“Emmie,” Shane said, hurrying in her wake.
Walsh stood in the open front door, posture openly hostile. Emmie pulled up short, shocked to see that kind of rigidity in him, and approached at a more cautious place, tiptoeing up to peek around his shoulder.
A man stood on the front porch, dark sweatshirt under his Lean Dogs cut, thick dark hair rumpled from a helmet. He had big, beautiful blue eyes, and they were better proof than a birth certificate. This was Walsh’s brother.
Walsh had to feel her pressed up behind him, but he ignored her for the moment. “Why are you at my house?” he asked the man on the porch. His normally flat voice was sharp at the edges with a coating of ice.
“I heard you had a posh place these days,” the brother answered. “I wanted to see it for myself.”
Shane joined them, stepping up on Walsh’s other side. “Fox.”
“Oh look. Little Shaney. Still letting King fight your battles for you?” It was a jab, sure, but it was delivered with such cool, calm, Walsh-like elegance that Fox came off seeming sinister, rather than annoying.
Shane exhaled loudly, but said nothing.
Fox’s eyes slid over and settled on Emmie. “I heard you got married, too.”
The tension was the stuff of not just knives, but meat cleavers. Emmie thought it was ridiculous, so she squeezed around Walsh and extended a hand to Fox. “Emmie,” she introduced. “Nice to meet the face behind the phone call that woke me up yesterday morning.”
His hand was cool and dry; he gave her one squeeze and then let go, his eyes searching across her face in a clinical way.
Emmie shivered – in abadway. She was struck by his similarities to her husband, but where Walsh projected competence and quiet, this brother radiated understated threat.
As she pulled back, Walsh’s hand curled around her wrist, like he wanted to draw her back against him. “We’re heading into Dartmoor now,” he said, indicating Shane with a tilt of his head. “You can come back with us.”
A staredown ensued.
Finally, Fox said, “Okay.”
Emmie kept her sigh to herself. She had no idea what sort of bad blood ran between them, but it was thick and sticky. A story for another time, maybe when she had Walsh trapped in bed in the dark, and work wasn’t an excuse to avoid his emotions.
“Awesome,” she said. “Not that this little family reunion isn’t delightful, but can we move out of the doorway please? The horses need to eat.”
They all gave her nearly identical looks of mixed amusement and scrutiny, like they were trying to see inside her head.
“Oh yeah,” she muttered, stepping into her clogs and brushing past Fox to head down the steps. “You’re brothers all right.”
~*~
Ava was worried about her man. There could never be any secrets between them, not when they knew one another so completely; were attuned to every facial twitch and every passing mood. Ava didn’t want them to be any less entangled than they’d always been, but such a connection meant she picked up on little eddies of disquiet, his frowns and sighs like screaming alarms.
Today, she knew the root source of his disturbance. And unlike the trash service failing to pick up, or an unexpected rain shower ruining a nice ride, this particular bother had the ability to damage him. Emotionally. And that was always the deepest kind of hurt, the kind that lingered in the heart and mind.
She finished buckling Remy into the front seat of the double stroller and set off across the parking lot.
It was a quiet stroller, and the boys were too consumed with the wonder of the brilliant sunny day to be fussy, but still Mercy noticed them long before they reached the open doors of the shop.
It was nippy out, so he had his long hair tied up and stuffed under a black knit stocking cap, heavy Black Watch plaid flannel under his embroidered garage shirt. Big, blue collar, and nothing you’d want to run into in a dark alley.
Ava smiled. She loved him so damn much.
“Fillette,” he greeted, voice loud and cheerful, his grin stunning as he stepped out of the bay and into the sunlight. “You brought my boys.”
“And your lunch, if you have time to sit down with us a second.”
“Absolutely.” He kissed her, and then placed a hand on both the boys’ heads, his dark, dirty hands contrasting with the unblemished clean perfection of the babies. The tenderness in his touch, the total reverence, squeezed her heart every time.
“Mes fils,” he told them quietly, then looked at Ava again, dark eyes bright with happiness. In the true spirit of the song by the same name, he was a simple man, and he didn’t need anything extravagant. An unexpected lunch date with his little family left him ecstatic. “What’s to eat?”
