She took the boys on a couple more outings that didn’t include Conall. Once, she said, “I’m sure you’ll enjoy some peace and quiet” as she swept them out the door, and didn’t let herself look back in case he felt abandoned rather than pleased not to have a pair of boys trailing him everywhere.
She picked and froze blueberries. She made everyone help her pick the raspberries and made enough jam to see her household through the year. She tried not to be touched that Conall had insisted on helping pick. Instead, she was careful to stay a row or two away from him at all times. And she somewhat sharply declined any assistance in the kitchen.
She cleaned the bathroom upstairs when he was downstairs talking to the boys. When midmorning came, his usual time for getting up, she made sure she was washing windows or outside fertilizing annuals.
The awful thing was, she remained painfully conscious of him. She’d turn her head and see him striding past the window, head thrown back as he laughed at something one of the boys said. At the dinner table she’d fixate on his hands as he reached for a dish or wielded knife and fork. It was stupid that his hands in particular made her shiver inside, but they did. They were so purely masculine: broad across the palm, long-fingered, strong. She knew he had calluses. She could close her eyes and remember the feel of those hands sliding up and down her arms.
His voice was low and calm, but she always heard it like the thump of bass in another car at a stoplight, deep enough to rattle her bones. And she tried but couldn’t always prevent herself from meeting his eyes, gray and invariably thoughtful.
Oh, yes, he’d noticed she was avoiding him and hadn’t said anything, but he was thinking about it, and her, and… Lia didn’t know what, only that something was going on in his head when he looked at her. And, damn it, he looked at her a lot. Even when she thought she was alone, she’d feel a prickle and glance up to discover he was passing in the hall or standing on the porch, his eyes resting on her.
It had gotten so she was having trouble sleeping.
Conall took over for Jeff in the early evening. Lia was secretly a little relieved that Jeff had chosen to sleep in the attic so far rather than in the bedroom across the hall from hers. She still met him coming and going to the bathroom sometimes and they’d exchange greetings, but she didn’t feel anything except, sometimes, mild startlement because who was that strange man coming out of her bathroom? The truth was, she could forget his existence for hours on end, while she couldn’t seem to forget Conall’s for a single moment.
Thank goodness Conall was in the attic in the evenings. Daytimes were difficult enough. At least in the evening she could read and sew or do some mending or spend time with the kids without him being there, too. This week she’d started the boys on some schoolwork, an hour in the mornings before Conall appeared, another hour or two in the evening. The boys and she would all have been distracted if he’d been around.
And she could brush her teeth and wash her face and move back and forth between bathroom and bedroom without worrying about running into him.
Which did not prevent her from picturing him the minute she was in bed with her eyes closed. How could he sit up there for hours on end the way he did? Wasn’t he bored to death? Or was he like any predator, endlessly patient?
Lia knew he always carried that big, black gun. She wasn’t sure the boys had noticed. She hoped not. She didn’t want them to become curious about it. Conall would have the sense not to show it to them if they asked, wouldn’t he?
Most nights she eventually dropped off, but she also often woke when he came downstairs at three or four in the morning. As a foster mom, she’d become super sensitized to any sound in the night; she mostly woke if one of the boys or Sorrel got up to use the bathroom, too. The plumbing in the house wasn’t quite antique, but it was old enough to be noisy, which didn’t help. The thing was, she heard Conall from the moment the attic door quietly opened and closed. He moved soundlessly down the hall, but she knew where he was every second, knew he sometimes paused outside her bedroom. She would lie rigid in bed, aching for him to push the door wider and come in. One night, when he stood out there for a particularly long time, she had to bite the back of her hand to keep from whispering his name.