It had always made her determined to find love of her own, one day.
Glancing at Bull across the room—his eyes locked on the fire—she thought perhaps shehadfound it. Even if it had been for a few short days. The way she felt about him now was so very different than the adolescent infatuationof her younger years. But now, just as she understood it…
Things would return to normal.
She was Rosie again, not Rose. He was a stranger to her, not meeting her eye. And everything would go back to the way it was.
“Fine,” Da finally sighed, stalking toward Mother. “Butheis leaving in the morning.”
Rosie’s mother merely hummed as her husband snagged her hand and began to drag her toward the door. “Perhaps it would be best if you retired now as well, Rosie darling,” she called, making it clear with a single look that she wasn’t going to allow her daughter to remain in the parlor with Bull. “Come along.”
“And I’m going to have Mary put him in the farthest wing from her!” Demon was growling as he stalked from the room. “Cannae trust him!”
“Demon, I do not thinkheis who you must worry about. Besides, Endymion does nothavewings.”
“The stables, then!” Da roared, as Rosie glanced back over her shoulder.
Bull was staring at the fire, and no matter how she willed it, he didn’t look up at her. Didn’t wink, didn’t smile, didn’t assure her he remembered the fun they’d had these last days.
Didn’t let her know he missed her closeness. Her hand. Her kisses.
Her fingers squeezed the ring against her palm, and she tried to keep her heart from breaking.
CHAPTER 12
This was hardly Bull’s first visit to Endymion. Staring up at the underside of the canopy, he stacked his hands behind his head and tried to remember the first time; it had been December, the year he’d gone to live with his brother Rourke, and they’d come for the afternoon, hadn’t they? That visit, when snow had trapped their party here, Bull and the twins had slept on sofas in the library. In the times he’d stayed here since then, he’d been given various guest rooms.
Tonight?
Tonight, Bull was sleeping on the top floor in what would likely have been a servant’s chamber, had Demon employed enough people. But since he and Georgia got by with a bare bones staff, this room was used as a spare room for the least-desirable guests.
Like Bull.
His lips twisted ruefully as he sighed and scrubbed his hand down his face. Why the fook couldn’t he sleep? He’dbeen lying here in darkness for hours, tossing and turning, mind whirling. Heshouldbe focusing on the case, or at least using this time to go over the facts of what they knew and what they didn’t.
Instead, all he could think about was that confrontation in the parlor.
The one where Demon told him hewasnae good enough.
After being raised by a father who killed off the sons who displeased him, and growing up in a world where bastards were judged poorly—and light-fingered bastards who’d taken a few years to figure out how to judge right from wrong from criminal were judged evenmoreharshly—Bull had spent a lifetime trying to prove that hewasgood enough.
He’d been lucky to have his brother Rourke and his brother-in-law Crowe to show him how to be a good man. When his mother had married Griffin—now the Duke of Peasgoode—that gruff and somber man had shown him how to love and honor his family. How that could be braver, and stronger, than any amount of fighting.
Bull might not have gone to the same schools as the true sons of the aristocracy, but he’d studied abroad, he was known far and wide as a good friend, and he’d built a successful detective agency with his own hands.
Aye, perhaps he hadn’t saved the world or anything, but he’d saved the worlds of hisclients, and that mattered.
Hemattered.
So why, lying here in the darkness, staring up at nothing, did he struggle to remember that? Why were there tears in his eyes?
Because deep down, ye’re afraid. Ye’re afraid Demon is right, damn him.
Ye’reno’good enough for her.
Angrily, Bull swiped at his eyes then pinched the bridge of his nose.
Aye, this was about his Rose. It hadalwaysbeen about his Rose.
