Page 132 of Stars in Umbra
Hanna smiled. ‘Or when she refused to eat store-bought bread after learning how to bake with her father.’
A wave of warm laughter broke from Mo.
‘Oh, and the time she built her tent on the upper paddock and tried to sleep in it during a thunderstorm,’ Hanna added, a mischievous glint in her eye.
‘Sounds exactly like Rina,’ Mo rasped, his gaze settling on her, full of a deep and tender fondness.
Mo, reclined and replete, chuckled, delighted, while Rina endeavored to play along, smiling, nodding, but her thoughts kept drifting.
Her fingers picked at the edge of her toast.
Her eyes lingered too long on the citrus trees outside.
Her mind circled again and again around the pale plastic stick she flushed away just hours earlier.
Reth entered halfway through the meal, wiping soil from his hands.
He greeted Mo with a respectful nod and a handshake, then slid into the seat opposite Rina.
After a few minutes of small talk, he leaned forward, studying her face.
‘You all right, love?’ he asked in his quiet way. ‘You seem elsewhere.’
Rina blinked, her fork partway to her lips. ‘Just juggling a couple of things, Papa. I had to shuffle some military schedules around for this impromptu time off.’
Mo glanced up, a smirk tugging one side of his mouth. ‘It’s myveryreluctant time off, sir. I wasn’t going to take it, but your daughter, fierce defender that she is, insisted that I’m her field priority now.’
Her lover gave Rina a conspiratorial wink.
Reth raised a brow. ‘That so?’
‘Tis,’ Mo drawled. ‘She’s guarding me from myself.’
Reth nodded, accepting the explanation, but his eyes lingered on his daughter a little longer than usual.
Rina forced a smile and turned back to her plate, stabbing at a mushroom.
Mo’s hand brushed hers beneath the table, grounding her again.
Just for a moment, the storm in her chest quieted. But it didn’t vanish.
She handed Mo to her mother for the rest of the day.
Hanna had plenty of chores for him, and he wandered off with her, happy to oblige and repay her kindness.
Rina begged off joining them, saying she needed to make a few calls to her team at the Peace Corps HQ.
With a comm tab in hand, she took a long walk across the upper paddocks, trying to slow her thoughts.
The implications turned over and over in her mind: her Colonel role, her possible promotion, and her duty to the Dunian Army.
Hell, her pregnancy and Mo himself.
More so, her growing adoration of him, and her current entanglement in his ex-assassin, deity-wrought crisis.
Despite everything, his past trauma, his otherworldly power, the residual danger he carried in every fiber of his body, he was still the man she wanted in her life.
He was so gentle with her.
