Glancing back she studied him. He wore nothing but the trousers. Though there were hints of amusement in his eyes now, the shadows under them still dogged them.
And he was pale yet, pale from worry and fatigue.
Well, she would damn well fix that.
“I think I can figure out how, since I’ve been on the receiving end often enough.” She went for soup. “I don’t know much about mothers—neither do you—but from everything you’ve just said she’d hate you blaming yourself for what happened. If she loved you, she’d want you happy. She’d like knowing you got away from him. That you grew up to be successful and important.”
“However I managed it.”
“Yeah.” She fiddled with the soup, then brought it to him. “However you managed it.”
“He’s in me, you know.”
She nodded, sat beside him again. “I guess it works that way, which mean she’s in you, too. Gives you a big one up on me, on the DNA chart.”
“I’ve been shuffling the past behind me all my life. It doesn’t shadow me the way it does you.” He ate, without much interest, because she’d gone to the trouble for him. “I didn’t want to bring you into this, or anyone. I wanted to sort it out for myself, that’s all. But it’s eating at me. I can see her face now, and I always will. I have family I didn’t know of, people who lost her. I don’t know what the hell to do about it. So I find myself guilty and churned up and frustrated.”
“You don’t have to do anything until you feel easier about it.” She lifted a hand, stroked his hair. “Give yourself a break.”
“I couldn’t tell you straight off.” He looked at her now. “Couldn’t get the words out. Shutting you out was easier. Easier yet, it seems, was taking some of that guilt and frustration out on you.”
“Not so easy when I knocked you on your ass.”
He leaned over, kissed her softly. “Thanks for that.”
“Anytime, pal.”
“I’m sorry I left you alone last night. You had a nightmare.”
“I’d say we both did. We’ll figure this out, Roarke.”
“Not so much to . . .” Her face blurred, doubled, shimmered briefly into focus again. “Ah, fuck me. You tranq’d the soup.”
“Yeah, I did.” Her tone was cheerful as she took the bowl before it tipped out of his limp fingers. “You need to sleep. Let’s get you into bed while you can still walk. I can’t carry you the way you do me.”
“You’re enjoying this part.”
“Well, duh.” She got his arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist, and hauled him up. “And I’m beginning to see why you get such a charge out of putting me under when you think I need it. It makes me feel all righteous and gooey inside.”
“Let me complete the reversal,” he managed in a voice slurring with the drug, “and say, ‘Bite me.’ ”
“Happy to, when you wake up. Step up, there you go. One more, that’s the spirit.”
“I should probably be pissed off at you, but I can’t quite focus on it. Come sleep with me, darling Eve. Let me hold you.”
“Yeah, you bet.” She eased him onto the bed, lifted his legs. His face was already going slack. “Just rest now,” she whispered as she pulled the covers over him.
He murmured in Gaelic words she’d heard before. I love you. She sat beside him, brushed the hair back from his cheeks, then touched her lips to his.
“Same goes.”
She set the lights on five percent so that if he surfaced, he wouldn’t wake in the dark. Then she went down to speak to Summerset before going back to her office.
While she worked late into the night, she kept the bedroom on-screen, so she could watch over him.
Chapter 13
His hands were on her, and his mouth, heating her blood, tripping her pulse before she was fully awake.