himself in a role night and day with no weekends or holidays to shed the new skin. Appalled, she wondered if that was all he was doing here: assuming a suitable personality, sliding deftly into the role that would allow him to fit in the best. Dad.
Did he want her only because if he was dad, well, she was mom? The thought made her feel sick to her stomach.
“No,” she said aloud. “I don’t believe it.”
How could she be falling in love with him, when there was so much about him she didn’t know?
A strange, choked sound broke from her throat. A near sob. Her eyes were dry, but anguish clutched her.
Please let this be lust, curiosity… Anything but love. Conall didn’t only have a dangerous job. He was dangerous.
And he could entertain himself with the boys today. She would do her damnedest to avoid him.
* * *
LIA SUCCEEDED IN HAVING very little to do with either of her unwanted houseguests for a good part of a week. She absented herself for most of one day doing errands: bank, hardware store, grocery store, post office and farm co-op. Conall had agreed to keep an eye on Walker and Brendan. My DEA agent babysitter, Lia thought semi-hysterically.
She took the boys on a couple more outings that didn’t include Conall. Once, she said, “I’m sure you’ll enjoy some peace and quiet” as she swept them out the door, and didn’t let herself look back in case he felt abandoned rather than pleased not to have a pair of boys trailing him everywhere.
She picked and froze blueberries. She made everyone help her pick the raspberries and made enough jam to see her household through the year. She tried not to be touched that Conall had insisted on helping pick. Instead, she was careful to stay a row or two away from him at all times. And she somewhat sharply declined any assistance in the kitchen.
She cleaned the bathroom upstairs when he was downstairs talking to the boys. When midmorning came, his usual time for getting up, she made sure she was washing windows or outside fertilizing annuals.
The awful thing was, she remained painfully conscious of him. She’d turn her head and see him striding past the window, head thrown back as he laughed at something one of the boys said. At the dinner table she’d fixate on his hands as he reached for a dish or wielded knife and fork. It was stupid that his hands in particular made her shiver inside, but they did. They were so purely masculine: broad across the palm, long-fingered, strong. She knew he had calluses. She could close her eyes and remember the feel of those hands sliding up and down her arms.
His voice was low and calm, but she always heard it like the thump of bass in another car at a stoplight, deep enough to rattle her bones. And she tried but couldn’t always prevent herself from meeting his eyes, gray and invariably thoughtful.
Oh, yes, he’d noticed she was avoiding him and hadn’t said anything, but he was thinking about it, and her, and… Lia didn’t know what, only that something was going on in his head when he looked at her. And, damn it, he looked at her a lot. Even when she thought she was alone, she’d feel a prickle and glance up to discover he was passing in the hall or standing on the porch, his eyes resting on her.
It had gotten so she was having trouble sleeping.
Conall took over for Jeff in the early evening. Lia was secretly a little relieved that Jeff had chosen to sleep in the attic so far rather than in the bedroom across the hall from hers. She still met him coming and going to the bathroom sometimes and they’d exchange greetings, but she didn’t feel anything except, sometimes, mild startlement because who was that strange man coming out of her bathroom? The truth was, she could forget his existence for hours on end, while she couldn’t seem to forget Conall’s for a single moment.
Thank goodness Conall was in the attic in the evenings. Daytimes were difficult enough. At least in the evening she could read and sew or do some mending or spend time with the kids without him being there, too. This week she’d started the boys on some schoolwork, an hour in the mornings before Conall appeared, another hour or two in the evening. The boys and she would all have been distracted