Jumping up and down, Sorrel yelled, “Yes, yes, yes!” Lia hugged her and did some jumping up and down, too.
Conall grinned and bent to put his mouth closer to Walker’s ear. “They’re not what you’d call gracious winners, are they?”
Brendan had come over and heard him. “We’ll beat their pants off tomorrow.”
Conall really wanted to see Lia with her pants off. He wanted that more than he’d wanted anything in a long time. But if it happened—when it happened—it would be a private event.
“Darned straight,” he told the boys, his eyes meeting Lia’s laughing, triumphant gaze.
* * *
IT WAS A GOOD WEEK.
Except for the job, that is. The surveillance was going nowhere fast. Duncan had talked to the owner of the pizza place, but next thing Conall knew there were pizza boxes from a couple of different restaurants in the trash. No interesting mail. No more late-night visitors. Two men came and went a few times, during the day. Henderson followed them once and came back reporting that they’d grocery shopped and filled the pickup with gas. He’d gotten close enough in the grocery store to see that they were buying mostly frozen food and packaged cookies, plus some magazines and the Sunday Seattle Times. Neither of the two were familiar to either Conall or Henderson. They took pictures and sent them off to see if a match could be made. Conall waited semi-patiently for the late-night visitors to return, but it didn’t happen.
He marveled at how little he minded. He should be getting irritable by now. Two weeks, and no breaks. That wasn’t unusual, but he preferred action of almost any kind to these long, wait-and-see-what-happens gigs. This time…okay, this time he was enjoying himself. He decided he would think of it as a vacation. He didn’t often do those, but this could be a good, if unlikely, substitute.
He mentioned to Lia his observation about Walker, and she made an appointment to take him to an ophthalmologist for an eye exam. The kid came home wearing glasses. He looked surprisingly cute in them, and he kept saying in amazement, “Wow. I never noticed before.” He spent a lot of time staring at blades of grass or spiderwebs in the barn and even faces. Heck, The Transformers would probably seem new to him.
They played baseball every day, the boys noticeably gaining strength and skill until they were keeping Conall on his toes. Neither had ever played soccer, so he taught them that sport, too.
“You must have played when you were a kid,” Lia said at dinner one evening, but he shook his head.
“Little League, but not soccer. These past few years I’ve spent a lot of time in Latin America. Everyone plays. Well, the boys and men play,” he amended, grinning at the way Lia’s eyes narrowed.
“The village where I lived had a soccer field,” she said. “Not really a field because it was bare dirt, but that’s where they played.”
“Most of them are bare dirt. Not only in Mexico. South Africa, Greece…” He shrugged. “Any place with a dry climate where they can’t afford to water a field that isn’t productive.”
Brendan wanted to know what he meant about productive, and he explained, “Where they grow food. Or grass to feed animals that provide food.”
“Oh. Like Lia waters her garden.”
“Right.” They were eating the first green beans from her garden tonight, and they were really good. Jeff and Conall alternated nights at the dinner table, although Jeff had mostly conceded him the days downstairs.
“Those boys freak me out,” he’d said. “They’re like zombies. I don’t know what to say to them.”
“You were supposed to be the expert on kids.”
“I guess I’m not that good with them. My own are— They’re normal. You know?”
“Because their father didn’t walk out on them and their mother hasn’t died.”
He’d flushed, and Conall regretted his harsh tone. Henderson was an okay guy, but he’d grown up in a normal family himself and then found himself a nice wife. He wasn’t what you’d call imaginative. Conall found himself spending more and more waking hours downstairs with Lia and the kids. He felt a little guilty about that, but Jeff bored him.