"Then?"
"I am nae one of yer men, Fergus."
He looked at her. Water traced down the bridge of his nose, along his neck, soaking through his plaid shirt and the linen shirt beneath it. He was cold and exhausted. His shoulder ached from the memory of the beam. Meanwhile, his wife stood in his field, wearing a wet nightgown, with mud on her bare feet.
She looked, God help him, as if she had every right to be exactly where she was.
"Ye should be inside," he said, his voice cracking.
"And ye should nae be out here alone. Nae ever."
He took a step toward her. He told himself it was to make his point. To be heard over the rain. "Ye daenae listen, Margaret."
"And ye daenae ask." Her chin lifted, that fierce Highland pride flaring in the dark. "Ye tell. Ye order. Ye send people away when the work is done as though needin' help was a temporary failin' to be corrected." Her hazel eyes did not move from his. "I stayed because someone should. Because I wanted to."
"I daenae need ye to."
"I ken what ye think ye daenae need, Fergus MacKenzie."
He was close now. Closer than he had ever allowed himself to be. The rain fell between them, a silver curtain. The shed groaned once, a settling sound, and the sheep rustled in the straw. None of it was loud enough to drown out the fact of her standing there.
"Everythin' with ye is a fight," he said. The words came out rough.
"Only when ye make it one."
She was soaked through. Her nightgown clung to every line of her, the thin fabric giving up any pretense of modesty. He had been trying not to see it for the past thirty minutes. He was very, very tired of trying.
The memory of the loch hit him. Her back bare in the evening light, highlighting the curve of her waist and how the water hadcaressed her. It intertwined with the heat of the work and a week of locked doors and raised cups. It all combined with the torture of lying awake, knowing she was only twelve inches of timber away.
He reached for her. His large hands gripped her upper arms tightly. He pulled her toward him with almost violent force and then kissed her.
There was nothing careful about it. No tactical calculation. No controlled approach. It was immediate and hard. It tasted of salt and rain and ancient, repressed fire. For one suspended heartbeat, she was still. Just a breath, just a shock, and then she broke.
Her hands came up to his shoulders, gripping the wet wool of his plaid. She kissed him back with a fierceness that knocked every remaining thought from his head. It made the storm irrelevant. It made the shed and the sheep and the mud and the whole relentless weight of the MacKenzie name entirely, completely irrelevant.
He had one hand crushed at her waist and one buried in the wet silk of her hair. He could feel her, all of her, through the soaked linen. She was warm despite the rain. She was fire in the dark.
A cry split the night.
Fergus stopped. He pulled back, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
Margaret was breathing just as hard. Her face was very close. Her eyes were dark in the storm-dark, her lips swollen and wet.
He released her. He stepped back into the cold.
"The sheep," he said. His voice was wrecked. A ghost of its usual command.
Another cry echoed from the shed, caused by one of the animals, startled by the thunder. Fergus turned toward the sound but didn't look at her. He couldn't. If he looked at her now, he knew he wouldn't be able to stop.
He was breathing hard. He was walking away. He was doing the only thing he could do, putting distance between himself and the disaster of his own desire. He needed a problem that could be solved with rope and timber. He did not know how to solve the one he had just made a thousand times more complicated.
He should not have done that. He had terms to keep. He had a clan to lead. He had a child sleeping upstairs who needed them to be sensible. And he had just…
He had just kissed his wife in the rain, and she had kissed him back.
He pressed one hand against a rough cedar post, the splinters biting into his palm.
Get yerself together, man.
