Page 47 of A Fearless Heart
Gabe looked concerned. “But if you do that, you’ll lose all the progress you’ve made. And I won’t see you again.”
“You might. You seem to show up wherever you want to be anyway.” She pulled away and looked at him inquisitively. “Why are you out here? There’s no task that would take you to this part of the property.”
“What if I said I got a premonition?”
“I wouldn’t believe you, particularly not after you broke into my glasshouse. But it was very good of you to rescue me,” she added, too grateful to ignore that effort.
“The truth is I saw you walking out this way and I got worried. What were you doing out here?” he asked. “Harvesting what? You could have asked someone else to gather whatever it was.”
She looked at him steadily, then sighed. “It’s not so simple.” From her pocket, she produced the little square of fabric. Opening it, she revealed the cache of minuscule mushrooms, straw colored and fragile, already shriveling up.
“Mushrooms?” he asked. “Are they safe to eat?”
“These aren’t for eating. I dry them and then grind them into powder and then steep a little in boiled water and drink it.” Why was she even talking to him, after he’d invaded her space?
“Oh, Christ. Like last time?”
“No, nothing like last time. I know how to use these. I’ve used them many times before. The tea I drink from these calms me down, it stops the shaking and the agitation and the…the endless circle of bad thoughts.”
“Will you tell me when you drink it?”
“Why, so you can spy on me?” she asked.
He flinched, but said, “You should have someone with you. After seeing you lying unconscious across the worktable of your laboratory once, I don’t want to see it again.”
“I feel like such a fool,” she said, the words rushing out of her. “I justneverthought that could happen on my own land. And I couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t even get to the knife in my bag, not that it would have been much use.”
He nodded. “Listen, you need to protect yourself in the future.”
“I thought you just said I was protecting myself too much.”
“I mean from real threats. Like those men. Whenever you walk the estate, you should take Romulus and Remus with you.” He paused. “They still make you nervous, don’t they? The dogs, I mean.”
“A little. I’m afraid they’ll bite me. Or I’ll lose control of them and they’ll bite someone one else, like a child…”
“One of the imaginary children in the wood.” He sighed. “You ought to walk the dogs anyway. Or you can take me along and I’ll mind the dogs,” he added.
The image of him and the two wolfhounds flanking her every step was surprisingly comforting. Except that she couldn’t trust Gabe. Even though part of her still very much wanted to trust him.
“We should return to the house,” she said, wishing she wasn’t always fleeing toward it.
“Wait. You’re disheveled.”
Gabe brushed away some loose debris from her hair. His fingertips grazed her neck and her lips parted in silent surprise. She peeked at him from under her lashes, trying to discern if his gesture was simple courtesy…or something else.
From the way he was looking at her, it was the something else. Tension built between them, like the charge in the air before a storm.
Cady knew he would kiss her. But she wanted him to kiss her again, ever since the encounter in the icehouse, when he showed her just how much she was missing by hiding alone in her tiny world.
So she tipped her head up and allowed it.
She let herself be subsumed by the intimacy of lips sliding on lips, breath that wasn’t hers filling her mouth, a voice too low for her to match saying lovely things that were undoubtably lies.
Oh, I remember. I still can’t trust him. Cady turned her head to the side, rejecting his admittedly dazzling attention. “This isn’t what I need,” she said.
“What do you need? Tell me.” The invitation was crystal clear, but Cady refused to respond to it.
Instead, she stepped back and said, “I need to go home and work in my laboratory. Without interruption and without intrusion.”
