Gallagher can watch me like a hawk.
None of it changes the fact that I am already in too deep with a woman I’m not allowed to touch.
So I sit there and watch her type one-handed, taped knuckles and all, and tell myself that for the foreseeable future, this is the only kind of release I’m going to get.
But if we make it out of this alive, maybe I’ll let myself want more.
TWENTY
TWIGGY
Iamnotthinkingabout Bran’s hands.
I am not thinking about his hands on my hips, about the way his chest felt under my palms, about the moment on that mat where the whole world narrowed down to weight and heat and the very real possibility that I was about to climb him like a tree.
I am absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent not thinking about any of that as I stare at the ceiling in Cotton’s office, very much awake.
The clock on the desk clicks over to 1:03 a.m.
I flop onto my side, blanket tangling around my legs, laptop screen black on the desk across the room. I shut it down hours ago after Brady’s lecture about no unsupervised contact, and I’ve been paying for it ever since.
My brain does not like idle time. Idle time is when it starts replaying things.
Mia Hart’s name. The way the Falls looked last winter. Jason’s file. Henry’s old chat logs. Henry’s new chat logs.
And, threaded through those in a very unhelpful way, Bran Kelly’s voice sayingI need you in one piece. All of you. Not just your brain.
I groan and drag the pillow over my face.
Somewhere in the house, a pipe ticks. The old bones of the estate settling for the night. Outside, the wind moves through the trees. I can hear a horse snort, faintly—Jasper or Rook shifting in their stalls.
The normal noises should be comforting. Instead they just underline how not-normal everything else is. There is a man out there who thinks I’m his favorite bird. There is a man down the hall who’s been told he’s not allowed to touch me. There is another man somewhere between them who will absolutely “fecking murder” the second one if he breaks that rule.
Irishmen and their rules.
I push the pillow away and sigh at the ceiling.
“Sleep,” I whisper to myself. “Now would be great.”
The house answers with a shriek.
For half a second my brain can’t process it—it’s too loud, too sudden. Then my whole body jolts upright as the alarm keens down the hall, high and vicious, not the soft little chime of a door sensor but a full-body siren.
My heart slams into my throat.
Security. Not fire. Cotton’s system has different tones; Brodie explained them to me once, aware that I was probably the only other soul on earth who would geek out over his security system the way he was. This is the one that meanssomeone’s where they shouldn’t be.
“Shit,” I gasp, already scrambling.
I’m sleeping in one of Cotton’s oversized long-sleeve shirts and a pair of soft cotton booty shorts that should absolutely not be seen by anyone who didn’t buy them for me. Too late now. I wrench open the office door and bolt into the hall, bare feet slapping the hardwood, hair in a wild knot on top of my head.
The corridor pulses red with the emergency lights, each flash strobing the family portraits into something out of a horror movie.
“Brodie?” I shout, voice high and thin under the howl of the siren. “Cotton?”
A door bangs open at the far end of the hall. Brodie comes out first, already wide awake, a handgun in his fist like it grew there. Cotton is right behind him in a nightgown, one hand on her belly, the other clutching a crying Saoirse to her chest.
Savvi appears from the other direction in a robe and slippers, gray hair loose, eyes sharp despite the sleep.
