“Too big,” he mused. “My mother doesn’t socialize much, except when she’s trying to get me married. She gives parties and invites her candidate of the week.”
“Sorry.”
“You have no idea how hard it is to find places to hide on this ranch,” he said wistfully. “She’s getting familiar with all the ones I’ve found, so now I have to stay in San Antonio most of the time to escape her.”
“She probably wants more grandchildren,” she told him and averted her eyes.
“She’s rather pushy,” he said gently. “I’m sorry she was rude to you. She was rude to Mac’s wife, too, but Winnie took her down a few pegs,” he added. “She still calls her the ‘little blonde chainsaw,’ but she says it with affection now.”
“Winnie’s nice.”
“Very nice.” He studied her with narrowed black eyes. “You’re pretty nice yourself,” he said quietly. “Coming all this way, inconveniencing yourself, just to work.”
“You couldn’t come to the office,” she pointed out.
“No, I couldn’t. I’m sorry you had to take the child out of school.”
“I spoke to his teacher. They understand the situation. It will be all right. He’ll catch up. He’s very bright.”
“He’ll like it here, I think. There’s a lot for a child to do. He seems to love animals.”
“He does. He’s always begging me for a dog. But we live in an apartment, and it’s not allowed.”
She thought of her apartment, and then of the break-in, and shivered.
“We talked about the attempted burglary,” he said suddenly. His jaw tautened. “And the phone call that came after it. They are part of the reason I insisted on bringing you up here, where we can keep you and your son safe. I hate that you’re mixed up in this.”
She was surprised, and touched. “Thanks,” she said softly, “but we both work for a highly visible law enforcement agency. It’s unrealistic to think there would never be a risk involved in it.”
“It shouldn’t involve your son,” he said bluntly.
“I used to be naive enough to think that no human being would ever harm a child.”
“Wishful thinking.”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” she asked. She drew in a long breath. “That’s what scared me about having my apartment broken into, the fact that someone might hurt Markie. He’s all I have in the world.”
He frowned. “You said your … Markie’s father,” he corrected, “was killed overseas.”
She averted her eyes. “Yes.”
“Did you care for him?”
She bit her lip. “Very much.”
An odd expression touched his handsome face. “I’m sorry.”
She turned away. “It was a tragedy, in many ways.”
“Would you have married him, you think?”
Unseen, her hands dug into the fabric of her jeans. “He didn’t have those sort of feelings for me,” she managed to say.
“He had some sort, or you wouldn’t have Markie,” he said, and then groaned silently at the slip of the tongue.
She swallowed, hard, and turned back to him. Her face was pale. “Please. It’s difficult to talk about something so personal,” she said heavily. “Could we change the subject?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I hear that the Chinese have a restaurant where robots deliver meals to the table.”
A surprised laugh escaped her tight throat. “What?”
He chuckled. “I read it on a virtual news site.”
“The internet has revolutionized the way we share information,” she replied.
“So it has. What was your boyfriend’s name?” he added suddenly.
“Mr. Blackhawk …!”
“Jon. We’re not at the office.” His gaze slid over her with a strange intensity. “What do people call you?”
“Sir?”
“What do people call you? Surely you have friends, family …”
“All my family is dead, except my mother, and we don’t have any contact now,” she blurted out. “I lost touch with my high school friends. I had a friend when I was training as a paralegal, but she married and moved to California.”
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