“What do you see?”
“One of those genius kids that spends his life studying.”
Ronan laughed. “Sometimes, yes. But you’d be surprised what I can get up to when I’m with all my cousins. We’re a wild bunch.”
“I’d have to see that to believe it,” she said. She eyed him up and down again. “How old are you anyway?”
“Twenty-five. And I can tie my own shoes and everything!” he teased.
Giada laughed. “I’m sure your mother is proud of you.”
“I hope so. It was hard to learn.”
Giada took one last bite and pushed her bowl away from her. “I’m stuffed.”
“Oh, I’m going back for seconds,” Ronan said. When he got back with his second meal, he took his seat and sat back for a second to look at her. “Why’d you ask how old I am?”
“Because while you’re obviously an adult, you look young.”
“I’m not quite as young as you thought, though, right?”
“No, but you’re still much younger than I am.”
“Nah,” he said, shaking his head as he took a bite of food.
“You are much younger than I,” she insisted.
“You’re what? Twenty-six? That’s not much.”
“No. I’m twenty-nine. A mother of two boys, with lots of experience about what to avoid in the world. You’re a twenty-five year old, still in college. We are not the same.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong.”
“Really? Well, then why don’t you tell me where I’m wrong.”
“You’re a woman who’s been treated roughly by some choices you’ve made…”
Her face morphed into one of anger, causing him to adjust his words.
“Or some choices that were made for you. You’ve learned the hard way that you couldn’t depend on anything but disappointment or unfairness unless you were depending only on yourself. You bided your time until your babies made their appearance, then you decided it was time to make a change for their sakes. But it took more out of you than you thought it would and you ended up in a homeless camp in the woods.” He took a second to read her face before he spoke again. “Or maybe that was intentional — it’s a good place to hide when you want to disappear. Regardless, you worked hard to find a safe, comfortable place for your kids and yourself, and come hell or high water you refuse to allow anyone, especially another man, to cause you to lose what you’ve finally been able to provide. Hence the walls you keep pushing higher and higher each time I try to break through.”
Giada’s eyes were misted over, and she seemed shaken. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know that I’m not what you fear I am. I know that you deserve safety, your boys deserve safety.”
She looked up at him with a pained expression on her face. “I can’t even put them in school because I’m afraid we’ll be found,” she whispered.
Ronan smiled at her. “It’ll be okay.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I also know that I’ll kill anyone or anything that tries to come at any of the three of you. What I see as a threat, my cousins see as a threat. Whatever it is you’re hiding from, they won’t get to you.”
“Daddy hurt Mama,” Leo whispered, looking up at Ronan with wide, scared eyes.
“Nobody’s going to hurt Mama again,” Ronan said, reaching his hand out and laying it on the little boy’s shoulder. “Okay?”
Leo nodded.
