Page 56 of His to Protect

This was a simple accident, one he could have easily pushed me past in order to keep us on our original schedule. Yet he dropped everything in order to ensure that I was okay.

“Thank you, Declan,” I whispered, pulling my eyes off the dark, black waves and bright, white caps. “No one’s ever done this for me before.”

His lips curled almost into a sneer and his nostrils flared. “It’s such a shame,” he muttered, and glanced out the window behind me.

“What is?”

“That you met Kevin and I met Mara before we met each other.”

He glanced down at our hands still entwined on the seat between us, and with his free hand, he skimmed his thumb over the veins on the back of my hand.

“How much less injured and screwed up would we both be,” he said, speaking more to himself than me, “if we didn’t have that past clinging to us?”

I was at a lost for words as he continued tracing the back of my hand, tracing the light freckles on my skin as if they were a connect-the-dots diagram in a coloring book.

I watched him for several minutes, saying nothing. Even if he expected an answer, I didn’t have one.

All I knew was that if I had met him before I ever met Kevin, I wouldn’t now feel so broken, so scared all the time.

I had a feeling that if Declan had walked into my life five years ago, I would have clung to him as if my life depended on it, knowing that I had just found the best man in the entire world.

—

I hobbled into the room, my shoulder tucked in under Declan’s. With one arm wrapped around my waist, he helped hold me up and keep pressure off my injured ankle. He held our small overnight bag in his other hand like he’d done all afternoon.

For a normal man, I imagined this would be awkward, if it were even possible.

For Declan, it seemed like nothing.

That was my last clear thought before I took in the room he had checked us into.

My eyes settled quickly on the bed against the far wall.

The one bed.

A large bed, roomy enough that we could share it without brushing up against each other while we slept.

Yet I knew, as a familiar warmth tingled in the best of places, that was the last thing I wanted—injured or not. I tensed against him at the thought.

His arm still around me, Declan moved us farther into the room. I heard the thud of the bag hitting the carpet and then the loud click of the door closing behind us.

“They only had a king bed available,” Declan said, his tone apologetic.

By the way his eyes roamed over my face, taking in my appearance, he’d misread my thoughts entirely.

Or he’d read them correctly and he was letting me down in a polite way.

Which would be just like the gentleman he’d shown himself to be.

With that sobering thought, I stepped away from him and made the short walk to the bathroom. “Excuse me for a moment.”

I flinched from the pain in my ankle, but hid it as I took several small steps, then stopped when Declan called my name.

Turning to look at him over my shoulder, I watched his eyes flicker from mine to the bed and back again. I caught the slight tightening of his jaw, and then he raised his phone. “I’m going to call David.”

I tilted my chin down and closed the bathroom door behind me as I heard Declan’s deep voice rumble, “Hey, dickhead. How’s it going?”

I laughed softly, and did what needed to be done in the bathroom.

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