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Chapter Five
The fifteenth-century stone tower house had been modernized extensively inside. Cold gray stone walls had been coated with white plaster and adorned with contemporary paintings and black-and-white art photographs of the surrounding Highlands. Roughhewn plank floors were now gleaming hardwood, warmed by thick wool rugs. In place of tallow candles and mounted torches spewing soot and smoke from their open flames, Mal had turned on beautiful lamps to chase away the shadows of the castle's interior.
But it was the room he'd brought Danika and Connor to on the second floor that gave her the most unexpected jolt of surprise. A nursery. Unfinished, by the look of it. A wooden crib stood empty in the center of the cozy chamber. A tall chest of drawers stood against the wall to her left, beside a basket overflowing with a menagerie of stuffed animals and plush baby toys that looked like they'd never been moved. On the far wall, someone had begun painting a whimsical mural-grinning lions and monkeys, wide-eyed elephants and giraffes, frolicking together on a colorful, half-completed landscape of jungle trees and tall green grasses.
And, draped with a pale sheet in a forgotten corner of the charming little chamber, a rocking chair sat alone in the gloom like a specter.
"There are blankets and pillows in the chest," Mal said from beside her. "Use whatever you like."
When she turned to thank him, he was already gone.
A few minutes later, after settling Connor in to sleep, Danika made her way back down the curving stairwell through the heart of the castle. She could hear Malcolm in the kitchen at ground level, boots moving over the slate floor, cabinets be waing opened and closed. Warm yellow light seeped out from the open doorway as Danika approached.
Mal had his back to her as he scooped something out of a bowl on the counter into a plastic zipper bag. His black suit coat and leather weapon holsters were draped over one of the four chairs at the table in the center of the kitchen. Without looking at her, he asked, "Find everything you need up there?"
"Yes. Thank you." She stepped inside the rectangular kitchen. She looked around at the curved white walls, granite-topped cabinets, and glistening stainless steel stove that outfitted the place. "I remember when this room was just a vault and open fireplace hollowed out of the stone. You and Con would sit down here for hours, arguing philosophy and bragging of your varied conquests. As I recall, yours were often female related."
He grunted. "A long time ago."
"Doesn't seem that long, now that I'm here again," she said, marveling at how true that was. The span of time evaporated further when he turned to face her now, his stony gray eyes sober with concern. The sight of him here, in this place, after the danger they'd faced together just a short while ago, made her heart constrict. He walked toward her, holding the filled plastic bag in his hand. It dripped water off one corner, the snow inside already beginning to melt.
"No ice in the house, so I collected some snow while you were upstairs." He gestured to the table and chairs. "Sit, Dani. Let me have a look at that bump on your head."
She did as he asked. He walked with her, sinking down onto his heels as she took a seat facing him. She hadn't realized she'd been hurt until she felt the cold touch of the homemade compress against her brow. She winced, sucking in a sharp breath. In reflex, her hand went up to her forehead, where Mal still held the ice pack in place. His skin was warm beneath her fingertips, the feel of his strong bones and tendons burning instantly into her brain.
The touch lingered, too long.
Too heavy with unspoken, unbidden, meaning.
They were too close like this, intimately so. He crouched before her. She with her legs spread on either side of his large body as he leaned in to tend her. His face was level with hers, near enough that she could see the first glimmer of amber burning into the cool gray of his irises. Near enough that she could feel the air crackle in the few inches that separated their bodies, electrified with a palpable tension neither of them seemed to expect.
With a scowl, he pulled his hand away from her, placing the compress of melting snow onto the table behind her. "This wasn't a good idea."
Danika swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. "You mean helping me tonight, or ..."
"All of it," he replied tersely, a thick growl that rasped through his teeth and the lengthening points of his fangs.
But he didn't withdraw from where he hunched before her, and his eyes remained fixed on her face, tormented and stormy. C an" aSmoldering with the same dark longing that had begun to kindle inside her. He snarled a curse, low under his breath. "I have to go. I have to get back to the club before Reiver notices I'm gone."
"Don't," she blurted, shaking her head when he started to move away from her. The thought of being left alone, just Connor and her, after the night they'd already had put a chill in her veins. And she couldn't bear the idea of Reiver possibly finding out what Malcolm had done for her and meting out punishment. "Don't go back there. How can you even think of going back now?"
"I have a job to do, Dani. Simple as that."
"Reiver is an animal," she reminded him. "He's a beast who trades in human lives. You said yourself he would've had me and my child murdered in cold blood."
"Yes," Malcolm agreed tightly. "Reiver is all those things. Worse, in fact. A pity you didn't realize that sooner, before everything went to hell tonight."
There wasn't much blame in that accusation. Rather, a stark dread. A fear in his eyes that his anger didn't quite mask. She searched that haunted gaze, hurting for him, wanting to understand who he'd become. "What happened to you, Malcolm? What happened to your face, to your name ... to the man you used to be?"
"He's gone, as dead as you are now." His mouth was a grim line, a muscle ticking in the side of his savaged, beard-shadowed jaw. "A hell of a lot can happen in a few hundred years, lass."
"Yeah," she said. "I guess it can. I never thought I'd see the day that Malcolm MacBain tossed away his honor and his good name in order to serve someone like Reiver."
"We all make choices. And I have my reasons," he murmured. With that hissed reply, he finally did withdraw from her. Dark lashes shuttering his gaze, he rose to his feet.
She stood with him, nose to nose, refusing to let him shut her out. "Tell me."
"Let it go, Danika." The words were a deep rumble, coming from his chest.
