The Man Behind The Mask. Barbara Hannay

his mother had once been in, a single parent struggling to be both parents, struggling to do everything right.

      His mother’s struggles had shaped Brendan, made him driven, made him want things for his own family that he and his mother had not had, and could not have even dared to hope for.

      Now, looking at Nora, he could see the strain in her face, the stress in the droop of her shoulders.

      It looked as if it had been a long, long time since she had laughed, or had anything approaching fun in her life.

      The weight of the whole world seemed to be on those slender shoulders

      It was not his job to lift it, Brendan Grant told himself. He’d managed to not get tangled in the web of life for a long time. Yet the last few days…

      But that begged the question about the kind of man he had become. Hadn’t he said to the boy last night that a mistake could be turned into an opportunity? To become something better?

      Brendan had made a terrible mistake that night two and a half years ago.

      He’d let Becky drive alone on a bad night. He should have been with her. She had begged him to go. She’d been so excited.

      A pressing project at work. No, no, I’ll meet you there. I’ll come up later tonight. You’ll wake up to my handsome mug in the morning. I promise.

      He hated these thoughts. He hated that he was questioning himself. That he could see light, and was being drawn toward it. He hated it that he was coming back to life.

      There was no reason he had to be here anymore. Nora didn’t need him.

      Except that she did.

      Life was asking more of him. And there was that ironic twist again. It was asking him to show someone else how to lighten up, how to have fun. But in doing so, he was coming closer to finding his own light. What if this time it broke down the walls all around him and pierced his heart like a lightning bolt?

      It would be so easy to walk away from a challenge like that! But if he let the legacy of his love for his wife be bitterness, somehow he had failed.

      If he could ignore the need of these two people, in a situation so like the one his mother and he had once been in, it wouldn’t matter how many beautiful houses he designed and built.

      What if the child Becky had carried had already been born? What if he’d had to figure out how to make a life for both of them and deal with his grief?

      That’s the situation Nora was in. She was grieving her sister and trying to make a life for her nephew.

      If he didn’t do a single thing to lighten that burden when her need was so obvious to him, Brendan was not sure he would ever get the bitterness of failure off his tongue.

      “So,” he said, making a decision, cocking his head to the music. “Do you know how to jive?”

      Ridiculous to feel as if it was the bravest and most risky thing he had ever done.

      “No!” she stated, then asked skeptically, “Do you?”

      “Of course not. Well, maybe a little. From high school dance class.”

      “Interesting school you went to! Word games and dance class,” Nora said.

      “Let’s teach each other,” he said. And then he pulled her in close to him. She put her hands up, pushing away from him, keeping a small barrier between her and his chest. She was tense and unsure.

      Well, she should be. Maybe she was asking the question he needed to ask.

      So he lightened her burden. And made her smile. Then what? What happened next?

      But this moment stole his questions about the future. Her huge green eyes locked on his face, her pulse beating harder than that rabbit’s in the delicate hollow of her throat.

      “Relax,” he heard himself say softly. He was still holding her hand, and rested his other hand on the soft curve between her rib cage and her hip.

      She did relax, looking at him with fearful expectation.

      “Okay,” he said, “just like dance class. One, two, three, one, two, three.”

      They shuffled along the aisle between the cages. She looked down at her feet, her tongue caught between her teeth.

      “I’m surprised you asked me to dance,” he said. “You aren’t very good at it.”

      “I thought I was pretty good when it was Valentine I was dancing with!”

      “Uh-huh.”

      “I was. Not so inhibited.”

      “There’s no cause to be inhibited,” he said.

      “Yes, there is! I’m going to step on your toes—”

      “I can handle it. Steel toes.” The truth was he’d had to force himself to go to work today. He had wanted to be here instead. He had missed it here as he had not missed getting to Village on the Lake every day.

      She glared down at his feet. “They are not!”

      “Specifically made for construction sites. They are.”

      “I’m going to look foolish.”

      “There’s no one here to worry about.”

      “What about you?”

      “I’d love to see this—” he pressed a finger into the little worry line in her forehead “—disappear. Just give yourself to it. Just for a minute.”

      She hesitated, then he felt the exact moment she surrendered shiver up the length of her entire body.

      “Now,” he said softly, “you should try moving your hips.”

      “You first!”

      “Just us and the bunnies. And a few cats.”

      “And a parrot who swears.”

      “Ah, Lafayette, the finger eater. Hard to find a home for him, I assume?” The distraction of talking about the parrot worked. Brendan was moving and she was going with him.

      “Hard to find a home for him? Impossible. Except for young men of a certain age who would take him to use as a novelty item at their frat parties. I couldn’t allow that.”

      “That sounds just a bit like, um, attachment.”

      “Well, it isn’t. That horrible parrot is probably going to teach Luke new words.”

      “There are no words that are new to a fifteen-year-old boy.”

      While she contemplated that, Brendan decided to up the difficulty level.

      “I’m going to pull away from you, but keep holding your hand. Up in the air like this. Walk beside me.”

      “This isn’t a jive,” she said. “I think it’s a minuet.”

      “Nope. No hips in minuets.”

      “Did you learn that in dance class?”

      She was becoming quite breathless. He pulled her back to him, put his hand on her waist, leaned his forehead to hers. “Get ready to spin under my arm.”

      She did.

      “Now spin back. We’re good,” he declared.

      “We’re not. We’re terrible.”

      “Ask Valentine if you don’t believe me. Get ready for the dip.”

      “Dip? No! Brendan! We’ll fall.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

      “FALL? ON MY watch? I don’t think so. Relax. Trust