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“Babies need to hear I love you . ” Her chin shook as she tried not to cry anymore. “Even from their fathers. ”
What the hell was he supposed to say? Alex stared back at her, suddenly feeling an edge of helplessness.
He couldn’t explain to her what he felt for her, what he felt at the thought of having children with her.
Holding their child. Seeing both of them in a new life they had created.
His throat locked up at the thought of trying to explain it, tightened with emotion he didn’t know how to describe. This wasn’t what he had heard love described as. This wasn’t what he had seen love to be. He wanted to protect her, yet he wanted to watch her be herself. He wanted to surround her in security, and at the same time, he thrived on the flashes of independence he saw within her.
“Teach me how to love, Janey. ”
He watched the surprise that filled her face, the shock.
“Alex, you don’t just teach someone how to love,” she said miserably.
She didn’t know how much her pain struck at him, how it destroyed him. Seeing her eyes so filled with shadows and hurt enraged him.
“Why not?” he asked her then. “You have a man willing to give you his life if it will protect you from a single scratch, a single tear. If you’re that important, why can’t you teach me how to love?”
Her expression clenched, a flash of bemusement filling her gaze. “You’re crazy,” she finally accused him, but she didn’t fight him when he pulled her back into his arms, and she didn’t cry.
God, her tears destroyed him. Seeing her sob, feeling her refusal to let him comfort her—she had no idea what it did to his insides. He felt as though his chest and his throat were shredded with emotion, with fury.
He wanted to kill at the sight of her tears, the sound of her sobs. Because Janey just didn’t cry. She was stronger than that. She’d held her tears back when he was certain she should have been sobbing over the
past weeks.
But she cried now, because he didn’t know how to love. Because he didn’t believe the love she was looking for existed anywhere. Except in a woman’s soul.
Maybe that was it. Hell if he knew. Right now he just wanted to hold her. He just wanted to curl up in his bed and go to sleep with Janey in his arms and forget the past few hours and the terror that had filled him at the thought that Janey could be taken from him.
“Zeke and the investigator will be here soon. ” He lifted her head, kissed her lips, felt the little shudder that raced through her and rested his forehead against hers. “It’s going to be over soon. I promise. You’ll be safe, and we’ll get this all worked out. ”
She nodded slowly, her lashes fluttering closed as she let her head rest against his chest for just a second.
Just a second.
Then he felt her backbone stiffen and she was moving away from him, straightening her shoulders and breathing in deeply. Damned stubborn Mackay pride. He almost smiled as he watched her.
Damn, she kept him off balance. Right when he expected one thing from her, she showed a reservoir of strength that astounded him and gave him something else.
“You know, Janey,” he told her softly, waiting till she turned to him, “if the love you’re talking about exists, then there’s nothing less that I feel for you. You own me. For now, can we let that be enough?”
She tipped her head again, and for a second he saw the way her eyes flashed with knowledge, more like her brother’s than was comfortable for Alex. Then a small smile, one that made his dick pound, edged her lips.
“Yeah,” she finally said, a breath of sound that wrapped around him and eased something that had been tightening inside him. “Yeah, Alex, we can let that be enough for now. ”
NINETEEN
“Whoever made this baby knew what the hell he was doing. ” Alex surveyed the damage in the bedroom as Mark, Tyrell, and a less-than-cooperative police detective picked through the rubble, sorting through it for pieces of the bomb and the shrapnel it contained.
“Any six-year-old can put one of these together off the Internet,” the detective informed him hostilely.
“Off the Internet, any six-year-old can’t set a timer to it and give it the exact amount of time needed to get away from the window,” Mark stated coldly as he used a large set of tweezers to lift another piece from the carpet.
He looked at the part of the device he was holding, turned it and considered if for long moments. “Hell of a timer, Major. ”
Alex inhaled slowly, his nostrils flaring in rage. “So we have an explosives expert to find. Someone who’s obviously native to the area. ”
