Page 115 of The Laird’s Sinful Obsession

Lachlann had learned the texture of that quiet well enough over the years to notice when something changed inside it, and the sound of the side door opening, followed by the familiar lightness of her step on the stone threshold, changed it considerably.

Shadow noticed too. The stallion's ears pricked forward, head lifting from the hay, and Lachlann ran a steadying hand down his neck.

"Easy," he murmured.

Alba appeared around the edge of the stall a moment later, her hair still half-pinned from whatever she'd been doing before this, a wool shawl pulled close against the morning chill.

She stopped when she saw him, taking in the scene. Lachlann in his shirtsleeves, brush in hand, Shadow standing patient beside him, and something in her expression settled the way it sometimes did when she found things as she'd hoped to find them.

"Ye're up early," she said.

"I'm always up early." He returned his attention to Shadow's flank, drawing the brush in long, even strokes. "Ye're the one who's late."

She made a sound that was almost a laugh and went closer, stopping just outside the stall to look the horse over with the appraising eye she brought to most things.

Shadow turned his great head toward her and she lifted her hand slowly, letting him take her scent before touching his nose.

"He's settled today," she said.

"He's always settled when there's company worth havin'."

She glanced at him sidelong, and he kept his eyes on the horse. He heard rather than saw her slip into the stall beside him, and a moment later she was reaching past him for the spare brush hanging on the post.

They worked in companionable silence for a while. She took Shadow's other side without being asked, working the brush in smooth, careful strokes, and the horse stood easy between them as though this were a long-established arrangement rather than one invented on the spot.

Lachlann watched her over Shadow's back when she wasn't looking, the concentration in her face, the unselfconscious efficiency of her movements.

He had stopped pretending, some weeks back, that he didn't look at her.

He reached for the water bucket to rinse the brush, and Shadow chose that precise moment to shift his weight, a sudden sidestep that swung his hindquarters into Lachlann's arm, sent the bucket tilting, and threw a generous arc of cold water directly across Alba's front.

She shrieked.

The sound of it startled Shadow all over again, which achieved nothing except making the horse take another step and slosh the remaining water across the straw.

Alba stood with both hands lifted, staring down at herself, her expression cycling rapidly through shock and indignation before landing somewhere closer to outrage.

"Lachlann."

"That was the horse," he said, with complete sincerity.

She looked up at him.

He saw the exact moment she decided it wasn't funny, and then the exact moment, immediately following, that she decided it was. Her hand shot out and flicked a palmful of water directly into his face.

He blinked.

She was already laughing. Bright, unguarded, the kind of laugh she didn't always let out, and the sight of it did something to his chest that he had mostly given up trying to name.

He reached into the bucket.

"Lachlann, dinnae ye dare."

He dared.

What followed was not dignified by any measure.

Alba retreated across the stable with considerably more speed than he'd expected, ducking behind a hay bale and launching a handful that caught him squarely on the shoulder.