The Call of Bravery

CHAPTER TEN



LIA HAD NEVER felt anything like this. All patience deserted her, replaced by urgency so huge and overwhelming, she was ready for him now. She kissed him with fervor that was probably clumsy, it had been so long since she’d done even this much with a man. She rose on tiptoe and strained against him. Her arms locked around his neck, and she had the heady pleasure of plunging her fingers into his hair, finally feeling the springy coarse-textured silk.

There was no tenderness in this kiss, only need. His tongue established a hard, driving rhythm interrupted only by sharp nips on her lower lip. She returned them, and followed his tongue into his mouth with her own.

She was trying to climb him, she should have been embarrassed to realize, but any ability to feel shame had been supplanted by this all-consuming want.

When the back of her legs hit the bed, she realized Conall had walked her the few steps. “Yes,” she whispered, and moved her open mouth over his jaw and down his throat.

He groaned and peeled off her tank top then looked at her. Dark color ran over his cheekbones and he made a sound deep in his throat.

“You’re beautiful. So beautiful.”

Lia slid her hands over his strong chest. “You are, too,” she whispered.

With something like a laugh, he lifted her and dropped her on the bed, coming down over her with one knee planted between her thighs. His mouth settled on her breast. As when he’d kissed her, he didn’t bother with preliminaries. He suckled her deep and hard, and she gripped his head to keep him where he was. He had to fight briefly to switch to her other breast. Lia pushed her hips up, almost but not quite satisfied to press against the powerful thigh she straddled.

Eventually that wasn’t enough. She moved her hand over the hard bulge beneath his jeans, loving the growl that escaped him. The zipper was stubborn; while she worked it lower he sucked in his belly and lifted his head to look at her face.

His was transformed by passion. It was as if the skin had tightened over the angular bone structure, erasing some of the care-worn lines, deepening others. His mouth was sensual, hard, his eyes lit by a molten glow that matched how he made her feel inside.

He jerked when, at last, she was able to lay her hand on his erection, stroking, gripping, savoring the astonishing pleasure of finally touching him.

She was shocked when he wrenched himself back.

“Don’t move,” he said in a low, harsh voice. “I’ve got to go get a condom. Unless you have some…?”

Lia shook her head.

“Stay.”

He muttered under his breath when he left her bedroom, swearing, she thought. Oh, heavens—he was trying to pull up his zipper. Lia was giggling when he returned, which earned her a dark look.

Conall shut the door, which was when she realized it had been standing open the entire time they were kissing and stripping each other. Would she have even heard one of the kids getting up?

He hadn’t quite managed the zipper, she saw when her gaze lowered. Conall glanced down, his expression momentarily rueful. “I’ll keep some of these in your bedroom from now on,” he muttered, dropping a handful of packets on her bedside table.

From now on? Splayed wantonly on her bed, Lia knew that he meant to come to her bed every night, and she was glad. Fiercely glad.

Every night until he had to leave.

I won’t regret this. I won’t.

“You have amazing legs,” he whispered. “I watch you all the time, you know.”

She nodded. “I know.”

Conall wrapped his hands around her feet and gently squeezed, then worked his way upward, stroking and kneading. Lia whimpered.

“Can we…not go slow? This time?”

He didn’t answer with words. Instead he tore her shorts off and wrenched his zipper down. He stepped out of his jeans even as he reached for one of the packets.

She was staring, wanting to touch him, but he said in a guttural voice, “No touching. Not now.”

Another time she might like to put the condom on for him, but at this moment she was only glad of his speed. He came down on top of her, some of his weight on his elbows, thrusting even as she lifted her legs to accommodate him.

Her body arched and a keening sound slipped out. Conall swallowed it with his mouth. He took her at her word—the rhythm he set was hard and fast and had her frantic within seconds. They grappled and plunged. The headboard whapped against the wall and Conall flipped so that she rode him. Even if she’d wanted to slow the pace, he didn’t let her, his powerful hands gripping her hips and lifting and lowering her even as he drove upward.

Release came shockingly soon, rolling over her in intense waves that were barely subsiding when Conall arched, bared his teeth in ecstasy and came. The cords in his neck stood out, and the sound he bit back was raw. It was a long moment before his hands first relaxed on her, then finally slid up her back to pull her onto him.

She lay there, limp and replete, feeling glorious so long as she didn’t let herself think. Thinking would open her to worries and fears.

Then I won’t.

“How the hell did we manage to hold out until now?” he muttered.

Lia smiled against his throat. “I don’t know.”

“Do you have any idea how many nights I’ve stood out there in the damn hall wondering what you’d do if I got into bed with you?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

He bent his head. “Mmm-hmm, what? You knew?”

Lia couldn’t help a soft laugh at his outrage. “Of course I do. I hear you every night, you know. I always wake up when you come downstairs.”

“It’s been killing me.”

“Me, too,” she admitted with a sigh. She kissed his neck right where it joined his shoulder. He tasted salty. She licked him for another sample. Who would have ever thought sweaty male could be so delicious?

“I’ve got to take this damn condom off.” He groaned, lifted her off him, and heaved himself out of bed. Her lamp was still on; she was able to drink in the sight of his broad back, lean hips and long legs as he left her room naked.

That gave her a moment of concern—what if one of the kids got up?—but it didn’t last long. For all she knew, he slept naked every night and chanced running into someone when he got up to use the bathroom. He was back before she had a chance to wonder whether he’d return. He was also semi-aroused, she saw.

She smiled when he reached the bedside. “May I touch this time, Agent MacLachlan?”

A grin flashed across his face, lightning quick and very sexy. “Certainly, Ms. Woods. To your heart’s content.”

Her heart would not be content for a very long time, she thought, speared by the pain that would be so much worse when he packed his bags and left.

But he wasn’t going yet, and she’d made her choice. For a second, sadness wanted to smother her. Was this the closest to true love she’d ever find? Perhaps it was inevitable that she’d fall in love with a man who would only be in her life for a short time.

So be it.

She reached out and cupped him in her hands, watching his face, learning what he liked.

* * *

CONALL DIDN’T LET HIMSELF fall asleep in her bed, even though he desperately wanted to. Lia had conked out after they made love a second time. Once the pressure cooker had been released the first time, they managed slow and tender, and, God help him, he’d never had sex like this.

Asleep, Lia was slight in his arms, her bones delicate when he moved his hands over her. Fulfilling a fantasy, he’d taken her hair from the braid and it now fanned over the both of them, a thick silken blanket. He gently lifted a handful at a time and let it run through his fingers.

She hadn’t told him to go. But he knew she wouldn’t want the kids to discover him in here, or to see him emerging from here later in the morning.

So at last he separated himself from her, kissed her softly when she mumbled protests, and tucked her in before picking up his jeans from the floor, turning off the lamp and slipping out of her room. He left her door ajar, exactly as she always did—and he’d memorized it down to a fraction of an inch—then took himself to the bathroom to discard the second condom and wash.

When he was done he braced his hands on the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He’d never bothered before, after sex, to look deep. Well, not since the first time, when he was an exhilarated sixteen-year-old on a high from what he’d done with Autumn Hiatt who was short, probably on her way to being plump but possessing huge tits. Sex otherwise was great, one of life’s pleasures. But the partners he’d had that sex with had never mattered all that much. He was shaken to find out how much different it was when the woman did matter.

When he had the really bad feeling no other woman ever would matter the same way. And that maybe sex wasn’t going to be so good in the future, either, when it wasn’t Lia’s gorgeous mouth he was kissing, her slick, heavy hair he’d buried his fingers in, her slim body beneath his, her green-brown eyes, glazed with passion but widening with amazement…

“Oh, hell,” he groaned, and let his head fall.

Tonight he and Henderson had finally caught a break. The men in the pickup had come back with another load, and before dark. They were getting cocky, it seemed. Given a good look, Conall had placed that familiar face, and they’d gotten some decent photos of two of the three residents of the house as well as the visitors.

The bastard Conall knew was a gunrunner. Gordy Costello been peripheral to an operation Conall had worked in Southern California and had escaped the net before arrests were made. He wasn’t important enough then for them to bother pursuing aggressively. A confirmation of his identity now, though, would help justify a warrant that might bring this case to a close.

And then he’d pack his duffel bag, toss it in the Suburban, say goodbye to Walker, Brendan and Lia and drive away.

He swore again, low and ragged.

He was good at moving on. A regular champion at it. Increasingly, he’d gotten bored with whatever he was working; he wanted nothing more than to move on to a new challenge, something that might engage him. It was ridiculous to think he was so happy living the bucolic life he didn’t want to leave. He pictured the damn cows chewing their cud and everything in him rose in outrage. No! This wasn’t him. It was…an interlude. That’s all. Pretty damn amazing sex, sure. Nice kids. He should be glad he’d been entertained while he was stuck here, because he would have gone out of his flipping mind otherwise.

He ran both hands over his face, turned off the light and made his way to the bedroom and twin bed he currently called his. Where he lay awake entirely too long, his gut roiling with some unnamed anxiety as the same scene kept playing through his head: him saying goodbye to those two boys then turning to do the same to Lia, knowing this was it. Moving on.

* * *

BY AFTERNOON CONALL WAS getting emails giving him names to go with faces. Lia’s neighbors were, of all damn things, survivalists. White supremacists. The group with whom these three were affiliated was small. A couple of members had recently bought a chunk of acreage in rural Idaho, triggering some interest but no action. They hadn’t taken out a loan, but nobody within the organization had ever held the kind of job that would have brought in money like that. Whatever was going on next door to Lia was the answer, or part of it.

Conall hadn’t seen any evidence yet that they were moving drugs, although he hadn’t ruled out the possibility. It was a tried-and-true method of raising big bucks, after all. Maybe Gordy Costello had switched his trade from weapons to white powder. Anything was possible. Conall kind of doubted it, though. He thought the neighbors were buying guns, but whether for resale or to arm themselves was another question. They wouldn’t be the first nuts with an us-against-the-world mentality. When they gathered on their Idaho enclave, they were likely to embrace a paranoid lifestyle, certain the FBI was watching through long-range binoculars.

He smiled grimly at that. Little did the fools imagine they were already being watched by federal agents.

Henderson, it developed, had worked an operation involving white supremacists who cultivated high-quality marijuana to support the war they envisioned coming between their kind and the U.S. government in its too-liberal, multi-ethnic arrogance.

Telling Conall about it, Jeff had shaken his head. “Despite the quantity they were growing and dealing, the sentences handed out were pathetic. They probably bought a new piece of property and went right back to farming the minute they got out. The profit was worth the risk.”

Yeah, wasn’t that always the case?

It occurred to Conall that his frustration with outcomes had been fueling his growing dissatisfaction with his job. Was he accomplishing anything meaningful? He’d begun to doubt it. Sometimes he wanted to do something where he could see a measurable impact. Maybe not a big one, but the faces of people he’d helped. The victims of the drug wars were mainly faceless to him. He spent his life immersed in the underworld of users and dealers. Too often decisions made and handed down from above were tainted with politics.

Maybe that was why these weeks had felt so clean to him. Why he half envied his brothers, who protected the townsfolk they considered their own.

He shook his head over the idiocy. Niall and Duncan arrested their townsfolk, too, some of whom were scum not that different from the men Conall put behind bars. Their crimes were committed on a smaller scale, that’s all.

Part of his mood, he admitted, had to do with the fact that here it was mid-afternoon and he was working instead of hanging out with Walker and Brendan. Lia had taken them somewhere a couple of hours ago; he’d heard the engine and from one of the attic windows seen her Subaru going out the driveway. He’d gone downstairs, ostensibly to use the john, but hoping to find a note. There was nothing. All he could tell was that the house was empty.

Later, Henderson had gone down and made a sandwich. He sat eating it now while he idly watched the house across the pasture.

Laptop open, Conall sprawled in the big easy chair Jeff had been enterprising enough to find behind a towering pile of boxes up here in the attic. No new email. He knew his restlessness had more to do with listening for the Subaru than because of anything he should be focusing on.

“I haven’t been pulling my weight,” Conall heard himself say.

Henderson turned to look at him in surprise. “You’re pulling your shifts.”

“Shorter ones than yours.”

“Not much. You’re doing most of the night.”

“And playing all day.”

“I’m okay up here. I don’t mind surveillance.” He hesitated. “I call my wife and we talk for a while every day.”

“No reason not to.” Uncomfortable, Conall wondered why he’d initiated this conversation.

“I wouldn’t have made friends downstairs like you have.” Weirdly, the other man was the one looking squirrely. “I’d have probably been sitting up here reading anyway.” He hesitated. “I told you once. The kids here…I don’t know what to say to them.”

“They’re regular kids.” Like I’d know.

Henderson was shaking his head. “No, they’re not. The girl is…I guess I don’t know any teenage girls, but she’s…sometimes the way she looks at me.” He stopped. “And those boys, if they talk at all, they ask weird questions.”

Well, that was true enough. Curiosity stirring, though, Conall asked, “Like what?”

“Since I go to church, can I tell them what happens to souls when people die. Or whether it’s true that fingernails keep growing after you’re dead.”

Conall’s mouth crooked into a smile. “Those sound like pretty normal questions for kids who’ve had a parent die to ask. And, okay, where souls go is hard to answer without sounding glib, but the fingernail question is easy enough.”

“Easy?” His partner stared at him as though he was crazy. “I’m supposed to talk about gruesome stuff like that to an eight-year-old kid? I asked where he’d heard that and all he did was mumble, ‘Dunno.’ So I said no, it’s not true, and he said how do you know? Had I ever looked at anyone when they first died and then a week later to see if the fingernails and hair and stuff had grown.”

“They’re thinking about death a lot,” Conall repeated. “I think maybe they have to have answers, or they’ll keep wondering. Answers let them, I don’t know, process their grief.”

“How do you know that?”

He shrugged, uneasy but not wanting to give that away. He said abruptly, “It makes sense, that’s all.”

He’d had a lot of questions about prison the first time his dad was sent away, too. The Washington State Correctional Institute was a great unknown to him, maybe not so different than death. Dad was just…gone.

Mom had shut Conall down every time he asked questions. In those days, he hadn’t had the internet to look up answers. He’d found a couple of books at the library and secretly studied them, but they were about correctional institutes in general and not the one his father was at in particular. He hadn’t been very satisfied with them. In retrospect he realized the books had been dated and he’d known that without putting his finger on what was wrong.

He hadn’t thought about any of this in a long time. He hadn’t remembered, either, that it was Duncan who’d finally told him what he knew. Mom had dragged Duncan, the oldest, on a couple of visits to Dad. Duncan told Conall he was lucky he hadn’t had to go. That it was scary going into that place with buzzers going off and heavy doors closing with muffled thuds behind Mom and him as they worked their way through security. That knowing they were locked in, too, made Duncan want to run out screaming.

Duncan scared. Conall had marveled at the concept. Hell, he still marveled at the concept. Didn’t Duncan face life square on? Had he ever once in his life flinched?

Feeling that streak of bitterness surprised Conall, and for the first time ever, he was ashamed of it. Yeah, Duncan was all about duty and doing the right thing, but that didn’t mean he was never scared or uncertain or furious at fate. He had to have been furious when Mom ditched them all.

I’ve held a grudge all these years over nothing, Conall realized. He should be ashamed. It seemed like every time he dredged up memories, Duncan was at the heart of them. It wasn’t his fault that Conall had felt inadequate in comparison. It was probably even natural, given the age difference between them. How did a kid that much younger ever equal the big brother whose achievements loomed so large?

Conall had known all this intellectually. Even known that if their family hadn’t been so screwed up and Duncan had gone away to college, Conall would have been grateful when his big brother called or noticed him during school breaks. They might have grown into friendship later, as the years passed. But as things had been, even before Mom walked out, their relationship was doomed. Conall could close his eyes and recall what an explosive mass of anger he’d been. Duncan had saved him. The fact that he resented being saved had never made sense.

But that crawling sense of shame gave him a clue. Until then he’d been able to pretend he was keeping his head out of the water on his own. From the instant Duncan sat him down to say, “Mom’s left us,” Conall had known the truth. He was drowning, and his only chance of survival was the brother he admired so much, the one who was having to ruin his own life because he had to rescue Conall—the pathetic, scrawny, excuse-for-a-MacLachlan youngest boy. He’d known Duncan despised him even as he felt obligated.

That was what he couldn’t bear knowing. He’d wanted to hate someone else instead of himself.

He eventually heard the Subaru and couldn’t stop himself from going to the window to watch Lia, the boys and Sorrel troop across the yard. He could see their mouths moving but couldn’t hear a word. They were all carrying bags that looked like they held clothes and shoe boxes. So she’d taken them shopping, even picked up Sorrel from school so she could join them at the mall. The sight made Conall feel disgruntled. He took himself and his bad mood back to the other side of the attic.

Tonight was Jeff’s turn to eat downstairs. Conall didn’t get a chance to see anyone but Sorrel, who delivered his dinner tray. Her face was brighter and happier than usual.

“Hey,” he said. “Good day?”

She nodded vigorously. “Lia said we needed some summer clothes so she took us to the discount mall. I got some really cool sandals and shorts and—” She eyed him and said, “I guess you don’t care about clothes, do you?”

Conall looked down at himself and laughed. “I guess I don’t.” It was stuffy up here, and he wore sacky cargo shorts and a faded T-shirt. A clothes horse he was not.

“Dinner smells really good,” she told him cheerily and left him alone.

Dinner was good. Lia had used veggies from her garden in a stir-fry on rice. Just like one of the kids, he got a big glass of milk and two home-baked cookies, thick and chewy. He ate without the pleasure he would have felt if he were sitting at the table with everyone else.

He wondered what Walker and Brendan were asking Jeff tonight. Had they started speculating about sex yet? Conall kind of thought that by age ten he had been. Were they worrying about what would happen to them, or were they still too caught up in their mother’s death for it to occur to them how uncertain their futures were? He’d have to ask Lia.

When Jeff came up, Conall said in frustration, “We’re wasting our time sitting here staring at that damned house. It’s not quite time for the utility district meter reader to make the rounds, but would those guys know the difference?”

Jeff pushed out his lower lip while he thought about it. “Maybe not.”

“Could we get their electricity knocked out and use that as a guise to go visiting?”

Knocking out phone service was a handy dandy excuse, but these guys had never signed up for a landline. In fact, it appeared any telephone communications they had with others were made using throwaway cell phones. No major service listed them as customers.

“Hell,” he said irritably, on a sudden realization, “I figured out why they were so unfriendly to Lia. Her skin probably isn’t lily-white enough to suit them.”

“She looks more Caucasian than Hispanic.”

“Not with that hair,” he argued.

“No suggestion they’ve been real chummy with any of the other neighbors, either,” Jeff said mildly.

Conall grunted and kept his mouth shut. Behind him came the rustles and thumps that indicated Jeff was disrobing and stretching out in bed. Dusk was settling, plunging the never-bright-and-sunny attic into purple-gray gloom. They didn’t turn on lights up here, which might catch someone’s attention. Maybe the hours sitting in semi to complete darkness were getting to him.

The fact that everything he believed about himself was now floating around like the sparkling bits in a snow globe, likely to form an unfamiliar landscape when they settled, was completely irrelevant.

* * *

HE CAME TO HER BED, as Lia had expected he would. She’d tensed the moment she heard the quiet click of the attic door. Even so, Conall took her by surprise, slipping into her room like a ghost. The mattress sank from his weight, and then he had her in his arms and was kissing her with intensity and need that found an instant response in her. It seemed like forever since she’d seen him. This morning when she awakened alone, she’d been both grateful and disappointed. To not see him all day was almost more than she could bear.

Ridiculous, but, oh, she needed him.

If anything, their lovemaking was more powerful than last night’s. Maybe it was the anticipation, the fact that they now knew each other’s trigger points. But Lia thought there was something about the way Conall touched her tonight, as though he’d missed her, too. Needed her.

When it was over, he rolled to one side pulling her with him, so that her head rested where it was meant to be, in the hollow formed by his shoulder. His hand kept sliding up and down her back, his fingertips testing each vertebrae, the curve of her waist, the sharpness of her shoulder blades. Happiness mixed with a kind of desperation filled her chest. It was like holding her breath underwater. The moment would inevitably come when she had to let it all out and she’d be left hollow inside.

“Why aren’t you married, Lia?” Conall’s voice was a rumble that vibrated beneath her cheek. “Why don’t you have your own kids?”

Surprised, she tilted her head but, of course, couldn’t see his face. She took a minute to formulate a reply.

“I didn’t want a marriage like my parents’. It’s so…unequal. I saw friends’ families, of course, but I never felt that close to any of their parents. I always had this feeling of separateness, I wasn’t like any of them.”

“Because of getting deported.”

“Maybe. Probably. It made me feel dirty, like I didn’t belong here. But I didn’t belong there, either. Dad and Mom are so different from each other, I guess I’ve always felt split down the middle.” She didn’t remember ever saying any of this before, even though she’d figured it out a long time ago. Maybe it was the darkness and the comfort of Conall’s embrace that made speaking now so easy.

“You’ve had boyfriends.”

She was glad he didn’t ask if she’d ever been in love. He wouldn’t want to hear her say, Until now, you mean?

“Only a couple that were semi-serious. One in college. That was the closest call to anything permanent. Emilio’s parents were migrant workers, but legal. He was warm and funny and we had something in common.”

There was a small silence. “But?”

“But it turned out he was also really traditional. He assumed we’d get married and there wouldn’t be any reason for me to go to grad school, would there, although it would be okay if I worked for a couple of years until he was making enough to buy a house and start a family. I panicked.”

He chuckled. That vibration felt so nice, Lia kissed his chest. Muscles flexed and his arms tightened.

“What about you?” she asked. “Your brothers are both married. Is it your job?”

At first she didn’t think he was going to answer at all. “No,” he said finally. “Although it would be tough, doing the kind of work I do.”

Lia had no trouble imagining how awful it could be—him disappearing for weeks or months on end, her having no real idea where he was or what he was doing, knowing only that he was probably in danger. Yes, that would be hard on a relationship.

“Jeff’s married, though. You knew that.”

She nodded.

“I know other guys who are. A couple of female agents, too.” Again he was quiet and she had the sense of him collecting himself. “I vowed years ago I was never going there.”

The heaviness in her chest felt a lot less like happiness now.

“My parents weren’t a shining example. Dad wasn’t abusive, nothing like that. I picture him now and I can see that he was handsome, maybe charming. He was good at making people laugh. He didn’t really like working for a living, though. Mom and he fought bitterly. It got physical sometimes, which scared the crap out of all of us. They’d break stuff, put holes in the walls.” He was silent for a moment. “She ended up doing everything around the house and holding down a job, too. Sometimes we’d suddenly have money. Later I realized it was when he was dealing. Mom kept making him swear to go straight, and he’d try, but it didn’t last long. He wasn’t…reliable.”

“He must have loved her, to try.”

“Maybe.” The way his muscles twitched felt involuntary. “I didn’t see anything that looked like love.”

His voice never gave much away, but she couldn’t possibly mistake this kind of searing pain. Lia lifted her head, wishing she could see him. She would have sat up and reached for the lamp switch except that she guessed he, too, was talking more freely because the darkness hid so much. In a way, she hoped he didn’t realize how much he’d revealed.

“But you…” she whispered. “They must have loved the three of you.”

His laugh hurt to hear. “I was nine years old when I heard my parents fighting. My father called me a pathetic excuse for a boy and said I was Mom’s fault. They were screaming at each other. She said she’d never wanted me, that Dad was the one who’d insisted they have another kid.”

Lia listened in horror. She didn’t move even the tiniest bit, even though she wanted to throw herself on top of him and hold him and tell him that his parents were idiots, that he was lovable. So lovable she hadn’t had a prayer of resisting him.

But his body was utterly rigid. She could tell that he was talking to the ceiling, maybe hardly aware she was there. She doubted that he’d ever told this story to anyone.

“Dad said I didn’t have the makings of any kind of man. He asked whether I was even his.” He gave another ugly laugh. “Mom started throwing things. I shut myself into my room. It wasn’t a good day, anyway. I got in a lot of fights, and I’d just had the crap beat out of me. My eyes were swollen shut.” His voice had noticeably relaxed; he was okay with telling her about this part. But then that quiet tension reintroduced itself. “It was seeing me that set them off. I didn’t exactly make them proud.”

“Oh, Conall.” She couldn’t stand it another second. She climbed on top of him and squeezed him with both arms. She burrowed her face against his neck. “They didn’t deserve you. I want to hurt them. I swear I’ll never say anything bad about my parents again. Even Dad loves me, I know he does. How did you turn into such a good man?”

“Hey, hey!” His arms had closed tightly around her, too, but he was laughing. Only then he said, “Are you crying? Lia?”

Damn it, she was. She never cried.

“Oh, hell. For me? Lia, that was a lot of years ago. It’s water under the bridge. I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No,” she cried. “I’m glad you did. And it does matter. When I think of you not having anyone—”

“Shh,” he said against her head. “Shh, Lia, you’ll wake up one of the kids.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do.” He was smiling, she could hear it. His hands moved over her, soothing, kneading, calming her. “And I did have someone. I had Duncan.” There was the smallest of pauses. “I had both my brothers.”

Lia went still. “Then why…?”

His pauses were hard to interpret but deep and dark with the things he chose not to say.

At last his shoulders jerked. “That’s the complicated part. I’ll say this much, though. That day, Duncan found me in my room. He brought me an ice pack and he talked to me. He was…there.”

“I may have to hug him the next time I see him.” She rubbed her wet cheeks on his shoulder and sniffed. Maybe she should feel foolish, but she didn’t. Mostly, she was mad.

“All I ask is that you don’t kiss him.” He was joking, she could tell. “Keep the kisses for me,” he said, and he didn’t sound humorous anymore. He sounded like he meant it, and her heart squeezed.

No wonder he was so damaged. Too damaged, maybe, to ever love a woman—her—the way she wished he could. Although she’d never really felt violent, Lia wanted to kill his parents, two selfish people who never should have had children.

“I shouldn’t have told you,” Conall said again, softly.

“I’m glad you did,” she repeated. And then they were kissing, first with astonishing tenderness, then with some of the earlier ferocity. They made love, and she wished he wouldn’t slip out of the room when they were done, that she’d wake to find him beside her come morning. But she knew that wouldn’t be, and that the kids weren’t the only reason.

Which hurt.