Page 112 of The Laird’s Sinful Obsession

"Ye scared me," she said quietly. "Nae Torquil. Ye. When I found out I thought, what else daesnae he tell me. What else is he managin' on his own." She exhaled. "I dinnae need tae be kept from the truth, Lachlann. I need the truth so I can stand beside ye in it. That's different from protectin' me."

"I ken." He stepped closer, and when he reached for her hands she let him take them, her arms uncrossing. His thumbs moved slowly across her knuckles. "I ken it is."

"Dae ye?" She searched his face. "Or will ye dae it again the next time ye decide the news is too heavy?"

He met her gaze, and what she saw there wasn’t the easy reassurance of a man saying what she needed to hear.

It was something more effortful than that, a man looking at a habit of himself and finding it wanting.

"From now on," he said, "I willnae hide anythin' from ye. Ye have me word on it." A pause, quieter. "And I'll ask ye tae tell me when I am. I dinnae always see it in meself."

"Ye're better at carryin' things than settin' them down," she said.

"Aye." The corner of his mouth moved. "That's fairly said."

She looked at him a moment longer, at the line of tiredness at the corner of his eye that only appeared when he'd been sleeping poorly, at the steadiness of him that she'd first mistaken for coldness and had long since learned was something else entirely.

She freed one hand and pressed it flat against his chest, feeling the slow, solid beat of him beneath her palm.

"Nay more closed doors," she said.

"Nay more closed doors," he said.

She meant to say something else.

She had a list, actually, of the things she'd rehearsed walking there, the points she'd been intent on making. But he was looking at her the way he sometimes did when he thought she wasn't noticing, with a quiet, unguarded attention that undid her arguments before she could make them, and she found the list had gone somewhere she couldn’t reach.

His hand went to cover hers where it rested against his chest, holding it there.

"Come here," he said, low and quiet, and it wasn’t a command, it never was with him, even when it sounded like one. It was an offer. A door left open.

She stepped into him.

His arms came around her slowly, the way he did everything, deliberate and unhurried, and she felt the last of the tightness in her chest release on a long exhale against his shoulder.

His hand moved up her back, and she felt his lips press to the top of her head. Not passionate, not urgent, just present.

Just him.

"I'm still angry with ye," she said into his shoulder.

"I ken," he said.

"I mean it."

"Aye," he said, and she could hear the quiet smile in it without seeing it. "I dinnae doubt ye."

She pulled back just far enough to look at him, and whatever she'd meant to say next dissolved when his eyes met hers. Dark and warm and entirely certain in the way they always were when they were on her, like she was something he'd already decided about and wasn’t inclined to revisit.

"Lachlann."

"Aye," he said, and walked her backward until the backs of her thighs met the edge of the desk.

The solar was a sanctuary of warmth, the flickering firelight casting long shadows across the stone walls. The scent of woodsmoke curled through the air, mingling with the faint, earthy aroma of heather that clung to Lachlann’s skin.

Alba fingers traced the edge of the wooden table, her breath shallow with anticipation. She had known that moment was coming, had felt the tension building between them, but now that it was there, her pulse raced as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to leap.

Lachlann closed the gap between them. His broad frame blocked the firelight, casting her in shadow as he stopped just inches away.