Her lips pressed together. “Do you think I only worry about myself? You don’t think I might be worried about what they’re doing to Tango?”
Well shit. He hadn’t thought of that.
“I’m not that selfish,” she said quietly.
“I know you’re not, baby.”
She sighed and stood up, carried her plate to the sink.
“Hol.”
She turned around and put her back to the counter, massaged her temples. “I’m not angry with you.” She wasn’t usually, but she was in a bit of a temper tonight. “Sometimes I just hate it, you know? The club,” she added, quietly. “I don’t, not really. But sometimes…”
Sometimes she wished it didn’t have a hold on him, and that they could be safe, just the two of them, without any outside threats. He knew this because sometimes he thought the same thing.
She shook her head. “That’s stupid. Because without a club, there wouldn’t be you, and without you…” She took a deep, shaky breath. “There wouldn’t be Lucy…or me.”
“Hol–” He was out of his chair and headed toward her when someone knocked loudly on the door that led out onto the deck.
Ghost and Mercy.
“Get armed,” Ghost said. “I’ll explain on the way.”
~*~
Emmie found her husband in the office off the library, frowning at his computer screen.
“I thought you were done for the day.”
“Tell me, love,” he said distractedly as she came to perch on the edge of the desk, “is your job ever ‘done’?”
“I think you know the answer to that.” A barn manager never truly clocked out. It wasn’t the sort of job that lent itself to firm hours. There was always something else to be done, always an extra mile she could go toward making her barn as successful as possible. “Anything I can do to help?” she offered.
He looked every one of his almost forty years and then some tonight, brow crimped, mouth bracketed by deep lines. “No.” But then he swiveled his chair toward her. “Actually, yeah. You’re pissed at me, I can tell. So you can tell me what’s up with that. That’ll help.”
It was said mildly, but was still the most openly hostile he’d been toward her.
Emmie recoiled. “What? I’m not pissed at you.”
He gave her a flat look.
“Trust me. You don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“How about I decide that for myself?”
She sighed. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” When he continued to stare at her, she said, “You don’t want to have kids, do you?”
He hesitated a beat too long. “I never said that.”
“But that’s the way you feel.”
“Did I tell you I wouldn’t have kids with you?”
This was even worse than she’d thought. “Walsh.”
They stared at one another.
“I don’t have anything against kids,” he said at last. “But I don’t have a burning need to become a father, no.”
