"Well, we could discuss the weather if you wanted," he pointed out, with a slightly amused smile. "But I'll let you in on a little secret. Most men don't really give a damn about that either."
Ava groaned, slumping her head into her hands. "You're lying if you claim you'd rather listen to me rattle on about CV levels."
"True."
She gestured to him in despair. "And thus I have few redeeming social attributes. I am going to die a virgin, and-" Kincaid suddenly looked like he wanted to spray his mouthful of tea across the table. "Oh my goodness. I cannot believe I said that. I think the stress of the riot has gone to my head. My brain's not working anymore."
Kincaid succumbed to a coughing fit, shoving his teacup away from him. "Jaysus." His face went red, his eyes wild.
"Forget I said it. I'm not- I'm not going to die a virgin, I mean... I probably will, but I don't want to, and- I'm so sorry!" Ava slammed a hand over her mouth. Stop talking, you fool.
Kincaid had buried his face in his hands and his shoulders were shaking.
Ava stared at him, physically holding the words inside her. It was possible she'd been this mortified before, though she couldn't remember a specific occasion.
Finally he erupted into a bark of laughter, lowering his hands. "Jaysus Christ, you're going to kill me one of these days."
"Stop it!" she said. "Stop laughing at me."
That set him off again. "I'm not laughing at you."
"You are!" A little frisson of hurt worked its way through her, and he must have heard it in her voice.
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 away with her.
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 censor herself.
"Ava," he said, his voice lowering as he reached over and cupped her hand.
"I can't help myself sometimes."
"Please don't ever change, Ava. I find 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've ever met."
Ava threw her hands in the air. "You see?" Hopeless. She might as well condemn herself to a nunnery.
Footsteps hammered down the stairs. "What's all that noise?" Orla called. "Ian nearly choked on his soup."
Ava sat back with a sigh. Kincaid looked like he was digesting a particularly troublesome meal.
"Just a rather lively discussion," Kincaid told her, that twinkle back in his eye.
Don't you dare breathe a word of it. Ava glared at him.
He crooked a brow, as if to say, Would I do that?
"Do you want to see him?" Orla's gaze remained cool.
Kincaid let go of a huge breath Ava hadn't realized he'd been holding. "I probably ought to."
He pushed away from the table. "Be nice to Ava, brat."
"Always," Orla said, and then turned that unblinking stare on her.
"Oh, and Ava?" Kincaid paused.
"Yes?"
"What I said before?" He headed for the stairs, glancing over his shoulder. "That was a compliment."
About...? Ava stared after him, before it struck her. You're not like any other woman I've ever met....
Suddenly her cheeks felt hot again.
* * *
"Orla tells me... you brought a girl... home," Ian rasped, his lungs catching at the effort, though he smiled.
Aye. And she's plaguing my mind. "Didn't have much of a choice. There was a riot."
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 his birth.
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, to bathe him....
"I'm sorry," he said bluntly. "I haven't been avoiding you."