Page 29 of Savage Blooms
“She doesn’t often joke,” Finley replied.
“You seem to know her better than anyone,” Adam ventured as he popped the trunk. He had a penchant for wiggling the truth out of people, even when it was uncomfortable for them. It was his nature to seek brutal honesty above all things. “How long have you two been an item?”
“Since we were teenagers.”
“And before that?”
“There’s never been anyone else. No one important, anyway.”
“Interesting,” Adam said, hauling his battered Kankan out of the car and handing it to Finley. They had broughttheir duffels of clothes in last night, but Adam had kept his laptop in the car along with his passport, just in case. Nicola had left her mauve toiletry bag with all her lotions and potions in the car as well, and Adam carried that one himself, because he didn’t like the idea of the other man touching her things. “Do you really take this whole faery thing seriously? Does she?”
“Faeries are one thing Eileen is dead serious about,” Finley responded, shouldering the stuffed backpack without any effort at all. “And I’ve lived on Craigmar land long enough to see with my own two eyes things you couldn’t even dream of.”
Adam slammed the trunk shut with more force than was necessary, then started back to the house. There was something about Finley that got under his skin. Adam wasn’t sure if it was his brusque tone or his connection to Eileen or the way he looked at Nicola or even the fact that under different circumstances, Finley would have definitely been Adam’s type. There was something disconcerting about all those factors swirling together in one person, so Adam just kept his eyes fixed straight ahead.
Adam thought Finley had gotten the message about them being done talking, but he spoke again just as they approached the looming oak doors.
“Eileen may seem…” Finley faltered, as though finding the right words was challenging. “High-spirited. But she’s a very sensitive person, at the end of the day. I’ll ask you not to abuse her hospitality. Or her trust.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Adam replied. Finley’s tone was bringing down his mood, and his hand still throbbed, and that strange sweet scent at the cave had given him a headache. He wanted to lie down. “Nicola and I are very grateful to be put up for the time being. And we’re happy to help Eileen in any way that we can.”
If it were possible, Finley’s expression darkened even more at the mention of Nicola’s name. Adam bit the inside of his cheek. He didn’t know when he was going to be alone with Finley again, hopefully never, so he should take advantage of the opportunity to level with Finley now.
“Nicola seems to have taken a shine to you,” he said in a tone that he hoped was slightly threatening in a still pleasant manner.
“Is this the part where you tell me to stay away from her?”
“This is the part where I tell you to be careful. She got her heart broken last year by some asshole on the lacrosse team. I would give her space, if I were you.”
Finley shot him a glass-edged look that had Adam spoiling for a fight, for closeness, for some kind of intimate violence that would burst the tension between them like a soap bubble.
“Why, because she’s yours?”
Finley, for some unhinged reason, was trying to get a rise out of Adam, and as much as Adam hated to admit it, it was working. He always got defensive when people mistookhim and Nicola for a couple, but he got even more defensive when she started running around with someone else. It was a bad quality, he knew that, but Finley, with his strange ties to Craigmar and entanglement with Eileen, was the last person Adam wanted to see Nicola involved with.
“No, because I don’t want to see her getting hurt,” Adam said.
“I have no intention of hurting her,” Finley said, and there were his cards, out on the table. “If anything, I have every intention of making her feel very good.”
Adam considered shoving Finley against the ancient oak of the doors, maybe balling Finley’s collar in his fist and holding him there while he did… something, but that seemed dangerous in more ways than one. He didn’t want to piss off Nicola or Eileen by roughing Finley up, and he didn’t quite trust himself to get that close to the other man. Besides, he couldn’t stop Nicola from doing exactly what she wanted, especially as far as romance was concerned.
“I’m the closest thing to family she’s got left,” Adam said, putting his cards down right next to Finley’s.
“If you’re just family, you won’t mind my stepping in, then.”
“We’ll see what Nikki decides,” Adam said, just to remind Finley who had known her the longest.
“That we will. Right of the lady to choose, isn’t it? Glad we could sort that out.”
Finley took Nicola’s toiletry bag from Adam withoutanother word, bumped open the door to the house with his shoulder, then tossed a final glance back to where Adam stood fuming on the doorstop.
“You shouldn’t carry anything with that hand for a while,” Finley said, disappearing into the house. “Welcome to Craigmar, Adam.”
In the resulting quiet, with nothing but birdsong and the rustling of high grass to break the silence, Adam wanted to scream.
Adam did his best to get more settled in his room, trying to break the living-out-of-a-suitcase habit since he may be here for a few days, maybe even more. He took in the room as he put his army-rolled clothes away in the chest of drawers.
He could get used to sleeping here, he thought. That thought felt a little bit dangerous but it also felt a little bit good, like slipping into a hot Epsom salt bath after a long, hard run.
