Conall laughed at that. “Really?”
They exchanged brief, wry grins.
“Really. Our sports teams suck.” Duncan returned to his point. “You had the girls eating out of your hand—”
“And other parts of my body,” Conall murmured.
Duncan chuckled, but continued, “I’d look into your eyes and I never saw any real emotion at all. I couldn’t tell if you’d tamped all that anger down like gunpowder that was going to catch a spark someday, or whether you were absolutely fine and I was imagining that you were a zombie and not the brother I remembered.”
A zombie? Was that what he’d been? Conall couldn’t decide whether to be amused or disconcerted.
“A zombie.” He tried it out on his tongue. “I think it was a little of both,” he finally admitted. “I tried like hell to believe I didn’t feel anything for anyone. Underneath…I’m pretty sure that kid who didn’t have anything but his pride and his anger was alive and kicking.”
His brother sighed. “I suspected that.”
“Maybe that’s where it gets weird. I don’t think anything changed until a few weeks ago.”
“When you came home.”
“Yeah.”
Duncan swallowed. “You didn’t want to come.”
“Hell, no.”
“You were still pissed at me.”
He grunted his agreement.
“So what happened?”
“I don’t know.” All those unidentifiable emotions felt like bits of flying grit, abrasive enough to scour glass. “I started seeing you—everyone—differently.”
His brother’s clear, often cool eyes—so much like his own—had softened with what might be compassion. “My suspicion,” he said, “is that the way you thought about me and the past was habit. Nothing else. You got home, looked around and realized somewhere in there you’d grown up and the man you are has only a passing resemblance to the kid who left town carrying his resentment like a backpack he couldn’t put down.”
Unblinking, Conall stared at him. Was that true? Had he been so damned oblivious he didn’t notice how he’d changed? Had he changed that much?
“I’ve been living my life based on vows I made the day I left home,” he heard himself say. “I wasn’t going to let anyone close. No wife, no kids, didn’t want family. Didn’t believe in forgiveness.”
Duncan only laughed. “Sounds like a teenager, doesn’t it?”
Jarred, Conall thought. God. It did. Melodrama city. “Still not so sure about the family ties,” he admitted. “I’d be a hell of a husband or father, with my job.”
Duncan made a noncommittal sound. Dished up some coleslaw.
“I’m not thinking about anything like that anyway. It’s the good ol’ days that have been on my mind.”
“Uh-huh.”
His eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You sound like me when I met Jane.”
Conall tensed. “What are you talking about?”
“Lia. Those boys. Seems to me you’d make a fine father, not to mention husband.”
He gave an irritable half shrug. “That’s ridiculous. You’re imagining things.”
His brother only looked at him.
“She’s— Okay, Lia and I have been—” He couldn’t say it. Filling in time having the best sex of his life. Talking. Making the air shiver when they were in the same room. “You know I’m out of here as soon as we wind this up.”
The pause was long enough to express Duncan’s opinion. To give him credit, though, he finally said only, “You have an idea of how to make that happen?”
They did talk business, then, Duncan reiterating his willingness to provide backup however and whenever Conall wanted it.
“If you’re right about them, they’re nobody I want living in my town.” His voice and expression both were hard. Oh, yeah, this was the brother Conall knew and loved.
“I’d better get home,” he said at last, stretching, then heard himself. Home? “Home away from home,” he amended.
Duncan smiled. “Lia seems good at making a home. That’s what she sets out to do for all those kids, isn’t it?”