"Oh. Oh, no." One slender hand brushed a fine web of gold hair from her flushed face, and she looked from the slightly fading darkness to the wagon, basking in the last thin rays of moonlight. "Renny's cantankerous enough without—" She stopped suddenly, fully awake, her brow puckered as worry and embarrassment warred. Ash struggled to think of a way to explain the boy's hot temper, but also that innate goodness of heart he had hidden from all save her. But before she could finish, Garret's full mouth curved with something akin to tenderness.
"I know, Mary Ashleen," he said in a voice that made her think of satin slipping over warm skin. "The boy—he's just damned jealous of your attention. Can't say I blame him."
He touched her, running his fingertips over her cheek as reverently as if she were the most delicate porcelain.
"Hell," he grated. "When I was first with Kennisaw, after my ma and pa were killed, I could've cheerfully poleaxed anyone who even talked to the old buzzard. He was all I had to hold on to. Renny..." Garret swallowed, and there was a hunger, not of the body, but of the spirit, deep in those silvery eyes. "Renny's damn lucky he has you." Garret's voice dropped low, so soft she could barely believe she heard the words as he whispered, "I wish to hell I did."
Her breath caught, heart fluttering wildly as Garret leaned toward her, and Ashleen was suddenly, achingly aware that she was clad in nothing but the finest of lawn, the fabric as meager a barrier to the fierce heat of Garret MacQuade as a wisp of silver-spun cloud.
His lips brushed against her trembling ones with agonizing softness, the feel of them, moist, warm, setting her middle all aquiver. One callused thumb skimmed the pulse beat at her throat, circling it in a way that made Ash melt inside. Her whole body tingling, Ashleen slid her palms up the muscled plane of his chest to those rock-hard, broad shoulders, pulling him deeper into the kiss. Wanting to lure him deeper still.
With a shuddering groan he drew away, his lips clinging as if loath to lose something Ashleen could not name.
She shivered when their mouths parted, wanting so much more. More than she'd ever foolishly sought in Timothy Kearny's practiced embraces, more than she'd ever dared dream of. Something that bored deep into the very core of her and left her needing...
But Garret was already levering himself stiffly to a standing position, the side of the blanket that had shielded him sliding off his broad shoulders to pool upon the ground. Ash clutched the woolen edges beneath her chin with one trembling hand, her eyes yet wide with the heady power of their kiss, despair and impatience niggling at her as she saw the steely resolve in the ruggedly hewn planes Garret's face.
He swiped his palms on his denims as if to drive away the feel of her, his lips compressed in a hard line worlds away from the yearning softness that had wooed her’s moments before.
Only the slight unsteadiness of his voice when he spoke revealed that he had been shaken as deeply as she. "I'll get Meggie into the wagon for you," he said, tugging at the collar of his chambray shirt. "Then you should both have a good hour or more to sleep before the others start stirring. I know you didn't—didn't get much rest."
His gaze flickered down to the bare skin of her throat, his mouth hardening into a line of iron restraint. And suddenly Ash knew that Garret had not slept at all—had spent the hours holding her in his arms, wanting her, denying his needs like some knight errant upon a temptation-laden quest.
Tearing his gaze away, he hunkered down beside Meggie, easing the drowsing child into his arms as if to use her as a barrier between them, and the thought flitted through Ashleen's mind that no enchanted shield could have served him better.
He turned, pacing down toward the wagon, to where the other children lay—a veritable army of reasons to resist the tide of passion sluicing through them both.
Ash's jaw clenched. He expected her to follow him back to the wagon, to a day that would be like all the others since they had left civilization. And yet even if she obliged him and struggled to pretend the link between them didn't exist, she knew that things would never be the same again.
She glared at his rigid shoulders, the longish dark hair spilling well past his collar, waves of tension seeming to ripple out from his taut body to taunt her own.
And in spite of her own raging emotions Ash felt a sudden urge to hasten up behind him, smooth her fingers over that silky dark hair, tell him everything would be all right. But it wouldn't be all right. It would never be all right while these wild, undeniable needs roiled between them, lashing them with the same awesome power as the storm that had racked the heavens the night before. And a thousand children standing between them would not change that single fact.
A shiver arced through her. Maybe it was time to prove that to Garret as well.
She caught up with him just as he reached the wagon. Bracing one hand against the tailgate, she climbed awkwardly into the vehicle, swathed as she was in the blanket's clinging folds. She reached out her arms, and Garret lifted Meggie into them, but he didn't release the child for long moments as he peered solemnly over the little girl's wispy dark hair. "Ashleen... thank you for coming out to the lean-to last night, sitting with me... talking. It was"—he faltered, then gave her a wistful smile—"almost made me glad of the storm. Made me wish—"
Pain flooded those silvery eyes, haunting them with an expression she had seen often in distant Ireland—in the faces of those who were starving, yet who would not take even the slightest crumb offered them for fear they would be robbing someone weaker, more deserving than they.
His gaze roved longingly past her into the dark coziness of the wagon—more of a home than any of the scattered campfires where he had made his bed. And suddenly she needed him to know how deeply he had touched her heart, how he had filled her with longings as fearsome as his own.
"Garret, I have to tell you... tell you I love—"
"Don't, Ash." He cut her off, his mouth twisting in anguish as he drew his arms away from Meggie. "Don't love me. I'd only hurt you if I... we..." As if of its own volition, his hand reached up to caress her shoulder, slide up the fragile cords of her throat. His fist knotted against her skin, his eyes closed, then he turned and stalked away.
Despair washed over Ashleen as she watched him walk off. After a moment she turned to tuck Meggie into the bed beside Shevonne. Ash blinked tears from her lashes as she drew the patchwork quilt up to the little girl's chin, wishing she could as easily shut out all of Garret's pain as well.
But she felt lost—even more so than when she had crested the Dragon Hill above the convent and had turned to take one final look at the beloved old building that had been her home for so long.
She loved him. Loved him so much it raked her deep inside, the pain of it the greatest pleasure she'd ever experienced. Yet was loving him the cruelest thing she could do—to them both?
Don't, Ash, his strained plea echoed in her mind.I'd only hurt you if I... we...
Still, could anything cause more pain than this barrier he seemed determined to keep between them? Could anything make her ache more than the longing ever present in those eyes that had seen too much pain?
He thought he was sparing her, being as pigheaded as Sir Alibad in the tales she had woven. But she didn't want a hero carved out of stone, as boringly noble as the princes Renny and Liam had squawked about that last day they had played Dragon's Lair.
She wanted a flesh-and-blood man. Garret, with his foul temper softened by that wonderful wry humor, his fierce independence laced with grudging sensitivity, that rare combination more beguiling than any grand chivalrous posturing could be.
