“I truly can’t believe that it hadn’t occurred to me to start decorating in there. Granted, I’ve been busy with managing the practice, and I’m used to existing with just the basics, so it wasn’t really at the top of my mind. But you know what? Decorating is fun. I hadfuntoday. Thanks again, Luch,” I gushed as we walked down my stairs and around the corner onto Main Street.
“Was that the only thing you had fun with today?” Luch stopped before we turned the corner, and I drew up short as I looked up at him. The loch, silvery with soft evening light spread behind him, and a few pink traces of the setting sun slashed across the sky. His face was shadowed, but those eyes, that unique greenish gold color, reflected the streetlamps that had popped onoverhead. It was as though they glowed, all-seeing, and the intensity in his look sent a shiver across my body.
“I think you know the answer to that.” Heat flushed my face as I looked up at him.
“Bloody hell, Faelan, but you’re gorgeous.” He brushed his thumb across my lip, before cupping my chin and giving me a bruising kiss. I felt it all the way down to my toes, like he’d staked his claim, and I surprisingly did not seem to mind.
Perhaps it was the lingering effects of the pleasure he’d already given me today.
Or was it just that I was genuinely enjoying his company?
Either way, I was more than happy to ignore that initial instinct I’d had to turn tail and run when I’d first met him. Perhaps it had been my anxiety about him discovering my magick, or maybe it had just been simply being in the presence of such an overly charismatic male. But now, his edges seemed to have softened around me, and something had shifted quickly with us. I’d gone from avoiding him to craving his mouth on mine.
A remarkably quick turnaround for someone like me. Marveling over it, I pulled back and shook my head, a smile on my face.
“What’s that look for?” Luch asked, taking my hand and tugging me down the street. I almost pulled back, not ready to be seen like that in public with him. Small towns, and all that.
“I don’t know. I’m not really sure what to think of you, Dr. Carmichael.”
“You think that I’m strong. That I’m sexy. That I’m wickedly funny.”
“And full of yourself?” I suggested, laughing as he stopped in front of The Tipsy Thistle, the main pub in town.
“Confidence and ego are often mistaken for each other.”
“Fair enough.” I laughed as he held the door open for me and pub sounds spilled out. The Tipsy Thistle was a pub housed in an old gray stone building with a narrow entrance and doorways low enough to duck through, worn wood floors polished to a sheen, and a circular bar on one side of the room. Tables of varying sizes were clustered around the room, most notably full, and a man stood by the fireplace with a microphone in hand. He wore overalls, had a shaggy beard and ruddy skin, and a younger man—clearly related—stood next to him dressed similarly.
“Och, hold on.” The man at the fireplace looked to us. “Are you two joining in then?”
“Um?” I looked around and a woman sitting at the bar with a short crop of swingy curls waved to me.
“They can be on our team, Fergus. We were short anyway.”
“Oh sure, steal the two doctors for your team, Agnes,” a woman grumbled from across the pub.
“I’m simply being welcoming, aren’t I? How was I to know they were doctors?” Agnes fluffed her hair and smiled like she’d already won.
“Do we back out quietly? Pretend we didn’t hear them?” Luch hissed at my ear and I glanced up at him over my shoulder, surprised to find a hint of panic in hiseyes.
“Why, Dr. Carmichael, don’t you like games?”
“Games are fine. It’s more the people factor.”
“You work with people all day.”
“Aye, but that’s work. I know what I’m talking about there. Social niceties? I fall apart.”
“Come on then, Doc. I’ve got your back. Plus, I’m starving.” Hooking his arm, I dragged him across the room to two open stools next to Agnes. “Hi, Agnes. I’m Faelan, the new vet in town. I think our paths crossed briefly at the hedgehog baby shower.”
Luch slanted me a surprised glance.
“Och, that was a belter, wasn’t it then? Welcome, welcome. We’re just about to start trivia night. It’s an off night for us, but Fergus is about to go on a month-long holiday—his first ever!—and he’s training his son to make sure he can handle the game while he’s gone.”
“It’s that serious?” Luch asked, nodding to a man who came out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of soup and a basket of bread.
“Deadly,” Agnes said, her voice hushed. “I wish I was kidding, but you screw up trivia night and these villagers will cut you.”
“You’d be at the head of the line wouldn’t you, darling?” The bartender leaned over the bar, tapping a finger to Agnes’s nose, and my curiosity piqued. The man was easily one of the most handsome men I’d seen in real life, excluding Luch, of course, and I blinked at him as he turned the full wattage of his smile on me. “Careful of this one. She’s adorable, but her claws are sharp.”
