Curled over, face pressed to her knees, Lia discovered that hearts didn’t break; they tore.
* * *
CONALL LAY IN BED raging at himself, as far from being ready to fall asleep as it was possible to get. How could he have been such an idiot? He’d had a chance to spend another night with Lia. There was nothing in life he wanted more than to make love with her again. And he’d blown it.
He hadn’t realized how much he’d been hurt by her accusation that he’d seen her as merely one more convenience to make his stay tolerable. He was still outraged when he remembered. How could she think that? Had he ever treated her in any way to suggest he didn’t value her?
God, that sounded anemic. Like her? Want her? Better, but still inadequate.
The house was quiet. He’d left his own bedroom door partially ajar, painfully aware that Lia’s wasn’t. He supposed that tomorrow night, once he was gone, she’d resume her usual habits. Tonight, she was sending him a signal.
You had your chance. Jerk.
Or maybe she was thinking something stronger.
Conall should have been tired. He was. His eyes were gritty and his head throbbed. The two-hour nap he’d taken today was the only sleep he’d had since the previous night. Sleep usually came easily for him. He’d learned to take advantage of any opportunity. He could sleep in the heat of the Mexican desert, wedged beneath a rock outcropping, one ear tuned for the rattle of a diamondback. A small boat, ripe with the smell of fish guts? No problem. A room in a hacienda where maintaining his cover was a daily balancing act and discovery would mean a certain and gruesome death? He could close his eyes, picture a velvety black sky studded with stars, and fall asleep as gently and certainly as a baby.
He was good at turning his mind off. What wasn’t so easy, he was discovering, was quieting this crackling static of emotions.
The truth was, he wished it wasn’t time to go yet. Eventually, sure, but…not yet. A few more weeks would be good. Long enough to see that Brendan was okay, that his misadventure hadn’t left any lingering terrors. Conall would have liked to keep working on his pitching technique, too. And Walker… Had Lia noticed that he’d bent his glasses last night? Those glasses had made such a difference to him. Conall still thought baseball wouldn’t be his sport; either he still wasn’t seeing real well when he was up to bat or he was worried about breaking the glasses. He had the timing down well enough to swing at more or less the right time, and sometimes he connected, but there was still something blind about the way he swung even though his eyes were open. He was better at soccer, a natural.
A couple of times Conall had noticed Walker wasn’t wearing the glasses when he should have been. He made a mental note to say something to Lia tomorrow before he left. His initial excitement had become tinged with self-consciousness because he had to wear glasses when Brendan didn’t. Walker tried to be as much like his big brother as he could. No surprise, when he didn’t have anyone else.
Please God, don’t let them be separated.
They’d survived so much. Remembering his first impression of them as ghosts, he wasn’t sure they could survive another blow so devastating.
And Lia. He had a suspicion she hadn’t meant him to hear when she’d confessed tonight that she didn’t know how she endured loving the kids and letting them go, over and over. He hadn’t seen her saying goodbye, but he knew there’d be a smile on her face. She would hug them, and be excited for them, and cry when no one could see.
She could keep Brendan and Walker. Unlike most of the kids she cared for, they didn’t have a family to be patched back together.
Maybe she didn’t want to. Or maybe she’d be denied if she applied to adopt them. A single woman… Conall could imagine some hide-bound fool somewhere certain that boys needed a father. Never mind that they’d been raised by a mother alone.
It came to him slowly as he stared into the dark that they did need a father. Otherwise why had they latched onto him the way they had? They’d been so hungry for a role model.
So hungry, he thought bitingly, that they hadn’t seen what a piss-poor role model he was. He’d almost gotten Brendan killed. Maybe he should have been more brutally frank about it, encouraged the kid to see that Conall MacLachlan was the last man he should want to emulate.