His eyebrows lifted in a comical tilt. “Believe me, I was very aware of that in Paris. Thankfully, no permanent damage was done.”
“You’re certain?”
“Absolutely. It was just a silly misunderstanding, mostly on my part.”
She scoffed. “Silly misunderstandings don’t usually end up with a knife to the back, do they?”
He responded with a sly grin. “Sorry, but didn’t you say you were from the Highlands?”
“I see, and I must surrender the point, sir,” she wryly replied.
“I should hope so.”
For several long seconds, they simply stared at each other. Something changed in his amazing cobalt gaze, something that flashed heat through her veins. Her mind seemed to go fuzzy around the edges.
“But why did you do it?” she asked, blurting out the first thing that came to mind. “The intelligence work, I mean.”
Kade didn’t seem at all discomposed by her abrupt change in behavior. “I was doing it for my country, of course. But if I’m honest, it was also for the thrill of it. And that makes me sound like a bit of a prat, doesn’t it?”
“No, but it seems to me that your life was already quite thrilling to begin with. Traveling everywhere, meeting interesting people. It all sounds very glamorous to me.”
“So I am an ungrateful prat,” he wryly said. “I thought so.”
Appalled, Charlie started to stutter. “Oh . . . oh, Mr. Kendrick, please don’t think I would ever say such a thing.”
He gently tapped her cheek. “Charlie, I’m just teasing. And please stop calling me Mr. Kendrick. We’ve been friends for a very long time, have we not?”
“I . . . I suppose,” she replied, feeling rather foolish.
“And you don’t object to me calling you Charlie, do you?”
“No, I like it,” she confessed. “And just to be completely clear, I don’t think you’re a prat or ungrateful. Not at all. It’s just that your life is so different from mine that I have trouble imagining what it’s like.”
“My life is everything I wished it to be, and I’m enormously grateful for that,” he said, turning serious. “But it’s been hard work and I’ve been doing it for a long time to the exclusion of almost everything else. I suppose I got a bit bored for a spell.”
“Do you regret any of it?” she softly asked.
“Not one bit. But it does come with a price—loss of privacy, and not seeing my family as much as I’d like.”
“Still, all that travel must be wonderful,” she said, feeling rather wistful. “Paris, Vienna, Madrid . . . it sounds quite amazing to me.”
He cocked his head. “Charlie, are you bored with your life?”
That took her aback. Was she? She’d never really thought in those terms.
“Maybe sometimes, I suppose. But of course that’s silly, because I have a perfectly good life and I love my family.” She rolled her eyes. “Most of the time.”
Kade smiled. “I know the feeling.”
“And I do love the freedom that comes with living in the Highlands. It’s so beautiful, too. Still, I’ve only been to Edinburgh twice in my life, and I’ve never been south of the borderlands.” She shrugged. “So Paris and Madrid will simply have to live in my imagination.”
Kade’s mouth curled up in a smile that seemed to hold so many secrets. She had to resist the impulse to lean over and press her lips against his, as if in doing so she would somehow gain access to all those secrets.
When his smile turned quizzical, Charlie mentally shook herself. Kade and his life would never be hers, and he would soon be leaving, anyway. That was just as it should be. She no more belonged in his world than she would in a traveling circus.
She patted his hand and stood. “It’s late. I’d best retrieve my silly brooch and be off to bed. Heaven knows I’ve caused you enough trouble for one night.”
He also rose. “No trouble, lass. I’ve enjoyed our talk very much.”
