Page 84 of Iron Cross

“Are you okay?” Kira quietly whispered to her.

“I’m fine, love,” Aoibheann said, as the two pulled away. My stepmother put her hands on her growing belly, and smiled. “As you can see, I’m doing well.”

Kira searched her face, a habit I had observed when she was Anna Jones - a curious tendency of inventorying every bit of someone’s features as they said something, as if she was looking for words where there were none.

Was she trying to read them? Was that something she had learned? Had she been abused growing up, as I had, she would do so naturally, without such a studied approach. Who had taught her to read expressions?

Was it the same person who taught her to shoot?

Why had I never noticed this before?

“You and I should have tea,” Aoibheann whispered, her eyes darting to me. “A moment alone, Eoghan?”

Her question hung in the air, before I parted my lips in a firm, and certain, “No.”

“Eoghan!” Aoibheann looked at me with hurt in her eyes, as though I’d given her an insult.

“As you can imagine, dear stepmother,” I said, pulling Kira to my side, “The last time she was left alone with you, I did not see her for three years. I won’t be making such a mistake again.”

A low, almost menacing chuckle came from Aoibheann’s husband, as his closed-lipped smile rumbled through the foyer.

“Oh, that is rich,” he said, his eyes on me, making my skin crawl. “Well, we must respect the head of household here.”

One side of his lips tilted up in a strange expression of smugness and condescension. Scorn. He looked at me with absolute scorn. One that I did not think I had ever earned.

“Aoibheann wished to speak with you, anyways, Eoghan.” His eyes turned to his wife, as he placed a kiss on her temple. “Privately. Why don’t you two have tea here in your receiving room? Kira and I can have tea in your office, so that you two might have a word.”

I was dumbstruck. He had sworn to never allow my stepmother to be in my presence without his overbearing presence. Now, he was thrusting her at me on purpose?

What did they have planned?

It was the treachery again that I had feared, the conspiracy to part my Muse from me.

“I’ll be okay,” Kira’s voice whispered against my cheek. She left a small kiss on my jaw, and I stood stunned. “My love, please. Trust me?”

Her finger traced my jawline, where I had rid myself of that infernal beard, and then she placed a kiss on my Adam’s apple.

“You have forgiven me.” Her whisper was a statement of fact. “Now you must trust me.”

How could a man ever deny his love when she said something so divine?

Chapter twenty-five

Lady of the House

Kira

Ifelt the blade on my thigh, lightly grazing it with my fingertips through my skirt. There was something wrong with this Jericho Vasiliev. It was a feeling that went beyond looking at his eyes to see if his pupils dilated or his nostrils flared. It wasn’t in the frown of his lips or the twitch of a fingertip.

There was something wrong with this man. Wrong, in the sense of deception. He was fake, like a wax mold that moved. Like an alien in a human suit.

“What are they talking about out there?” I asked, as we stood on Eoghan’s Persian rug.

“She’s asking about betrothing our daughter to your son,” he said, his expression cool and placid, but his jaw was tense, the muscle ticking by his cheekbone.

“No!” I said, my eyes wide.

“Of course, the answer’s no,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Are you insane? We’re not the Spanish royal family. Our children might not share blood, but they will be cousins of a sort.”

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