“Ye be my wee thief. Steal a kiss, lass.”
“I’ve already done that. Twice, if you will recall.”
“Aye, and your sweet kisses haunt my dreams.”
Mine, too, she declined to say.
“Please,” he whispered.
Allie almost capitulated at that . . . almost closed the last two inches between them and pressed her lips once more to his.
But at the last second, her latent sense of honor reared its head.
A sober Ethan would not kiss her.
She firmly pushed out of his arms.
“You will thank me for my forbearance in the morning,” she said, standing upright beside his bed.If you remember this at all, she mentally added.
He pouted and rolled to his side, a palm tucked between his cheek and pillow.
“Ye be cruel,ladra.” He yawned.
“That I am, Ethan,” she whispered. Turning, she plucked a wool blanket from the foot of the bed and draped it over him.
“Thank ye . . .”—his eyes fluttered closed—“. . . for trusting me with your tale.”
She stared at him for one last moment, memorizing the splay of eyelashes fanning his cheekbones, the night whiskers stubbling his jaw.
How could she find even his drunken repose so achingly endearing?
She wanted to keep him. To claim him for herself.
The epiphany rose much like theacqua altain Venice, the ‘high water’ that swamped the city in winter months. Allie was suddenly drowning in the vision of what a life with Ethan Penn-Leith could look like.
His amused eyes teasing her across a dining table in some cozy, mountain abode.
His whispered words caressing her ear as they watched an opera.
His strong arm flexing under her palm as they strolled along a street in Rome or Paris.
How couldthisbe what she yearned for? Hadn’t her own sordid family history tarnished the idea of hearth and home forever?
Yes, her heart panged to imagine such a life with Ethan. But she had learned long ago that dreams were just that—dreams.
And so, Allie did as she had always done with something she wanted more than her next breath—her mother’s health, Tristan’s rebirth, the return of her mines—she blew out the bedside candle and closed the door gently behind her.
15
Ethan woke the next morning to sunlight pounding against his eyelids with the force of Thor’s hammer.
Groaning, he rolled onto his stomach, pulling a pillow over his throbbing head.
Och, he was never touching whisky again.
Hazy memories of the night before surfaced.
Drinking and laughing in the public taproom.
