Page 49 of Savage Blooms
She heard the bitterness in her voice, and she saw the way it stung in the slight narrowing of Adam’s eyes, but she didn’t care. Sometimes, being right was more important than being nice.
“Eileen has been through a lot, and she’s been super generous. She’s put us up here for free and cooked for us and she even offered to buy our plane tickets home. I don’t think it’s fair for you to—”
“What if Eileen isn’t the princess locked in the tower waiting for you to save her?” Nicola said, voice nearly breaking. She feared that if Adam wasn’t willing to entertain this notion, at least, then he was truly lost to whatever spell Craigmar was weaving. “What if she’s the wicked witch?”
“That’s a mean thing to say,” Adam said flatly.
Nicola deflated like a Valentine’s Day balloon forgotten in the back of the florist shop.
They sat in silence for a moment, Nicola scowling down at her hands and blinking back tears, Adam propped up awkwardly in bed as he chewed on his lip. Then, just as Nicola was considering storming out of the room and slamming the door behind her, Adam spoke.
“This isn’t a story,” Adam said slowly, like she was a fool, like she was a child. “It’s real life. It’s okay if youfeel jealous. I know family stuff is hard for you. I think last night probably just opened up some old wounds.”
This was why Nicola had never dated Adam Lancaster. He acted like such a rationalist when it came to other people, but when it came to the whims of his own heart, he always did whatever he felt like.
“That’s really patronizing,” she said, voice small. The tears stung like hot coals at the corner of her eyes. Another minute of this and she would break, but she refused to let him see her cry.
“I don’t even know what you’re accusing her of, except giving you bad vibes,” Adam said, and now he was the frustrated one. He threw back the sheets and stood, yanking a long-sleeved T-shirt on over his sweatpants. “You’re not the only one who has damage about their family. Can you please just let me have this and enjoy it for one day before you start poking holes in a good thing?”
Nicola’s blood turned to ice in her veins.
She had a handful of theories about what Eileen might be up to, none of which ended well for Adam, but at that moment, she couldn’t care less what happened to him.
“Fine,” she said, standing to go. “It was stupid of me to come here, anyway. Enjoy being the chosen one, or whatever the fuck. I’m going for a walk.”
“Nikki,” Adam said with an exasperated sigh. She thought, in her extravagant rage, that she would like to cut out his tongue the next time he called her that. “Don’t. It’s freezing out.”
“Good,” she said. “Maybe I’ll die out there and you and Eileen can celebrate by fucking at my funeral.”
Nicola slammed the door behind her, hard enough to rattle the doorframes, and strode down the halls. Hot tears streamed down her face as she choked back a sob, her fists bundled up tight at her sides.
Let Adam figure it out himself, she decided.
If he suffered in the process, so be it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Adam
Adam didn’t follow Nicola as she stormed off down the hall, and he told himself that he didn’t care if she caught pneumonia out in the grounds. If she wanted to have a meltdown out on the moors like one of her Gothic romance heroines, so be it. The tightness in his chest was just anger because she was being impossible. And the pain in his jaw from grinding his teeth was just from sleeping so deeply after that late night.
Adam dressed and drifted down the master staircase, moving a little slower than usual. He looked up at the portraits he had admired so many times, wondering what it would look like if his grandfather’s face had been captured in oils. Wondering why his grandfather had ever left this place, and why he had never heard about a sister named Arabella, or about any family at all.
Nicola’s warning burned in the back of his brain,reminding him that he didn’t have the whole picture. There was probably something here he had missed.
Adam pushed away the thought as he made his way to the ground floor. Sometimes, good things just happened. There didn’t have to be an ulterior motive or a cosmic scale being rebalanced. Sometimes, families grew apart from each other then they reunited. It was the oldest story in the world, and it didn’t have to have a twist ending.
Adam wandered into the kitchen, expecting Finley and Eileen to have already finished their breakfast, but instead he found Eileen alone, her shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows, her hands covered in flour. She was trying to pry up the gelatinous dough spread out on the counter with a bench scraper.
“Morning,” Adam said with a chuckle. “What are you up to?”
Eileen started, then pressed a flour-dusted hand to her throat while she caught her breath.
“You scared me. I thought you wouldn’t be up so early.”
“It’s nearly ten,” Adam said, nodding at the clock. “Pretty late in the day, actually.”
“Oh,” she said, looking down at the various items spread over the counter. Adam spotted walnuts soaking in a ceramic bowl, butter chopped into irregular cubes softening in a dish, and some sort of poultry defrosting in the sink while still wrapped in butcher’s paper and twine. That didn’t even cover the utensils, scattered around the kitchen like shrapnel from a cannon blast, and thevarious plates and cutting boards, of which Eileen had already dirtied a dozen. “I must have lost track of time. I’m not used to cooking big meals like this. Thank God I started early.”
