Then it became even less difficult as I noted that Aisling was being Aisling, quiet, a little shy, solicitous, taking care of her family, but more of the former two.

I feared this was because she was not an eleven-year-old boy, who would miss the fact that Mickey and I were not speaking, but instead a fourteen-year-old girl, who wouldn’t miss it.

And I noted that she didn’t and this troubled her.

What troubled me was that I got the sense it was more. Something deeper. Something that had to do with Aisling alone and nothing to do with Mickey and me.

Something maybe to do with her mother.

“She is da bomb,” I agreed with Cillian, watching Aisling at the same time trying not to appear like I was doing it and shifting my seat back, twisting to cross my legs to the side. “Though, if she were to meet you, I’d hope she doesn’t think you’re a Nazi.”

“Me too,” Cillian replied. “Maybe, when we go with you to Dove House, I’ll dress as an Allied soldier so she won’t get the wrong idea.”

This amused me at the same time it alarmed me because he’d said “when” they went with me to Dove House.

I was about to address that when I felt something altogether too pleasant for the circumstances slinking over my legs and I felt this not after my mind conjured an image of Mickey in his jeans.

I looked to my legs then up to Mickey.

He was sitting back in his chair, one hand in his lap, one elbow on the arm of his chair, jaw resting on the backs of his curled fingers, eyes on my legs.

No, his entire attention was on my legs.

Completely.

I had on a pair of strappy, but casual, tan high-heeled sandals and with these was wearing a shirtwaist dress in a drifty silk with a subtle feminine pattern that had a background of deep pink. It had a belt of the same material cinching it at the waist, buttons up the front (and I’d only undone a proper few at my collarless neckline) and long sleeves. But the skirt was scalloped up at the side seams and hit above my knee.

Sitting, it rode up significantly.

So with my legs to the side, aimed toward Mickey, and crossed that way, a goodly amount of thigh was on show.

I felt a tinge of heat hit my cheeks—and, frankly, elsewhere—and I fought it back as I stared at Mickey, perplexed at the same time I resisted the urge to hide my legs under the table.

Why was he looking at my legs?

“So, when can we go?”

This question drew my attention and I looked to Cillian.

“Go where, honey?”

“With you to Dove House,” he explained.

I blinked.