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  Bronnie put her index finger on her cheek and pretended to think. “Well, I'll have to check my social register. That's almost a year away and...”

  She got no farther, for he stepped in front of her and pinned her against the car, deliberately pressing his lower body against hers. He did not speak, but the heat in his blue gaze said more than words ever could have. He ground against her and, at her gasp of shocked breath, grinned brutally.

  “Aye,” she said on a breathless note. “T'would be my pleasure to have you escort me, Milord.”

  He stepped back. “Then it's settled.”

  “Did I have a choice?” she muttered, looking around to see if anyone had been a witness to her capitulation.

  “No,” he answered and started walking backward. “See you next Tuesday?”

  “Of course.” She laughed.

  He gave her the deaf language sign that had become their special goodbye, winked, and headed toward the bicycle he had chained to an oak. She sighed as she watched him throw a long leg over the seat. The muscles against his light green T-shirt rippled and her eyes fell of their own accord to his tight derrière in the torn, faded jeans.

  “Hey, aren't you going the wrong way?” she yelled.

  He looked back. “Going to Aunt Lou-Lou's!” He stood on the pedals and pumped hard, the bike cantering from side to side as it sped beneath his powerful legs.

  She laughed again, shaking her head. “I should have known,”

  Sean had one addiction and that addiction was hot boiled peanuts. The best place in town to get them was at a roadside stand run by a cheerful black lady named Lou-Lou Rainey. Packed in little brown bags wet from the salty water, the green peanuts were Sean's favorite treat. To Bronwyn, his militant craving for the peanuts was an endearing trait.

  To Sean, they were nectar from the gods.

  * * * *

  Deirdre McGregor looked up from the kitchen sink when she heard the car door slam under the carport. She stared out the window, not seeing the lush lawn Dermot had spent thousands of dollars to landscape earlier that spring. She did not see the pretty white latticework gazebo or the glider and Adirondack chairs that formed a quaint seating arrangement on the old brick-paved patio. “Is that you, Bronwyn?” she called as the door to the mudroom opened.

  “Yes, Ma'am.”

  Girding herself for the talk she had been instructed to give her daughter, Deirdre pushed away from the sink and took a seat at the breakfast table. “I'd like a word with you, dear,” she said as her daughter entered.

  “Wanna drink?” Bronnie asked as she made a beeline to the fridge. When Deirdre didn't answer, she turned with a cola bottle in her hand, wobbling it from side to side. “Mama? You wanna drink?”

  “No thank you, sweetheart.”

  Bronnie shrugged, fumbled in the catchall drawer for the bottle opener, popped the cap, then tossed the opener back in the drawer. “I don't see why Daddy won't let us buy drinks in the can.”

  “'They don't taste the same,'” Deirdre quoted her husband.

  “I can't tell the difference,” Bronnie said. She looked at Deirdre, who was sitting with her hands clasped tightly together. “Is something wrong?”

  “Sit down. We need to talk.”

  “Okay. What's up?”

  Deirdre closed her eyes for a moment, then squared her shoulders. “Bronwyn, your father and I have come to a decision. We know it isn't going to set well with you, but under the circumstances, you have given us no alternative.”

  “Alternative to what, Mama?” Bronnie asked.

  “We know you have been seeing the Cullen boy. We—”

  “You've never forbidden me to see Sean.”

  “Not in so many words, but you are perfectly aware of how we feel about him.”

  “You don't know him,” Bronnie reminded her.

  Deirdre threw out a negligent hand. “That is beside the point. We know about his parents and—”

  “His parents have nothing to do with the kind of man Sean Cullen is, Mother!”

  “Bronwyn,” Deirdre said, annoyance rife in her tone, “he is not of your class.”

  Bronnie sat back in her chair, her face hard. “You mean he isn't a doctor's son or the grandson of a state senator, don't you, Mama?”

  “The boy failed his senior year of high school! What does that tell you about his ambition? He comes from a very unacceptable class of people. I mean—look at what his father does for a living, for Christ's sake! And I know perfectly well you are privy to the gossip bandied about concerning what that odious man does to his wife.”

  “And his son,” Bronnie stressed, her teeth clenched. “Or did you forget what Sean's father did to him when he defended me to Father Goodmayer all those years ago?”

  Deirdre shook her head. “I haven't forgotten, but it doesn't matter.”

  “It matters to me!” Bronnie said, coming to her feet. “I love Sean Cullen, Mama. I've loved him for a long, long time!”

  “You are too young to know what love is.”

  “He said you'd do this one day. He knew you would!”

  “Then he isn't as stupid as he acts.”

  “There is nothing stupid about him!”

  “Don't you dare raise you voice to me, Bronwyn Fionna!”

  “I won't have you talking about Sean like that.”

  “You watch your tone, young lady. We've never had to ground you before, but there is always a first time.”

  “Then do it! It won't stop me from loving Sean Cullen and it won't stop me from seeing him every chance I get!”

  “He'll be eighteen next month,” Deirdre said. “I checked with his homeroom teacher, Mrs. Daniels, to make sure when his birthday is.”

  “What has that got to...?”

  “And you are still underage. In the eyes of the law, he will be an adult and you are a child. He could be arrested and charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

  “You wouldn't.”

  “Try me.”

  “He hasn't done anything wrong,” Bronnie said, tears welling in her eyes.

  “You are not to see him again. Is that understood?” When Bronnie did not reply, Deirdre stood up. “If you do, he will be the one to pay for it. We will have him arrested and he will go to jail. That, I can promise you.”

  Tears streaked down Bronnie's pale cheeks. “Why are you doing this?”

  “He is nothing more than a passing fancy. A teenage rebellion your father and I should have put a stop to long before now.”

  “I love him!” Bronnie sobbed.

  “You think you love him. I'll concede he is a handsome young man, but the world is full of handsome young men. When you go on to college—”

  “I'm not going to college!”

  “Yes, dear, you are going to college,” DeeDee emphasized. “And you'll meet a young man whom you will be very proud to bring home to introduce to your father and I. When that happens, you will know what true love really is.”

  “You might take me out of Sean's arms, but you'll never take him out of my heart! I will love him with my dying breath! If I can't be with him, I won't ever be with another man!”

  “Then you'd better prepare yourself for the Carmelites, sweetie, because I'd rather see you spend your life in a convent than shackled to a nobody like Sean Cullen!”

  * * * *

  Bronnie fled the room before she could say something she might later regret. As much as she loved her mother, she neither respected nor liked her at the moment. Flinging herself down on her bed, she pulled her old teddy bear to her and buried her face in the slick fur.

  Her sobs shook the bed.

  * * * *

  Deirdre went to the phone and dialed the hospital. It was rare that she had an argument with her daughter. Those times when she had, the argument had been over the Cullen boy and Bronwyn's obsession with him. Such arguments brought on migraines and now Deirdre felt one pulsing over her right eye.

  “Sylvia, let me speak to Dr. McGregor,
please,” she told the switchboard operator.

  “I'll see if he's available, Miss DeeDee,” the operator replied, recognizing Deirdre's voice.

  Lighting a cigarette while she waited for her husband to come on the line, Deirdre fanned the smoke out of her face and massaged the pain over her eye with the heel of her hand.

  “What's up?” her husband asked when he picked up.

  “You have got to do something about that boy.”

  Dermot didn't need to ask whom Deirdre meant. “Did you talk to her?”

  “I did and I got the reaction we expected.”

  “So?”

  “I received a call from Frannie Wilson this afternoon. She was driving by the Teen Center and saw our daughter being...she was...that boy was...”

  “What were they doing?”

  “He was rubbing against her, Dermot! Luckily it was Frannie who saw such a disgusting thing! We can count on her to be discreet.”

  “I wish I had a dollar for every time I rubbed against you before we were married.” Dermot chuckled. When Deirdre hissed, he reminded her that nothing had gone beyond that touching and he was positive it hadn't with their daughter. “I don't like it, but she's going to experiment, DeeDee. That's the way things are today.”

  “She won't experiment with that Cullen bastard!” Deirdre shouted.

  “Just let me handle it. I'll go have a talk with him.”

  “And if he won't listen?”

  Dermot's voice turned hard. “He'll listen, Deirdre. Believe me, he will.”

  “But what if he doesn't?”

  There was a moment of silence, then Deirdre heard her husband take a long breath.

  “I have people who owe me a favor or two,” he said. “If I need to, I'll call in those favors. The Cullen boy won't be allowed to be a problem for us.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Tymothy Cullen was just closing the doors to his butcher shop when Dermot pulled into the parking lot. Seeing the fancy car and the man with the expensive suit who exited the pricey foreign job, Cullen unlocked the door and opened it. “Need a few lamb chops for the grill tonight, sir?”

  Dermot stepped into the shop, his nostrils quivering from the sharp aroma of meat and animal blood. He looked at the white porcelain meat counter with its array of sliced and diced flesh. “Thank you, no. I'm looking for Sean. Is he here?”

  Cullen narrowed his eyes. “You're looking for my boy?” His mouth tightened. “Why?”

  “I am Dr. McGregor,” Dermot informed man, knowing that should be explanation enough and it was.

  Cullen folded his brawny arms over a thick, barrel-like chest. “I wondered when you'd get around to coming after the little idjut. I told him he ought not to be messing with no doctor's kin.”

  “Is he here?” Dermot inquired. He was ill at ease in the presence of a man he considered one step up from Neanderthal.

  “No, he ain't. He's over at Griffin's, I'm guessing.”

  Dermot took out his handkerchief and covered his nose. “You should do something about the odor in here. It is very offensive.”

  Cullen grinned. “You one of them vegetarian people, Doc?”

  “No,” Dermot snapped, “but the stench is overpowering.”

  “Sean, now, he's one of that kind. Wouldn't eat meat if you pinned him down and pried open his mouth. Reckon he'd as likely choke on it as swallow it.” He shrugged. “Been that way all his life. Ain't that a helluva note for a butcher's son to be a candy-assed vegetarian fool?”

  “Perhaps he finds this odor as putrid as do I. I can certainly see why a person would abstain from eating meat if he or she got a whiff of this every day!”

  “A man what don't eat meat ain't much of a man to my way of thinking,” Cullen sneered. “Got that silliness from his Ma, he did. She don't eat meat, neither.” He shook his head. “It ain't right and I've told them so many the time. I've tried to show them the error of their ways, but neither one seems inclined to listen.”

  Dermot glanced at the red-haired man and shuddered. He could well imagine how a man as coarse and uneducated as this one would go about trying to indoctrinate his family into eating meat.

  “You say he's at Griffin's?” he asked, wanting desperately to get out of the shop.

  “Griffin Motors,” Cullen snorted. “He's working over there in the afternoons.”

  “I see. Well, thank you, Mr. Cullen,” Dermot said through clenched teeth. He turned to go.

  “Don't want him near your baby girl, do you, Doc?” Cullen laughed.

  There was something nasty in the way Cullen asked the question that rubbed Dermot the wrong way. He stared into the man's lined, beefy face. “I'm sure you understand how a father would like to protect his child.”

  “Sean can protect himself, but I reckon you need to protect your baby girl from him, now, don't you?”

  Dermot's back stiffened. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Cullen's lips twitched. “Reckon you heard he is of a mind to Join with your girl.”

  “Join?” The word sent a chill down Dermot's back.

  “Aye, as in the Joining of bondmates and all that.” Cullen's grin turned to a hateful leer when he realized Dermot did not understand. “You know, Doc—as in wedding your soul mate.”

  “Most certainly not!” Dermot declared, his eyes going wide. “There could never be a marriage between my daughter and your son!”

  “Then you'd best tell him that ‘cause he's been telling me and his ma how Bronwyn McGregor will be his bride at the Summer Solstice of her eighteenth year. He's been a'planning on that Joining from the first day he laid eyes on your baby girl.”

  “No!” Dermot snarled, shaking his head fiercely. “That is totally out of the question. I will not allow it!”

  “Can't always stop what's destined to be, Doc. Sometimes when you do, destiny sorta rears up and bites you on your boney ass, you know?”

  His temper flaring, Dermot did not reply. He snatched open the door and strode out, his face as hard and set as granite. As he pulled his car door open, Cullen stepped out of the shop.

  “You'll have to do more than just tell Sean Cullen no, Doc. It ain't never worked for me and it won't work for you.”

  Dermot ground the gears of his Italian sports car as he peeled out of the parking lot. In his rearview mirror, he caught a glimpse of Cullen laughing uproariously as he went back inside his shop.

  * * * *

  Andy Griffin winced as the squeal of tires took his attention from the carburetor he was tuning. He looked out the garage bay opening and saw the low-slung black sports car braking to a stop in front of the showroom. Picking up a rag, he began wiping his greasy hands as he went to see what this late customer might need. He was already forming his response in his mind because his shop wasn't equipped to work on foreign cars. He never got a chance to ask what was needed, for the enraged man who climbed out of the sports car came at him like an avalanche.

  “Where's Sean Cullen?”

  Griffin took in the rigid posture, set face, and glaring eyes of his visitor and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Out back,” he replied and barely had time to step aside as the man pushed past him.

  The black man who was changing the oil under a station wagon stopped what he was doing and stepped to the back door of the garage. “Sean!” he yelled. “You gots company!”

  Griffin nodded. He appreciated Zeke giving the boy some warning that he was about to go toe to toe with, who might well be, Sean's girlfriend's father.

  “Ten to one he done got that girl in the family way,” Zeke said in a low voice.

  “Lord help him if he did,” Griffin quipped as he joined his employee. “That man looked mad enough to spit nails.”

  “Yassir. Mad enough to crucify dat boy,” Zeke agreed, pulling off his baseball cap to arm the sweat from his brow.

  They stood in the doorway and watched the angry man march over to where Sean was washing a new trade-in. Sean twisted the nozzle of the hose to turn off the
water, then turned to face the man storming toward him.

  * * * *

  “I want you to stay the hell away from my daughter!”

  Sean looked past Bronnie's father to Andy and Zeke. He knew whatever was said here would be all over Albany by morning. Zeke would tell the patrons of the Satin Kat bar down in Harlem and every black woman there who had a job as a maid would tell her white employer. Andy would tell his wife, Harriet, who would tell everyone in her beauty shop. By midday tomorrow, there wouldn't be many people of consequence in town who wouldn't know Dr. Dermot McGregor had called out his daughter's suitor.

  “Dr. McGregor, I—” he began, but Dermot's infuriated shout stopped him.

  “If you think you will ever be a part of my family, Cullen, I suggest you think again! I have no intention of allowing Bronwyn to take up with the likes of you!”

  “What exactly is the likes of me, Dr. McGregor?” he asked, his voice tight.

  McGregor leaned into Sean's face. “Uneducated, conniving, poor white trash.”

  Sean lifted his chin. “I have an IQ of one-sixty, Dr. McGregor. I—”

  “I doubt that. You failed your senior year of high school. Even a blind man could see you're a worthless deadbeat looking for an easy meal ticket.”

  “A meal ticket?”

  “Do you think everybody is as stupid as you are?” McGregor punched Sean in the chest with his index finger. “Don't you think I know what you're after?”

  Sean stared into McGregor's eyes. “What is it you think I want, Doctor?”

  “You want to continue seeing my daughter and that's not going to happen. I certainly would never allow someone like you to court her! Just the thought of you wanting to marry her makes my flesh crawl!”

  Though he knew the hurt likely flickered across his face, Sean held his ground. “Does it matter that I love her and that—?”

  “And that you want her daddy's money?”

  “I don't want your money,” Sean replied through clenched teeth. “I will provide for us.”

  “Oh, really?” McGregor drawled nastily. He jabbed his finger into Sean's chest again. “And just how the hell do you think you could ever provide for my daughter washing cars?”