“Can you?” He pulled her to him, nipped her bottom lip.
“I give good as I get. And you might get more yet if you pour me some wine.”
He turned, found a bottle, studied the label. “Do you understand what it would have done to me if he’d hurt you?”
?
?None of us can think like that. We can’t. What we feel for each other, all of us for each other, is strong and true and deep. And we can’t think that way.”
“It’s not thinking, Branna. It’s feeling.”
She laid her hands on his chest. “Then we can’t feel that way. He weakens us if he holds us back from taking the risks we have to take.”
“He weakens us all the more if we stop feeling.”
“You’re both right.” Iona came in. “We have to feel it. I’m afraid for Boyle all the time, but we still do what we have to do. We feel it, and we keep going.”
“You’ve a good point. You feel, but you don’t stop,” she said to Fin. “Neither can I. I can promise you I’ll protect myself as best I can. And I’m very good at it.”
“You are that. I’m going to open this wine, Iona. Would you have some?”
“Twist my arm.”
“After you’ve done the wine, Fin, you can scrub up the potatoes.”
“Iona,” Fin said smooth as butter, “you wouldn’t mind scrubbing the potatoes, would you, darling?”
Before Branna could speak, Iona pulled off her coat. “I’ll take KP. In fact, whatever you’re making, Branna, you could walk me through it. Maybe it’ll be the anniversary dinner for Boyle.”
“This is a little rough and ready for that,” Branna began, “but . . . Well, that’s it! For the love of . . . Why didn’t I think of it before?”
“Think of what?” Iona asked.
“The time. The day we end Cabhan. Right in front of my face. I need my book. I need my star charts. I need to be sure. I’ll take the table here for it—it shouldn’t take long.”
She grabbed the wine Fin had just poured, and walking toward the dining area, flicked fingers in the air until her spell books, her laptop, her notepad sat neatly on one side. “Iona, you’ll need to quarter those potatoes once scrubbed, lay them in a large baking dish. Get the oven preheated now, to three hundred and seventy-five.”
“I can do that, but—”
“I need twenty minutes here. Maybe a half hour. Ah . . . then you’ll pour four tablespoons, more or less, of olive oil over the potatoes, toss them in it to coat. Sprinkle on pepper and crushed rosemary. Use your eye for it, you’ve got one. In the oven for thirty minutes, then I’ll tell you what to do with them next. I’ll be finished by then. Quiet!” she snapped, dropping down to sit before Iona could ask another question.
“I hate when she says more or less or use your eye,” Iona complained to Fin.
“I’ve an eye as well, but I promise it’s worse than your own.”
“Maybe between us, we’ll make one good one.”
She did her best—scrubbed, quartered, poured, tossed, sprinkled. And wished Boyle would get there to tell her if it looked right. On Fin’s shrug, she stuck it in the oven. Set the timer.
Then she drank wine and hoped while she and Fin studied Branna.
She’d pulled one of her clips from somewhere and scooped up her hair. The sweater she’d rolled to her elbows as she worked from book to computer and back again, as she scribbled notes, made calculations.
“What if she’s not done when the timer goes off?” Iona wondered.
“We’re on our own, as she’d skin us if we interrupted her now.”
“That’s it!” Branna slapped a hand on her notebook. “By all the goddesses, that’s it. It’s so fecking simple, it’s so bloody obvious. I looked right through it.”