and Taron were working together, wouldn’t Darragh know about him too?”
“We’re not sure what Darragh knows at this point, which is why we have to move fast.”
We sat in silence for a minute while I looked for a new topic, not liking at all how uncomfortable the Darragh subject was making me.
“I’m not sure I’ll know what to do in my own bed tonight,” I said, hoping my diversion tactic wasn’t as plain to him as it seemed to me.
“I know,” he laughed. “What will you do without the creaky, rock-hard mattress, and the constant running of the broken toilet in the bathroom?”
“And the nurses constantly coming in to check on me, and then there was this guy who would not go away…”
I peeked over at him with a grin, to find him shooting me a wry glance. “Sounds awful.”
“Oh, it was!” I bit back a giggle. “I swear he was with me twenty-four seven, poor guy must have no life at all.”
“Must have been hell. You had to spend all that time staring at him, was he at least good looking?”
“Ah,” I shrugged, no longer able to contain my smile, “he’s all right.”
“Just all right?” he growled through his grin, grabbing me around the waist and dragging me with a shriek up onto his lap.
The next moment his mouth took hold of mine as both of his hands wound into my hair. My eyes fluttered as his lips worked their way down, nipping at my chin before blazing a tingling trail to my collarbone, then climbed back up the side of my neck, ending at his favorite spot just under my ear. The noises coming out of my mouth as my head lolled back were entirely involuntary and not exactly graceful, but given Alex’s reactions to them, they were exactly what he wanted to hear. I slid my hands down his back then slowly up his sides, relishing the moan that rumbled in his chest. Just as my fingers reached the buttons on his shirt, he let out a long breath and rested his forehead on my shoulder.
“We should stop,” he said with a hoarseness that made me shiver.
“No, I don’t think we should.”
He looked up at me with a grin. “We are in public, after all.”
“Then let’s go somewhere private,” I whispered, bending forward and kissing his neck as he’d done mine. As my lips teased the hollow of his throat, his chest begin to heave under me and suddenly his hands were grabbing at my back, fisting my shirt, pulling me closer.
“Becca,” he breathed after a too-short moment, “we have to stop.” Reluctantly, he took hold of my shoulders and lifted me away from him. “You’re not ready for this yet, you need more time.”
“Fine,” I sighed, with a frustrated grin.
“Don’t worry,” he said, kissing me lightly on the nose. “Soon.”
We sat, both of us trying to get our pulses back down to where they should be, while I was again trying to find a topic of conversation. Wonderful as kissing Alex had been for – ahem – personal reasons, it had also kept my mind from the hard lump forming in my stomach that I was trying desperately to ignore. I felt the tension creep into my face, and hoped I could find a new distraction before Alex noti–
“Becca, what’s wrong?”
Damn. “It’s nothing,” I said, standing. “Let’s go back in.”
“Becca,” he said, reaching out and grabbing my hand before I could walk away. “Please tell me.”
I looked down at the soft concern on his face, and felt the truth spill out of me before I could stop it. “I… I’m scared, Alex,” I admitted, looking away. “Darragh… he knows about me, I know he does. Cail would have told him by now. This is getting so serious, and I’m supposed to be the one who fixes everything. I’m not supposed to want to hide in my room.” I stopped, still looking down at the floor, both relieved to get the words out and ashamed at what they were. “What if I can’t make everything better?”
“Come here,” he said, pulling me back down onto his lap. He held the side of my face, and looked hard into my eyes. “Listen to me. It’s OK to be scared, it would be foolish not to be. But I want you to understand that it is not up to you to make things better. It’s up to all of us. You are never going to be alone, do you hear