“It’s all right. He’s on the sofa downstairs. Do you need anything? I can make you some tea to help you sleep again.”
“I feel like I’ve slept a week.”
“And some of us haven’t slept through one bloody night,” Boyle muttered. “Go away, Meara.”
“I’m going. I’m sorry.”
She went out through the hall door, heard the rumble of Boyle’s voice, the murmur of Iona’s laugh before she shut it behind her.
Fine for them, she thought, all curled up warm together, and here she was sneaking around in the middle of the night trying to find her man.
She was halfway down the steps before it struck her.
Her man? When had she started thinking of Connor as “her man”? She was fuddled up, that was all, just fuddled up from magicks dark and light. She wasn’t thinking any way at all, not clearly, and should probably go straight back up to bed.
Sleep it all off.
But she wanted him, that was the hell of it. She wanted her head resting on his shoulder as Iona’s was on Boyle’s.
She made her way down.
He’d wrapped himself up in the throw on the sofa that was too short for him so his feet ended up propped on the arm of it, and his face half smashed into the pillow angled on the other arm.
The only way a man could be near to comfortable under the circumstances would be by drinking himself unconscious first. She shook her head, set her hands on her hips, and wondered how he managed to look so fecking adorable, considering.
They’d banked the fire so it burned low with simmering coals red as a beating heart. The light flickered over him, adding a bit of the devil to the adorable.
Regardless, she had some words to say to him, and he was about to hear them.
She started forward, eyes on his face, and tripped over the boots he’d tossed aside.
She landed on him, hard and full, getting an elbow in the belly for her trouble. So the first word she said to him was oof.
And his response was a muttered, “What the fuck!” as he levered up, grabbed her shoulders as if prepared to give her a good toss. Then he said, “Meara?” and pushed the hair out of her face.
“I tripped over your gigantic boots and into your bony elbow.”
“You may have collapsed one of my lungs. Here.” He shifted her, managed to sit with he
r half sprawled over his lap.
It was far from the way she’d intended things to go.
“Are you feeling sick then?”
Even as he lifted a hand to her brow as if to check for fever, she batted it aside. “Why is everyone thinking I’m sick? I’m not sick. I woke, that’s all there is to it. I woke as I’ve slept most of a day and half a night away.”
“You needed to,” he said, altogether reasonable. “Do you want some tea?”
“I can see to my own tea if I’m in the mood for bloody tea.”
“Sure you’re in some mood or the other.”
Tears wanted to fight their way through the annoyance, and she wouldn’t have it. “You said you’d forgiven me.”
“I did. I have. Here now, you’re cold.”
She batted again as he started to wrap the throw around her. “Leave off, will you leave off fussing over me.” Those insistent tears kept pushing up, shocking, shaming, stupefying her. “Just leave off.”