Page 40 of The Beast's Heart

Please let him not know.

Please let no one else know. Oh god, if Geoff knows…

Adam stirs and blinks awake. He shields his eyes from the sunlight that’s falling over his face. The sunlight that must have woken me. His brow furrows as his sleepy gaze falls on me. “Belle? Alright?”

His voice is thick with sleep. The sound of it makes my stomach go tight. I run a hand through my hair, which is probably a disaster. My heart’s aflutter. I don’t know what todo with myself. I rub absently at my hip which is protesting the night spent on the floor.

When I fail to answer, he sits and scrubs at his face with his hands. “Suppose I should go check the damage. See if I can fix the power.”

“Can I come?” Mal asks.

Mal. Awake. He’s watching us from a little nest of blankets on Ben’s other side. How long has he been awake? Could he have seen The Snuggling? Oh god.

“I wanna see what got hit,” Mal says.

It’s so rare that he expresses an interest in something and here he is volunteering to spend time with The Beast. I put my own concerns aside and force a smile. “I think that’s an excellent idea. If Adam doesn’t mind?”

Geoff chuckles. His eyes are still closed and he says sleepily. “Adam. Gets me every time.”

Adam, for his part, is looking between me and Mal like I’ve just asked him to walk across hot coals.

“Adam, weren’t you just saying that you wanted to spend more time with the children?” I prompt.

He swallows and nods. Not quite the enthusiastic assent I was hoping for. But it’s not a no, which is a gigantic victory in my books.

17

ADAM

Ifollow the power line from the house all the way down the long drive to the road. There’s a low mist hanging over the grounds and everything smells damp and cold. I shove my hands into my jacket pockets. Little critters dash through the undergrowth ahead.

Malakai is less chatty than I would expect for a child. He finds a stick and is content to walk along beside me, kicking at stones and occasionally hitting things.

I see the problem some time before we reach it. A tree, completely black and broken in half. The pole beside it is scorched. Lighting must have jumped to it.

Mal gapes at it and declares it, “fire” or that a “fire” had happened—I’m not sure which.

I take out my phone. The plan is to call the electrician in Fort William to find out how I go about fixing this thing, but I don’t have any bars. On the other side of the road, the barren countryside inclines up a munro.

“We need to find some signal,” I tell Mal.

“Why did you put your house in the middle of nowhere?” he asks as we start the trek.

“I didn’t.”

He rolls his eyes. “I know. It’s old and haunted. That’s what Geoff says. He says it’s hundreds of years old.”

“Parts of it, maybe.”

“I meant why did you choose to buy it? You’ve got that place in New York.”

The kids stayed at the New York apartment for a few weeks before we came here. It’s a penthouse, but much smaller. They had to share rooms and there was no garden, let alone all of this. Still, his candor is refreshing. Especially from him. After the thing with the piano, I thought that Mal was terrified of me. Maybe Belle was right.

Belle. The way his eyes glowed in the firelight, his flushed cheeks, his golden hair…

“I didn’t choose this house. My husband did.”

“That’s why he’s still there now?”

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