“Yeah,” I murmured. “Sorry.” I pulled my hand free of his because the warmth was fucking with my senses. Thank God he removed his hand instead of resting it on my thigh or I would have completely lost it. “What did Matty mean? What are you supposed to ask me?”
Magnus chuckled. “Remember how I told you that Matty wants to marry Leo?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, in that same conversation, he decided that you and I should get married.”
I laughed at that even if the idea didn’t seem all that funny. No, I wasn’t interested in marriage with anyone, but I sure would have loved to live in Matty’s imagination where a guy like Magnus would want someone like me.
“Why did he think that?”
Magnus’s smiled faded and his eyes met mine. “Because we’re both alone,” he murmured.
The innocent logic was amusing, but there was no humor in Magnus’s gaze which led me to say, “That’s not the only reason, is it?”
The silence between us lasted several long seconds before Magnus whispered, “And because he thinks I’m sad and that being married means I won’t be sad anymore.”
I didn’t need to ask if the little boy was right. Magnus had hidden his grief well in the past six months, but I’d seen enough in just the last few days to know that he’d loved his daughter with everything he was.
I was tempted to end the conversation with another crass joke, but my mind rebelled. I couldn’t make light of this man’s pain. I took a deep breath and forced myself to say the words I hadn’t even had the strength to admit to myself.
“I lost someone too.”
Chapter Ten
Magnus
Dante’s admission did and didn’t surprise me. I’d suspected there was something in his past that had left its mark, but I never thought he’d actually admit it. We’d been getting along better since the night I’d confronted him in my room, but we also hadn’t talked much unless it was necessary.
And that had been all on me since I’d been caught up in my own turmoil. Between the anticipation of Jenna’s service and needing to pick out her final resting place that wasn’t really even that, I’d been too emotionally drained to do anything besides focus on working on the house. The only other time besides the visit to the cemetery that we’d left the house had been this morning when we’d gone to the District Attorney’s office in Austin so I could meet with the prosecutor one last time before the trial started on Monday. Dante had been on alert the whole time and hadn’t visibly relaxed until we’d left the city limits. I hadn’t been as on edge, but that was probably because I was too numb to feel much of anything. The only bright spot in my days were my calls with Matty.
And while I couldn’t really call Dante a bright spot, in a strange way, just having him around brought me a sense of comfort I hadn’t felt since I’d left Seattle. Maybe because he was part of the same family of men who’d accepted me into their fold, I wasn’t sure. And since the night of our talk, he’d backed off from the crass sexual jokes he’d so often thrown at me. While I didn’t miss his crude comments, I missed something else that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. He was quieter than normal and that just wasn’t him. I felt like I still hadn’t met the real Dante…just a skewed version of him that wasn’t quite enough.
My physical attraction to him hadn’t waned in the least, but I’d started to accept that it had nothing to do with stress. Whatever my mood was, I still wanted him. His touch, his smile…didn’t matter. I just wanted it. All of it.
I’d quietly tested the waters of my attraction by occasionally touching Dante in ways that weren’t necessarily sexual. I wasn’t sure what I’d hoped to accomplish in the long run, but I’d certainly gotten some answers I hadn’t been looking for. Namely that it wasn’t just about physical arousal when I was near him. I wanted to know what he thought of things and I liked seeing the plethora of expressions steal across his face when he didn’t realize I was looking at him. Like when he was interacting with Ace – he actually spoke to the animal as he petted him and I found that endearing despite the fact that I couldn’t always hear what he was saying. When he was talking to Memphis on the phone about how things were going, he’d stand just a little bit taller as he listened intently to whatever Memphis was saying to him. If there was even the slightest hint of a threat against me, he would put himself in front of me and do that thing with his arm like he’d done the first day in the parking garage at Ranger headquarters…always watching my back.