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They were too far apart on this. Ally wanted him to understand her position, but she needed to understand his, too.
“Ally, you have no idea how… Shay has suffered so much. I’ve lost track of the number of miscarriages. They’ve been trying to adopt, and that isn’t working, either. It’s been one baby disappointment after another. If you have somehow given my sister false hope, I’m afraid of what it will do to her.”
“False hope? How can you—”
“How can you? is the point, Ally. How could you?” The anger in his voice, the tension in his body, was too much. “I don’t… I can’t handle this. I can’t do this. I need to get out of here.” And with those final words, he walked out of her house.
* * *
TAG DROVE AROUND, took a walk by the river and then sat in his pickup for a while staring at a tree. Then he headed to the hangar intending to take care of some paperwork because he couldn’t face the emptiness of his house. Since the first time he’d brought Ally there, he’d been harboring fantasies. Fantasies, he realized now, that had been pointless and possibly self-destructive. Pointless because they were never going to happen. Self-destructive in that they were only amplifying his disappointment and heartbreak.
He’d been fooling himself by thinking that their biggest obstacle was their age difference. He’d been so focused on it that he couldn’t see that the bigger—the huge, giant, dinosaur-sized—problem was in their fundamental belief systems. Ally thought she could save the world. Tag just wanted to do what he could to make it a better, safer place for the people he loved. He knew his limitations. Ally didn’t. She wasn’t a miracle worker, and she needed to face that fact.
Iris’s car was in the lot. What was she doing here this late? Not in the mood to see anyone, he considered leaving, but movement at the window suggested his presence had been noticed.
“Hey,” she said when he came through the door. “I thought you were at Ally’s?”
“I was. I just needed to catch up on some stuff. What are you doing here?”
“Same. Trying to get a handle on all this business that is going to have to be shifted when your campaign begins. You’ve got quite an empire, brother. I didn’t realize.”
“Well, what else have I had to do all these years?” He busied himself with a stack of mail because Iris was giving him an assessing look.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, fine.”
“Did you and Ally have a fight?”
How did she know these things? “Not exactly.” Tag couldn’t imagine Ally ever fighting.
“A disagreement?”
“Yes.”
“What about?”
“None of your business.”
“Ouch.” She added a chuckle. “Not used to seeing you so testy.”
“I’m not testy,” he snapped, falling into her trap, which only made her laugh again.
“You know,” she said, leaning back and throwing her sock-covered feet onto the desktop. “One thing that being away for so many years has given me is this weird objectivity and keen insight where my siblings are concerned. Or maybe I’ve always had it. I don’t know.”
“That’s interesting,” he muttered drily, hoping to give her the impression that it wasn’t.
“Yeah, what I’m saying here is that this good-guy act that you’re into doesn’t fly with me. Aren’t you exhausted?”
Yes, was his immediate gut reaction even though he wasn’t sure what she was referring to, exactly. “Iris, what in the world are you talking about?”
“Well, Tag, the way I see it is this. Almost everything you do in life, you do for someone other than yourself. Running here and there and fixing this and that.” Before he could respond, she held up a hand and began ticking items off finger by finger. “Helping. Fixing. Listening. Giving. Saving.” Out of fingers, she threw up both her hands. “Animal trapping. Even babysitting! When are you going to start doing what you want? When are you going to take care of you?”
He shrugged. “I like babysitting.”
“I know, and even though you’re trying to deflect like you always do, you’re making my point. You’d make such a great dad! Don’t you want to settle down and have a family of your own?”
