“I thought it might be easier than packing up our crew again.”
Our crew? Her heart pinched. She wished he wouldn’t say things like that. It hurt.
“Wouldn’t that be kind of conspicuous? I thought you were trying to keep your presence quiet.”
A rueful smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “I’m spending half my time outside with the boys. If our neighbors have had any reason to come looking, they’ll have seen me already.”
She suddenly had the creeps. It was all she could do not to turn her head and stare at the woods separating her house from the neighbor’s. “What do you mean, come looking?”
“They haven’t,” he said quickly. “We’d have seen them. But they may have heard me talking to the boys. We get kind of noisy out here sometimes.” Seeing her expression, he added, “It’s okay, Lia. They have no reason to think I’m anything but a friend. Maybe a boyfriend. Why would that worry them?”
“A boyfriend.” It hadn’t occurred to her what this would look like. Alarm quickened her pulse. “I could lose my license.”
He was shaking his head before she finished. “We’ll explain if we have to.”
“It never even occurred to me.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he repeated.
She marshaled her thoughts. “I guess the neighbors wouldn’t have any reason to think anything of me having a bunch of friends over for a barbecue.”
“Nope.”
She’d liked his sisters-in-law. Staying friends with them probably wasn’t an option, given the fact that their husbands were in law enforcement and she regularly broke the law, but she could enjoy them now, couldn’t she?
“A party sounds fun. It’ll be good for the kids. If they’re free, why don’t we do it tomorrow? Otherwise it’ll have to wait until next weekend.”
She could tell he’d be just as glad to put off further family interactions for another week, but with a sigh he slid open his phone. His eyes were warm on her face when he said, “Thanks, Lia.”
She waited until he had spoken briefly to his brother and confirmed that yes, Niall and family at the very least thought tomorrow sounded great. Niall would call Duncan and let Conall know whether he, Jane and Fiona would join them. Lia immediately revised her afternoon plans to include a trip to the grocery store.
“Great,” Conall growled. “One more thing to look forward to.”
“You should be glad to have family,” she told him crisply, and went inside.
* * *
SO SHE THOUGHT he was an ungrateful bastard. No news there. He was.
Conall’s irritation eventually wore off, leaving him with the memory of Lia’s expression.
Fostering children was a vocation, she’d said. Because she wanted a family, the kind she hadn’t had. The kind she didn’t think she ever would have. No, Lia hadn’t said any of that, but Conall was good at reading between the lines.
She couldn’t understand why he had rejected his brothers, and along with them lost the chance to have more family: their wives and children. She was maybe even a little angry at him for not appreciating something she hungered for.
She hadn’t said that, either, but he could tell.
The hell of it was, Conall knew she was right. He’d lost a great deal. No, not lost—thrown away.
From his adult perspective, he was having trouble remembering why. All he knew was that, for years, anger had simmered inside him. It was one of the few emotions he felt. Most of the time, he was barely conscious of it. He’d always believed it was directed at Duncan, the oppressor.
Tonight, sitting at the attic window watching a dark house, he knew differently. Maybe he’d felt safe to channel all that rage and hurt on the brother who had refused, no matter the cost to him, no matter what they did, to turn his back on Conall or Niall.
Conall’s attention was momentarily caught by movement. After verifying that it was only one of the Dobermans trotting across the yard, Conall thought, I locked away everything I felt for Mom and Dad. I convinced myself I felt nothing.
I lied.
Asked at any time in the past fifteen years, he would have sworn he was self-aware. Live and learn.
The necessity of keeping watch freed his thoughts. He played back a hundred reels of his childhood and teenage years. College graduation, with Duncan in the audience even though Conall hadn’t invited him.
Maybe the damage had been done early, when Conall had wished for so much more than he ever got from his brothers, and especially Duncan, the big brother he’d worshipped. He