There Goes My Heart (The Sullivans #20) - Bella Andre Page 0,55

she reached into the baby’s bag. As soon as Ruby saw her containers of food, she grabbed them, managing to get the top off a bright green bowl. Thankfully, dried apple pieces spilled onto the blanket rather than pea puree. Ruby gobbled up her treats, using both hands to stuff the food into her mouth.

“Looks like you have a kindred spirit there,” Rory said with a laugh.

Zara nodded her agreement as she ripped open the bag of chips. “I’m all for double-fisting these right now.” When Rory’s stomach audibly growled, though, she took pity on him and fed him the chips from her right hand while she devoured the ones in her left.

“God, I love it when you do things like this,” he said with his mouth half full. He looked from where Ruby was sitting between Zara’s legs munching her food, to where Zara was picking up potato chip crumbs to do the same. “I never knew spending time with a woman could be so good.”

She didn’t know how to respond. The air between them felt far too charged given the tenuous hold she had on her own emotions at the moment. Which was why she deliberately moved the conversation in a different direction.

“How’d you get into woodworking?” Surely that topic couldn’t go any deeper than she was comfortable with, or set off another emotional bomb.

Rory unwrapped the lobster rolls and handed her one. “My earliest memories are of my dad and two of my uncles building together. Decks, planter boxes, sheds—even a house for a neighbor. As soon as I was big enough to hold a hammer, I wanted in. Evidently, I was underfoot so often that they had no choice but to let me help. It wasn’t really about woodworking back then—it was more that I wanted to hang out with the guys. My dad’s brothers seemed so much larger than life when I was a kid.” He grinned. “Still do, even though I don’t see them nearly as much as I’d like to.”

Zara should have known better than to think she could skirt emotional land mines by asking Rory about his livelihood. He was so close to his family that it made perfect sense that his initial love for woodworking had come from spending time with his father and uncles. Why wouldn’t he want to do that when his family sounded absolutely perfect?

She was obviously a glutton for punishment, because she couldn’t resist asking him for more. “Where do they live?”

“They’re all over the country. Uncle William lives on a lake in the Adirondacks. He and his wife, who passed away more than thirty years ago, raised their four kids in New York City, and my cousins all still live in New York state. Uncle Max and Aunt Claudia live in Seattle, and my five cousins are all near each other in Washington. Unfortunately, Uncle Jack from San Francisco passed away from an aneurism when his youngest kids were two, leaving my Aunt Mary to raise their eight kids by herself.”

“She raised eight children by herself?” Zara couldn’t have been more wrong about the Sullivans’ perfect lives. She felt her own loss of her mother so keenly that she sometimes forgot she wasn’t the only one who had experienced that kind of pain. “I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.” Not only for Rory’s aunt, but for his eight cousins who had lost their father.

“Aunt Mary is a superstar,” he agreed. “And my San Francisco cousins are all really close, probably because they had to help raise each other.”

It was all too similar to the way Zara and Brittany had helped get each other through their teenage years. Which brought her back full circle to last night, when she’d lost it.

Zara kept her gaze firmly on the jar of apple puree that she was opening for Ruby, lest Rory notice she was getting emotional again. He’d already had to deal with her tears last night. He didn’t need to be drenched by the waterworks again.

But she should have known that she couldn’t hide anything from him. He reached for her hand, and Ruby—who was shockingly in tune with emotions, given that she was only one—mirrored his action by putting her little hand over Zara’s too.

“I didn’t mean to bring up something that hurts you,” he said in a gentle voice.

“You didn’t,” she protested.

Of course he saw through her. “I can’t imagine how much it must have hurt to lose your mom. How much it