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I put the simmering need for him down to a lack of sex and excess, jumbled hormones. Funny that when I expected it to hit most, the grief wasn’t anywhere as near overwhelming as I expected. Where was the guilt of wanting one man when I had two men’s baby growing inside me?
I didn’t bother to try to work that one through in my head, trusting my brain to make the right choices. Baby brain was real—I could barely put a sentence together most days.
“Are you happy sleeping outside? I have several beds in my room, you know.” The twins had gotten the master bedroom by default, their bunks and my cot reorganizing what was designed to be a parents’ room back in the nineteen forties and never meant to contain our nocturnal activities. They’d only been in my life for a few weeks—barely two months—but now, nine months later, their influence on my heart—my life—was enough to make a significant impact on my future, and our baby.
With Ryker and Kai, I had been safe, heard, listened to for the first time in years.
Seen.
For the first time since Ruski.
And now he was here, and I was safe again. Grief, for tonight, took a back seat, taking my uncertainty along with it. What it meant is he stayed...that was another thought I wasn’t prepared to deal with right now.
I nudged his shoulder with mine. “Tell me about those you’ve lost.”
He snorted and quirked an eyebrow in my direction. “Do you want to be here all night, girl? What a question to ask.” He shook his head morosely, the closest action to the man I'd known him as back then.
“Everything is an act. Isn’t it?” I asked softly, my smile fading.
“Sometimes. Not others.” Ruski shrugged, like it was just another part of his job.
But which job? The mafia prince or the military man who whisked into a secret operation with a kiss on Christmas?I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself.
Ruski leaned back on his arms, his head tilted back to the sky. “Jonny Chinn and Leroux were cousins. Not the blood sort, though they may as well have been for the blood we spilled.” He closed his eyes and shook his head, as though warding old demons away. When he opened his eyes, his yellow-hazel gaze was fixed on me, his gaze piercing right through me. “Jonny...he was a bit of a mentor. Took me on my first jobs, taught me how not to get killed. Maybe not the best teacher, because my slip-up cost his life. I should have been the one my father mourned, but instead he lost a good operator that day.”
“Sounds like he was a good friend.”
“Could have been a brother.” Ruski swallowed hard. “Leroux...he was supposed to be the brother figure. A baby one, someone to distract me when my father worked, and I wasn’t supposed to follow. But I did and he...didn’t. Leroux decided to do something a little different one day, and backstabbers...they don’t last long with my father.”
“I can imagine, if he’s anything like your uncle.”
Ruski barked a laugh. “Only a hundred times worse. Damn, that was a good week in Bangkok.” He turned his head enough to look me over, his gaze sweeping me in an intimate gesture that left me shivering for a very different reason. “It’s good to see you, Abby.”
“Good to be seen.” I murmured the words softly, casting a glance over my shoulder, but no one from the unit had come out to pry, at least that I could tell.
None of Caleb’s infamous drones circled or hovered, and I hoped they’d take the hint to leave us alone. Not that I didn’t appreciate the care factor and understood from a security perspective, but I needed to get my head on straight, and that was hard enough with the only ex who ever mattered sitting next to me on a bedroll scented with pure male spice.
“How are you coping with it all? That’s one hell of a protective—”
“Overprotective,” I put in helpfully.
“Fine.” Ruski grinned, his melancholia dissipating with every word. “Overprotective family you got yourself.”
“It was an accident,” I blurted.
“‘It?’” Ruski raised an arched eyebrow and waited.
“Coming to Australia. Finding a family. Having a baby,” I whispered, slightly horrified by my words. “No wait—I said that wrong. All of it. I’m not ungrateful, otherwise I’d still be working in the club, dancing, or managing and trying to find a way to keep the girls safe. And me. It would have been a short-lived career.” I grimace.
“I remember.” Ruski leaned on one elbow and trailed the back of his knuckles along my arm in a featherlight caress. “I remember you dancing for me and falling in love with you in one night. Never felt anything like it before. Or since.”
I swallowed hard, attempting to repress the goosebumps that broke out wherever he touched me. “I remember that too. And I remember a pair of twins whirlwinding me away to...here. Where I have a job. And a family. And a baby.” My voice broke onbaby. I closed my mouth with a snap, while Ruski traced along the back of my arm, making invisible swirls over my shoulder. “Stop that.”
“Do you like it?” He paused. I nodded, squeezing the thin sheets of his bedroom between my fingers. “Then let me keep going.” He resumed his exploration, running his fingers along my wrist to capture my hand.
One finger at a time, he unpicked my death grip, tugging the sheet free. Then he brought my hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to my knuckles.
My heartbeat raced, my body overheating from that tiny gesture. The vestiges of guilt I’d been waiting for swept over me, far less than I imagined. Apparently, my heart had healed. While it still hurt at the thought of my boys, this was not taking anything away from my time with them.
