“Thank you.” The words felt strangled. His nearness washed over her like sunshine—bright, refreshing and enlivening. Things she didn’t want to feel again, not when it came to Brian. She grasped the walker’s grips and shuffled forward, aware of him tall and straight at her side.
Her limitations frustrated her. As grateful as she was to have survived a head injury and resulting coma, she wanted to ride her horse, jog at her usual breakneck speed and keep up with things at the ranch. Worse, she hated being vulnerable around Brian when she needed to be strong.
“Don’t they make the cutest couple?” Eunice cooed.
“The cutest,” Marjorie agreed, opening her book.
“They look like they belong together,” Anna sighed as her knitting needles began clacking again.
She lumbered across the room as fast as possible. Was Brian upset also by that last comment? The two of them used to belong together.
Used to. Not anymore. That was something that would never change.
“I spent most of the morning on the phone.” He pitched his voice low, so it wouldn’t carry in the busy hallway. “The marshal who handled you—”
“Tommy Hatfield.” Fondness swept through her. Tommy had been good to her and her children, a rock when she’d feared for their lives. “How is he?”
“Retired. When I couldn’t reach him at his office, I tried his home phone.”
“They gave you that information?”
“No, I already had it. Did you think I would let you go without a single worry? Without making sure I knew the man who was taking you and the kids into protective custody?” A muscle jumped along his jaw, betraying his quiet words.
“I never gave it any thought.”
“You had a lot on your mind at the time.” His tone was kind as he matched his gait to her halting one. Kind was one adjective that had always described Brian. Committed was another. “Before he took you, I grilled that man. I had to make sure he’d done every possible thing to keep the three of you out of harm’s way. I couldn’t rest until I was certain of it.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
It shamed her. At the time she’d been convinced Brian had fallen out of love with her so thoroughly, he didn’t care one iota for her. She should have considered his feelings more, the ones that may have lurked out of sight behind his unemotional exterior.
Maybe, she admitted, she should have voiced her concern and her caring for him more during their troubled marriage. It was too late to fix it, so she swallowed, concentrating on trudging forward, blind to where they were going.
“Tommy’s wife gave me his cell number, and I caught him out fishing.” Brian stopped to pull out a chair for her. “He sounded pretty surprised to hear from me. He didn’t know anything new about your case, so he has to get back to me.”
“So, more waiting.” She plunked into the offered chair, hardly noticing the dining room echoing around her. The vacant tables, the sounds of the staff hard at work in the kitchen, the rustle of Brian’s clothes as he drew out a chair and sat beside her, facing her, so close she could see the threads of bronze in the melted-chocolate color of his irises.
That kindness she read there hadn’t changed. He was still such a good man. Caring and compassionate. She hoped he’d found happiness in his life. Their failed marriage had been only half his fault.
“What do we tell the kids?” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“All of it. If my argument with Jack taught me anything, it’s that lies can destroy a family.”
“That’s right...you’d mentioned that you’d gotten into an intense confrontation with Jack before you fell off your horse.”
“He wanted to know who his father was, once and for all, and he was furious when I refused to tell him.” She couldn’t remember the argument or even hitting the ground. The details of that day were fuzzy to nonexistent, but it hadn’t been the first argument they’d had on the subject. She leaned back in the chair. “Don’t think I’d forgotten you or forgot the father Jack and Violet should have had.”
He swallowed hard, nodded once, obviously unable to answer. Guilt and sadness moved across his face.
Interesting. Yet again she was reminded that the Brian Wallace she’d once known hadn’t been one to show feelings at all, even in the heat of an argument. But now... She could detect a flicker of raw emotion in his eyes.
“There has always been a huge gaping hole in my life. In our lives.” His confusion sounded gruff, a father who’d been forced to walk away from two of his children. “It tore me apart.”
“Me, too.” Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them away, refusing to let them fall. Brian spotted them and leaned in to lay his hand against her cheek. One tear rolled across her skin and into the cup of his palm. The pain she felt, the wrenching agony of the hole in her life where he, Maddie and Grayson should have been, eased. “I never stopped missing them.”
“Me, either. I can get to know Violet and Jack, although I keep wanting to call them by their original names, before the marshal changed them. It’s going to take some getting used to.”
“It took me a long time to get used to it, too,” she admitted softly. “As important as it was at the time, I kept slipping up. Violet was just a baby, so she adjusted to her name easier, but Jack kept stubbornly insisting he was Tanner. We had to make a game of it.”
“I can picture it. Grayson cried and cried for you. Night after night, day after day. Being alone when he’d been with his twin every hour of the day and night didn’t help. He cried for Tanner—I mean, Jack—too.”
“I wondered.” She gazed upon his face, the one she knew so well. The memory of him had stayed with her more than she’d realized. “I ached for them every night and day. They were my children.”
“Being separated from them was torture. It would have been easier to reach in and cut out my heart. I knew you felt the same way.” Understanding shone in his eyes. He’d walked in those shoes, too.
Maybe dealing with Brian won’t be so bad, she thought. He’d been hurt, too. God willing, maybe the hurting was over. “I really think we can go on from here. We can be civil, right?”
“Right. For the children’s sake.” He moved away as if they’d never been close, as if they were just two people sitting together, side by side in a big empty room. The clunk and clatter from the kitchen echoed loudly. “We keep them safe, we work together to make sure the past doesn’t harm them and once this is over, I’ll be on my way.”
“Back to Fort Worth?”
“That’s where my life is.” His home, his practice, his church, his friends. “I’ll be back for the weddings, of course. But don’t worry, Belle, you won’t have to deal with me for long.”
“That’s not what I was worrying about.” For an instant, a hint of vulnerability softened her Cupid’s-bow mouth, and in the brush of sunlight tumbling through the wide windows, she looked bronzed, the highlights in her auburn hair gleaming like rare silk, and a flashback from the past roared through him—the image of Belle sitting in the rocking chair, one newborn cradled in each arm, serene and glowing with a new mother’s love. Affection he’d thought was long dead whispered in his heart, just ashes of what was, he rationalized. That’s all it could be. His love for her had died long ago, but his caring for her hadn’t.
That caring was what motivated him now. He launched off his chair and held out his hand. “Let’s check you out of here and get you a real meal.”
“What does that mean? A homemade meal?”
“Sure,