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Just the fact that he said that like he was talking to a three-year-old prompted her outside. The grass was cool under her bare feet. The sun hadn’t woken up, yet she was outside.
Going over to H, pulling the hoodie tighter around her, Tess noted him holding a small black thing and turned to see what he was looking at. In a heartbeat, the spectacle erased the remaining webs of sleep from her consciousness.
There, on the roof of the trailer, was Daire… on his hands. Upside down on his hands… As if that wasn’t crazy enough, he was wearing a blindfold too.
“What the hell?” she said, doing a double take at H, who was concentrating on his little black device. “Why is he doing a handstand on the roof?” No answer. She gaped at the sight. “When the hell will he ever need to do that for anything?” She glanced around, seeking clarity. “What the hell time is it?”
“Ares!”
“Oh, four, twenty-three,” Daire called, holding his position.
“And?”
“Eighteen seconds.”
“Twenty-three,” H corrected him. “Gimme ten.”
At that, Daire’s elbows bent and, still upside down and vertical, he lowered at a slow, controlled pace only to push himself back up straight again.
She couldn’t believe her eyes. “What the hell is—”
“It’s an endurance exercise,” H said, stooping her way, keeping his focus on his ward. “He’s been up there a half hour. Cramp alone could be enough to make a grown man cry.” Yet H wasn’t fazed or pulling back. “It requires concentration.”
“And the blindfold?”
“Sensory deprivation discombobulates balance.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” she said, swinging around to check out Daire going up and down. Eventually, he got to his ten and froze again.
“Do you want to shoot him?” H asked.
As if the moment wasn’t ludicrous enough.
Her brows went up. “Do I want to what?”
H nodded toward a long black trunk on the grass by the trailer. One that hadn’t been there before. “They’re rubber bullets.”
“No, thank you. I do not want to shoot anyone,” she said, putting up the hood of her sweater, hoping it would keep some of the heat in. “Won’t he freeze up there?”
“Not up there,” he murmured, then raised his volume. “Attention!”
Walking on his hands, Daire turned and flipped onto his feet in one slick move. He didn’t remove the blindfold, just walked to the end of the trailer and dropped onto a hip to slide from the roof to the grass.
Only when he was on his feet again did he pull the black blindfold from his head and scrub a hand over his hair. Drawing her eyes away, she didn’t care about the way he stretched his shoulders in that tight black tee-shirt. She didn’t.
“That is my daughter.”
The menace of H’s tone brought her attention back around just in time to see Daire’s gaze ascend. Glancing down, Tess wondered what the hell he’d been looking at. All she saw between the hoodie and the grass were her legs. When she looked up, his stare was fixed straight ahead, and he stood to attention as ordered.
Unimpressed, H scowled. Still at a loss, she peeked down again. Either she was missing something or Daire had been looking at her legs and H didn’t like it. They’d been having sex for a month; Danny wouldn’t be that interested in her legs… why should Daire be?
That thought was quickly eclipsed by another. Did H know they’d been having sex for a month? Did he know they’d been intimate at all? If he didn’t, what would he do if he found out? Telling him could cause violence between the men… But why should she keep secrets to protect anyone?
“Get the F-Flare.”
“Sir,” Daire said, turning in a quick, militaristic snap to march over to the trunk.
He opened it and brought whatever he retrieved back to H. A flare gun. Despite anticipating the sound, she jumped when he shot it. Except… what? It didn’t fire any regular flare. There was a light, a small one, so small that as the projectile shot across the lake, it disappeared.
