He had been staying on his side of the cab, though his energy, his sheer Keltan-ness hadn’t been. It had wrapped around me and cocooned me in some sort of shroud that helped stop the real world from completely smashing through my defenses.
Then it wasn’t just his presence. His hands snatched my face, and he was across the cab. The movement itself was quick, and the outward gesture could’ve been brutal. But he managed to command my attention like that, setting my skin on fire as his hands cradled my jaw like it was a fragile china doll.
“Okay would have been making sure there was no reason for you to be within fifteen feet of a hospital,” he murmured. “Okay would have been not feeling the heat of a blaze that could have snatched you from this world while I watched. You were a hair’s breadth, baby.” His eyes blazed with the past and the present. “I know it ‘cause I’ve seen it. I didn’t do okay there either. In fact, I did a fuck of a lot less than okay.”
My breathing was strangled at his touch, his proximity and the weight of the emotions that saturated his words.
“Ian?” I guessed on a whisper.
He jerked his head once in response.
Of its own volition, my uninjured hand came to stroke his palm. I didn’t think of what an explosion would have done to an ex-soldier who had lost his best friend to fire. To war.
I did think about it now. Because that’s where he was right now. On the battlefield, seeing that happen again. His eyes danced with demons.
“I think you need to come inside,” I whispered.
The demons remained, but something flared behind them, and his hands flexed.
“Of course I’m fuckin’ comin’ inside,” he growled.
I opened my mouth to retract that offer thanks to his macho-man speak, but my retort was silenced with a quick, closemouthed kiss.
“You’re coming inside,” I mumbled.
He chuckled before pulling back and hopping out of his truck.
I did the same, and he scowled at me, helping me down.
“It’s a broken arm, not leg. I can get out of a truck,” I informed him snippily.
No words as his hand grasped mine and his eyes darted around the front yard of my small but cute cottage on the outskirts of Amber.
He was silent and watching the shadows the whole way up the walk.
I didn’t say anything either, the chill of reality settling over me from the day’s events.
War.
Not like the one Keltan was chasing back, but the crux of it was the same.
“Keys,” he demanded, holding out his hand and standing slightly in front of me on the stoop.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s open,” I replied.
The second of silence was filled with fury that saturated the night air. “What?” he asked on a quiet tone that was rather foreign.
Or the fury behind it was.
“Oh, chill out, it’s Amber.”
I felt his body tighten next to mine. “You mean the town in which at least three kidnappings have taken place, multiple murders—one of your friend—and today a fuckin’ car bomb went off, nearly killing you,” he roared, whisper a distant memory. “What the fuck were you thinking, Lucy?”
I didn’t scare easily. Or I’d like to think that. I’d faced a car bomb today, as Keltan had just pointed out, and had more or less kept my shit.
But his raw and unrestrained fury had me flinching, on instinct.
Because it was so unrestrained, so raw, that it mimicked, for just a moment, the anger that had settled the ice around my heart that this man had set about melting.
He sensed it, the fear, but he didn’t address it.
His hands bit into my shoulders. “Stay the fuck here,” he ordered.
And then he disappeared into my house, the lights flickering on as he did so.
I didn’t stay there, of course. It was chilly, my arm hurt and I needed wine. What did he expect to find in there, anyway? A whole crew of insurgents?
I walked through the front door into the hallway, greeted by fresh flowers, as always. Something else my mother taught me.
“No day can be truly bad if you have good lipstick and fresh flowers.”
And it was kind of true. It had been a well and truly bad day, but the vision of the white lilies calmed me some. As did the smiling photo of me, Mom and Polly hanging over it. And the knowledge of the wine in the kitchen.
And Keltan in the kitchen.
Instead of battling my emotions against wanting him there, I decided to give myself a second to breathe before I headed that way, my heels clicking against the hardwood floor. I stopped halfway to yank them off and throw them in the direction of the living room.
I sighed in relief at the cool wood flat against the throbbing soles. Years of wearing heels meant I got used to the pain, not that it wasn’t there. Kind of the same with the emotional stuff.