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After sayinggoodnight to Grace and Rick, Lucas followed Tessa to their borrowed room.
He’d hoped that, by that night, they’d either be comforting Maria in Ophelia or—if this was all one terrible misunderstanding—on their way back to Dayton. Since neither of those options were the case, they were looking at another night at least in the ground-floor room.
After Tessa stepped into the room, stepping around the pile of suitcases on the floor, Lucas closed the door behind him and joined her inside.
Tessa sat down on the edge of the bed. She didn’t reach for her luggage to change into her nightclothes, a sure sign that she wasn’t planning on going right to sleep.
He should’ve known she was waiting to talk to you alone.
Meeting his gaze, she asked simply, “When are you going out searching again?”
That was his Tessa. It wasn’t a “will you” but a “when are you”... she didn’t doubt that he wouldn’t give up after only one day of looking.
Even so, there was a twist to her expression that had him scrutinizing her closer. “Did everything go okay back at the house today?”
“It was alright. Would’ve been better if I went with you, though.”
Lucas understood that. To be fair, he would’ve preferred her company, too. But if there really was a threat in Hamlet, there was no way in hell he was going to jeopardize Tessa’s safety. It was bad enough his sister was missing.
If anything happened to his wife?
Lucas wouldn’t be able to survive it—and neither would plenty of others.
“You know why I asked you to stay back at the house with Grace,” Lucas reminded her.
Tessa sighed. “I know, Luc. And don’t pay any attention to me. I didn’t mean to be so whiny. It’s just… I’m so freaking worried about Maria.”
It was one of Lucas’s greatest pleasures in life that, during Tessa’s first visit to Hamlet, she became fast friends with Maria. It only just hammered home that he had picked the right woman for his forever that his sister was fond of her from the beginning. The feeling was mutual, too, and he knew that Maria’s disappearance was weighing heavily on his wife’s shoulders.
He needed to distract her. And though his favored way of taking his wife’s attention off of anything he didn’t was a definite possibility, he decided to hold off on that for a moment.
Actually, a cold shower seemed like a good idea to get his head on straight.
“I know, babe. And to answer your question, I’ll be going back out first thing in the morning.” Grabbing the bottom hem of his sweater, he pulled it up and over his head, tossing it onto the empty rocking chair in the room. “For now, I think I’ll take a quick shower and then, if I’m lucky, maybe I can sleep a couple of hours so I’m running on all cylinders tomorrow.”
“That’s a good idea, Luc. I’ll get you some fresh clothes.”
Half-undressed and watching Tessa bend over to reach for his suitcase didn’t do much for his good intentions.
Another distraction, then. “I know you didn’t want to stay back, but at least you seemed to have had a good night with Grace and the baby.”
Lifting the suitcase to the bed, Tessa snorted.
“Cuore?”
“You know… Grace said something funny about that, too.”
Lucas raised his eyebrows as she glanced over her shoulder to peek at him. “Oh? What was that?”
Tessa shrugged. “She was just wondering why we don’t have any of our own. She apologized if she was overstepping, if it was a fertility issue or something, but she said I looked so good with Su that she had to ask.”
He went still. It was an instinctive reaction. Whenever he thought about someone—anyone—coming between him and his wife, he immediately went on the defense.
It was even worse when it was Tess herself that spawned that feeling inside of him.
Children…
Thinning his lips, he asked, “Is this really the time to have this conversation?”
