Page 95 of Recurve Ridge

“How are you feeling?” I asked, tracking a stray leaf that tumbled along, refusing to float on the top like anything in a bid for survival. The leaf bobbed, disappearing for a moment before resurfacing farther down.

“You brought me out here to ask how I’m feeling?” Robe turned sideways toward me, his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets.

I shrugged. “I thought you might answer me if we were away from the house.”

He snorted. “You don’t know me very well.”

I raised both eyebrows and faced him in full, ignoring the beauty of the river for a moment. “You brought the body of a man you loved all the way down the hill after looking after him as he died in your arms three nights ago, then disappeared into the night and sought vengeance for his passing. And you haven’t said a single word about it since. No one has.” I watched him, pleased when he didn’t look away. “I could put money on the assumption that if I don’t ask you how your mental health has been since you tried to commit murder, no one else will. Am I wrong?” I challenged him.

Robe considered me, drawing one hand from his pocket to skate his fingertips over my cheek, tucking my hair behind my ear. “No. You’re not wrong.” He paused for a second and stepped a little closer. “Are you going to ask if I killed him?”

I blinked. “You’re avoiding my question.” My heart hammered a wild staccato in my chest.

“So are you.” He coiled my hair around his fingers, bringing me closer. “I didn’t, though not for lack of trying. Blackthorne still breathes. For now.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. I heard the words Brandon had uttered before he died. We all did. “I’m glad you came back safe.”

Something had happened to put him off his goal. Robe didn’t strike me as a man who gave up on a task without resentment over his failure. Either Gideon was gone, or something had reduced his ability to carry out the vengeance he sought that still burned dark in his eyes when he returned.

Either way, relief swamped me.

He hadn’t died or been the one the boys had dragged into the house, unconscious and bleeding. I’d seen enough of that since arriving in the cabin to last five lifetimes.

Robe hummed, dipping his head. “I like having you in my home, Mari Merripen, with your British accent riling up my boys. I like what you make me feel too. It makes… everything worthwhile.”

I stared as he lifted his gaze, focusing on something I couldn’t see. He was so damn complicated, all soft edges and hard muscle underneath, or maybe he reversed that and twisted those characteristics around. The forest shifted around us with renewed life, so different from the haunted stillness I tore through in muted desperation months ago. Bird noises filled the silence, reminding me we weren’t alone.

“Did he kiss you?” Robe asked abruptly. “Will, when he brought you out here.”

I paused, recalling the way he’d arced over me, his fingers on my pulse.Strawberries. He’d been so damn close.

“No.”

Robe nodded. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and he pulled me into him until my world filled with his leather-and-smoked-whiskey scent. I sighed when he curved his hand around my jaw, tipped my head back, and covered my mouth with his.

His kisses were usually rough, but this time he gave me a chance to catch my breath and hold it rather than steal it away. My head still swam at his closeness, his mouth gentle against mine, offering gratitude. I kissed him back, letting my tongue seek him out, rather than the other way around. My sighs were lost in the whispering brook as he held me close, wrapped in his arms until the light changed and dusk fell.

Then he walked me back to the cabin with one arm wrapped around me the entire time, as though he would never let me go.

* * *

I wokebeside the ghosts of two of the most extraordinary men I’d ever met. The large bed grew too big, too empty without them in it, and I took no luxury in spreading my arms out to either side. Jon spent the night with me, though I recalled a brief kiss from Robe when I opened my eyes at dawn to find him gone.

My legs ached. Fluid soaked my thighs, reminding me of the mini orgy I participated in the night before. Rather than embarrassment, my cheeks flamed with the need to feel Robe inside me again, and soon. Jon’s hands playing with my body, easing each fragment of anxiety as it arose, blew me away but felt so right at the same time.

When I emerged from Robe’s room for breakfast the day after I’d decided not to count sunrises and sunsets anymore, five sets of eyes stared at me, and I knew something more than our nocturnal activities had changed overnight.

Alan placed a mug of tea in one of my hands and a piece of toast in the other. He bent to kiss my forehead, then the corner of my mouth, unshed tears glistening in his sapphire eyes.

Shock bounced off my tarnished armor as I stared around the room. Will wouldn’t look at me, and even Miller’s glare had decreased its usual degree of animosity.

“What’s going on?” I inhaled the black chai that Alan seemed to favor, its aromatics a calming agent as a familiar dose of panic edged in to haunt me yet again, and managed a single sip.

Robe crossed the room to stand in my space, much as he had that first day. Instead of a shot of arousal that set endorphins roaming free in my body, trepidation curled there.

“I need you to tell me who hurt you, and who you are—were—to him.”

But he already knows.

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