Page 57 of Beloved Enemy
“You can’t just... just do that, Reid,” she finally said. “I am my own person, and I have a right to make my own decisions.”
“And ye will, lass,” he said over his shoulder, softening his voice ever so slightly. “But nae here, and nae now.”
Not entirely unexpected, Charlotte did not long follow Reid so passively.
She began to tug at her hand before a minute had passed.
“Stop,” she commanded. “Reid, I mean it,” she said when he did not stop but tightened his hold on her. “You have no right to decide my fate—and that’s exactly what you’re doing right now. It’s not your—"
Reid whirled on her, his expression hardening. “Dinna respond to my kiss as ye do,” he clipped, “and tell me I have nae right.”
Charlotte’s breath caught in her throat, the shock evident in her eyes. For a full five seconds, she stared at him, stunned.
“Holy shit,” she finally said, her voice lacking humor. “You’re serious? You think because I like your kiss, that you get to boss me around or be the... the decider of my fate? Christ,” she snorted in disbelief, “that’s about the most medieval, sexist, chest-thumping thing I’ve ever heard. What now? You’re going to drag me by my hair back to your cave?”
Her scathing words cut through the remnants of their earlier intimacy, and any lingering warmth from their kiss evaporated in the instant. Reid’s face settled harshly with his frustration. He shouldn’t have been surprised by her defiance, but the vehemence in her reaction caught him off guard.
Charlotte wrenched her hand free and took a step back, her chest rising and falling. “I don’t need you to make decisions for me, Reid. I’m perfectly capable of doing that myself, and I’m not ready to give up today. Not yet.”
Reid’s jaw tightened as he tried to find the right words, his initial anger giving way to a deeper, more conflicted emotion. “Aye,” he said finally, his voice rough but quieter. “Ye can make yer own decisions, and have I nae said so? I’m nae trying to take that from ye. When ye make sound decisions, I’ll nae gainsay ye. But when ye make foolish decisions....”
***
Charlotte rolled her eyes at him, at how blithely he could declare her and her plans foolish, simply because he didn’t happen to agree with them. She knew he was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept—and she certainly wasn’t going to admit that to him.
The weight of their unresolved feelings pressed down on her. The kiss lingered in her mind, as a reminder of the confusing, undeniable connection between them. What sadness she’d known for not having been moved back to the future was heavy,but in truth his kiss caused much of it to dissipate, forcing her to wonder once again if she would ever truly be able to leave Reid behind—or if she even wanted to.
Too bad Reid obviously didn’t feel the same.
Her eyes widened as she questioned what she knew for sure. And what she might not know, what she would hope for, but that he might be guarding but what might be reasonably assumed from his kiss and his protectiveness.
Lifting her chin, she boldly challenged him. “Why don’t you just say that you don’t want me to go?”
It was the proverbial equivalent to going all in, putting everything out there, rolling the dice, what have you. It was a sudden leap of faith based on her woman’s intuition—which had, admittedly, proven unreliable at best in the past—and Charlotte regretted almost instantly giving him the opportunity to deny her charge.
This was going to hurt, she understood immediately, and braced herself internally.
“It makes nae difference to me whether ye stay or go,” he said evenly. “And dinna believe a kiss says otherwise.”
Charlotte’s heart sank at his cold denial. The words stung more than she’d anticipated, but for some reason, she wasn’t ready to let it end there. She was proud of how steady her voice was when she replied. “Sorry, but I’m not buying it. If you don’t care, then why did you kiss me? Again. If you don’t care, then why are you so concerned about my safety, that you won’t leave me here as I want?”
Reid’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t immediately respond. The silence that followed was charged with unspoken words, the wind whipping through the trees and all around them, a casual witness to their conflict.
Charlotte pressed on, her gaze unwavering. “It sounds to me like you do care.” She shrugged and added, “Or at the very least, you are not as indifferent as you pretend to be.”
She wished, more than ever at this moment, that he was more an open book, that his pride didn’t force him to hide his feelings behind the harsh shadow of his gaze.
“I am laird of Kingswood,” he stated, “and have an interest in the well-being of every person living under the banner of—Jesus Christus, lass, dinna roll your eyes at me.”
“If you insist on hiding behind that vanilla and purposefully generic BS,” she ranted, her voice rising with emotion, “then I will roll my eyes at you.” She waved her hand at him. “Go on. I’m not going with you, and you can’t make me.”
His eyes darkened, a silent, steady challenge. The set of his jaw tightened, his body unmoving, exuding quiet strength—a wordless reminder that he was more than capable of making her. He was bigger and stronger.
There was a long pause, the tension between them thickening.
Finally, Reid looked away, further down the hill, and admitted. “I dinna want to see ye come to any harm, Charlotte.”
He might have supposed she would be appeased by this, his concern, but having just stated that as laird of Kingswood, he might have that concern for anyone who lived there, Charlotte was unmoved.
