“It’s fucking raining,” he says.
I laugh out loud. “Good thing I’ve got you to enlighten me,” I tell him. “Not sure what I’d do without that.”
He playfully smacks my arse straight through the sodden fabric and holds me to him.
“I love you, you crazy woman. You know that?”
“How can you?” I ask him. How can you love someone you just met? How can you love me all crazy and unpredictable like this?
“You’re my wife. You bear my child. How could I not?”
“Pretty easy,” I say. “I mean, I could list five reasons right off the top of my head.”
He shoots me a lopsided grin that does wicked things to my heart, for he never grins like that.
It feels good to be held like him, good to be kissed, but I know I’m just being weak. I’m letting him seduce me.
Don’t fall for it, my mind warns me. But I’m cold and lonely, and I want him to love me. I want someone to.
“Come back inside,” he says. “And I’ll warm you up.”
With a sigh, I nod. What choice do I have? I’m surrounded by guards, and if I tried anything foolish, he’d stop me.
Where would I go, anyway?
I go in with him, and he does just that, warms me up.
He takes off my wet clothes and helps me into clean ones, tucks me back into bed when the nausea overtakes me again, and when the queasiness passes, we make slow, beautiful, languid love until the sun sets and it’s dinnertime.
I didn’t tell him I loved him back. I accept that he loves me. But my heart is guarded.
Am I so weak that I let him bring me back to him? That a kiss, an orgasm, and the promise of protection makes me fold like a cheap tent in a gust of wind?
No, I tell myself. I’m not weak. I have to get through this early stage of pregnancy, get my bearings and my feet under me. I can’t make any moves until then.Chapter 17CormacI don’t know what to do with the woman.
I take the best care of her I can. She sleeps for long hours, but she’s troubled even then. When she wakes in a cold sweat, or worse, in tears, I hold her. I get her the medicine that helps her nausea, feed her the food she craves that keeps her at an even keel.
But she’s closed off to me. She doesn’t open up.
I wish she’d let the demons that plague her out. That she’d tell me what it is that torments her. She’s a troubled soul, but I can’t do anything to slay her dragons if I don’t even know what they are. And hell, I’m so busy with my work that I can’t devote every minute to her like I wish I could.
We still haven’t found who’s responsible for nearly killing her and the others. Keenan’s convinced the O’Gregors had something to do with it, but I’m not so sure myself. I wouldn’t put it past her brother.
I wake before she does most days, and this morning it’s my phone that wakes me. I grab it off the table beside me. The door to the bathroom’s closed and she isn’t in bed. Sometimes she still gets queasy, poor lass. I answer the phone.
“Yeah?”
“Mornin’, Cormac.”
It’s Tully. We’re good now. Hell, in some strange way, I think we’re closer than we were before, as if what we went through solidified us.
“Morning.”
“Saw something strange last night at the club.”
“Did you?”
He’s gone back to the club with Boner and Nolan, but I haven’t been in weeks. I’m a married man now. And even though Aileen and I have a ways to go, I’m determined to remain faithful to her.
“Can you come down to breakfast today?” he asks.
“Aye.”
I hang up the phone and call out to Aileen over my shoulder. “Heading downstairs for breakfast, need to meet with Keenan. Call me and I’ll bring up what you like.”
I leave the room, and something troubles me. I don’t really know what it is, but my instincts are warring with me. To stay with her. Not to leave. But I can’t be with her every second of the day, so I appease my conscience by making sure the guard is outside the door, and my phone is on.
I go downstairs to the dining room, my mind elsewhere, and nearly run smack into mam at the foot of the stairs.
“Y’alright, son?” she asks, her brow furrowed in concern.
“Aye,” I tell her, leaning in to give her a kiss on the cheek. I don’t want her to share the concern that bothers me. “Just distracted is all.”
“How’s Aileen?” she asks. She gathers freshly-picked flowers in her arms from the garden. She likes to put them around the house in little vases.
“Fine,” I say, too quickly. “Still nauseous but she’s getting along now. Got to go, mam.”