Page 123 of Protecting What's Mine

“Was it on accident or purpose?” Lucia asked. “Mama says sometimes when people get hurt it’s not on accident. But that they can still be okay.”

Mack was losing control of the conversation. “Uh, I guess it was on purpose.”

Lucia put her chubby little fists on her hips. “It’s not okay for people to hurt other people,” she lectured.

“No, it’s not,” Mack agreed. “But I’m okay now.”

“My mama’s okay now, too,” she said with an emphatic nod. “Sometimes I kiss her old boo-boos to make sure they still don’t hurt.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Mack told her, feeling her throat tighten painfully.

Lucia leaned in and pressed a sloppy kiss to Mack’s eye. “’Dere. Now yours won’t hurt anymore either.”

Bewildered, Mack watched the little girl skip off until the image blurred behind hot tears she blinked away.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and jolted.

Linc sat next to her, and bath-fresh Sunshine burrowed under Mack’s arm on the other side. He didn’t say anything.

“Just got something in my eye,” she fibbed.

He stroked a hand down her back, and she wanted to tell him. To blurt out the words that bubbled up and demanded to be set free. She had feelings. So many of them now that she didn’t know what to do with them all.

Instead, she leaned her head on Linc’s shoulder and decided to just feel it all for a while before making any rash decisions.

39

Linc argued baseball with Luke and kept an eye on Mack as she joined in the conversation with Denise and Freida across the yard.

He felt a tug on the hem of his sweatshirt. “Chief Wink! Can I draw you a picture?” Lucia asked, peering up at him with those big, beautiful Vietnamese eyes.

“I’d love a picture,” he told her.

“’Den I need some paper,” she informed him.

“I brought crayons and four coloring books,” Gloria said, appearing behind her daughter. “But she’s insisting on paper.”

“Lemme ask Dreamy,” Linc said, pretending not to see the look Gloria and Luke exchanged. If everyone was surprised by his relationship with Mackenzie, they might as well hurry up and get over it.

He inserted himself into the girl talk as they debated whether or not Harper should run for Benevolence mayor the following year.

“Do you have some paper a three-year-old could commandeer?” he asked.

Mack smiled up at him in a new, soft, dreamy kind of way that made him want to kick everyone out and kiss her for the rest of the night.

“Sure,” she said. “There’s a notebook in the living room on the shelf by the fireplace.”

“Thanks.” He did kiss her then. He couldn’t help himself. He left her with Freida and Denise’s chorus of “oooh” and headed into the house, all three dogs on his heels. “Behave yourselves,” he warned them.

He found the notebook, a sketchpad actually, on top of a stack of medical journals and flipped it open. The charcoal portrait surprised and intrigued him. It was a young woman with laughing eyes and thick, black hair that kinked and curled in a celebratory riot around her face. He turned the page and found another portrait, a man with a buzzcut and lines around his eyes and the mouth that was pressed in a firm, flat line. He wore a uniform decorated with a load of military experience.

“Not that one,” Mack said, breathlessly hurrying into the room. “I forgot. The notebook’s on the end table.”

“Mackenzie, these are amazing.”

She looked like she was about to be sick.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” he asked, closing the sketchbook.