Page 72 of Duty

She slapped his bare chest. “None of my tattoos are silly.”

“That’s fair.”

Haven glanced at the clock on the wall, and shrugged. “Yeah, I guess the bandage has been on long enough.”

She let him peel back that small, three inch by three inch bandage to find the new ink on her skin. Andino stilled from head to toe at the black and white image staring back at him from her inner wrist. His grip on her arm tightened instinctively the longer he stared at the tattoo, silence in his mind, though his heart …

Oh, there, it raced.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

Andino blinked. “It’s a whale.”

“Mmhmm.”

“A killer whale.”

Haven laughed softly. “Yeah.”

“An orca.”

He kept that firm hold on her, and refused to let go even as his gaze drifted between the small smile on her pink lips, and the tattoo on her wrist. There was no possible way she could know—no way she had any idea how he felt about something as silly and simple as killer whales.

No one knew.

No one but his mother and his father.

No one.

“I had a dream—I was on a boat, and I was whale watching,” Haven said, shrugging. “That’s never even been a thought in my head. I guess whales in dreams can mean different things. Something big in your life, or even something spiritual with your mind and heart.”

Andino swallowed hard. “Or that everything is going to be okay.”

Haven’s brow dipped. “Or that, yeah. How did you know—”

His throat tightened.

She couldn’t know.

There was no way …

“When I was a kid,” Andino said, “I watched a show about orcas, and according to my parents, I was obsessed after that. Nothing satisfied me unless it was whales. I did that sometimes; went from one thing to another in my interests, and they always just let me do whatever. The whales, though …”

“Hmm, what?”

“They stayed with me for a long time,” he admitted. “It was a couple of years before the child-like obsession waned, but even then … just come here.”

He turned fast, and pulled her along with him as he left the kitchen, and headed down the hallway. His office was downstairs, and although Haven had spent a couple of nights in his house, she’d never gone in there as far as he knew.

“Andino!”

Her laughter was high, and sweet.

His chest just ached.

His mind was chaotic.

She couldn’t know.