Heavens, but she loved oranges.
“My greatest regret?” He paused, a shadow passing over his expression. “I regret that I wasnae there in that villager’s hut with ye when ye miscarried our bairn. That ye had to experience such suffering without me.”
His eyes dropped to Eilidh’s flat stomach.
She felt the weight of his gaze, a sinking through her midriff. She pressed a hand there, as if that could stop the potency of . . . whatever was happening between them.
She needed to ask questions that were not parried as easily as the swords lying at their feet.
“What is the thing you dislike the most about me?” She ate another segment of orange.
“That ye dinnae remember me,” he replied, again popping another section in his mouth. “That ye dinnae remember Iloveyou.”
Love.
Present tense.
The verb—active, immediate, longing—joined the sinking tug just below her sternum.
This would not do.
“Allow me to rephrase the question. What is the thing you disliked the most about me when I was Jamie?” She ate another slice from his fingers.
His answer was immediate. “I loved everything about ye.”
“Try again. Be honest.”
“I am!” he snorted. “Ye were the light of my life, lass.”
“Ooof!Cease this flirting!”
“I cannae help it when I’m around your fair self.” He spread his arms wide, showing her far more of his attractive forearms than was wise for her sanity. “Bonus wooing, remember?”
“Kieran!” She stamped her foot. “Be serious—”
“Och, ye can be a wee bit stubborn, ye know!”
His aggravated growl sent a thrill chasing her spine.
He dropped another slice in his mouth.
They were down to two orange slices.
She ate one of them. “Do you want me to be Jamie again?”
Instead of popping the last piece into his own mouth, he offered it to her.
She readily accepted it. It tasted of sweetness and hope, despite the chasm of loss and forgetting between them.
He watched her chew.
“I want ye to remember how much ye love me,” he whispered. “I want ye to letmelove you.”
She swallowed, that leaden weight in her stomach sinking further.
How did he do this?
How did he turn every conversation back at her, leaving her unsettled and unsure?
