He winced and somehow she knew it had nothing to do with his arm. What was wrong with him? Would he ever talk to her, really talk?
Leaning forward, he took one of Lucia's hands, studying it like a mystery.
"I'm sorry, Sara," he said low, still fixated on Lucia's hand.
Now that stunned her silent for a heartbeat. She continued to rub her snoozing daughter's back. "For saying I was a drug addict or doubting Lucia's your child?"
"Both."
As much as he'd hurt her, he'd always been fair, and oh how that made it difficult to fight with him. "I apologize for not telling you about the diabetes. That was shortsighted of me. I'm used to downplaying it to keep Ramon from becoming more protective and taking away what little freedoms I had."
She breathed past the insidious smothering sensation. "I was also afraid you would insist on carrying the backpack as well as Lucia and reopen the wound on your arm. I worry about you, too."
His eyes shut tight, his head hanging again. "I shouldn't have said what I did about Lucia, and I shouldn't be barking at you now."
She deserved the apology, and she knew he was honorable enough to deliver it, but something about his stillness bothered her. "You were only saying what you thought, which I wish you'd done in the first place."
"Why?" A dark smile tugged the corner of his mouth. "You would have been just as pissed off then."
She rose and skirted around the bed to kneel in front of him so she could read his eyes, what little he would let her see. "It's not about me being angry. It's about Lucia. I wouldn't have told her you're her father if I'd thought for a second you were having doubts about taking responsibility for—"
His head snapped up. "I never said I wouldn't take responsibility, damn it. I'll support her and y—"
She pressed a finger to his mouth. "That's not what I meant and you know it. I meant taking responsibility for her heart."
He gripped her wrist. "Help me believe it."
A part of her wanted to list the explanations again. Maybe he would hear and listen this time. But she knew better. There were no new details to relay. He never forgot a thing, he just wasn't ready.
This was about more than wanting a man full of romance. This was about trust. "I can't do that for you, Lucas. You can't take responsibility for someone else's heart when you're not even ready to admit you have one of your own."
He didn't answer, much less look at her. He was as closed up as she'd ever seen him.
She rocked back onto her heels with a sigh and shoved to her feet. "I believe I'll take you up on your offer to sit with Lucia while I shower."
She backed from the room, her eyes pinned on Lucas's hunched back. She had reason to be angry with him, every right.
So why was it so hard to keep from wrapping her arms around him to take on burdens she knew he would never share?
No heart?
Lucas wished that was true, because then he wouldn't be sitting here by Lucia's bed feeling as if somebody had detonated a bomb right in the middle of his chest.
Lucia would be fine. Relief threatened to knock him on his butt, this kid somehow immeasurably important to him when last week he hadn't known she existed.
Except in the middle of that relief, he'd still hit rock bottom. He'd almost lost Lucia. Sara had been shielding him. And one of his pilots, Nola Seabrook, was missing.
They'd found her flight suit and combat boots wadded up in the brush outside of Chavez's compound. They had reason to believe she was on the move with someone else, given markers found along the main road out.
There wasn't a thing he could do to help her. Although he'd been over and over the possibility of tracking her himself.
But reason and logic had gotten him this far in his career, and despite the personal need to account for every member of his squadron, logic told him the best course of action now was to follow the protocol for this kind of situation. Something he damn well wished Seabrook had done in the first place.
Why had she left to search for him? He'd never been the kind of team-player commander that crews embraced. God knows he made it a point never to connect personally with the people in his command. Yet this woman he barely knew beyond her personnel file had taken a foolish risk to bring him back before the compound started exploding.
A humbling thought he didn't quite know how to process.
Search-and-rescue teams had been deployed. They knew their job. In this case, to fix what he'd screwed up. He'd lost one of his people on his watch. It didn't matter where he'd been or what he'd been doing, he was in charge.