“You don’t have a family? A home?”
He’d worked on making sure there were no emotions attached to his past. It simply was what it was. “I grew up in an orphanage, until I was fifteen. Then I was adopted, but I only lived with them for a couple of months.” John and Esther had made him feel welcomed. They’d even given him a last name; up until then, he’d just been Henry, but they weren’t his parents, and he knew they never would be. His real parents had left him, as a three-year-old child who only knew his first name, on the front steps of the orphanage. He’d wondered why, for years, but eventually decided it didn’t matter if he was as unlovable as a child, or as an adult.
“Why did you live with them for only a couple of months?”
“Because I went to school, to a junior college, when I turned sixteen and lived in the dorms there for the next two years, and then I became an agent with the Bureau and started traveling. Moving from assignment to assignment.” He’d never told anyone that before. No one. Other than his uncle Nate, no one in the agency knew he’d been adopted. There had been no reason for him to tell her, either. It had just come out, like he knew he could trust her.
She stopped walking and turned, faced him. “I’m sorry, Henry.”
“Why? There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”
“Yes, there is.” Sadness filled her eyes as she looked up at him. “Everyone should have a family. No matter how strict or stern, family is everything. I would do anything for my sisters.”
She was so sweet. So precious. The desire to kiss her, to hold her, was painful. He held strong and merely touched the tip of her nose with one finger. “I’ve already figured that out.” He would do anything for one of his partners, but that was different to her reasons. She would do anything out of love. He did it out of duty.
Betty was certain she’d never felt so sorrowful for someone in her life. She might not agree with most of her father’s harsh rules, but he was her father, and she had her mother and sisters. Her family. She couldn’t imagine life without any of them. Her heart literally ached for Henry. For the loneliness he must have known his entire life. She wanted to take that all away for him. Stretching on her toes, she leaned forward and kissed his cheek.
After the kisses they’d shared, she wasn’t sure why that one made her cheeks grow warm and tingle. Attempting to hide her the flush of her cheeks, she bowed her head, but then lifted it and looked at him. She could be truthful with him, and that felt good. “I’m going to miss you when you leave.”
“You are?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She huffed out a breath. “Because I like you and I like helping you. I know I haven’t done much yet, but all you have to do is tell me what else you need.” That was very true. She had a list of all the joints she and her sisters could visit and couldn’t, and would share the entire list with him, going over each place and what she’d learned about each place. She wanted to do more, wanted to help him in any way she could.
He was looking at her, with a slightly odd expression. Like he couldn’t believe what she’d said.
“It’s true,” she said.
He touched her cheek, softly. It nearly took her breath away. Then her heart skipped a beat as he leaned forward. Her eyes fluttered shut as she tilted her face upward, fully ready to meet his.
Disappointment washed over her as his lips touched her forehead. “I like having you help me.”
In order to hide her reaction, she asked, “What other information, besides the list, do you need?”
Holding her elbow, he started walking again. “For now, the list will be good. It will help a lot.”
Falling in step beside him, she began telling him about the places that were on the list, and any information she could remember off the top of her head. He asked questions about the joints and she answered them, and then because she truly wanted to know more, she asked him about his life at the orphanage.
She kept a smile on her face, but it was hard. His answers were matter-of-fact, but to her his childhood sounded so lonely. He sounded so lonely, she couldn’t stop herself from holding his hand.
“Tell me some fun things about growing up there,” she said quietly. “There had to have been something.” Despite how she and her sisters complained, they did have fun together, especially with the sneaking in of material and sewing new outfits. He had to have had something like that.
He looked at her oddly, but then nodded, and grinned. “We, me and two other boys, used to sneak down into the kitchen at night and steal food. Not a lot, just enough for the younger ones who’d missed a meal for one reason or another. The kitchen workers would set traps to try to catch us, but we never got caught.”
She laughed. “No wonder you became an intelligence agent. You’d been righting wrongs way back then.”
He winked at her. “Or maybe we were just thieves. The other kids called us Robin Hoods, but they never ratted us out.”
“You were Robin Hoods, and of course no one ratted on you. They would have gone hungry if not for you. You were their hero.” He truly was in her eyes, and she wanted to know more. “What were their names? The other two boys?”
“Mick Lawrence and Darrin Wolf.” He shook his head. “I haven’t thought about them in years. I never saw them again after I was adopted. They said they’d keep making sure the younger kids got fed.”
He grew quiet, and she squeezed his hand. “I’m
