There with You (Adair Family 2)

“But it was horrific for you.” I didn’t need to guess. If one day I woke up to find Thane no longer breathing beside me, I’d lose my goddamn mind. “You’re so strong.” I reached for him, peppering tear-soaked kisses over his face.

He returned those kisses with deeper, more intentional ones.

“Thane”—I tried to move away from him—“maybe we shouldn’t.” Not after what he’d just told me.

“Francine is not a ghost in this bed.” He lifted me under my arms and threw me gently on it. I gasped as he came down over me, his features harsh with need. “And I won’t let her become that for you.”

* * *

THANE

Making love to Regan wasn’t just about distracting him from memories he’d rather not linger on or making sure she didn’t let the truth of Fran’s death mess with her head regarding what was between them in this bed.

It was Regan’s tears. Her visceral, unconstrained reaction to his pain.

That she might care enough about him to want to stay. And maybe she did. Maybe now, at this moment, she did.

But Thane couldn’t trust her mind wouldn’t change in a few months or a year or even a few years’ time. If he let himself believe in what sparked between them, she’d eventually destroy him.

So he needed to lose himself in her body, in the distraction of their passion.

And mostly, he needed to let go of the self-reproach that plagued him. Remorse for Fran. For her memory. Because as much as he’d never forget what it was like to love her or grieve her … Thane had moved on.

He’d moved on in a way that shook him to his core.

29

Regan

“Lew, remember your homework,” I said as he and Eilidh made their way toward the front door.

“Got it,” he mumbled.

“Then what’s that on the dining table?” I rounded the island and hurried to pick up his math booklet.

I was just tucking it into his backpack as he waited patiently and Eilidh not so patiently announced she wanted to be at school already because “they were writing letters to Santy Claus today” when the doorbell rang seconds before it opened.

Lachlan stepped into the house.

“Uncle Lach-Lach!” Eilidh lunged at him, and he swung her up into his arms. She wrapped her little arms and mitten-covered hands around his neck. “What are you doing here?”

“Princess Eilidh, I am taking you and your brother to school this morning.”

He was? “You are?”

Lachlan’s azure gaze turned to me. He seemed to study me as he nodded. “Robyn needs a word. I thought I could take the kids before I head to the castle.”

My stomach flipped. I knew what that word was most likely about. Yesterday, I’d asked to speak with her alone, and I’d taken her for a walk on the beach to tell her about Austin’s attack in Vietnam. I tried my best to explain that I wasn’t intentionally keeping it from her, like I’d explained to Thane. I think she understood. Plus, I told her what triggered it, which meant I revealed my affair with Thane, and my sister was not in the least surprised. She said she already suspected, and Lachlan had made a few comments to her that he suspected the same thing. Panicked about him finding out without Thane’s say-so, I made her promise not to confirm it. She was so dazed and angry about Austin, I didn’t even know if she remembered agreeing to it.

I knew she was furious at Austin, but I was also afraid she was hiding how mad she was at me. She said his attack completely changed the profile she had on him. It took his threat level up a couple hundred notches.

Pulse racing, I stared back at Lachlan. “Oh. Okay.”

He nodded and looked at Lewis as he held out his car keys. “Lew, you want to open the Rover and get your sister buckled in?”

Lewis took the keys from his uncle and asked with a weary sigh, “When will she be old enough to buckle herself in?”

Eilidh wriggled out of Lachlan’s hold, her expression mulish. “I’ll buckle myself in now!”

Her brother hurried after her out the door. “You can’t, Eilidh. You won’t do it right!”

“I will too!”

“Will not!”

Their voices grew distant as they ran down onto the drive where I knew Lachlan’s security guys were already waiting to escort the kids to school.

All the while, Lachlan stared at me. I squirmed, knowing by the hard but tender glint in his eyes, much like his brother’s, that Robyn had talked to him. “She told you.”

He gave me a grim nod.

I shrugged, feeling vulnerable. “I’m fine. He didn’t rape me. Other people have had it way worse. Look at Robbie. She’s been shot three times, attacked, and almost murdered by a psycho.”

Lachlan didn’t smile at my nervous facetiousness. Instead, he took a step toward me, his voice low as he replied, “And yet, she handled all that like a pro but cried herself to sleep in my arms last night.”