Here Comes the Rainne Again (Invertary 6)
The guy on the bed burst out laughing.
“What did you say?” Megan said.
“There’s a monkey in the tree.” Her mother shrugged. “It’s the only French I know.”
“Well, that’s freaking helpful,” Megan snapped.
“Don’t take that tone with me, young lady. It’s more French than you know.”
“Laydeez,” the prisoner crooned in his sexy accent. “I have ze leetle ingles.”
“Bloody hell,” Shona said. “It’s a sad day when the bad guy has to help you out.”
Megan ignored the women and placed a hand flat in the middle of the prisoner’s broad chest. She noticed his heart was beating steadily, as though lying tied to the bed didn’t bother him at all. She ignored the amusement in his dark eyes and the way his bottom lip was fuller than the top one. He was a prisoner. She needed to remember that. And if he had some English, there was nothing to stop him from talking.
“Tell us everything you know,” she said, and watched him smile widely.
10
* Rainne and Alastair *
“I can’t believe you’ve been walking around with a face full of glass shards and didn’t say anything.” Rainne put the first-aid kit on the floor beside Alastair, where he sat beside the fire. She rooted around for a pair of tweezers.
“My face was frozen. I could barely feel it.”
“That’s not an excuse.” She held a cloth in one hand and the tweezers in the other and reached for his face.
Alastair’s hand snapped out and encircled her wrist. “I can do it. You rest and get warm. You’re shivering.”
Her breath quickened at the feel of Alastair’s hold on her. “I’m right beside the fire. I’ll get warm and deal with your face at the same time.”
“I can do it.” His jaw was locked.
“I know. But I’m here and I’m happy to help.” Her shoulders slumped. “Just let me, okay? You can prove how capable you are when I’m done. Trust me, this doesn’t make you any less of a man.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he let her hand drop.
Rainne took that as permission, and gingerly reached for the first speck of glass embedded in his neck.
“Don’t I?” She pulled the fragment free and moved on to the next one. “Even three years ago you w
ere all about taking care of everyone around you. Your confidence was overwhelming. You knew what you wanted. You knew who you were. There wasn’t an insecure bone in your body.”
“And that’s bad?” His sneer mocked her.
She stilled and stared at him. “You were twenty! What guy knows what he wants at twenty? What person knows who they are at twenty?”
“So you decided I was lying and made up my mind for me. Admit it, you didn’t believe that someone would want you just for being you, instead of for something you could do for them.”
Rainne flinched, his words a direct hit. “How could you want me for who I was? How did you even know who I was? I didn’t. I didn’t have a clue who I was.”
“And now you do?” There was clear scepticism in his words.
“Yes. Now I do.” She removed another piece of glass.
“Okay, I’ll bite. Who are you, then?”
She let the question lie until she finished removing the last of the glass from his neck and face. She sat back on her heels and looked at the man before her. It was obvious he was in pain, but he hadn’t said a word. Stubborn man. She left him for a moment while she fetched a mug of water for him, then handed him two painkillers.