Always You (Adair Family 3)

Arro.

I smiled tenderly at her as she strode into my hospital room. A glance at the wall clock told me visiting hours had just begun.

“You do know they discharge me tomorrow,” I teased. “There’s no need to keep checking on me.” God, but I was so fucking thankful she’d visited every day.

Arro’s sweet smile caused a wave of longing as she took the chair by my bedside and dragged it close. “I want to visit. You look so much better today. The color is back in your cheeks.”

“Good,” I muttered, studying every feature of her beautiful face. “Won’t you be late for work?”

She shrugged. “Marcello is handling things until I get there. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“Mac.” Arro stared me down.

My lips quirked. “I hurt a bit when I move,” I confessed.

Those gorgeous pale-blue eyes moved to where my wounds laid beneath my pajama T-shirt. “I’m going to kill the bastard,” she muttered, sounding more bloodthirsty than I’d ever heard her.

It made me smile until her gaze returned to mine, and I saw how tormented her expression had become.

“If I’d lost you …” Her eyes filled with tears, and she lowered them, trying to shield herself from me.

The tortured croak of her voice revealed everything we’d been too afraid to admit out loud. And even though it made me a selfish arsehole, I exulted at the idea of being loved by Arrochar Adair.

I reached for her hand, and she clasped onto me, fingers curling tightly around mine. “I’m fine,” I replied hoarsely. “I’m alive and I’m here. Robyn and I will find out who is behind all this.”

Arro nodded and seemed to shake herself, blinking rapidly to push back the tears. Our gazes met again, and she gave me a soft smile. “Robyn stayed.”

I nodded. “She stayed.”

“I’m so happy for you, Mac.”

I flinched and tried to pull my hand away, but Arro clung to me. “We’re not … nothing has been… we haven’t talked things through. We’ve just been talking about the case, really.”

“But she’s here,” Arro insisted. “Mac, if she didn’t want a relationship with you, she would have left already. And you didn’t see her face when I told her about your attack. Robyn was terrified.”

I flinched at that too.

“I’m sorry.” Arro sighed. “I didn’t mean … I just wanted you to know that Robyn loves you. There might be a lot of hurt between you and many things to discuss, but I believe you and she will work this out. That you’ll have a relationship with her again.”

Hope, that torturous wee bastard of an emotion, rose inside me.

Fuck, I hoped Arro was right, even as I told myself I didn’t deserve the chance. For Robyn’s sake, however, I would tell her whatever she needed to know.

She sighed, her eyes drifting over me again. “I bet you’re glad you’re out of here tomorrow.”

“You have no idea.”

“I wish I could kidnap you now,” Arro teased. “We could just get in the car and drive somewhere, away from all this, just for a bit. Just the two of us.”

Her words and the way she looked at me leaned dangerously toward bringing our feelings out into the open. Feelings that were awakened on a New Year’s Eve a few years ago. Feelings, I had to admit, might have been developing for months before that.

Now those feelings were locked down in that dark pit with all my demons. They tried to creep out, to escape, but I knew I couldn’t let them.

Looking at her now, though … sometimes it was hard to remember why that was.

Why I couldn’t just bridge the distance between us and kiss her pretty mouth?