"I wish I had pictures to show you, but I didn't dare take any and alert Ramon that I planned to leave. But there are so many memories to share, like the time she poured all my shampoo in the garden fountain to make more bubbles than we could blow in a whole afternoon...."
Sara's stories about her child spilled from one into the other with such obvious maternal affection, he couldn't help but smile. Not that she could see his reaction now that the sun had finally slipped into the horizon.
His eyes would finish adjusting in about a half hour, but for now, everything was pitch-black. He needed that anonymity with so much to process.
Aside from the fact that Lucia barely looked three to him, much less four and a half, she sure as hell didn't resemble him or anyone in his family. She was one hundred percent her mama's clone.
Even if the child was close to the right age, maybe Sara didn't know for certain, either. The thought of her being raped, especially when she was so helpless from her injuries...
He couldn't think about that and stay sane.
Another thought slithered through his mind. Even if all she'd said about Ramon's nutcase plans proved true, she still could have taken a lover. Five years was a long time and he knew well how deep her passionate nature flowed.
Why would Chavez hide her for five years? A child, too. It didn't make sense.
Although logistically, a person could exist exclusively inside Chavez's small townlike compound. Lucas's hand inched back to check for the reassuring presence of his gun in his vest. He'd lived in an area smaller than that in inner city L.A., walled in by wire fences and poverty. Choices gone, exposure to the world limited to an eight-block radius, school to home and back again, nowhere safe outside. His parents had done their best, but worked double shifts to keep them out of a shelter during a time when help for the homeless was next to nil.
"Lucas?" Sara's whisper sucked him back into the present. "Are you awake?"
"Uh-huh," he grunted, grounding himself in the soft feel of Sara sitting next to him.
"I'm sorry to ramble on. I can't expect to cram five years into one night, but after bottling it up for so long..."
Her head fell onto his shoulder. She jolted upright.
He cupped her head and guided it down again. "You always were better at talking than I am, which works well."
"I imagine it's a lot to absorb." Her hot breath teased his neck—ah, hell, he was toast. "I'm having trouble processing everything. But I am so very glad you are alive."
"I'd hate to think you wanted me dead."
Not much of a stretch given that old scar on his chest. How ironic that he'd been in the Air Force for seventeen years, served in multiple conflicts, but his only two injuries had both resulted from civilian women.
At least Sara had only sliced his arm. Dawn had aimed for his heart.
Back when he was a junior in high school, Dawn had moved into the next apartment. They'd met hanging out on the fire escape while he studied and fed the birds, and she hid from her hooker-mother's Johns.
He didn't trust quickly, but after three months out on that fire escape with her and another month ducking into his bedroom with her—he'd thought he found someone like him. He'd also thought he could save her.
He'd been wrong on both accounts.
She'd lured him out and delivered him up to a gang leader looking for a new drug mule. Dawn had just been looking for a free hit. When he refused, she'd launched at him with all the strength of a crazed junkie.
He'd told Sara the scar came from falling out of a tree when he was a kid. Except there weren't trees in his old neighborhood.
Only one incident, sure, but an affirmation of his lifelong certainty that he was better off as a loner. Nothing had made him question that.
Until Sara.
Now there was a kid tying them together, because no matter who'd fathered the child, she carried his last name and none of this was the little girl's fault.
Lucas scrubbed a hand over his face. Damn, he was in over his head, but Sara obviously expected him to say something more about this revelation and he didn't have a clue what he was feeling.
He settled for, "She's a cute kid. Tough, too. I like that."
"She's a little tomboy. I think that is the right phrase in English, but I'm a bit rusty. I only get to practice when I'm teaching Lucia, and Ramon's grandchildren." She sighed against his neck again. Waiting?
Apparently he hadn't said enough. No surprise. Emotional outpourings weren't exactly his style.