Until You

"And?"

"And, the council was scared of getting in trouble. Everybody agreed we were getting screwed but nobody wanted to confront Blakely. I didn't blame them. I didn't want to march into her office, hold out my dinner bowl and say, 'More, please,' either."

"So you came up with another plan, one that got Beryl tossed out?"

"She didn't. Get tossed out, I mean. Her parents decided to move her to another school." Her voice changed, lost just a bit of color. "Even after the school made it clear they intended to expel me, Beryl's father said that any school that permitted someone like me to slip through their admissions screening in the first place wasn't the right place for his daughter."

Conor felt his belly knot. He wanted to turn back the clock, seek out Beryl Whatsis's old man and punch out his lights—after he put old Blakely on a bread and water diet.

"Hey," Miranda said softly, "don't look like that. It was a long time ago—and when you hear what I did, you might not feel so sorry for me."

She gave him a self-satisfied little grin that eased away his anger. He grinned in return, rolled over, and looked down at her.

"Come on, Beckman, can the suspense! What'd you do?"

"I sneaked into Blakely's rooms one night after dinner. I hid in a closet."

"Ah ha," Conor said. "A covert operation."

"And you'd know all about those, of course."

For just an instant, his heart skipped a beat. But she was still smiling, and finally he realized that she'd been referring to the job he'd told her he held as a private detective.

"Sure," he said casually, chiding himself for having tossed out such a dumb, off-hand remark. "A pamphlet on covert operations comes packed inside each Handy Dandy Junior Detective kit."

Miranda smiled and linked her arms loosely around his neck.

"So I hid in the closet and sure enough, in just a little while, Blakely came in and sat herself down at her desk. A couple of minutes later, one of the monitors who worked in the kitchen came trundling up the stairs, carrying a tray. She set it down in front of Blakely, whipped off the cover, and there it was."

"Lobster and pâté?"

"Better than that. Steak and a baked potato oozing with butter. Oh, I still drool when I think of it! The closest we'd come to meat in weeks was some slimy grey stuff."

"Mystery meat," Conor said, "yeah, we had that in the army."

"Is that where you broke your nose? In the army?"

Damn, what was the matter with him? He never so much as hinted at his background. It was right up there on his How to Survive list, not just professionally but personally. You didn't give pieces of yourself away; what was the point? Nobody gave a damn about anybody in this world, not really. Nobody cared what was your favorite color, or what kinds of books you preferred. He'd always known that; it was one of the things Jillian had thrown at him, when they'd split up, that he'd never let her in, and now here he was, dropping bits and pieces of information like a flower girl going up the aisle with a basket of rose petals on her arm, not just wanting to know everything there was to know about Miranda but, dammit, wanting her to know about him.

Wanting her to know the truth, that he'd lied to her from Day One, that he wished to God he hadn't, that she was becoming a part of his life he didn't want to think about ever losing...

"Conor?"

He blinked, forced himself to focus on her slightly puzzled smile.

"Yes," he said, catching a strand of her hair, letting it slip like silk through his fingers, "I was in the army. But it isn't where I broke my nose."

"I'll bet it was playing football, in high school."

He laughed. "Football heroes don't break their noses."

"Is that what you were?" Miranda planted a gentle kiss on his slightly bent nose. "A football hero?"

"Well, I would have been," he said modestly, "but I broke my leg taking a joyride on a Harley, and that was the end of me and football."

"Joyriding? As in borrowing?"

"Joyriding, as in borrowing without permission. Are you horrified?"