The car was a big old Buick, almost old enough to beg for restoration if it weren’t for the fact that it probably got twelve miles to the gallon. Besides, who’d want it? The door squealed when the driver opened it. Conall wondered what shape the shocks were in and how the car had handled the potholes.
A Hispanic man who might be in his forties stepped out, his dark eyes going right away to Conall who, carrying Julia, strolled over to meet him.
“Lia expecting you?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m Mateo Gonzalez.” He had a slight accent. “And you are?”
“Conall MacLachlan. Julia and I were visiting el caballito.” He grinned at the little girl, who grinned back.
“I’m here to pick Julia and her brother up. Her, er, aunt has arrived to get the kids.”
“Has she,” Conall said blandly. “And here I thought Lia said their mother would be back for them. When she could make it.”
The guy was sweating. Conall knew he shouldn’t toy with him, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.
Lia burst out the front door, and both men’s gazes swung to her. “Mateo. You’ve met Conall? I’ve got their stuff, but I’ll have to go back for Arturo. Oh, and their car seats are still in the Subaru.”
“Right. I’ll go get them,” Conall said.
Julia indignantly declined to go into Mateo’s arms. Accordingly, Conall carried her to the barn where the Subaru was parked, handing the other man one of the child seats while Conall grabbed the second one with his free hand. Mateo had buckled both into the back of his Buick by the time Lia returned, breathless, with Arturo. While Mateo loaded their limited possessions into the trunk and slammed it, Conall watched as Lia settled Arturo into his car seat and said her goodbyes. Her eyes were glazed with tears as she took Julia from him and circled the car to put her in, too. Then she and Mateo talked quietly, giving a couple of quick glances at Conall, before Mateo got in and drove away. Lia watched it go with one hand pressed to her mouth.
“How long have you had them?”
“Only…uh, three weeks.” She gave a tiny, resigned sniff. “I know I’m being silly, but I hate to say goodbye.”
“But you do it all the time.”
She nodded.
“It must be a hell of a lot harder when you’ve had the kids for months.”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why foster if it kills you every time they leave?” He didn’t begin to get it.
Her eyes were still shiny when they touched on his, then slid away. “It’s…complicated.”
Complicated. What did that mean? And why did it matter to him?
He shook his head. “You need to learn not to get attached.”
Lia’s laugh was small and broken. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Why would I be kidding?”
“How can I make them feel safe and loved if I don’t get attached?”
“Pretend,” he said, with a shrug. “Say the right things, cook for ’em, rock them to sleep if you have to, but don’t let yourself feel anything.”
Her eyes searched his. “So easy.”
He shifted, not liking the pity he saw on her face. “It has to be when you do my job.”
After a minute Lia said, “I suppose you’re right. But you know, it’s a lot easier to pretend with adults than it is with kids.”
Conall guessed that might be true. Maybe that’s why kids usually made him uneasy. The way they’d stare so openly, laying their emotions out there as foolishly as a wild animal that didn’t guard its scent from predators.
When he didn’t say anything, Lia started for the house. “I need to check on the boys.”
To her back, he said, “Lia.”
She stopped without turning.
He made his voice hard. “Tell me Matteo doesn’t know who I am and why I’m here.”
Her shoulders stiffened. At last, slowly, she faced him. “He won’t say anything.”
“Goddamn it!” he roared. “The one and only thing I asked of you.”
Her eyes widened in outrage. “The one and only?” She stalked to him and stabbed his chest with her index finger. “Along with breakfast, lunch and dinner? Sharing my bathroom with two men?” Her voice kept rising. “Making excuses every time anyone I know wants to visit? Scaring me now that I know I have drug dealers living next door?”
Would it help to argue that he was doing most of his and Jeff’s laundry and helping clean the kitchen? Seeing her expression, he guessed probably not.
“I needed him to know how important—” She screeched on the brakes, likely remembering exactly why she had needed the kids gone.
Did she really think he’d turn her in? Her lack of trust stung for no good reason. He’d only been here a week. She didn’t know him that well.
Conall sighed. “I won’t turn you in, Lia.”
Could her eyes get any wider? “Turn me in for…what?” she whispered.
“I know those kids are illegal.”
“How…?” She really was scared now, panting for her next breath. “What?”
“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “I promise you.”
“Oh, God.” She backed away.
Conall held both hands up, palms out. No harm. “Lia, I mean it. I know you think you’re doing a good thing…”
That fired some anger on top of her panic. “Think?”
“Will you tell me why you do it?”
She was beautiful scared and mad. The green seemed intensified in her eyes. Lashes clumped together from her earlier tears. She almost vibrated from the force of her emotions.
No, she was always beautiful. He admired her bustling in the kitchen, he liked her shy, maybe most of all he was stirred by her tenderness with the children. He had yet to see a moment when he didn’t think she was beautiful.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked, her voice constrained.
“I want to understand.”
“Why?” she said again.
He scrubbed both hands over his face. “I don’t know.”
Lia blew out a breath, her eyes closing momentarily so that those thick lashes fanned above her cheeks. When she opened them, he saw resignation again, deeper and more hurtful than what she’d felt at saying goodbye to two small children. Conall felt a kick in his chest.
“I really do need to check on Walker and Brendan.”
He nodded.
She hurried away. He couldn’t help appreciating the view from behind of her graceful gait and subtle curves. The braid, fat and black, swinging gently, seemed to emphasize the slenderness of her rib cage and waist, the feathery tip pointing to her perfect ass.
God, he was a bastard.
When the screen door slammed behind her, Conall walked over to pet the pony again. This time the horse came to the fence, too, both noses nudging him hopefully.
“I’ll bring you a carrot next time,” he told them. He hadn’t had much to do with horses, but they did like carrots, didn’t they? He’d met more burros in his time, still popular as a beast of burden for the poor in Mexico.
He heard the screen door again, but waited where he was for her. When she joined him at the fence, he turned and leaned his back against a post.
“I haven’t seen Sorrel this morning,” he said, trying to lessen the tension.
Lia went along with it. “She’s eating breakfast right now. I think she stayed up late online last night.”
“Does she have friends there?”
“I think so. And a Facebook page, of course.” At his expression, she said, “I’m keeping an eye on it. She hasn’t said anything about you or Jeff there. And nobody who has posted has commented. I really do think she understands why it’s important that she keep quiet.”
She was thirteen. A mass
of hormones. Conall only shook his head, hoping.
Stroking the shaggy pony’s ears, Lia didn’t look at him. “How did you know?”
“About Arturo and Julia?”
She nodded.
“You’re not a very good liar,” he said gently. “And I could see that you were worried.” He hesitated. “Duncan told me he’d heard something.”
That brought her terrified gaze to his. “Your brother?”
“He told me he didn’t know if it was true or not, but he wasn’t going to do anything about it. The local P.D. stays out of immigration issues. People have to trust them, be willing to talk to them when a crime has been committed. If they’re afraid of being asked to prove their citizenship, they won’t talk to cops.”
“But there’s been talk.” This was said so softly, he had to tilt his head to hear her.
“Maybe not that much.” Watching her, he said, “Do you want me to ask him?”
“I…don’t know.” Lia turned blindly back to the animals, leaning her face against the horse’s neck.
“The kids are gone. You have nothing to fear right now.”
She laughed, but not happily. “Right now.”
“You could quit.”
“It’s…important to me.”
“Make me understand,” he said again.
Her eyes lifted to his, and he couldn’t have looked away to save his life. “Do I have a choice?”
He felt again as if the horse had somehow planted one of those hooves smack in the middle of his chest, maybe denting a few ribs. Conall hadn’t felt anything like this since he was a kid.
Back off, he told himself. I don’t need to understand. I don’t need anything from her.
But now he was lying to himself.
He swallowed. “Yes.” His voice roughened. “I meant it when I said I won’t tell anyone. Talking to me is optional.”
Still she looked at him, her eyes searching, intense. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a breath.
Abruptly he was freed; she was stroking the horse, gazing out across the pasture. “I guess it doesn’t matter now. You’re right. Julia and Arturo are gone. If you really want to know…”
“I want.” Hell, now he sounded hoarse. He wanted her in a hundred ways.
Foolish, and dangerous.
Lia only nodded. “Okay.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
LIA CLIMBED THROUGH the fence rails, wanting a barrier of some kind between her and Conall. As if it would do her any good at all.
After hopeful and unfruitful nudges at her empty jeans pockets, horse and pony wandered a few feet away and began to graze. She crossed her forearms on the fence.
“My mother was here illegally.” She grimaced. “I told you that, didn’t I?”
He rested one booted foot on the lowest rail and nodded.
“Mom came here with two of her brothers. I guess they stayed in the L.A. area for a bit, then gradually headed north. None of them wanted to work in agriculture. My uncle Guillermo is a mechanic and Uncle Jorge mostly did construction, I think. Mom found jobs as a maid.” This wasn’t the painful part of the story for her. Very aware of Conall’s keen gray eyes, she continued.
“Mom met my dad when she was cleaning offices. Dad is an electrical contractor. They had a thing, she got pregnant, but they didn’t get married at first. Maybe he was embarrassed by her, I don’t know.”
“Why would he be embarrassed?”
“She was uneducated, a maid. I doubt she’d picked up more than broken English by then. She still has a really strong accent.”
“Is she as beautiful as you are?”
That made her cheeks heat. “I— Mom is pretty. But she’s darker-skinned, of course.” Dad and Mom hadn’t done much socializing, and by her teenage years Lia had suspected he was still embarrassed by his obviously Hispanic wife. Lia had never been sure; her father wasn’t exactly the warm and fuzzy kind, so maybe he simply hadn’t made friends.
“But he did marry her.”
“Not at first. We lived with him, but…it was more like she was his housekeeper. Mostly I remember Mom yelling a lot and him getting stony-faced and slamming his study door.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “When I was five, Mom and I were deported.”
Shock showed on Conall’s face. “What?”
“She was cleaning rooms at a hotel and she’d taken me to work with her that day. There was a raid, and we were rounded up with a bunch of other maids and, I don’t know, I think a gardener and a maintenance guy—all illegal. Of course Mom didn’t have my birth certificate with her, and I doubt it would have made any difference if she had had it.” Lia toed a rough clump of grass, focusing on it. “I remember being scared. They weren’t very nice to us. It was like we were cattle. We got taken to some kind of processing place where there were a couple hundred other people they’d rounded up. We slept on pallets and then they flew us to Mexico.”
“Was your mother able to contact your father?”
“I don’t think they gave her the chance. She did later, once we were in her home village, and that’s when he decided to marry her. But getting papers for us even after they were married wasn’t easy. We stayed there for a year and a half.” She swallowed and said with quiet force, “I hated it.”
“Mexico?”
“Yes…no. It was being transplanted like that. I had nightmares for a long time about being rounded up. I think I got separated from Mom once. At least in my nightmares I always did.” She hadn’t had that one in a long time, but it had made occasional appearances even when she was in her twenties. “These men were laughing and grabbing at me…” Her throat closed at the memory. “Probably they were trying to help, but they scared me. Even once we got there and Mom’s family took us in, I never fit in the village even though I spoke Spanish.” She laughed a little. “Honestly, I was probably a spoiled little princess. It was really primitive compared to what I was used to. I became painfully shy and I clung to Mom but I was mad at her, too, because she didn’t take me home.”
“Thus Arturo and Julia.” The understanding in his eyes twisted something in her.
“Yes. Maybe for kids like them it would be less traumatic to have stayed with their mom, but I’m not convinced. I’d like to think the process isn’t as brutal now as it was when it happened to Mom and me, but I’ve heard some awful stories. And also…” She hesitated. “Well, obviously the kids weren’t with their mother when she was arrested. If she’d told immigration agents where to find her children, she’d have been ratting on a bunch of other people who probably didn’t have papers, either. If they’d been family, they probably would have taken care of Arturo and Julia, but they weren’t. There’s this sort of, um, underground network for making sure the children stay safe when that kind of thing happens. Sometimes when the kids leave me they do go back to Mexico or the Dominican Republic or wherever their parents are. Sometimes another family member eventually comes for them. And sometimes…” She flicked a glance at him.
“Sometimes Mom or Dad sneaks across the border and comes to pick up their own kids.”
“Yes. I never meet them. Matteo is my main contact.” She narrowed her eyes at Conall. “Will you report him?”
He shook his head. “I said I wouldn’t get you in trouble, Lia. As far as I’m concerned, Matteo was never here. I didn’t meet him. Some caseworker picked up the kids. Why would I pay attention?”
“Thank you,” she made herself say.
“You don’t have to thank me, Lia.” His voice was like a soft touch, one that raised goose bumps on her arms. He sounded…tender, a word she immediately tried to reject. She had to be imagining it.
“Yes, I do.” She stiffened. “Does Jeff know, too?”
“I don’t think so. He hasn’t said anything and neither ha
ve I. I don’t get the feeling he’s all that observant.”
Lia didn’t, either. “But he’s a DEA agent.”
“He’s good for this kind of job, but I don’t think he’s done much undercover work. He hasn’t learned to watch everyone, always.”
“How can you do that? Doesn’t the stress kill you?”
“It becomes habit. Everybody has an intuitive awareness of their surroundings. It’s a survival skill. Most people deliberately tamp it down. They convince themselves it’s unnecessary. For me it is.”
That simple. He was matter-of-fact about it. He did a dangerous job and needed to be preternaturally aware of everyone and everything around him. She’d never had a hope of avoiding his sharp eye, Lia realized. She was lucky, that’s all, because he’d deemed what she did harmless enough not to weigh against her usefulness. He was being practical, that’s all. For him, the mystery was solved. For her…well, she either had to trust him or to say no the next time—and every time—Matteo called.
“Will you ask your brother who he heard the rumor from?”
“Yes.” He paused. “Are you close to your parents?”
Lia gave a choked laugh. “You noticed, huh? I talk to Mom regularly. Dad only when he happens to answer the phone. He’s a really distant guy. I love him, but I’m not sure I like him very much. He and Mom still have kind of a strange relationship. She waits on him, he takes her for granted.” She laughed again. “Okay, maybe not so strange. There are probably lots of marriages like that.”
“No sisters or brothers?”
“Mom got pregnant once after me, while we were down in Mexico. She started hemorrhaging and ended up not only miscarrying but having to have a hysterectomy. It was…really awful.” Another shadow on her memory of that time.
“You relate well to the kids who come to you because you know what it feels like to be abruptly transplanted.”
“I suppose so.”
“You really do care about them all.” His tone was odd and she looked at him in surprise.
The Call of Bravery Page 10
