The Keep (The Watchers 4)

“Yes,” I insisted. “I’ve been practicing my breath-holding techniques. I want to work up to more difficult conditions. ” I hoisted my kit bag higher on my shoulder and flinched against the searing pain along my stomach. I needed Ronan to make up his mind ASAP, but he still looked far from convinced. I brightened my smile, adding, “I’d eventually like to try, you know, maybe like a free dive. ”

The corners of his eyes crinkled in a skeptical look. “‘Maybe like a free dive’?”

Uh-oh. Too far. “I’ve been thinking about what you’ve said, about preparing myself. Making myself more competitive. Watchers need to have experience with deep, breath-hold dives, right?”

He ran a hand through his damp hair, and I refused to contemplate how that dark mop poking every which way was like girl kryptonite. “But I already went out for a swim, just now. ”

“That’s right,” I said brightly. “Which means it’ll be easy to hop back in the car and go again. ” Pasting a bland, expectant smile on my face, I waited, and it was like a game of chicken, seeing who’d cave first. When he didn’t say anything, I busted out the big guns and sighed heavily. “I guess, if you don’t want to, I could probably handle the boat by myself…. ”

“Truly, Ann? You’re truly going that route?”

The nickname stopped me cold. He’d called me Ann just a couple times before, and it never failed to punch through my armor. It was what my mother had called me.

He dug his keys out of his pocket and went around to the driver’s-side door. Placing a hand on the hood, he leaned over to look at me. “Are you coming or not?”

I got in before either of us had a chance to change our minds, holding my body carefully against my pain.

“By the way,” he said as he pulled onto the main road, “manipulative isn’t a good look for you. ”

“It worked, didn’t it?” I settled in, careful of my injury, and buckled up. I had to hide my grin—no need to rub this in.

We bounced along in the SUV, and for a while, neither of us spoke. But, oddly, it wasn’t an unco

mfortable silence. Sure there was some tension—romantic and otherwise—but where my relationship with Ronan was concerned, friction and awareness had come to feel like normal states, so this was like slipping into something comfortably familiar.

After a while, I caught him peering at me from the corner of his eye. He looked away quickly, eyes glued back on the road.

“What?” I asked, instantly on the defensive. Was he going to find a way to blame our almost-kiss on me?

“Nothing. ”

I shifted in my seat to get a better look at him, but his profile gave away nothing. “You were thinking something just then. ”

“It’s just…” He considered for a moment.

“Jeez, Ronan. Just what? What’d I do now?”

“What did you do?” He gave me a startled look. “Och, silly girl,” he muttered, then simply reached over me to pop open the glove box.

It took a conscious effort not to flinch away. The closeness of his hand to my knees made something pulse low in my belly, so completely was I aware of him.

But then I registered what he’d pulled out. An old cassette tape. “Where’d you get that?” I asked incredulously.

The slightest of smiles quirked the side of his mouth. “As you said, I have my secrets. ”

“Don’t I know it?” I snatched it from him. It was a plain black tape with #14 written on the white label in black marker. “What’s this?”

He snatched it back. “Something I think you’ll like. ”

He slid it in the tape deck. The hiss of static filled the car, followed by a clicking, and then…music.

It stole my breath—literally. My entire body seized stiff as I held my breath, not daring to move. Music. It’d been so long since I’d experienced it privately like this. Not Baroque classics played by a vampire string quartet. Not Dagursson’s waltzes. Just sitting in a car, riding and listening. Letting the notes wash over me.

It was a piano solo, and I heard it with such texture, it was as though I’d never truly listened to music before. Higher notes unraveled their tune on the treble clef, while the low bass keys were played so tentatively, I felt the emotion behind each stroke of the pianist’s fingers. The ponderous pauses, the mini silences between notes—every second was a revelation.

Was it the blood that’d attuned me like this? Or was it merely my own deprivation? Had my raw emotional state made me vulnerable? Sitting in this confined space, with Ronan, the guy who’d tricked me here, then had the gall to turn around and care.

Like the notes, I let these thoughts wash over me, letting myself be brave enough to truly face and contemplate each one.