“You can still ask Odelia. Would she tell you the truth?”

“If she thought it would hurt me.”

She needed to pull Gavin back into the light. “Your mother wanted you to live with her.” She hesitated a long moment. “Do you know if she’s still alive?”

Gavin bolted out of his chair and returned to the window, crossing his arms over his chest. His voice sounded like his throat was being abraded by sandpaper. “I assume my father would have told me if she wasn’t.” He paused. “I could have tracked her down, but I didn’t want to know.” His voice dropped to a low rasp. “If she were dead, she could never show up on the front porch to take me away.”

His dream still held power over him, all these years later. Allie walked up behind him, laying her cheek against the indentation of his spine and wrapping her arms around his waist. “She’s probably still in that house in Casa Grande, hoping that someday you’ll sleep in the bedroom she furnished for you.”

For a few long seconds, he stood as rigid as stone. Then he turned within her arms and dropped his head on her shoulder while shudders racked his body. She stroked his hair like a child’s as he sobbed without a sound.

Allie lay on her side, head propped on her hand, watching Gavin sleep. Sprawled chest down, he lay with his head turned toward her, one arm crooked around it. Still protecting himself, although his fingers were open and loose. His lips were slightly parted, a sign his jaw muscles were relaxed, and the pinched lines between his eyebrows had smoothed to mere shadows.

She’d held him until his sobs had quieted and then led him upstairs. Stripping off his shirt, she’d coaxed him to lie down on the bed so she could do the best healing she knew how. She stroked and kneaded and smoothed the tense knots and swellings of his muscles, trying to draw his pain into her hands. She put every ounce of love she felt for him into her touch, willing it to soak into his skin like a soothing oil. He lay still beneath her touch, and little by little she felt his body unclench as he entrusted himself to her care.

When he rolled over and drew her down on top of him, she went willingly, letting him lose himself inside her in long, slow, sensual lovemaking.

And now he slept, exhausted on every level of his being.

She understood that the abandoned child who lived within him had found some comfort in his mother’s cards, but it was too little, too late. Gavin fended off the world with his words because he’d never had anyone else to do it for him. All the people who should have loved him had been focused on their own battles. His needs had never come first for anyone in his life.

And Irene Bartram certainly hadn’t helped, if the encounter Allie had seen was anything to judge by.

“Such a fierce frown.” His storm green eyes were open, the spiky black lashes sharp against his skin. “Don’t put wrinkles in that beautiful skin on my account.”

Allie made an effort to soften her expression, reaching out to trace a finger along the arc of his deltoid. “You know how you always say that readers need closure in their stories?”

He rolled himself into a sitting position, his face taut with wariness. “That’s in fiction.”

“We need it in fiction because we crave it in life.” She also sat up, pulling the sheet over her bare breasts. “You have the resources to find your mother.”

He let his head fall back against the padded headboard. “And what would I say to her?”

“It’s more important to find out what she would say to you.”

He reached for her hand, setting it on his drawn-up knees and tracing between the fingers. Suddenly, his fidgeting stopped, and he raised his eyes to her face. “If you’ll go with me.”

That made her draw back in surprise. “You don’t want a third wheel at a mother-son reunion.”

He wove his fingers between hers. “When I looked in that box, I got to the first level of books and quit. If you hadn’t been here, I would have done the same thing again, no matter how often Ruth nagged at me.” He pressed their palms tightly together. “I needed your strength to get to the bottom of Pandora’s box, to find the hope there.”

“And now you’ve found it, so you don’t need me any longer.” Allie didn’t want to say it, but she had to.

“Of course I need you. I want you there because”—he scowled at their joined hands—“because I’m a better person when you’re with me. I want my mother to meet the better Gavin.”

Hope unfurled its wings in her heart again, but she ignored it to focus on Gavin. She curled her fingers down around the back of his hand and softened her voice. “I don’t mean to add to your burden, but it’s possible that your mom has passed away. Your father seems to have kept a lot of secrets, or maybe he didn’t even know.”

“Then I would need to confront Odelia.” He turned their hands back and forth, his gaze fixed on them. His voice went as frigid as the ocean outside his window. “And I do not want you to witness that. That will bring out the worst in me, and I’m fine with that.”

“So you’ll try to find your mother.” She took a deep breath. “And I will go with you to meet her if you do.” How could she not, after what he’d said?

He bent to kiss the back of her hand, his lips warm and firm. “I know you will keep your word.”

She looked at their hands interwoven together and imagined them as a symbol of her life becoming more and more entwined with Gavin’s. When he no longer needed her, there would be a lot of ripping and tearing.

Chapter 25

Allie pulled on a green shirt and a pair of jeans after waking up to an empty bed. The night before she and Gavin had gone to bed early, both exhausted by the emotional afternoon. Neither had wanted to eat, so Allie’s stomach felt hollow this morning.

Maybe Gavin and Pie were having breakfast. She just had to figure out which of the mansion’s many rooms they might choose to eat in.

As she headed for the main staircase, she heard the sound of keys clicking and followed it to Gavin’s office. He sat at his desk, his fingers flying across the keyboard. The cat was curled up on a cushion Gavin must have moved onto the desk for her.

Relief coursed through Allie. She’d been afraid that the painful revelations of the day before might have sent Gavin’s muse screaming back into her cave.