As quietly as she could, Fiona stepped into the kitchen. She was almost tiptoeing. Keenan had been about to take a sip of tea, but it stilled before it reached his lips. He set it down on the counter as she set one of her books about knives down not far from it. Without looking at any of us, she opened it, revealing the romance book she always hid inside of them.
Then she turned and walked out.
In her own way, she was admitting to a story like Delaney had. Something had pushed her to read romance too. She was daring Keenan to find out why.
My husband picked me up and carried me upstairs.
It was the first time Keenan didn’t seem to care about business.
Chapter30
Maeve
“Idon’t mind that it’s so early,” I said to Cian as he led me outside by the hand two days later. “But I’d like to know what for. And in these.” I looked down at my body. Cian had me dress in a warm, slouchy sweater, yoga pants that were lined with something soft, and sneakers.
I shivered when the crisp fall air cut through the warm air lingering on my skin from inside. He pulled me closer and set his beanie on my head. He was dressed similarly, but in a T-shirt and sweatpants that showed the outline of his massive bulge. If he tried to go out in public in those…I’d trip him. He’d have every woman with a pulse drooling.
He barely touched the pieces of hair that had escaped from the hat, and I trembled. “You didn’t know how to react when you were grabbed at the bookstore.”
“Yeah, because he surprised me.”
He gave me a blank look.
I laughed and raised my free hand. “In my defense, it’s early, and you did some wicked things to me this morning.”
A slow smile came to his face before he shook it off. He moved toward me to avoid Argus and Grania plowing into his back before we started moving again.
“Defense,” he said, like he was continuing his train of thought, “is what we’ll be learnin’ today.”
“Wait.”
We stopped.
“Are you saying you’re about to teach me how to fight?”
“How to defend yourself. You’ll have lessons in self-defense, shootin’, and Keenan offered to teach you archery.”
I suddenly had a glimpse of his childhood after his parents were murdered.
“Archery?” I shook my head. Hard no. “I’ll end up pulling the bow back and knocking myself out. I’m willing to learn the others, though. And what about knifery?”
He threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Is that a new word you added to the dictionary, my love?”
“I told Delaney I should publish it someday. A book of Maeve O'Callaghan’s Unique Words.”
He grinned. “I’d read it.”
“Thank you.” I bowed my head to him.
He lifted my chin with his finger and kissed me. A cool, smoky wind blew, stirring the burnt leaves at our feet, and I could have sworn it was by magic.
The entire scene—kiss and all.
Before I was ready, though, we started moving toward a small place behind the big house. Cian told me it was his personal gym. I wasn’t a gym person, so he could’ve had anything in there and I’d never check to find out. We stopped at the hundred-car garage on the way. He opened one of the doors with a remote from his pocket. A red SUV with the Ferrari emblem was on it.
He nodded to it. “Yours.”
“Is this part of my lesson?” I grinned.
