Carla Neggers - The Carriage House

She lifted the table with one hand and pulled it away from him. He remained in his chair, but his eyes had darkened noticeably. Tess didn't care. She picked up an empty chair and flung it. It toppled over, and one of the university students said, "Hey, what's going on?"

"A brawl," Davey said. "Stay out of it."

Andrew didn't say anything. He unclasped his hands and calmly scratched the side of his mouth.

Tess kicked over the second unoccupied chair at his table, then picked it up and slammed it back down on the floor. Days of frustration, tension and lack of sleep were taking their toll, and she wanted release. She'd seen a brawl or two. She wanted to bust up the place, get some kind of reaction out of Andrew Thorne.

She grabbed his stew bowl and threw it against the wall. The pottery was so thick, it broke only into two pieces.

"Jimmy," Davey said, "you keeping track of the damage? It's going to add up."

Andrew kept his gaze pinned on Tess. It was kissing him, too, she realized, that had her out of control. Her reaction to him. Physically, emotionally. She'd tried to pass it off on the odd weekend in Bea-con-by-the-Sea. She'd told herself when she saw him again, it wouldn't be there, this over-the-top reaction to him.

But it was. Even staring down at him from her fourth-floor window, she'd felt it.

"We need to talk," he said calmly.

She took a swing at him, figuring he was inert, but one hand shot up with lightning speed and caught her by the wrist before her fist could connect with his jaw.

He moved easily to his feet. "Calm down."

"There is nothing a woman hates more than being told to calm down."

"Tess."

The feel of his hand on hers was like a hot brand. She couldn't breathe. "Let go of me."

"Not until you promise not to punch me."

He'd done this before. Bar brawls. He wasn't just a North Shore architect.

"Hey, Tess," Davey said. "You've got to learn to pick your fights. The guy's got height, weight and experience on you."

Fury boiled up inside her, and she leveled her foot at Andrew's shin and let loose, catching him off balance. He swore. She slipped out of his grip and spun off toward the door.

He grabbed her by the elbow just as she was stepping over Davey's feet. "Tess, I said, we need to talk."

"No, we don't."

She snatched up Davey's fresh beer with her free hand and let it fly, its contents catching Andrew in the face and spewing over three dusty construction workers who'd just walked in. "Hey! What the hell?"

The place erupted. It was as if her temper and bad mood were contagious. Andrew was forced to drop her wrist in order to defend himself against a beefy man who thought the beer was his doing.

Seizing her opening, Tess jumped on Andrew's back with the blind hope of summarily tossing him out of her father's bar. She could have left. She could have gone on her way and let Jimmy Haviland and Davey Ahearn deal with Andrew Thorne. But the chance to throw him out herself was too good to pass up. This was her place. This was where she was safe. This was sacred ground. He had no business spying on her anywhere, but especially not here. She felt violated, invaded.

He didn't budge, instead reaching one arm around in back of him and sinking his grip into her thigh. "Tess, damn it!"

When she reached for Davey's stew bowl, her godfather rolled off his stool and peeled her off Thorne. "Take a swing at me, Tess, and I'll pop you in the chops."

Jim Haviland came around in front of the bar. "Okay, if I were Ben Cartwright, I'd fire my shotgun in the air, but I'm not. So, everyone, shut the hell up and sit down."

They complied, and he handed out brooms, dustpans, dampened bar towels and a round of beers, on his daughter.

She was unchagrined, but refused to look in An-drew's direction. He was standing behind her, breathing fire now. That was something. At least she'd penetrated that cool Yankee control.

She glared at her father. "If you'd thrown Thorne out like I said-"

"You know, Tess," Davey interrupted, still between her and Andrew, "I've always thought you were the head-over-heels type. You never were going to go quietly or slowly. I figure, you throw a table and a couple of chairs at a man, it means-"

"Suppose I throw a chair at you, Davey?"

He grinned, unrepentant.

"I'll get the mop," Tess said. "Help clean up." Her father shook his head. "No way. You've done enough damage. Go home and cool off." He handed her a cup of ice. "Pour that down your back. Get a good night's sleep. In the morning, you go back to those detectives, tell them you saw a goddamn skeleton and someone stole it out of your cellar. Make them look into it."

But she was in no mood for anyone to give her advice. "I'll do what I have to do." She was surly now, her head spinning, and she could feel Thorne's eyes boring into her. "Send me my bill."

Her father was losing patience, too. "I will, you can count on that."

"Come on," Andrew said, his tone quiet but uncompromising, "I'll give you a ride home."

Tess bristled. "I'll take the subway."

"Fine. I'll give you a ride to the subway station."

She relented, only because her father's likely next move was a call to the police, and she'd be spending the night in a holding cell. She shot him a knowing look. "We're even. I didn't tell you about the skeleton. You didn't tell me about Thorne."

"No way we're even." He grinned at her suddenly and leaned against the smooth, scarred wood of his bar. "I figure this time, for a change, you got the short end of the stick."

Andrew ended up with a small cut on his arm from fending off one of the construction workers and a bruise where Tess had kicked him. She didn't have a scratch on her. It was as if she'd gone through the brawl with a protective force field around her, a perk, he supposed, of being Jim Hav-iland's daughter.

She was wrung-out. He could see it in the stiff way she moved, in her eyes and the determined set of her mouth. She'd fight her fatigue. She was in the mood to fight everything.

"Your father says you're not given to seeing things," Andrew said.

But the idea that he and her father had talked behind her back obviously didn't sit well with her, and she didn't respond. She had her arms crossed on her chest and was staring out the side window. They'd passed the Museum of Science, and he'd fought his way onto Storrow Drive. It was dusk, the city lights glowing against the slowly darkening sky.

"I think your father makes a hell of a beef stew."

"That's what everyone thinks."

So, he wasn't anything special. She wasn't giving an inch. "He never remarried after your mother died?"

"No."

"Girlfriends?"

"Some." Out on the Charles River, a lone sculler dipped his oars rhythmically, Tess watching. "He gave up a lot for me."

"Maybe the right woman never came along."

"My mother was the right woman. After she died, there was no one else for him. That's the way he looked at it."

"He didn't want to be disloyal?"

She shook her head. "No. It's just that falling in love again was impossible for him. Real love is a rarity. He was lucky to have had it at all, never mind twice in one lifetime."

It sounded like an excuse to Andrew, or a fantasy on her part. "That's pessimistic."

"Practical. Realistic." She cut a glance over at him, her body still rigid. "I'm talking about real love, not lust, not friendship."

He smiled. "Lust is important."

She turned back to the window and resumed her silence.

Andrew decided this wasn't the moment to tell her that her father had waxed philosophical on his daughter and men. It wasn't that Andrew had asked. Jim Haviland, bartender supreme, had done the talking. He'd said men were few and far between in Tess's life these days, that she'd gone from being too impulsive to too picky-maybe because she had an idealized view of him and her mother, as she'd been only six when she died. He'd talked while he cleaned glasses and stirred the stew, the bar empty that early.