Page 67 of Shadow Spell

“We never— Oh, that.” Content, she tangled up her legs with his. “I was no more than nine, you git!”

“But naked all the same. I’ll say you grew up and around very well indeed.” He ran a hand down her back, over her ass, left it there. “Very well indeed.”

“And you yourself, if memory serves me, were built like a puny stick. You’ve done well yourself. We had fun that night,” she remembered. “Froze our arses, the lot of us, but it was grand. Innocent, all of us, and not a worry in the world. But he’d have been watching us, even then.”

“No.” Connor touched a finger to her lips. “Don’t bring him here, not tonight.”

“You’re right.” She brushed a hand through his hair. “How many, do you think, are where we are tonight who have all those years and memories between them?”

“Not many, I expect.”

“We can’t lose that, Connor. We can’t lose what we are to each other, to Branna, to all. We have to swear an oath on it. We won’t lose even a breath of the friends we’ve ever been, whatever happens.”

“Then I’ll swear it to you, and you to me.” He took her hand, interlaced his fingers with hers. “A sacred oath, never to be broken. Friends we’ve ever been, and ever will be.”

She saw the light glowing through their joined fingers, felt the warmth of it. “I swear it to you.”

“And I to you.” He kissed her fingers, then her cheek, then her lips. “I should tell you something else.”

“What is it?”

“I’ve my breath back now.”

And when she laughed, he rolled back on top of her.

***

SHE’D SHARED BREAKFAST WITH HIM BEFORE, COUNTLESStimes. But never at the little table in her flat—and never after sharing the shower with him.

He could count himself lucky, she decided, that she’d picked up some nice croissants from the cafe when she’d gotten dessert for her mother.

Along with them she made her usual standby—oatmeal—while he dealt with the tea as she hadn’t any coffee in the pantry.

“We’re to meet tonight,” he reminded her, and bit into a croissant. “These are brilliant.”

“They are. I don’t step foot into the cafe often as I’d buy a dozen of everything. I’ll go by the cottage straight from the stables,” she added. “And help Branna with the cooking if I can. It’s good we’re meeting regular now, though I don’t know as any of us suddenly had a genius idea on what to do, exactly, and when to do it.”

“Well, we’re thinking, and together, so something will come.”

He believed it, and the croissants only helped boost his optimism.

“Why don’t I take you to the stables on my way, and just fetch you when we’re both done? It’d save you the petrol, and seems foolish for us to each take our lorries.”

“Then you’d have to bring me home after.”

“That was the canny part of my plan.” He hefted his tea as if toasting himself. “I’ll bring you back, stay with you again if that’s all right. Or you could just stay at the cottage.”

She downed tea he’d made strong enough to break stone. “What will Branna think of this?”

“We’ll be finding out soon enough. We wouldn’t hide it from her, either of us, even if we could. Which we couldn’t,” he added with an easy shrug, “as she’ll know.”

“They’ll all need to know.” No point, Meara decided, being delicate about it all. “It’s only right. Not just because we’re friends and family, but because we’re a circle. What we are to each other... that’s the circle, isn’t it?”

He scanned her face as she pushed oatmeal around in her bowl. “It shouldn’t worry you, Meara. We’ve a right to be with each other this way as long as we both want it. None who care for us would think or feel otherwise.”

“That’s right. But then as far as my other family—my blood kin—I’d as soon not bring them into it.”

“That’s for you to say.”

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