built like you and the other kids. She’s like me. Her natural shape has more to it.” Her gaze sharpened. “Do you think I need to diet?”
“You know I don’t. I love the feel of you in my hands.”
That, at last, enlivened some obvious affection in her expression, and her smile gained heat. “I know. And I love the feel of your hands.”
“But if Lia wants a different shape, isn’t that her choice? Isn’t that what you mean when you talk to them about being comfortable in their skin?”
“Lia isn’t built to be skinny. It’s not natural to her. To stay like she is, she has to diet in unhealthy ways, deny herself things her body needs. I watch her eat, Nick. She hardly does at all. And this intermittent fasting thing she’s attached herself to? That’s just starving herself most of the day. Then she nibbles at some spinach and calls it a meal. She’s going to make herself sick.”
Nick had noticed that Lia was thinner, of course, but he’d noted her changed eating habits only insofar as Beverly had pointed them out.
Food and nutrition was his wife’s domain. It wasn’t something Nick had ever had to think about, personally. Even now, when he was approaching seventy and had chronic aches and pains from age and injury that made mornings slow and wore rough spots on his attitude, he ate what he wanted and stayed lean. He still worked out fairly regularly, but in an old-man way now, walking long, dull miles on a treadmill and lifting dumbbells at a weight he’d have been embarrassed of twenty years ago.
“If you think she’s making herself sick, that’s all the more reason to bring her home, bella. She needs to be where we can keep an eye on her.”
“I’ve already conceded that point. I want her home, too.”
“Then why didn’t you stand with me when she was in here?”
“Because it’s more complicated than laying down the law, Nick. Our daughter is not one of your soldiers you can just tell what do to without caring what they think. She is our child. She has hopes and dreams, and what you said—you sounded like you didn’t care about any of that. You sounded like you meant to lock her away in the castle.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? You wouldn’t rather we all stay in the house all the time?”
Nick didn’t answer, because Beverly knew the answer.
Yes. Right now, with so much going on, he would feel better if Beverly and the children stayed home all the time. In the house he’d made into a fortress, with state-of-the-art security system, a panic room, and armed guards around the clock.
A fortress, not a prison. This was a comfortable, well-loved, well-lived-in house. This was their home. He didn’t mean to lock anyone away. And he had no intention of insisting they stay in the house, though he would have preferred it. He only wanted them near to hand, with less world between him and them.
“You can’t keep our children in the nest forever, Nick. No matter who you are, what you do, what crossfire that puts them in, we have to let them live their lives.”
“So, then, in that reasoning, if Lia wants to starve herself, we should let her. She’s a legal adult. It’s not our business anymore. Is that what you’re saying?”
Beverly hated when he pushed a point of logic through a crack in her emotional argument. Her eyes narrowed, and he added, “Bella. We want the same thing. To take care of our children. You say we’re failing them. I disagree—unless we don’t do everything we can to keep them safe. That’s here.”
He would bring Elisa home, too. His fragile girl. But his world was the one she feared most desperately. When she’d said it straight out, that he made her afraid, he’d let her go. That loss was a bleeding wound in his chest, and the worry throbbed.
“I know,” Beverly answered, and Nick took a beat to remember what she was answering, what thought he’d last spoken. “But it won’t be forever, Nick. It can’t be. If you dismiss Lia’s plans for her own life, you’ll build a wall between you. Let her know we’ll support her going back when things calm down.”
“Back to that place where those bastards would have hurt her. That’s what you want.”
“My God. You are such a man. Of course I don’t want that. It makes me crazy how much danger there is in the world for our