Page 15 of Intimately Faithful

Not only because Misha started fussing.

She rushed up and took Misha from him, using the baby again as a buffer as she gently rocked and shushed her back to sleep.

Behind her, Danny moved to clear away the plates.

“You said your husband is dead.”

Oh, God.

“He is,” she confirmed, retaking her seat.

Aoife held her chin high and kept her eyes on him. “He isn’t Misha’s father…”

FOUR

“Saint Peter is the funny one.” Danny

Someone was testing Danny until the inside of his skin burned molten hot.

He wanted to look up at the ceiling and shake his head.

He wanted to walk through the yard in his bare feet across to his church, sit in a pew and have a serious talk with his boss and ask what was he being punished for?

Hasn’t he atoned enough?

Probably not.

But to put Aoife in his path and not expect him to react as a man would, by taking her onto his lap to comfort the obvious tears she was holding back, was asking too much of his resolve.

He didn’t want to think about her dead husband or the father of her daughter.

He concentrated on what was most important and that was what brought her running in the snowy night with a baby and no luggage.

“I’m making tea, do you want one?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just stuck a tea pod in the machine and fixed cups and creamer. His ma would balk that he wasn’t using tea bags, but he wasn’t about to confess now. When he sat at the table, his knee brushed hers and she visibly shuddered and drew her leg back.

Frowning, he looked at her again. Closer this time. Dark circles colored under her eyes as though she hadn’t slept in a month of Sundays. She’d always been a skinny girl, though she could eat him under the table.

Fuck, don’t think about her eating me.

“I need the full picture here, Aoife. Stop drip feeding me. Who is chasing you? Why are they chasing you?”

He wanted to throw a million questions at her. Starting with why the hell she was here of all places? Did she know he was here before she came to Colorado? What does this all mean?

He watched her cradle in the little girl as she snoozed off her milk coma, making a mental note that she’d need so many more things for the baby than he had on hand here at the parish.

What did it say about him that he wanted to jump in and rescue her again? No questions asked, his brain was already ten steps ahead getting everything she’d need for a comfortable life. A safe life, one that would take the haunted rabbit in the headlights look from her face.

“Okay. Okay… here is it. Misha’s father is called Grigori Kuznetsov and he…..”

Swear to God, the moment he heard that name the blood turned to ice in his veins and everything Aoife said after that drifted off into the white noise of Danny’s alert brain.

He put down the cup that had been half-way to his lips

She was involved with the Russian mob.

His stomach fell down to his feet.

And suddenly her situation became a million times worse than he could have ever imagined it to be.

---