Page 26

CHAPTER 26

Diana was dozing in the passenger seat, but she woke up when Costa pulled into the ranch yard. She rubbed her eyes and looked around as he kept going, past the house and up a steep driveway that led to the saguaro cabin.

“We can go down to the main house if you want,” Costa said, glancing at her. “But I thought you might want a little while to get refreshed. It looks like that coffee and Red Bull is wearing off.”

Diana laughed and rubbed her forehead, where a headache had erupted again. “Yeah, I’ve definitely build up a tolerance over the years. You wouldn’t think so after sleeping for the better part of a day, but I feel like I’m crashing.”

Costa looked at her with worry. “How bad? Want me to call the SCB?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. I’m just tired.”

They collected the shopping bags and went inside. Diana hadn’t expected the cabin to remain untouched in their absence, but apparently it had, with no sign that anyone had been in it at all. Her empty coffee cup was in the sink, right where she had put it days ago. She rinsed the cup and put it away. The crib was still just as they had left it, and Diana laid a hand on it, caught up in a sudden urge to hold Emmeline in her arms again.

“With all that’s been going on, I completely forgot—are there any updates on Em from the SCB? Finding out who she really is, I mean.”

“None so far,” Costa said. He opened the fridge and began to put away the few additional items he’d brought. “The confiscated lab records from Alamagordo might shed some light on it. I think it’s definitely looking like Em was there for a while.”

Diana looked out the window at the afternoon sun. She thought about making coffee, then about lying down, and found herself standing still, her decision-making ability having completely deserted her.

When a hand brushed hers, she looked up with a flinch of surprise.

“Come on,” Costa said quietly. He took her hand and led her into the bedroom, where the bedcovers were still rumpled from the last night they had spent here, together yet apart. “Lie down for a little while. Everything will still be there after you rest.”

Diana sat on the edge of the bed and took off her boots. “Just for a few minutes. I don’t think I need sleep. I just need ...” She trailed off, unsure what she actually did need.

My house back? My life back? But she had passed some kind of personal Rubicon, she sensed. Even if everything was magically put back exactly as it had been in the blink of an eye, she wouldn’t be the same.

Costa adjusted the pillow. “Here, this looks comfy. I’ll go, if you want me to?—”

“No,” she said, turning to look at him. “I want you to stay.”

They lay down fully clothed on top of the covers. Costa drew her against him, and she settled without complaint, tucking her head into the crook of his shoulder. He put an arm over her. For a while, she simply lay there, comfortably drifting. The world felt far away from her, outside a bubble consisting only of the two of them. She didn’t feel as if she was going to fall asleep. It was simply nice to be here, not having to move or think or do anything. Content.

Costa spoke at last, his voice so quiet that she felt it as a low rumble in his chest as much as she heard it with her ears. “I could leave, you know. If you want me to.”

“Leave?” she asked, too lazy with sleep and satisfaction to move. “Leave what? The bed? The ranch? The SCB?”

“Any of the above. Except maybe the bed.” He stirred a little, adjusting position. “I’m serious. I’ve spent most of my adult life at the SCB, and all of my life in Arizona. I could quit. Get a new job. Go somewhere else. Your forties are the traditional time for a midlife crisis change of career, right?”

Diana laughed quietly against his shoulder. “You’d be unhappy.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” He propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her. His gaze was incredibly soft. “I’ve been thinking about that. It’s interesting. I know that when we talked about this before, when we were so much younger. I never could have left back then.”

“And I understand why,” Diana said softly. Her heart broke for him. “I don’t think I did understand, then. You had to care for Marco, and stay on the ranch to take care of things here. It was important to you. I shouldn’t have tried to talk you into leaving.”

“You had every right. I could always say no. I mean, I did say no. But now ...” As he spoke, he began to slowly stroke her hair. “It’s different. Everything is different. I’ve had twenty years to live the life I chose, and I’ve enjoyed that life; I never regretted it.” He paused, and she saw a flicker of unhappiness on his face, as if remembering all the regrets he did have.

“You didn’t make the wrong decision,” Diana said swiftly. And then, touching on the one thing they had never talked about openly: “What happened to Marco wasn’t your fault.”

Costa jerked, like a man drifting into sleep and jolted suddenly out of it. “He joined the SCB because of me. Big brother Quinn, giving him direction, being a surrogate dad after our parents died.” He almost spat the words. “I don’t know if you know exactly what happened; it was after you left.”

“He died in the line of duty,” Diana said. After all this time, she got the feeling that he did want to talk about it. “I heard the story. He was a hero.”

“And his wife is a widow, and his son has no father.”

“And none of that is your fault. Not a single bit of it.”

Costa let out a long sigh. He didn’t pull back; he just kept running his fingers through her hair. At long last, he said, “I know. I was so damn hard on myself afterwards, I don’t even think I noticed when I stopped. I guess I’ll always feel some guilt for it. He was my little brother. But somewhere along the line, I guess I got it into my head that I needed to take care of Jay, help raise him the way I helped my aunts raise Marco after our parents died.”

“And then what?” Diana asked quietly. “If you try to save the whole world, there’s always more world to save. It never ends. At some point, you have to find the right balance of living for other people, and living for yourself.” She took a deep, shaky breath, preparing to talk about something she’d never spoken of to anyone. “I went the opposite way, you know. I was so afraid of—of ending up like Mom that I threw every responsibility out the window and ran off to see the world.”

“Some people would consider joining the Army a pretty responsible thing to do.”

“Maybe it was. But I was running away, not towards. I didn’t even know Mom was sick until she was pretty far gone.” Diana swallowed. She closed her eyes, afraid if she kept them open, tears would blur Costa’s sympathetic face. “Everything that happened, my folks having to sell the ranch, Mom dying—maybe it wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed.”

Costa’s hand faltered on her hair, then went on stroking. “You can’t blame yourself for your mom getting cancer, or your folks having money problems. That would have happened whether you stayed or left.”

“I know. It doesn’t stop me feeling guilty about it, though.” She opened her eyes and blinked past a little mistiness. “I guess that’s the point. You’re right, there’s nothing I could have done about the big picture stuff. But there are things I could’ve done to be a better daughter. I could have missed fewer holidays and birthdays. I wouldn’t have spent so many Christmases in foreign parts of the world, sending cards and packages a month late. You had all of that—the Christmases, the holidays. You’ve been there for all of Jay’s birthdays. I missed nearly all of my mom’s, from the time I was eighteen until she died.”

Costa gave a little sigh and a faint smile. His hand cupped under her head, fingers buried in her hair. “I’m not going to indulge you in feeling guilty about your life choices, any more than you would for me.”

Diana huffed a soft laugh. “I guess not. But the thing is, we made completely opposite decisions, and bad things happened anyway. I feel like some things would have been better if I’d stayed, but maybe not. You think it would’ve been better if Marco hadn’t followed in your footsteps, but who knows? Bad things can happen in rural ranch country, too.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Yeah. So, we made the choices that felt best for us then. And we followed those paths as far as they’d go, wherever they led. In my case, apparently it led right back to Arizona—and to you.”

Costa leaned over and kissed her. She put a hand behind his neck, and they explored each other’s mouths for a little while. Familiar and new—the way things had always been with him. As if she had known him forever, which she had, but also with new wonders to discover around every turn.

They broke apart slowly, but kept their foreheads together, her hand on his neck and his fingers in her hair.

“And now what?” he murmured, lips nearly touching hers.

Diana had opened her mouth to reply, or maybe to kiss him again, when there was a sudden knocking on the outer cabin door.

Costa sat up. “If this is an invitation to dinner, come back later!”

“Hey, boss, it’s me,” Cat Delgado’s voice said. “They said you were up here. Are you busy?”

Costa looked down at Diana. His lips twitched. “Well, are we?” he murmured.

“I think this’ll keep,” Diana said, grinning back up at him. Her heart seemed to hum with an eager, warm energy. “But we’re just tabling the discussion, not abandoning it.”

“Deal.” He gave her a hand up, and raised his voice. “Come on in, Cat. We’re not asleep.”

It was later than Diana had realized, she discovered once she was vertical. Afternoon sunshine had given way to the warm colors of evening, painting the cabin’s interior. She wobbled a little and got her balance with Costa’s hand on her arm. They went out to the living room, where Delgado was looking around curiously.

Delgado turned swiftly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”

“We were just resting.” Costa smoothed his hand through his hair. “What on earth is so important that you had to drive out here in person?”

“Something I didn’t want to trust to the phone system,” Delgado said. She shot a quick glance at Diana. “It’s not bad, I don’t want to alarm you, but—you need to come see Farley, right now.”