day.
“Otherwise, what’s a good time for me to move in tomorrow?”
“The kids’ preschool is closed for spring break this coming week and next so I’ll let them sleep until they wake up on their own—eight o’clock at best. After that tomorrow is pretty open.”
“So maybe we’ll just play it by ear?”
“Sure.”
He nodded, keeping his focus on her so that Dani again remembered how weird she looked and wished she didn’t.
But he still didn’t remark on it or question her about it. Instead, after seeming to apply her appearance to memory, he said, “I’ll take off then, get to my brother’s.” He glanced in the direction of the lower level and said, “Should I say goodbye or something?”
Dani almost smiled at the confusion in his voice that said he was at a complete loss of what to do with kids.
“It’s up to you. If you want to. But they get pretty engrossed in their cartoons at wind-down and I wouldn’t expect too much from them.”
“I like that you just said I’m a friend of their mother’s, though. I wasn’t sure who to say I am...”
“Yeah, let’s just start there. They’ve had a lot to deal with since the accident. Keeping things as simple as possible seems to work best.”
“And if I am their father...we’ll figure out how to say that?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“If we come to it.”
So he had some doubts. She supposed he was entitled to that after Audrey kept him in the dark.
Dani walked him to the front door, opening it for him and realizing only then that there was a big, black rented SUV parked in the drive just outside the dance studio, so he must have seen what was going on in there when he arrived.
And thinking about how she just cut loose during dance parties with the kids—all while her hair was in the state it was in tonight—was a little disheartening and a whole lot embarrassing.
But she decided against saying anything and only said good-night.
Then she watched him walk out to his rental, unable not to notice that his backside was as good as his front.
But it didn’t matter. The guy had a lot to deal with, and she was only there to care for, advocate for and protect the twins.
And once that was taken care of, she had decisions of her own to make. Big ones.
So the way he looked didn’t make any difference.
“That was some hard-core sack time—eleven hours straight. You must have been beat.”
“I was coming off about thirty-six hours without, so yeah,” Liam confirmed to his older brother, Conor, on Monday morning over coffee and the bacon and eggs Conor had made. “Sorry, though, for being the lousy houseguest who comes in the door and just crashes.”
“No problem, I understand. And so did Maicy.”
Liam had barely said hello to the woman his brother was now engaged to and shared a house with—Maicy Clark. They’d grown up with Maicy in the small Montana town of Northbridge. Conor and Maicy had only recently met up again, resolved old issues and rekindled their romance.
But after a brief greeting when Liam had arrived from the Freelander place the night before, he’d begged off to get much-needed sleep.
“I was just glad to hit the rack,” he said. “But now that I have, the first thing I need to hear about is Declan.”
Liam hadn’t known anything unusual had been going on with his twin until a week ago when he’d returned from his latest mission—the same time he’d received the message from Dani Cooper about Audrey. The message waiting from Conor had been old and it had only relayed that Declan had been wounded in action.
After receiving the two communications, Liam had immediately called Conor. But even then his older brother had said only that Declan was all right. Liam could tell Conor had been holding something back but he hadn’t been able to get him to say more. Because their phone time had been limited, Liam had needed to move on to the other news that had rocked him. Since then Liam had been in transit and unable to make more contact.
Last night Conor had only repeated that Declan was okay, but now Liam wanted to hear the details.
“It happened two days after Mom passed—after I’d called you about that. But when I tried to get hold of you to tell you about Declan, you were already out of reach,” Conor began.
Their mother had died in October. It hadn’t come as a surprise. She’d been in a steep decline physically and mentally for over a year by then. In some ways it had been a relief to Liam to hear it on the eve of his mission because at least he’d left knowing she wasn’t suffering any longer.
“Mom died, I left, Declan got hurt—all in three days?” Liam said, giving a succinct timeline.
“Yeah, it was a helluva three days,” Conor said, showing some of the strain it had put on him.
“So what happened?” Liam prompted.
“Declan and Topher were in a Humvee when they drove over a buried IED.”
Topher was Topher Samms. Like Maicy, Topher had grown up in the same small town with the Madisons. Both Liam and his twin brother, Declan, had considered Topher their best friend. The three of them had even gone through Annapolis and joined the marines together.
“Is Topher okay, too?” Liam asked, suspicious that this was the first he’d heard his friend’s name mentioned in the incident that had injured Declan.
“I’m sorry, Liam,” Conor said, his words, tone and expression enough to convey that Topher hadn’t made it.
That news was another blow to Liam, who closed his eyes and leaned on forearms he set on the table on either side of his breakfast. He let his head fall between his shoulders and took a steeling breath that he held until his lungs burned, all while Conor gave him that moment.
It was a lengthy one as he tried to digest that his and Declan’s old friend was gone.
When he could, he exhaled, sat up straight and opened his eyes again.
“Tell me about Declan,” he said curtly because it was the only way he could keep emotions in check.
“It’s been rough,” Conor finally admitted. “There was more than once that we came near to losing him—”
“But we didn’t. You didn’t let that happen.”
Conor was a navy doctor and navy doctors treated marines.
“He’s
