Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tate
By the time I come to bed, she’s dead asleep, sprawled across the blanket with her mouth partly open and her hair all askew. Still, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
And now she’s my wife.
The knowledge thrills me, even as the fear of what happens next pervades my every thought.
She’s both safer now and more in danger than ever.
Safer because she wears my metaphorical ring, bound to me with vows that are unbreakable.
More in danger because this has gone beyond what anyone ever suspected.
I crawl in beside her and wrap my hand around her belly.
I kiss her shoulder. I don’t expect anything from her right now.
I don’t need anything. I know it’s our wedding night, and we should be planning so much more than crashing in bed beside each other, but we both know the wedding was a mere formality. Insurance, as it were.
She smiles but doesn’t open her eyes. “Hello, husband,” she says in a husky voice.
I can’t help myself. I slowly divest her of her clothing, and within minutes, we’re quietly finding our way around each other again.
When she’s teeming with need, her legs wrapped around me as I capture her mouth with mine, I glide into her with a groan of satisfaction.
“Fuckin’ brilliant,” I whisper in her ear. “I love you so much.”
“And I love you,” she whispers as her climax overtakes her and her mouth parts in ecstasy.
I tuck her back under the covers, and she curls up next to me.
“No matter what happens, Tate,” she whispers. “Know that I love you.”
Her words have an ominous ring to them, and I know why. What happens over the next few days — even hours — will put us both in grave danger.
“No one will hurt you, lassie. I promise you that.”
I’ll kill every motherfucking one of them before they harm a hair on her head.
She smiles, her eyes already closed again. “I know you will.”
And it’s the stark determination, her steadfast knowledge that I’ll protect her, that bloody fuels me for what has to happen next.
I fall asleep with her curled up beside me, her steady breathing in line with my own.
The next day, I wake to find her sitting at the table wearing nothing but my T-shirt.
“Good morning,” she says with a soft smile. “I’m sorry to tell you, you’ll never get me to go back home.”
I lean up on my elbow and smile at her. I could get used to waking up to a view like that, her hair all sexy-tousled, my T-shirt, a wee bit too big for her, falling off her shoulder.
“Why’s that?”
She sighs, pointing her hand to the balcony.
She’s drawn the edges of the drapes open, likely not too far since she didn’t want to wake me.
“This bloody view,” she says, her voice husky.
But then something gets her attention. The paper she’s writing on falls to the floor, forgotten, as she walks to the balcony door.
She pushes the blinds open fully, warmth and light flooding the room in the early morning sun.
“We have to go to the beach,” she says suddenly. “How quickly can you get dressed?”
I’m already pulling on my trousers.
“What is it?”
She shakes her head. “Can’t tell yet. Could be just my imagination.” She gives me a winsome grin. “Or maybe I just want an early morning walk with my husband?”
She quickly dresses and tucks her phone into her back pocket. We’re a good bit away from the coast, and it takes us a few minutes to even get to the privacy gate that lets us out.
“For Christ’s sake,” she mutters, panting. “That view’s deceptive. Seems like it’s right outside that damn door, but they make you work for it, don’t they?”
I take her hand and tug her alongside me. “There are loads of things worth working for, lassie,” I say with a wink.
“Leave it to you to make it dirty.” But I can tell with the grin she’s giving me that she’s bloody pleased.
She frowns when we get to the cliff’s edge. My heart smacks against my ribcage seeing her set foot at the very brink, looking down at the beach below. “My God is it lovely here,” she whispers. “Something so raw and primal about it, isn’t there?”
“It’s alright,” I tease. “Leave it to the writer to wax poetic on it.” She sticks her tongue out at me.
“Damn lucky you’re so close to the edge, darlin’, or I’d smack your arse for the cheek.”
She wiggles said arse, but then the next moment, her brow furrows and she sobers, peering down at the beach below.
“How do we get to the beach?” she asks, stepping back off the edge.
I look around us, until I spy a stone staircase that looks like it’ll take us there. “Let’s try this.”
One does not go quickly down small, roughly-hewn stone steps built into the side of a cliff. By the time we’re on the beach, whatever she spotted is gone.
“Fran,” I say, my patience waning. “What did you see, love? Why won’t you tell me?”
She sighs, wrapping her arms around herself as a brisk wind kicks up over the sea. I drape an arm around her and turn her away from the bitter cold, bearing the brunt of the chill myself.
She shivers against me. “Because,” she says with a sigh. “I don’t want to give you false hope.” Her voice drops. “Or fear.”
“I can take it.”
She looks up at me, her eyes wide as saucers. “Thought I saw Islan, Tate. With her Welsh mate. Couldn’t be sure, of course…”
“What?” It’s the last thing I expected her to say. “How would she get here?”
“He’d have access to the same type of transport you do, wouldn’t he?”
I don’t reply at first, as I mull this over. “So now it’s ‘her Welsh mate?’”
She grimaces. “Believe so, aye.”
“Maybe it was just someone who looked like them…”
She doesn’t look convinced. “Perhaps.”
We explore every inch of the beach. A path here leads straight to the city centre, so even if it was Islan, and there’s no way to know if it was, there would be no way for us to find her. I call my family, but no one answers. Finally, just as we make it back up to the main house, I get Paisley.
“Where’s Islan?”
She blows out a breath. “Good morning to you, too, brother. Honest to God.”
“Paisley, this is important.”
She sighs. “Of course it is. Everything is always important. What is it, Tate?”
She’s not giving me a direct answer, and I know enough by now to know there’s reason for that.
“Paisley,” I say, in a warning tone.
“Fine, Tate. She spent the night with her date. She’s a legal adult now, you know, and doesn’t have to answer to all of you.”
“She bloody well does when our Clan’s in danger.”
“Tate, we’re always in danger. Bloody always.”
I don’t answer at first, because she’s fucking right. Every day you wake up a Cowen is a day you face danger.
“I need you to track her down, Pais. Can you do that for me? It’s important.”
She pauses before she answers. “Aye. I can.”
“Thank you. Keep me posted.”
We hang up the phone as we make it back to the main McCarthy house.
We meet Nolan and Sheena, Keenan’s youngest brother and his wife, as we make it to the house.
Fran chats easily with Sheena, and Nolan and I briefly catch up.
By the time we head to the main dining room, it’s teeming with people.
Staff milling about, filling teacups and mugs, carrying large platters of sizzling sausages, fried eggs, and broiled tomatoes, while others lay baskets of golden scones and thick slabs of soda bread on the table beside crocks of butter.
Fran swallows. “Now this is the way to honeymoon.” She winks, and now that she’s not teetering on the edge of a cliff, I give her that smack to the arse she earned.
“Tate!” she hisses, her cheeks coloring.
“I’ll show you the way to honeymoon,” I whisper in her ear. I live for the smile she gives me.
I sit beside my Clan brothers and Fran pulls out her phone.
I can tell by the way her eyebrows knit and she works her lip, and the fact that she doesn’t touch her plate of food, that she’s hard at work on something.
I don’t ask her what, giving her time to deal with it herself. She’ll tell me when she’s ready.
I’m in the middle of a conversation with Keenan when she jumps to her feet. We all look at her.
“I need to make a few calls,” she says. “I’ll go back to our room for a little privacy, alright?”
I nod. “Of course, lassie. Anything you need from me?”
She shakes her head. “No. Well, not yet, I should say. Soon, absolutely.”
She fairly runs out of the room. I watch her go, thoughtful. I wonder what it is she needs to find out.
I finish my conversation with Keenan, thanking him when he offers to give me anything I need.
I go back upstairs to Fran, and when I find her, she’s got wads of paper strewn all around her like baubles. I stand in the doorway, hands shoved in pockets. She doesn’t even look up when I enter.
“Have you found Islan?”
I frown. “No.”
She nods. “It was her I saw, I know it. Something else I saw just now confirmed it as well.”
I try to quell the rising panic as I think about this. “If Islan’s here, she’s come with the Welsh.”
“Aye,” Fran says, still furrowing her brow as her phone rings.
She takes the call. “Right,” she says, nodding.
“And when did that happen?” She scribbles notes on a pad.
“And when did he see him? Of course. Yes. Well, I do so appreciate everything you can find. I’m so grateful. Thank you.” She hangs up the phone.
“Fran,” I begin, but she holds her hand up to me.
“No, Tate, please, not now. I have so much I’m trying to figure out here, I can’t risk telling you my hypotheses.
” She looks up at me, her eyes pained in apology.
“I could hurt you right now if I tell you something I suspect, only to find that it isn’t so.
Hurt you so much. I don’t want to plant false hope. ”
Her words are an enigma to me. I don’t reply at first.
“Can you trust me?” she asks, her brows pinched together. “Please?”
“Aye,” I tell her, walking over to her so I can lift her chin and hold her gaze. “I can. But you let me know if you need me.”
“We don’t always need the assistance of a man,” she says, teasingly.
“Of course you don’t. Doesn’t mean you should deny the help when said help will make things go more smoothly, though. Just like it would be boneheaded of me not to ask for your help when needed.”
“I got myself into this mess,” she begins.
“In a sense, aye, but we aren’t innocent in this. And if I can aid you in any way, you need to tell me. Don’t let your pride get in the way, don’t make stupid decisions as a result.”
“Aw, Tate,” she says with a teasing smile. “You do say the most romantic things.”
I bend to her, covering her mouth with mine. She tastes like tea and biscuits, sweet and rich. I stifle a groan as her tongue plays with mine, sensual and seductive and all Fran.
“I’ve got a lot more zingers where that came from.”
She reluctantly pulls away from me, her eyes thoughtful, but I let it go. She’s working something out in her mind, and I need to give her the space to do that.
Still, I can’t shake the feeling that we’re on the edge of something… something that will change damn near everything. If Islan’s here… if she’s with the Welsh… we’ll have to find her.
And our Clans will war.