“Lass, I wouldnae dare. He’s the true laird around here.”
Flynn climbed the fence and whistled low. The great beast snorted and ambled closer. Heather laughed despite herself, tension cracking. Flynn pulled a crab apple from his pocket, split it, and handed her half.
Angus accepted it with a delighted huff, brushing his velvet nose against Heather’s palm.
“Good boy,” she whispered, voice breaking on the words.
“He’s partial to redheads,” Flynn said softly. “Has taste.”
Surprisingly, she laughed; a real, startled laugh that drew color back into her cheeks. Flynn’s eyes warmed with it.
His cottage crouched against the hillside, slate roof beaded with rain. Inside, it smelled of his signature pine soap and woodsmoke. Flynn kicked off his boots and tossed his jacket over a chair.
“You sit,” he ordered gently. “I’ll make some tea.”
Heather obeyed, watching him move: broad shoulders and the stiffness in his right arm where Kerr’s blow had landed. When he brought the mugs, she caught his wrist.
“Let me see,” she said gently.
He tried to brush it off, but she didn’t let him. She turned his arm beneath the lamplight: bruises bloomed purple and yellow, and there was a shallow cut near the elbow. Not to mention his shoulder, which bore the brunt of the abuse. She dabbed at the cut with gauze from his first-aid tin, her fingers steady until they weren’t.
“You could’ve died,” she whispered.
The words frightened her the moment they left her mouth.
The thought came fast and cruel:This is your fault.If she had never opened the journal, never started chasing whispers of gold and ghosts across the Highlands, Flynn wouldn’t be sitting here bruised and bleeding because of her stubborn curiosity.
The guilt cinched around her ribs like a corset pulled too tight.
Heather swallowed hard and forced her hands to stay steady as she pressed the gauze to his arm. There would be time later to wrestle with that thought. Right now, all that mattered was that he was here. Alive.
Flynn’s hand came up, cupped her cheek, thumb tracing the bruise there.
“But I didn’t. Because of you.”
The words landed deeper than any bruise.
He meant them. Every syllable.
The air shifted. Her eyes raised to his; whatever wall had been holding them upright since the attack at Glenoran simply wasn’t there anymore. A charged silence consumed them both.
He leaned in first, slow enough for her to stop him. She didn’t.
The kiss was soft, searching, tasting faintly of tea and apology. When it deepened, her hands slid into his hair, his found her waist, and the world shrank to breath and heartbeat.
They broke only when the fire popped, startling a laugh out of both of them.
“You’re hurt,” she murmured.
“Yes. But not enough to stop this.”
He brushed her hair back and kissed the bruise on her temple, the corner of her mouth, the hollow of her throat—each one slower, surer, until thought dissolved into need.
Heather tugged his shirt loose, fingertips skimming the ridges of the bruising; he inhaled sharply, then framed her face again, eyes dark and tender.
“I love you,” he said, low and certain.
“I love you,” she breathed, then kissed him back like a vow.
