He was too big and too fine to be in a small, shabby place like Rory’s room. Or Rory’s life.
“What do you want?”
“Civilized conversation. Are you capable of it?”
“Areyou?” Rory snapped. “Or are you gonna keep throwing me around?”
“Would you like me to?” Kenzie said, with saccharine sweetness. “I can throw you much harder than that.”
Rory tried not to cringe. If Kenzie had come for a fight, Rory didn’t have a prayer. “How’d you get in my room?”
“I thought it’d be more private to talk here than your shop. So I picked your lock.”
He’d what?
“Funny thing, actually,” Kenzie continued blithely, like he hadn’t just shifted Rory’s entire view of him. “The lock on the outside was laughable. But then I saw your locks inside.” He rapped the door behind him with his knuckles. “Two extra chains, both with expensive and complicated padlocks. Both a homemade installation job, by the look of it.”
Rory’s stomach rolled over. He tried to keep his face still. “What of it?”
Kenzie pointed to his window, a narrow slice of dirty glass that faced another boarding house across the alley. “That window isn’t wide enough for a child and you’re on the third floor with no fire escape. No one’s climbing in that window, but someone has still shoved a board in the top so that it can’t be opened. It must be sweltering in here in the summer.”
Rory shrugged as insolently as he could, like his pulse wasn’t creeping up. “Hell’s Kitchen ain’t Central Park West. What’s your point?”
“That I see barely anything keeping people out,” said Kenzie, “and a hell of a lot of effort made to keep some poor soul in.”
Rory’s heart skipped a beat, but it wasn’t like Kenzie would ever guess his reasons. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“No, of course you don’t. Why would you explain anything like a reasonable person?” He ignored Rory’s dirty look. “I spoke with your dear auntie today.”
“She thinks you whisked me off for a—” Rory cleared his throat “—‘wholesome boys’ night out.’”
“What could two men possibly get up to together that isn’t wholesome?” Kenzie said dryly, and Rory’s skin suddenly felt too hot. “I did leave out the part where I took you to a speakeasy and you nearly took me to an early grave. The hell you’re ever having a drink in my presence again.”
Rory winced. Here it was. “If you’re gonna clock me, just do it.”
“You think I came tohityou?” Kenzie looked genuinely affronted. “Do you have a single thought about me that doesn’t assume I’m an asshole?”
Rory’s gaze stole, unbidden, to Kenzie’s lips again. But what he said, churlishly, was, “You make that impossible.”
“Perhaps.” Kenzie smiled his dangerous smile. “But surely, if anyone would know about making the impossible possible, it would be you.” He paused, and added, clearly and unmistakably, “Theodore.”
Chapter Ten
Rory blanched pale as a ghost. He scrambled as far away as he could, until his back was against the wall at the head of the bed. “Why do you know that name?”
“It’s yours, isn’t it? Theodore Antonio Giovacchini-Westbrook. Named for your father, Theo Westbrook, a pastor of English descent at a well-known church near Ithaca. And for your maternal grandfather, Antonio Giovacchini, because your Italian mother passed down more than just those eyes.”
Rory swallowed. He drew his knees to his chest. Behind the glasses, the eyes in question were wide. “What else do you know?”
Arthur leaned against the door. “That your parents met during one of your father’s visits to the city. And that your prosaic father thought his reputation as a man of the cloth couldn’t bear the scandal of a bastard, let alone a half-Italian one, so he went back to Ithaca and left Teddy Giovacchini and his mother to fend for themselves.”
Rory’s mother had run away to an uncle upstate; small towns had long memories, and Arthur had found the restaurant that had once employed the beautiful Italian waitress with the bespectacled little boy. He could imagine what the townsfolk had whispered about her, raising a mixed son on her own. But the restaurateur was adamant that Teddy had been his mother’s pride and joy, which made the next part of Arthur’s carefully pieced-together history suddenly stick in his throat.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Rory’s jaw tightened and he looked away. “Isn’t everyone.”
The attempt at sarcasm was ruined by the rawness of his voice, the hitch in his words that twisted something in Arthur’s chest. Christ, hewasan asshole, making Rory dredge up the past. Some wounds never close.
