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O’Hara struggled to sling the quiver of roses over his wings, then removed a rose and aimed it with his bow.
Savvy called out, “Go on, then.”
Right. He looked straight ahead. “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”
“Wait,” Savvy said, “shouldn’t he be blindfolded then?”
“Too similar to last week’s post,” O’Hara said.
Jonathan glanced up at O’Hara and sucked in a hissing breath. It was like the man lived to get under his skin in every possible way! Calmly, “What are you doing?”
“Acting like Cupid.”
Calmer, “You’re pointing toward Savvy and Nate.”
O’Hara slowly turned his ‘arrow’ to Jonathan, their gazes meeting. Something heady flickered in those eyes. “Should I be aiming somewhere else?”
Jonathan doubled his grip on the leather reins.
O’Hara drew the bow and let go, and in a moment of absolute gracelessness, the rose simply fell onto his lap and the neck of his horse.
Jonathan shook his head, amusement sudden and strong and threatening to lift the edges of his lips. He turned the traitorous smile away from O’Hara, toward his patiently waiting silver bay. And then O’Hara’s horse shifted, leather reins sliding out from his palm, and air stirred around his riding helmet, shoulders—
A flash of silver danced before his face. Wings, O’Hara dangling them before him by their straps. Shakespeare again. “You are a lover. Borrow Cupid’s wings and soar with them.”
Jonathan spun around, catching O’Hara’s gaze through the glittery mesh of the offered Eros wings. They twisted in the breeze.
It never ceased to amaze Jonathan how much O’Hara found in the world to smile about. Each quirk of his lips held a conversation of its own, some private and enigmatic, some transparent.
This smile started out bemused and had softened to something almost . . .
He leaned forward like it might share the secret through the wings—
A cough. “Can we, uh, get started now?”
Nate.
Jonathan wasn’t sure if he was grateful for the interruption, or . . .
He rolled back his shoulders and took the wings, pinching the soft flexible wire as he retrieved his phone from Savvy and sent them ahead down the trail. O’Hara and he would follow with a bit of distance.
He watched them until they rounded the green-banked bend. The trail was wide and gentle, overlooking rolling green paddocks and small streams. The kind of scenery that calmed the mind. Jonathan breathed deeply.
“They’ll be fine, Jonathan.”
Not quite why he hadn’t turned around yet.
One of the wings scraped the skin at the side of his watch and he shivered as he turned to O’Hara. The bow was too much for their trek. O’Hara passed it to him. “I’m keeping my quiver. Will you wear your wings? Or too . . . frivolous?”
There was a sparkle in his green eyes, but O’Hara’s thighs had stiffened around his horse, making it whinny.
Jonathan set aside the bow, donned his wings, and swung onto his horse, a strange energy coursing through him.
He faced a gaping O’Hara and raised his brow.
O’Hara closed his mouth. And then, with a glance that tracked Jonathan from helmet to boot, he rode forward.
Jonathan was prepared to canter ahead at the first sound of distant distress, but he hadn’t anticipated that distress would come from O’Hara in the last twenty-minute stretch back to the stables.
They’d set off with Jonathan a half-length behind, and they’d had an enjoyable, fresh ride over packed dirt paths hedged with shrubbery, the ocean sparkling under a cloud-speckled sky in their periphery. For a brief time, Jonathan had let go of all the thoughts tangling in his mind—
A loud whinny.
It all happened in a second. Something spooked O’Hara’s horse and it shied suddenly sideways, throwing O’Hara off balance and onto the dirt.
In the next second, Jonathan was out of the saddle and flying on his silver wings to O’Hara’s side. He cupped O’Hara’s shoulders and scanned all his limbs, checking he was intact.
Shocked laughter stirred his wings. “That was . . . graceful.”
“Hm.”
Jonathan’s palms skimmed up the sides of O’Hara’s hot throat, his jaw.
“Nothing’s broken,” O’Hara murmured. “Other than my pride.” He shifted and his expression crunched. In pain?
A sharp analysing sweep over his body. O’Hara sat upright, one leg outstretched, the other bent to his chest between them. Nothing looked to be bleeding. Nothing seemed broken. “What’s wrong?”
O’Hara’s gaze travelled the ground around them.
Catapulted out of his quiver during the fall, red-petal rosebuds made little shocks of colour where everything else was green.
Jonathan shook his head. “They’re only flowers.”
A frown landed on him; O’Hara grabbed a fistful of his riding jacket and pulled him close, parting his lips to say something, and quickly let go. Shifting onto his knees, he began collecting the fallen roses.
A shiver ran through Jonathan, and then he was plucking up dirt-dusted stems, polishing them with his thumb and forefinger.
