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Eric sniggered. “My work is my work. One day I’ll leave it there.”
I was incredulous. “You’d just… quit. And do what?”
“Teach,” he said with immediacy, “in some capacity. Yeah, I’d teach. What? I don’t know. But I’ve been told I’m a really good teacher.”
“That’s… nice.”
Nicer than being a gun for hire, muscle for hire, advisor to thugs… etcetera.
We listened to the wind trying to wrench the chrome chimney outside off its hinges, the flue of the wood burner indoors rattling enormously with the force coming in from the outdoors.
Something struck me; a hint he’d made before. “You don’t know what I think of you, Eric. You only imagine.”
His silver eyes were lined with long dark lashes and in that moment, as he smirked in that rakish way of his, I thought he looked simply gorgeous. I almost forgot we were meant to be having a conversation.
“You think I’m completely besotted by him, that I think the sun shines out of his arse,” he chuckled lightly. “Well, you’d be wrong. I know his faults, warts, and all.”
I was surprised that’s what he thought I was thinking. It wasn’t at all. What I was thinking was that Eric had been messed up in childhood and still hadn’t dealt with that, not properly. I pitied him more than anything.
“I love him like any man loves a best friend, but am I sceptical as to why he married you? Yeah! More that than some simple jealousy. I accepted who he is and what we are to one another a long time ago.” Who was he trying to convince? “Yeah, I wonder… and I’m intrigued… but Harold and Morag and even Caelan have me all wrong. I’m not some blind fool. Sometimes I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate because I can see what a bunch of others can’t.”
I hated to admit it, but one of the attractions of Caelan was that he was such a mystery.
In general, people couldn’t help but gravitate towards him—if only to figure out what’d shaped him that way. His stature, charisma, supernatural strength and intelligence…
“You can see a person’s faults but still love them entirely, Eric. Like I love him.”
He let out a long exhale and smacked his lips together in annoyance. Putting his head in his hands, he gave a sigh that was more one of amusement this time. “But you do not fully know him, so how can you know it’s love, and not this… what did you call it?”
I reluctantly whispered, “Trauma bond.”
He raised one eyebrow and clucked, “Yep.”
Eric made me feel uncomfortable and ill at ease, he always had. He wasn’t just a beautiful man, he had a stillness in those silver eyes of his, and it was more than his training that’d made him such a cool customer. I thought he’d always been like it.
Then there was that hair. White-grey like silk, shaved underneath, with the long parts (which probably reached his chin if I had to guess) always tied back, only the occasional stray piece coming loose. He had to have some idea how gorgeous he was, how cruel he could come off, and this coupled with his beauty was incredibly disarming.
“Can’t you for one minute not be analysing everyone all the fucking time?”
He gave me an upside-down smile. “I wouldn’t be any good at my job otherwise. He’s like this, too. He just doesn’t say what he sees sometimes.”
My cheeks started to heat. “Can’t you just be kind to the woman you’re bodyguarding, after everything I’ve been through? Can’t you just shut the fuck up and be fucking nice?”
I had a small baby. An errant husband. A past full of ghosts, shadows and dangers.
A future that looked uncertain. A storm that was nearly driving me insane.
In fact, just as I had that thought, some noise outside made Eric shoot to his feet, gun out from wherever he’d been hiding it.
He looked around and wandered to the hallway, checking the front door. The wind was so strong, it’d sounded like someone had been trying to break in.
“Just a patio chair. Thought I’d secured them all,” he muttered, “wait right here.”
The howling wind swept through the house and made me shudder as he opened and closed the door. It was nearly May, but up here, as weather fronts fought for supremacy in the battle between the last of winter and the beginning of summer, it could still feel the loneliest, most brutal of places.
Wondering if to get myself to bed before he came back, I realised there was no saving face as he fought his way back in, shutting the door again.
“Fucking hell,” he shouted. “Mayhem out there!”
