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Rather than jumping in and questioning, Mikayla remained silent.
"I had a daughter. Her name was Nicolette." He hadn't told anyone about his child. He never talked about her. Sometimes, he felt as though Nicolette had been nothing but a dream.
"That's a very pretty name," Mikayla breathed softly against his chest. Nik could feel the pain inside, just as sharp, as bright, as ever, but this time it seemed tempered by time, or by Mikayla.
"What happened to her?" she asked softly after several minutes had passed, an edge of sadness in her voice that warned him that she knew his baby was already gone.
"How do you know anything happened to her?"
Mikayla lifted her head from his chest until she could gaze down at him, the dim light from the moon spearing through the windows, giving her just enough perhaps to see by.
"If nothing had happened, then she would still be with you," Mikayla said softly.
"You wouldn't be dodging bullets for a woman you barely know if you had a child depending on you to come home."
God, how right she was.
"I was in the army." He cleared his throat, remembering too clearly the decisions he had made because of his daughter. "I transferred out of the unit I was in for a desk job when my wife became pregnant. Nicolette was five when her mother decided marriage didn't suit her. She was having an affair while I was working long hours to try to provide as much as I could for her and Nicolette. It wasn't enough.
"I was at work when she left. The man she had been sleeping with had been mixed up in some bad business. Some of his enemies thought he was in the car with her and Nicolette. They intercepted it. Nicolette was shot." Her body was torn apart by the power and speed of the bullets that had ripped into her tiny body.
Nik could still see it. The blood, the horror. The knowledge that he hadn't protected his child.
"It was my fault," he finally whispered, accepting that guilt now as he had never before. Accepting it because he realized the care it took to hold a woman's heart. He hadn't taken that care. He had nourished his job, nourished his position, and given his free time to his child, while his wife had been left on the outside looking in.
"How is it your fault?" Mikayla asked.
Nik stared back at her. "Because I wasn't the husband I should have been, Mikayla. I wasn't the man I should have been."
"Nik, I'm so sorry," she whispered, and he swore he saw the glimmer of a tear that eased down her cheek. "But it wasn't your fault. Your wife made that decision, not you." Someone other than he shed a tear for the child who had never had a chance to live. The delicate little girl who wanted to be a ballerina. The laughing mischief maker who waited each evening for her "poppa" to come home.
"It was a long time ago." He had to blink back the moisture in his own eyes. 109
Mikayla shook her head. "It happened yesterday. That's how clear it is in your heart, Nik. You loved your daughter."
He nodded slowly and said, "Yes."
It happened almost nightly in his dreams, almost daily in his memories. And the ache never completely went away, though over the years it had softened.
"Lay down." He pressed Mikayla back to his shoulder. "Nicolette would have loved you. You look like one of those damned fairies she was forever reading about." And Mikayla did. In that moment Nik realized how much she did resemble one of the little sprites in those long-ago books Nicolette used to make him read to her.
"A fairy, huh?" He felt Mikayla grin against his chest.
"A very beautiful, very wild fairy." He almost smiled himself. "Flitting around and finding trouble every chance she has. You need a full-time keeper."
"Are you applying for the job?" The laughter in her voice, the gentle teasing, was almost more than he could bear.
"Too many jobs already." He had to close his eyes against the refusal he forced past his lips. "Let me get you out of this one first, baby. Maybe you'll learn how to stay out of trouble after that."
"You can hope." Her voice had sobered, the realization that he wouldn't, couldn't, stay a silent reminder that nothing lasted forever.
"I can hope." He kissed the top of her head gently before tucking her closer to his body.
He could hope for many things, though he had stopped doing so long ago. If one didn't hope, then disappointment didn't visit. Hoping meant you had something to live for, and living for something or someone else was asking for pain. He'd make certain she was safe; then he would make certain someone watched over her. Someone other than him.
The next day Mikayla assured herself she had gone into this with her eyes opened. She wasn't in love, she promised herself. When Nik left, and she knew he would leave, then she would be able to go on without nursing a broken heart. It didn't help to know she was lying. As autocratic as he could be, as dominant as he was, she was still falling in love, and that knowledge had the power to terrify her. He was so much more than most men she knew. Hell, more than any man she had ever known. In the dark the night before, she had learned something about him that she hadn't expected. Something that might explain that dark, tortured air she glimpsed around him.
He'd lost so much. A whole life in some ways. A wife and a child. He'd obviously left the army after their deaths and now worked privately. But he was still alone. And a niggling little warning at the back of Mikayla's mind whispered that he seemed to like being alone really well.
