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I turned my head and caught him grinning with a set of lusty eyes. “Give me time.”
“Aye, I can do that,” he said, “so long as I can hold ye tonight.”
I agreed that he could and he took a big, deep breath.
“I winna let anything happen to either of you,” he reassured me as I kept eating. “You’re my life, Flora. I swear it. London, or Scotland. Or wherever. So long as it’s you and Logan I’m with, I’m home.”
I gulped and avoided his searing gaze. “There’s a lot we still need to talk about.”
“Aww, no…”
“I want to know everything, Caelan. About how you protected me while Sherry was at large, what the danger was, really. I want to know it all.”
I heard him swallow even as my chewing was noisy and the insects were still going great guns. “Raking over the past doesna do anyone any good.”
“Humour me?” I asked, and turned my eyes to his.
He saw how serious I was. “If ye like then, Flora.”
“We start tomorrow. Everything. You promise?” He rolled his eyes and reluctantly agreed, nodding. “I want to know about Eric and your past with him, too. Why he would claim you’re a sadist.”
“I’m no sadist Flora, but when someone provokes me, I can be a bastard when I wanna be.”
I didn’t doubt it and shot him a look of unsurprise. “If we’re to move forward, I need the full picture, Caelan. I mean it. Don’t swaddle me any longer. And if you need to know anything from me, too… I’m open to it.”
He chewed his lip. “So you’re really serious, then?”
“I am more serious than I’ve ever probably been.”
He gulped, as if to say, “Shit.”
I lay on top of the sheets in a vest and knickers, some of the sheets bunched between my sweaty thighs. I wanted to put the aircon on in the room but Caelan was afraid the baby would get cold. He was asleep in his crib with the window cracked just slightly so he might benefit from a bit of breeze. All he wore was a nappy and vest, the nets protecting him from mozzies.
The lights from outside cast big shadows around the room because we had left the balcony doors open for air. So I had some faith that we were moderately safe here.
Caelan lay there nearly naked aside from a set of very small holiday pants, as he called them. Y-fronts but even smaller! Ridiculous man with all those long, graceful lines.
“I’m not tired now,” I chuckled, just as he moaned a yawn.
“Is that a hint?” he said, one side of his mouth tipping up in a grin.
“No. I think I’m getting my period. I’m retaining water and feel an ache. Here.” I pointed at my lower belly and just at the centre of it, there’d begun a dull ache.
He reached out and ran his fingers over my bit of swollen midriff. “Poor baby.”
“Is everything going to be all right, Callie?” I reached out and stroked his face which he’d shorn a lot since earlier. Probably the heat. But he wasn’t shaved smooth, not like that other man…
Before the image had chance to flash in my vision, his jaw ticked and he spoke softly, “I want to tell you yeah, but I honestly dinna ken.”
I rolled onto my back and looked up at the ceiling. “Sophie was angry with me last night.”
“Why?”
“Says I don’t know what I’ve got. Etcetera.”
“D’ye ken what you’ve got?”
“Yes, but… I have to be honest, Caelan. The Jimmy thing still haunts me.” There, it was out. Finally. I’d got it out.
