But he might have. If he’d simply looked up and noticed Lucy.
“Da was heading to begin a long, profitable journey. But instead of continuing on, he stayed two nights at the inn. The second night, mum poured him an ale. And Da slid a ring of twisted heather branches across the counter in return.”
Lucy tried bending the thin wood into a circle, snapping twigs. Eventually she gave up, crestfallen.
“My da told me that story every night—of how he met my mother and how someday,” Lucy whispered, “someone would walk through those same doors for me.”
And someone had.
Campbell.
Arran rubbed a palm over his chest.
“Mr. Smith,” she murmured.
Her confession thrust like a knife.
Lucy kept on twisting the rusted, jagged blade. “I never met anyone like him. He was polite and kind. He asked about my day.”
Arran thought he might break. “That is all it took for you to fall in love with Campbell?” A simple kindness shown?
Lucy nodded. “That was all.”
“That was all?” A shaking started deep inside him. “That wasall?”
“I—” Lucy lifted her palms. “Isn’t that enough?”
The hint of her perplexity was the straw that broke him.
Arran erupted. “Hell no, it is not enough, Lucy. Christ!” The truth came tearing from him. “You deserved so much more than simple kindness. You deserve to have the bloody world laid at your feet and the damned stars and moon sprinkled in for extra measure. And a crown to honor you for the queen you are and…”
Lucy stared wide-eyed.
“And… And…” An insupportable bitterness left an acrid taste on his tongue. “I’m certain Campbell will do all that for you.”
Lucy touched a hand to her heart. “I don’t need all that, Arran.”
And the fact that she didn’t was one of a million things that set her apart from any woman before her.
Arran bored his gaze into Lucy’s. “There’s a difference between needing something, Lucy, and deserving it.”
Their eyes locked, that dangerous connection where the world melted away but for the two of them.
Arran resisted the pull, but his head moved of its own volition, lower, closer to Lucy—until their brows touched.
They pressed their foreheads against one another, straining towards one another.
Ah, Christ, help me.
Lucy reached between them and pressed her palm against his cheek. “I thought I knew what I wanted, Arran.” Her words caught. “I was so determined my sweetheart would walk through the door. Every time it opened, I wondered if he was the one who’d come for me? Was it the man who would be willing to sacrifice all just to have me in his world?”
Lucy stretched up a hand and extended it toward Arran. “What I couldn’t imagine…” Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “What I couldn’t b-believe…is that my life could play out differently.” A half-laugh, half-sob bubbled past her lips. “How could it? How could I know anything different when I was as tethered to The Spotted Elk as my mum and her mum before her?”
His heart pumped oddly.
What was she saying…?
Lucy opened her mouth—
