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She nodded as they walked again. “You’d fight to protect me?”
“Aye, of course.”
“You’d die to protect me and Talamh.”
“I’m taoiseach—”
“The answer would be the same whether or not you’d lifted the sword. It’s who you are as much as what. You’d die to protect me and Talamh.”
“I would.”
“Don’t ask me to be less. However foolish it is, if I fear anything more than dying, it’s being less. Don’t say anything about this to Marco. I’m not going to tell him. He’ll worry too much, and—”
Now Keegan stopped. “You’d lie to him? Lie to your friend, your brother?”
“Not saying anything about this isn’t lying. I don’t want to add this kind of stress.”
“You’d shield him like a child? He’s not a child. He’s a man.”
The words whipped out of him and took her back a step.
She’d seen him angry, but never quite like this. Not this hot, bubbling anger that didn’t shout, but sliced straight through.
“Keegan, I—”
“You’ll treat him like a man, by the gods, and with the respect he deserves. You’ll treat him like the good man he is, or you shame him, and yourself. You makehimless when you know how that cuts more than anyone.”
She drew in a shaky breath, then rubbed her hands over her face. “You’re right. I hate it that you’re right. Not tonight, okay? Please. I don’t think I can stand talking about it more tonight. And… I have people I need to speak with in America, and I need to think all that through, make some calls. Probably need to do some emails, and I can handle that part in the morning before he gets up. Then I’ll tell him. When it’s just him and me. It’s better if it’s just him and me.”
She took the pendant off, slipped it into the pocket of her coat. “I’ll tell him tomorrow, that’s a promise. I’ll tell him all of it because you’re right. To hold back is a kind of lie, and worse, it makes him less. He doesn’t deserve that from anyone, but especially from me.”
She took a long breath as she saw the cottage through the trees.
“Do me a favor and keep him occupied while I go upstairs and make those calls?”
“Who do you call?”
“If I’m going to have the courage to do whatever I need to do, I need to have enough, and common sense with it, to make arrangements for if. I have a lot of money, my father and Nan saw to that. I need to make arrangements for it—it’s important on this side.”
“Make all the arrangements you like. You’re going to live because you don’t want to piss me off.”
“That’s absolutely the top reason I want to live.”
It wouldn’t be easy. She thought the conversations she’d had the evening before—broker, accountant, lawyer—had been fraught. Simply because it all struck her as so complicated. Telling Marco everything would be more fraught and more complicated.
In the morning, she read over drafts of legal documents, made changes or corrections, added a few things, answered questions, and shot emails back.
She thought she had a reasonable handle on it now, for a layperson, but expected it would take more rounds to firm it all up.
It all ate through the early hours of her morning. When she heard Marco in the kitchen, she waited awhile longer. He deserved to get some coffee in him, she told herself.
Finally, she read the word on her wrist and stiffened her spine.
“Hey, taking an early break?”
He wore an old sweatshirt with its sleeves cut off. She could see the tattoo of the harp on his biceps. He’d tied his braids up high on his head and padded around the kitchen in gym shorts and bare feet.
“How about I make you a good breakfast? Cheese and spinach omelets, some good thick Irish bacon, and some breakfast potatoes. Got some nice blueberries, too.”
