Page 16 of The Mech Who Loved Me
"Stop it!" she said. "Stop laughingatme."
That set him off again. "I'm not laughingatyou."
"You are!" A little frisson of hurt worked its way through her, and he must have heard it in hervoice.
Kincaid looked up, his eyes still crinkled with humor and shining with half-shed tears. Ava sat very still. It wasn't as though she'd thought them friends, but as she'd tended to his injuries in the last month he'd become not so gruff, a little teasing at times. And the more comfortable she found herself in his presence, the more her mouth started to run awaywithher.
She had the sudden, striking realization Kincaid was possibly the only other man—besides Byrnes—who made her relax to the point where she forgot to censorherself.
"Ava," he said, his voice lowering as he reached over and cuppedherhand.
"I can't help myselfsometimes."
"Please don't ever change, Ava.Ifind you intriguing, conversational gaffes and all," he admitted, though the admission might as well have been pulled from him. Almost grumbling under his breath, he added, "You're not like any other woman I'veevermet."
Ava threw her hands in the air. "You see?"Hopeless. She might as well condemn herself to anunnery.
Footsteps hammered down the stairs. "What's all that noise?" Orla called. "Ian nearly choked onhissoup."
Ava sat back with a sigh. Kincaid looked like he was digesting a particularlytroublesomemeal.
"Just a rather lively discussion," Kincaid told her, that twinkle back inhiseye.
Don't you dare breathe a word of it.Ava glaredathim.
He crooked a brow, as if to say,Would Idothat?
"Do you want to see him?" Orla's gazeremainedcool.
Kincaid let go of a huge breath Ava hadn't realized he'd been holding. "I probablyoughtto."
He pushed away from the table. "Be nice toAva,brat."
"Always," Orla said, and then turned that unblinking stareonher.
"Oh, and Ava?" Kincaidpaused.
"Yes?"
"What I said before?" He headed for the stairs, glancing over his shoulder. "That was acompliment."
About...?Ava stared after him, before it struck her.You're not like any other woman I'veevermet....
Suddenly her cheeks felt hotagain.
* * *
"Orla tells me...you brought a girl... home," Ian rasped, his lungs catching at the effort, though hesmiled.
Aye. And she's plaguing my mind. "Didn't have much of a choice. There wasariot."
All the laughter and cheer Ava brought into his life vanished. Kincaid refused to look at his uncle's withered legs where they lay under the blankets. The Ian he could remember was a monster of a man, hale and hearty, with a laugh that could shatter your eardrums. He used to throw Kincaid up in the air as a child, until he was shrieking with laughter, and he'd been the father Kincaid never had, after his own abandoned his mother a year after hisbirth.
It was hard to look at him like this. Harder to imagine what his uncle was going through. All alone in here, trapped in his bed, with his body dying inch by inch and Orla forced to clean up his messes, to feed him, to turn him, tobathehim....
"I'm sorry," he said bluntly. "I haven't beenavoidingyou."
Ian fumbled for his hand, his thin forearm barely able to lift off the coverlet. Kincaid caught his uncle's straining grasp, his fingers brushing against paper-thinskin.
