Her gaze drifted back to the happy, fat little baby in the stroller, and her heart constricted again. A strange, unknown force built in her chest, until she couldn’t contain it any longer.
“I want another one.” The words burst out of her before she had time to consider them, spilling out of a deep well of need she had barely acknowledged in herself.
“You want another what?” Dragos asked.
This wasn’t the time to talk about such an emotionally charged subject. She tried to bite the words back, but they tumbled out anyway. “A baby. I want another baby.”
“You want . . .” He stopped and started again, speaking his words with care. “You want to talk about that here?”
The astonished look on his face was too much to take. The details of the sunny late afternoon blurred as tears filled her eyes. Quickly, before Dragos could see her expression, she whipped around to face forward.
“No, of course not.” Her voice shook. “I shouldn’t have said that. It just fell out of my mouth.”
He straightened from his slouching position.
If he touched her or showed any sign of gentleness, she could feel the tears would turn into a geyser, and she really didn’t want to burst into tears in public. She really didn’t.
What the hell, self?
Bolting upright, she slid away from him as she stuttered, “F-football practice is almost over—why don’t you wait here for Liam, and I’ll meet you both at the car?”
“Pia,” Dragos said, the gold of his eyes flaring to incandescence. Clearly he didn’t like that suggestion in the slightest.
Telepathically, she said, Dragos, it’s all right. I’m having an emotional moment. I didn’t expect it. It came out of nowhere, and I’m a little embarrassed by it. I’d like to take a few moments to compose myself. Please.
After a moment, he growled, We’re still going to talk about this.
Of course we will. Just not in public, okay? Backing farther away, she headed down the wide concrete steps.
As she walked away, she could feel his fierce energy boiling at her back. He hated it when she cried, and he would doubly hate the fact that she asked him to stay behind.
But he would do it, because she asked it of him. Because he loved her.
Aside from the small fact that he could be the most terrifying creature she’d ever laid eyes on, he was an excellent husband and mate as well as a father.
She reached the ground level. Just before she turned the corner, she looked back up at him.
No longer in a relaxed sprawl across the bleachers, he sat forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, his dark head angled toward her. He had put on his sunglasses, no doubt to hide the incandescence spilling from his gaze, and his jawline was tight. It made his hard, ruthless features look even fiercer.
Suddenly she noticed the incongruities in the scene.
It was a perfect suburban setting, on a perfect suburban day. Tame, emerald green fields rolled toward the town in the distance. The aged Adirondacks Mountains provided a picturesque backdrop.
The coach’s whistle sounded over shouts and calls from the children. They ran toward him and stood in the group looking up as he talked to them.
Pia had been wrong about nobody paying attention to them.
Nobody had been paying attention to her.
Everybody paid attention to Dragos. As she glanced around, she saw several other adults peek up at where he sat, some distance away from anyone else.
He was the anomaly in the perfect suburban setting. He was a lion sprawling in the midst of a flock of plump, clucking pigeons, a dark, brutally elegant Mephistopheles taking a silent stroll through a placid country church, and some instinctive part of them knew it. A couple of the women looked frankly covetous. One in particular looked covetous and a little afraid at the same time.
As that described to a T the beginning of her relationship with Dragos, she understood exactly how that woman felt.