fall semester, Delphinia had taken over a Shakespeare course at Bryan Community College in the town just west of Masterson, when the regular teacher had gone on maternity leave. Two nights a week, as Delphinia had guided everyone through A Midsummer’s Night Dream, she’d noticed how often Kristopher and Bridget snuck glances at one another during class, how they abruptly looked away when they happened to catch one another staring, how Kristopher nearly blushed, how Bridget struggled to look unaffected instead of giddy.

  Delphinia knew living, breathing romance when she saw it—no matter what her parents believed about her. The boy was smitten.

  “Bridget and I could start Romeo and Juliet now, instead of waiting for everyone else.” Kristopher turned toward the empty bar. “Where’d she go?”

  I don’t know. I was watching the man in the tight black T.

  “She probably went to freshen up,” Delphinia said, but Kristopher turned toward the restrooms, cupped his hands around his mouth and belted out, “Bridget!” He sounded like a drill sergeant, not a lover.

  Bridget walked in, waiting until she was close to Kris before cupping her hands around her mouth and yelling at him as loudly as he’d yelled across the pub. “What is your malfunction?”

  Delphinia cringed.

  “Sorry, Dr. Dee. I didn’t recognize you from behind earlier, or I would have said hi. Hi.”

  “All done with the drink you nursed along for ten minutes?” Kristopher asked Bridget. “Some of us can’t lounge around after an all-night party.”

  Delphinia looked between the two of them with a sinking heart. Her parents were right: she had no radar. Her parents didn’t use slang like radar, though. Their daughter had no ability whatsoever to gauge romantic attraction when it didn’t occur between the covers of a book.

  They meant that affectionately. Her parents enjoyed teasing her because she’d been oblivious to the attentions of an eligible, suitable, new professor at the start of the school year. She’d met him at the annual dinner for new faculty members. Vincent Talbot, JD, PhD, had been new to the College of Law. She, Delphinia Ray, PhD, was not new, so she’d thought nothing of it when the seating chart placed them side by side. That was how it was always done, every year: a new professor was seated next to someone who was already part of the Masterson University faculty.

  It wasn’t until she and her parents had returned to their home that she’d been informed that Vincent Talbot was markedly interested in her. He’d requested to sit beside her, in fact. Her parents knew this, because her father and mother were Dr. Archibald Ray and Dr. Rhea Acanthus-Ray, respectively, the dean of Masterson University’s College of Liberal Arts and the chair of the Department of English, also respectively.

  In addition to being a professor, Vincent Talbot was a lawyer. Tall and well-groomed, too. Most suitable, her parents had agreed. Hadn’t Delphinia found Vincent charming?

  Not really. He’d been determined to make her agree that the banquet’s red wine was too fruity. She’d pretended that her ninth sip had revealed the truth of his position, so he’d stop. Yes, notes of blueberry. I do see what you mean.

  She hadn’t caught him sneaking glances her way during the dinner. He’d never blushed. She’d never felt giddy. Shouldn’t a romance begin like that?

  Judging from her parents’ amusement, no. Love in real life was not as dramatic and exciting as it was in the literary worlds she inhabited. Shakespeare was her favorite. Everything was colorful and passionate in Shakespeare’s plays, from the courtships to the sword fights. She loved teaching them.

  Too bad she wasn’t allowed to.

  Mother did not care for Shakespeare. The plays had been written for the common man. Four hundred years later, they were still common, easily reworked into movies, even comic books. The revered complexity of Hamlet could be reduced to a Disney-drawn lion cub. That said it all, in Mother’s opinion.

  Therefore, EN313 Victorian Prose and Essays was Delphinia’s assigned course. She spent her days lecturing on the Victorian-era men who’d believed the world needed to know their personal opinions about the superiority of industry over agriculture, as well as the men who’d written lengthy rebuttals that championed shepherds over steelworkers. She spent her nights propped up in her bed, grading student essays about the essayists. Was it any wonder the youngest Dr. Ray hadn’t recognized that the new Dr. Talbot found her fascinating?

  Or that she’d been so wrong about the two students who were bickering before her right this second?

  Delphinia interrupted. “Which scene from Romeo and Juliet did you select?”

  Kristopher heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes. “She wants to do the balcony scene, because she’s dying to use the balcony.”

  “It’s because I am an actress, so I want to perform one of the most famous scenes ever written,” Bridget said through clenched teeth. “It’s not because the balcony is cool.”

  Delphinia looked up. The balcony was actually very cool. A second-story loft ran the length of one wall. The wood railing would make a great balcony from which Juliet could confess her love to Romeo, below. His passion would enable Romeo to scale the wall of his enemy’s home to reach his lover for the kiss that would seal their fate.

  Delphinia gauged the balcony’s height. Realistically, it would require passion plus a significant amount of upper-body strength. Oh, our Delphinia, always so pragmatic.

  Her gaze drifted from the balcony to the corner around which the bartender in the black T-shirt had disappeared. Shakespeare had written Romeo as a physical role, requiring the character to dance at a masquerade, to scale garden walls, to break up street brawls. Passion required more than pretty words. It should inspire a man to use his body, to take action, to carry a keg—

  A keg. What was wrong with her?

  “Where do you want to go?” Kristopher asked.

  “What do you mean?” Delphinia didn’t want to go peek around that corner. Really.

  “The booths face the stage, but they’re about as comfortable as sitting in a church pew.”

  Directly across from the stage were three partitioned seating areas. Delphinia stepped closer and ran her hand down the dark wood of a carved post. “Gorgeous. I wonder when this place was built. It’s clearly Victorian, but—”

  “1889,” Bridget said. “I know that because my uncle owned this place for decades.”

  “It’s also written on the sign,” Kristopher said, giving Bridget a smirk before calling everyone over. “This is the Dr. Dee I told you about. She taught Shakespeare at BCC last semester. If you haven’t taken Intro to Shakespeare yet, take it at BCC instead of MU. It’s much, much easier.”

  “Because she does such a good job explaining what’s going on in the plays. Not because she’s an easy teacher.” Bridget smacked Kristopher on the arm. “You dweeb.”

  Delphinia would have been more amused, but she was too anxious that one of the other students might recognize that Dr. Dee from BCC was also Dr. Ray from Masterson U.

  “I just meant you’re the best, Dr. Dee. It’s nice of you to help us out.”

  She’d identified herself as Dr. D. Ray on the first papers she’d graded at the community college. Kristopher had picked up on the Dr. D and left off the Ray, and the nickname had stuck. Conveniently.

  Delphinia couldn’t resist sitting in one of the vintage booths. Kristopher’s church pew was actually one long bench, perhaps fifteen feet long, divided into three alcoves by wood partitions. Unlike a modern cubicle, the walls were tall enough that, even standing, no one would see over them, unless they were on the MU basketball team. Two extra chairs and a small table fit in each section. She chose the center alcove and sat down with relief.

  So far, so good. None of the students had recognized
her, and she was sheltered here from anyone who might walk by and look in the picture windows.

  Cowards die many times before their deaths.

  Could a more dramatic Shakespeare quote pop into her head? She would tell her parents that she was moonlighting at BCC if it were relevant. It wasn’t, not yet. If she applied to teach Masterson’s Shakespeare electives, then a discussion of her experience at the community college would be cogent.

  Not if. When. She would apply. Someday.

  Her parents had assumed her absences from the house every Tuesday and Thursday evening were standing dinner dates with Vincent. She hadn’t corrected them. They believed she was adding passion to her life, and she was...to her professional life.

  She rejected the premise that her personal life was hopeless. She hadn’t always been so inept when it came to dating. High school had been lonely, of course, because she’d been the youngest person in every class, but she’d finished it in three years. Once she was far from home, at her beloved alma mater in New England, she’d made the shocking discovery that there were a lot of people who liked her. She’d felt so normal—and she’d dated boys without needing anyone to point out their interest in her at all.

  But at nineteen, she’d graduated with her bachelor’s degree, and her parents had insisted that she return to Masterson for her master’s degree and PhD. There’d been no more dormitory taco parties, no book clubs, no time to date while she completed her thesis at a record pace. Centuries-old literary figures had been her main companions during her twenties.

  She was twenty-nine now. She’d begin her thirties with Professor Vincent Talbot by her side. He was perfect for her. She would feel a spark of passion for him at some point. She would.

  She ran one finger over a detailed rosette carved into the back of the bench. How many passionate stories could that rose tell? How many declarations of love had been made right here on this bench?

  Her story wouldn’t be one of them, even if—no, when—she and Vincent took their relationship to the next level, because Vincent would never take her to a pub. He preferred the cocktail hours her parents hosted at their home for visiting professors, guest lecturers and the occasional politician. Delphinia had been attending such soirees since the fifth grade, when her parents had expected her to greet the guest of honor politely and then excuse herself to go read in her bedroom. Silently.