I felt closer to him at that moment than I’d felt to anyone in a long time.
“I was thinking …” Arran finally broke the sweet silence as he pulled back a little. “We should tell people separately that we’re dating.”
My belly flipped at the thought of everyone knowing. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell my brothers. You tell Arro, Regan, and Robyn.”
Nodding, I chewed on my bottom lip as a riot of nerves flooded me.
Arran gently released my lip from my teeth with his thumb. “What is going on in that gorgeous head?”
I released a heavy sigh. “What if … what if they’re not happy about it? What if they interfere?”
“Well, I think we can say with absolute certainty that Regan will be happy, since she’s been trying to make this happen for months.”
I chuckled because I was pretty sure he was right.
“And I love my family, Eredine, but we’re none of their business. We’re telling them because we don’t want to hide this, but that isn’t an open invitation for them to stick their noses into our relationship.”
I snorted. “Arran, we’re talking about the Adairs here. Noses will be stuck in our business.”
“Then they’ll just need to back off. And I’ll make that clear. They can stick their noses in once you and I are settled into this. But for now, we need time to figure this out together without their input.”
“I respect their opinion,” I said. Because it was true. It would bother me if one or more of them didn’t think this was a good idea.
Arran frowned. “More than you respect what’s between us?”
“Of course not,” I hurried to assure him. “It’s just … don’t pretend like it’s not complicated.”
“It isn’t complicated. Lachlan had an affair with his best friend’s daughter who is ten years his junior. In turn, that best friend fell in love with our sister who is thirteen years younger than him. And Thane started sleeping with Robyn’s twenty-five-year-old sister behind everyone’s backs. Not one of them has the right to judge us for our innocuous decision to date.”
I laughed, and then couldn’t stop, and soon Arran joined me. Finally, the amusement slowed, and I wiped tears of hilarity from my eyes. “Oh, man, when you say it like that”—I grinned at him—“you Adairs are a bunch of deviants.”
“Except me. There are only four years between you and me, and that is perfectly acceptable.”
“True.” I chuckled again, shaking my head. “Lord, this family has turned Ardnoch into a soap opera.”
He reached for my hand, tangling his fingers through mine. “The heart wants what it wants. And the Adair men seem to have a penchant for American women.”
The heart wants what it wants. Such a painful truth. If I wasn’t currently listening to mine, I’d be tucked away in bed with no fear of anything ever changing in my life. While my days had become stagnant until Arran, they had also been safe.
I was gambling with that safety by giving into my heart.
But looking into his beautiful blue eyes as he played with my fingers, sensation shivering up my arms and to other more pleasant places, I couldn’t imagine life without him now.
And wasn’t that utterly terrifying?
* * *
We’d moved this month’s book club meeting to Tuesday evening because Regan and Arro had wedding stuff to do on the weekend. This meant I had less time to think about telling them about Arran, which was both good and bad.
What I wasn’t expecting was to find Mac at book club—Arro hadn’t mentioned that. I’d thought he’d be with the guys because Arran had asked Lachlan to come over to Thane’s while we were at Arro’s, so he could tell them about us.
Now I’d have to tell Mac, and he was very protective of me, so I didn’t know how this would go down.
“I’m not a huge thriller reader,” Regan said as we settled in Arro’s living room. “But I gotta say, this one kept me glued. I finished it in a few nights.”
“I don’t know.” Robyn waved her copy at us. “The cop stuff was a bit off.”
“Agreed.” Mac grinned at her. “But I imagine only a police officer would be bothered by the inaccuracies.”
And since they were both ex-cops, that made sense.
“Let’s keep things positive and start with the good stuff,” Arro suggested, holding out a tray of snacks. Everyone else took a cookie to eat with the tea she’d served, but I waved her off nervously.
Mac took the tray from Arro and steered her into a seat, but she trained her eyes on me. “You okay, Ery?”
My stomach rolled, and I had to take a deep breath. Sitting up straight, I looked at my friends and gave them a tight smile. “I wanted to … well, I wanted to bring up something before we got started.”