anyone would mistake his deep voice for somebody else in the house.
She closed her laptop. “Come in.”
The door swung open, and her father stepped into the room. She liked him best when he looked this way, in jeans and a button-down shirt in a regular color—this one was classic Oxford blue—and dark socks with gold toes. He seemed more like a regular dad dressed like this.
He was older than the dads of most of her friends and classmates; he’d been close to fifty when she was born. After he’d been shot and almost died, he’d gone fully grey—like, he and Mamma had gone to dinner one night and Papa had had salt-and-pepper hair, about half and half, and then the next time he’d come through the front door, weeks later, he’d been wholly grey, with a beard that was basically white. But he didn’t seem old to her. He was her papa. Just the way he should be.
Lia was angry and hurt. She was scared, too, and felt guilty in various and unsettling ways. But she loved her father above all others, even now. “Hi, Papa.”
He sat in the chair beside her desk. “I’d like to talk for a few minutes. About Alex.”
Her breath slammed into her throat and dropped. She’d been trying all evening not to ask, in case asking might put Alex in more danger somehow. She’d tried to figure out by reading her father’s expressions what had happened, but he’d been inscrutable.
With a swallow, she picked up the breath she’d dropped. “Okay. Is he okay?”
“He is. I talked with him yesterday. Now I want to talk to you.”
Lia waited, not breathing again.
Her father studied her quietly for several seconds, and Lia’s breath hovered, afraid to come out until he’d said what he wanted to say.
“Tell me, Lia.”
He always said that, tell me, like two words were enough to make himself clear. Usually they were. Not this time, however.
“Tell you what?” If he expected a play-by-play, she would disappoint him. No matter who he was, that was not his business.
“How you feel about this boy.”
“He’s twenty-two, Papa. Not a boy.”
He let that challenge fade between them without his acknowledgement.
So Lia answered his question. A fluttering hope, nothing more than the still-wet wing of a new butterfly, made her belly twitch. If he wanted to know her feelings, then was he considering staying out of her way with Alex? Not hurting him, or worse, for the terrible sin of liking her?
“I like him a lot. He’s good, Papa. He takes good care of me. He saved me from that thing at the fraternity.”
Her father’s jaw clenched so tightly Lia heard his teeth grind, and she regretted bringing that up, while she was trying to make a case to have a boy—a man—in her life.
“Are you saying you want Alex in your life? You like him that much?”
“Yes. I don’t know if he feels like that, but I do.”
“You’ve never had a boyfriend before, have you?”
Lia couldn’t control the sigh that came as she shook her head.
He watched her for a long time, his jaw twitching, until he said, “I’m worried, gattina. You’re innocent and trust so easily. And this boy—he’s part of my world. I don’t want that world for you. I don’t want you hurt. It’s a worry I’ve carried every second of your life.”
“Papa, I’m already in your world. You’re my father. How could I not be in your world?”
A long, slow, deep breath swelled his chest—and then he coughed a little, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. He checked his hand before he let it fall away. That was a habit he’d developed since the shooting. Lia wondered what he thought he’d find, and what it would mean. He’d been shot in his chest and hadn’t been wholly the same since. Still strong, still her papa, but different in some way too subtle to describe.
“If something happened to you, that would end me. You understand?”
It was unlike her father to try so hard to explain himself. He was much more apt to lay down the law, and let Mamma come behind him with the explanation.
Lia saw the opportunity his conflict offered her. “Alex is really good at keeping me safe.”
“I hope you’re right.”
It took Lia a second or two to understand what her father had really said in those few words. When the dawning came, all her doldrums of the past few days blew away on a sudden gust of victory.