“You’re bored,” she whispered. “And you’re lost.”
Victor gave her a look that demanded silence.
“You’re bored and you don't want Kate to know because she’s emotional because of the baby. You don’t want her to feel as though she’s not enough for you especially when she’s growing a child within her.”
Victor’s jaw flexed, and he looked away. When he looked back, his expression told her to stuff it or he’d gag her himself.
His eyes moved from her to his twin daughters and his wife. Kate had decided not to swim, given their next baby had made a bathing costume uncomfortable. She was sitting under a large umbrella with a book on her lap and the posture of a woman who had crossed the line from studious to slumbering.
Vi, however, knew better. She was betting that Kate’s eyes were slits, and she was watching her struggling husband with concern. All the brilliance she possessed was focused on the man she loved.
“Keep quiet,” Victor hissed, foolishly thinking he’d bypassed letting his wife know that he wasn’t well at the moment.
“You’re a lucky man,” Vi told her brother to see how he’d react.
His response was a kiss on her head again and to try for a smile. He failed, but he hadn’t realized it. He left Vi’s side to join Kate under the shade. Vi had little doubt he was avoiding her and her unwanted truths, but if anyone could draw him from his ennui, it was the wife he adored.
He leaned in to examine his potentially sleeping wife. Kate’s eyes cracked open and she smiled at him. Vi shook her head. Victor didn’t realize, but Vi did.
She turned away, giving them their moments of quiet, and found Jack watching her from the water, so she took her drink and crossed to the poolside lounge chair. Jack pushed himself out of the pool a moment later, and Vi let her eyes rake over her husband as she grinned at him.
His broad shoulders seemed so much wider when she could see them in the light of day. His face had tanned over the last few weeks, and his penetrating eyes had already caught her humor. He was a mountain of man, and he made her feel tiny even when she wasn’t particularly small. It was rather like Beatrice and her Smith. When Jack turned all that focus on her? Intoxicating.
“You are a minx,” he said, and he didn’t even know what she’d been thinking. Jack leaned down to lift her feet onto his lap and sit at the end of her lounge chair.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The lie fell on deaf ears and she could see his mind had already wandered.
When Jack didn’t focus back on her, she examined him carefully. His jaw was clenching and unclenching, and his mind was fixed on something that had nothing to do with their lives.
Vi turned her gaze from her husband to his friend Ham and noticed that Ham didn’t have that same distant look. He did, however, have a barely pregnant wife who was holding her temples as though she were in pain. Vi’s gaze moved back to Jack and she asked, “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head.
Her gaze narrowed on him as his eyes met hers, and she could see the flash of humor that ghosted over his face. His eyes glinted, the corner of his mouth twitched, but nothing else showed his amusement.
“You’re trying to protect me,” she accused.
“It is my job, darling one.”
She rolled her eyes at him and leaned back into the chair, lolling as though she were a slug. “It’s my job to look after you too.”
He pressed his thumb into the bottom of her foot, massaging it. “I won’t apologize.”
Her look was pure wicked mischief and Jack flinched in the face of it.
He tried, “Come now, darling Vi.”
She didn’t so much refuse to be placated as refuse to comfort him. She never tried to torment him by getting into trouble or meddling. It was more that she couldn’t turn her mind off, and she refused to live inside a gilded cage simply because he loved her. She was as careful as she expected him to be, though. She kept him in her mind when she made her choices but that was what she expected of him as well.
“Jack, I want you to be happy. Follow your instincts and your skill on this case.”
He paused and then sighed. “You do have a magic when it comes to getting people to talk to you. You’re excellent at figuring things out when you turn your mind to a problem, Vi. But I need to figure this stage out by myself.”
She wasn’t angry with him, so when he lifted her, laid down on the lounge chair and tucked her between his legs, she leaned back against his chest despite the heat and told him, “I’m not upset, Jack.”
“I just need you to be safe.”
She turned to face him, letting her hand slide to where he’d been shot and placed a solitary finger over his scar.
“I know.” His eyes met hers with stark honesty. “I—”
“I don’t need you to live in a box,” she reminded him.
“But you don’t want to be in one yourself.”
“Exactly.”
He tangled their fingers and lifted their joined hands to his mouth. “I love you, Vi.”
“And I you,” she said low.
A splash interrupted them and Vi laughed as Denny dunked Ham out of nowhere. Ham lazily turned and Denny immediately surrendered, both hands in the air.
“Cowardly lad,” Lila called from her own seat in the shade. Her baby, Lily, was laying against her chest and her fan was moving quickly.
Victor dove into the water, joining in Ham’s punishment of Denny. They finally left the water when Kate gathered up the babies with the nannies. The group decided to spend the rest of the afternoon napping before a late dinner when the air would cool and they could eat outside on the back patio.
Vi curled
