Impossible To Resist (BWWM Romance Book 1)(68)

She sipped happily at her coffee and ate her breakfast, enjoying the fact that it had been brought to her two days in a row. When it was her turn for the bathroom, she dressed herself in black pants and a silvery gray sweater that brought out her eyes. She wanted to blend into the background of the crowd so that she could take photos without being noticed much.

Connor heard the bathroom door open and looked up at her without thinking at all about it, only to lose himself in the blue-gray depths of her eyes. He was drawn right to them, and it was a moment before he realized he was staring into them, before he made himself look away and concentrate on the cup of coffee before him.

“Well, you look nice today. Are you ready to go?” He followed it up with a change of topic so that it would seem as casual as he hoped it sounded.

She felt her cheeks warming and a small smile touched the corners of her lips as she turned away from him to pick up her coat. “Thanks! Um, yes. I just have to grab the camera batteries off the charger and then we can leave.” She kept her response light; she didn’t want him to know that his compliment thrilled her.

They drove back through the still falling snow, though the storm had lessened considerably and the flakes had thinned to just flurries. There was more than a foot of packed snow on the roads and side-streets of the town.

The two of them hiked through it from the parking lot and made it to the building where day two of the event was to be a continuum of the debates the day before, though covering different hot topics.

Catalina felt more sure of herself the second day, and confidence enabled her to get better shots and move around in the room with ease and focus as she worked. Connor stayed near her and watched over her as she captured much of what was going on.

It was much the same as the first day; the four candidates took the stage, but then the moderator came out and made an announcement that there would be controversial topics being discussed and that any manner of uproar from the crowd would not be tolerated and any instigators making a scene would be expelled from the building. Then she took her seat and the debate began.

Catalina looked around the crowded room and decided that the audience looked to be fairly calm and collected. She saw faces of people who had been there the day before, but none of them had been involved in the disruptive scene that she had almost been caught up in yesterday.

The moderator began the debate with women’s rights and abortion and the air in the room got hot rapidly. People were mostly still for a while at the beginning of the discussion, but as the debate took an ugly turn between the candidates, Catalina could see how it was beginning to fire up individuals throughout the crowd.

Just as things began to sound like a low rumble among the people facing the candidates, the moderator called for a thirty-minute break, and everyone got to get up and move about, get some fresh air, and cool down a little before the afternoon session of the debates continued.

It was long into the second half of the day when a young woman who was waiting at the microphone asked a question about men making decisions about women’s body parts. Since men didn’t have the parts in question, she felt that they had no right to make decisions about organs that they did not have themselves.

There was a stirring in the audience and a man who happened to be standing at the opposite microphone on the other side of the audience turned to her and called out his opinion about having a right as a father about deciding whether or not his child should be aborted. He felt that the woman didn’t have the solitary right to the decision, and before he was even finished speaking, the crowd erupted in anger and frustration. Nothing the moderator said made any difference to the mass of people who launched at each other.

Catalina was right in the middle of it when it broke out, and Connor, who had been watching her and everything around her with a hawk’s eye, leaped forward just as a huge man swung his fist toward another man. The target of the huge man ducked and the huge man would have hit Catalina directly in the face if Connor hadn’t jumped in front of her.

Just as he put himself between her and the huge man, the man’s massive fist landed hard on Connor’s face and knocked him backward into Catalina and both of them landed against three security guards who were struggling to restore order in the melee.

The security guards, seeing what happened, converged on the huge man and had him on the ground and in handcuffs in a matter of moments. Two other security guards helped Catalina and Connor to their feet and steadied them as Connor tried to regain his balance.

Catalina hadn’t realized that he had been hit at first, all she knew was that they had both flown backward with considerable force and she’d landed on other people. It wasn’t until the guards picked them up and began to make a fuss over him, that she looked up and saw blood pouring from a cut over his eyebrow.

Her mouth fell open and adrenaline and panic flooded through her as she reached for him, sure that her heart was going to break in half at seeing him injured. The security guards hauled them both to the front of the building where a team of medics took over and hovered around Connor, cleaning him off and patching him up.

The debate was brought to an immediate end and several people were escorted from the building in handcuffs. Connor and Catalina got into the car and she drove them back to the hotel, worrying about him the entire way.

When they reached their room he lay on the bed for a few minutes, but then sat back up. She was looking for ice to make a fresh ice pack for him and when she got back, she stood before him and looked down at him as he sat on the edge of the bed looking like hell.