It didn’t seem right a man who didn’t cook himself should have a kitchen superior to hers—and she’d considered her own a dream of style and efficiency.
So she brooded about that while she let the meat marinate, and set up her temporary desk in his nook.
Another cup of tea, a couple of biscuits—store-bought, of course—and her dog along with Bugs snoring under the table. She passed the time working on the formula for the second poison—ingredients, words, timing—sent a long email to her father in case he knew, or knew anyone who knew, more of demons than she could uncover.
By the time Fin came in, grubby from the stables, she’d abandoned her books and sat at his counter peeling carrots.
He got out a beer, said nothing.
“You’re the one who put me in this kitchen.” She didn’t snap, but the edge of one colored her tone. “So if you’re going to cling to your anger with me, take yourself elsewhere.”
He stood in a ragged jacket and sweater more ragged yet, jeans giving way at one knee and boots that had seen far better days. His hair mussed and windblown around the cool expression on his face.
It only egged on her own temper he could look so bloody sexy.
“I’m not angry with you.”
“You’ve an odd way of showing your cheerful feelings then, as you’ve been in and out of the house twice and said not a word to me.”
“I’m buying a couple more hacks for the guideds and working a deal on selling one of the young hawks to a falconer. It’s my business, one that keeps all this running, and I came in and up to my office so I wouldn’t be talking terms in front of the hands and the young girl in for her afternoon lesson.”
He tipped the beer toward her, then drank. “If it’s all the same to you.”
“It’s all the same, and still the same I’m saying to take your temper somewhere else. It’s a bloody big house.”
“I like them big.” He walked over, stood on the other side of the island. “I’m not angry with you, so don’t be a fecking idjit.”
She felt the very blood kindle under her skin. “A fecking idjit is it now?”
“It is from where I’m standing.”
“Then if you insist on standing there, it’s me who’ll go elsewhere.” She slapped down the peeler, shoved back, and got halfway to the doorway before he took her arm.
She gave him a jolt that would’ve knocked him back to the opposite side of the room if he hadn’t been ready for it. “Cool yourself down, Branna, as I’ve been working on doing these past hours.”
Her eyes were smoke, her voice a fire simmering. “I won’t be called an idjit, fecking or otherwise.”
“I didn’t say you were, only advised you not to be.” His tone was cool as January rain. “And for the third time, I’m not angry with you. And rage is too tame a word for what I hold in me for him, for the bastard who put his hands on you.”
“He poisoned Connor, near to killed Meara, and Iona, he’s burned Boyle’s hands black and laid you out on my kitchen floor. But you’re more than raged because he now knows the shape of my teats?”
He took her shoulders, and she saw now he spoke the truth. What lived in his eyes was more than rage. “Battle wounds, and fair or foul they’re won in battle. This wasn’t any of that. You’ve only just let me touch you again, and he does this? You can’t see the deliberation, the timing? Doing this so you’d think of my blood, of my origins when next I want to touch you?”
“That’s not—”
“And you can’t see, can’t think with that clever brain that he had contact with you? Physical contact, and with it might have pulled you out of the here and now to where he willed?”
She started to speak, then held up both hands until he released her. And she went back, sat again. “You can call me a fecking idjit now, as I’ve earned it. I didn’t think of either, but I can see it clear enough now. I didn’t think of the first, as you have nothing to do with what he did, what he tried to do to me. I wouldn’t think of him when you touched me, Fin. That’s where you have it wrong. He meant you to think it, and there it seems he succeeded.”