And now he realized just how afraid she was for her sibling too.
“You’re waiting around for a sister you haven’t seen or heard from in years?”
“Yes. I am.”
Knox let go of a curse. He had to admire her loyalty, no matter how futile it might be. “You said she left a few months after her son was born.”
“Shannon didn’t leave. She vanished. There’s a difference.”
“Only in the semantics. The net outcome is the same.” He couldn’t curb the cold frankness in his tone. Nor the sharpness of the truth she seemed reluctant to accept. “She’s gone, Leni. After six years, I’d say she’s not likely coming back.”
She flinched as if he’d physically struck her. “Fuck you. You don’t know that. You don’t know a damn thing about me or my family.”
No, he didn’t. But his soldier’s mind dealt in logic, not emotion.
If Leni needed reassuring, unfortunately she wouldn’t get it from him. He wasn’t the type to coddle or soothe. He didn’t know how. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to prop her up with false hope. Not when she was so afraid of Travis Parrish’s return that she was willing to appeal for help from someone like Knox.
“I should go.”
She stared at him, her gaze bleak. Wounded. “I think that’s probably a good idea, Knox.”
It was. He knew that. Yet his boots remained rooted where he stood.
Damn it, why hadn’t he just kept walking right on past her diner earlier tonight? He’d already be across the border into Canada by now, instead of standing alone with Leni in the heat of her warmly lit living room, her beautiful face flushed with anger and a mounting regret.
He needed distance now, before he let his attraction to her spiral any further out of control. Leaving was the best thing for him to do for both of them.
Instead, he moved toward her, not stopping until there were only scant inches separating her body from his.
She didn’t retreat. Maybe if she had, he would have found the scrap of discipline he needed—the smallest measure of honor—to prevent his hand from reaching up to stroke her cheek.
Her skin was as soft as velvet, infinitely warm.
His Breed gift had made him reluctant to touch from the time it first manifested in him as a child. Its silence when he was touching Leni felt like a balm. So much so, it was next to impossible for him to draw his hand away from her now.
He couldn’t shake the memory of finding her staggering out of her crashed vehicle in the ravine. Unresolved fury for the bastard who’d done it simmered like acid in his veins.
Knox had killed for less offenses than Dwight Parrish’s tonight. Leni had dismissed the incident as if it were merely par for the course, but he couldn’t deny the urge to make the asshole pay in blood for the way he’d antagonized her.
Which was just more evidence that it was long past time for him to get out of her life.
Because what he’d told her was true. With men like that, taking on one meant going to war with the entire clan. As satisfying as he might find both prospects, it would only create added problems for Leni and her nephew. Especially when she was so stubbornly determined to remain in Parrish Falls.
And every minute he allowed himself to get lost in the stoic, unshakable grace of Leni’s eyes, the more tempting it was to wake the killer inside him and let the ashes fall where they may.
But she wasn’t his to protect. Not his to savor right now, either.
With a low rumble of warning curling up from his chest, Knox pulled his hand away from her cheek.
“You take care of yourself, Lenora Calhoun.”
A quiet sigh leaked out of her. She nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. “Goodbye, Knox.”
He stepped back, needing the space more than he cared to let on. For the first time since she walked into the room, he let his gaze drop from her face. His sight snagged on the tattered hem of her plaid shirt. The flannel had several long gashes in it near her abdomen.
He hadn’t noticed it until just now.
“Did that happen in the ravine?” When he glanced up at her face again, her cheeks went ashen. “You told me you weren’t hurt.”
