Off Kilter (24 page)

But Roan had already felt the shift. It was unnerving how easily he read her, felt the changes in her. It was also comforting. She latched on to that, to steady herself. He felt the fear in her, the tension, and yet nothing changed in him. Not even a flicker. She could be herself, even her broken, unable-to-relax-enough-to-just-enjoy-a-damn-kiss self … and he was still standing right there. She wanted to ask him again, why? She wanted to shake him, and ask him why he was taunting her with the impossible. Why did he think she, who was a veritable walking minefield, was worth the effort?

“I want to show you something,” he told her. “Let’s go for a walk. Bring the camera.”

Just like that, the moment ended. No recriminations, no making her feel like a pathetic loser because, once again, she’d pulled back emotionally. She felt she’d made a huge stride forward, despite being left with a gnawing ache in her gut.

After she grabbed the camera case from the truck, she turned to find him smiling at her, dimple winking and eyes crinkling. Maybe he realized it had been a breakthrough for her. It wasn’t a kiss.
The
kiss. But it was still a start.

He took her hand as if they walked hand in hand all the time, and started off toward a narrow trail through the wall of tumbled stones in front of them. When he wove his fingers through hers, she was the one to tighten their hand hold. He shot her a wink. And she was instantly infused with warmth.

So … they were flirting—attraction fluttering in your stomach like a firestorm of butterflies. It wasn’t only rampant need
and swamping lust. It was also … friendly. And playful. Joyful.

“It’s just down the trail here, but step carefully.”

He held her hand, helping her down the steeper parts, though she hardly needed the assistance. He had to know that, he’d watched her climb all over the rocks while taking shots of Graham and Katie’s wedding. But … it felt good, so she accepted the help, liking the feel of his easy strength. She remembered what he’d said, about casual touches and keeping their hands on each other. He’d said he liked the feeling of being connected, that it was reassuring, comforting. Exactly what she felt at that moment.

An undercurrent of attraction continued to sizzle, making her quite aware of how strong his hands were, the hard width of his palm against hers, the scrape of calluses … and fingers she already knew could tug her tight or stroke her with such gentleness.

At that exact moment she made a pact with herself: she’d do her damnedest to stay in the moment and enjoy the outing for what it was. Keep the anxiety, the fear at bay, and use the time to get to know Roan, and maybe learn a little more about herself. To give herself permission to simply … feel. She needed to stop thinking in big picture terms and reduce everything to right now … one morning. One outing. No worrying about where it might lead and what might happen. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know she was grappling with mental crap. He knew … and he was still there. For that reason alone, she should be able to trust him. With that pledge in mind, she let him lead her, still hand in hand, down the steep, rocky trail.

“It gets narrow here. You’ll have to turn to the side,” he instructed. “Keep your back against the rocks. Do you want me to take the camera?”

“I’ve got it.” She’d put the strap over her head so it went across her chest. The camera was such a natural extension of her, she hadn’t thought about it. It was far less gear than she usually worked with. “Where are we—oh. Wow.”

She’d inched around what was more a narrow ledge than a trail. Beyond that the tumble of boulders fell away to a steep drop-off … and a view that was breathtaking.

“That’s incredible.” The vista before her was framed on either side by two rugged rock peaks that soared higher than the one they were perched on, making her feel as if they were hugged between the two. Through the narrow gap in front of her, she could look below at the rock and boulder tumble that cascaded straight down for thousands of feet … all the way to the beach, and the cove beyond. If she looked forward, directly through the gap, the ocean played out as far as she could see, to the distant hazy horizon. “Such a primal juxtaposition between the jagged rocks and calm cove waters, heights and depths, distance and immediacy …” She was talking to herself as she unzipped her camera bag without even thinking about it.

Roan steadied her so she could use both hands. Her initial instinct had been to pull away, preferring to balance her own weight than rely on anyone to keep her centered, but she immediately quashed the instinct and let him brace her to the rock wall behind them. She reeled off a series of shots using the taller jagged peaks as a frame. What she wanted to do was lean out and take shots straight down, but she didn’t have anything to tether herself with.

She looked around for a place to wedge her feet, or better, a place to lie flat on her belly, when Roan carefully turned so his chest faced the wall. He reached up with one hand and grabbed a stubby branch growing out of a deep crevasse in the wall. He tugged, it held; then he slid his free arm across her hips, his upper body strength easily pinning her. “There,” he said, “go ahead.”

She looked at him and wondered again if he could read her mind.

“Just lean slowly.”

“Roan—”

He grinned. “I’ve got ye.”

The corners of her mouth kicked up. “You wish.”

“Aye, that I do. And often.”

She shook her head, but she liked flirting. The smile that had been hovering came out in full. It was … fun. “It would be better if I lay flat.”

“Many things are better that way, aye,” he said with a cheeky grin. “But for this, the ledge is too narrow, your angles would be challenging. You can get a shot straight down from here, if you shift slowly.”

“You sound quite sure of yourself.”

“You’re not the only one with a camera. The only difference is that when you risk your hide, at least it’s for a good cause. I’m fortunate my remains aren’t scattered down below.”

“You were up here alone?”

“Aye. Hiking. I was doing some historical research.”

“As part of the marketing for Kinloch?”

“It was personal curiosity, though the story is a good one for selling the island lore. There was a tale of an inland trail that led from the cove below up through a steep climb, then winding through the crevasses and passes, all the way back to the fortress, and I just couldn’t see how that was possible. So I started hunting for it.”

“Does it connect all the way to Flaithbheartach?”

“You’ve gotten pretty good with your Gaelic, ye know. I noticed it at the rehearsal. That ‘tis no’ a name that rolls easily off the tongue.”

“I’ve managed worse. At least your language has vowels.” Her smile widened. “Even if you do pronounce them all wrong.”

He grinned. “I believe we were utilizing the language long before your lot even organized yourselves.”

“True. Yet, you can actually understand us when we speak.”

“Pretty mouthy for a woman presently being held from plunging to her death by the arm of the very man she’s taunting. Living dangerously, lass.”

“You’ve no idea,” she said, but her smile remained. She trusted him. With a whole lot more than holding her to the
wall, apparently. How was that possible? “Okay,” she said, sliding the camera easily from it’s padded pouch. Ready?” Was she, she wondered?

“Aye.”

He firmed up his support as she set the f-stop and played with the other settings. She should have brought her regular gear, but she’d been working off her beloved old Nikon since her hike to the shore that fateful morning. The morning of her epiphany. The morning she’d almost gotten run down by Roan, and had begun to see him for who he really was. In her mind, the life-altering idea that had set her off on that hike, and her collision with Roan, physically and emotionally, had seemed tangibly connected in some way.

She looked through the viewfinder, then fiddled a little more with the aperture setting, and wondered what he would think if he knew why her camera bag had still been in the boot of Kira’s Fiat. She’d taken off in the car the morning before, much as she had the epiphany morning, with the same goals in mind.

She’d spent most of the previous thirty-six hours developing prints and working digitally with the wedding shots. Not only had she found herself drawn, time and again, to the shots of Roan, but to her candid shots of the villagers and the wedding party. It pulled at her mind … and her heart. And her thoughts had wound back to her goal of depicting the history of that place, and how it had led to the islanders’ current peace and quiet prosperity. She realized that the crux of the story was the people, more than the place itself.

She’d told herself the tug she felt was just the excitement of the story taking hold in her, as stories had in the past. That excitement was building. There was a story to tell. She not only felt it, she knew it.

It was entirely different from the way she normally approached her stories, as it was after the fact. She had the wonderful and rare luxury of time. Time to think, time to plot, time to plan. That was never the case in her previous work. It was
gut instinct and go for it, pray she got what she needed as she developed her angle while the story unfolded before her very eyes, in all its glory … and all its brutality.

Excitement was there, and the drive to tell the story, every bit as strong, but completely different. The tug wasn’t one of sorrow, or anger at injustice and inhumanity. The tug was one of … joy. Of hope. That, sometimes, things turned out for the better. Sometimes there were happy endings.

Huh. She hadn’t put it together until just that moment. She was working from a joyous outcome, back to the beginning, to the roots of the story. She already knew how it ended. There was a certain kind of peace in that. And a glory, too.

She’d gone out looking for more of the story the morning before, driven by the photos she’d spent half the night developing, unsure of where the journey would take her, but trusting she’d know what she needed when she saw it. She knew it would involve people as much as places, which was why she’d noticed a bunch of kids playing soccer in a field behind the one and only small schoolhouse on the island. It was just east of the village, past the port road. She’d initially headed that way, intending to position herself to take shots of the ferry coming in, thinking about links to history and survival that single form of transportation provided to the islanders. Instead, she’d turned and aimed her long range lens on the field. The idea that those kids were playing soccer on the very field where bloody battles had taken place had captured her attention.

The surprise had come when she’d looked through the lens, zoomed in … only to discover their coach was the man presently pinning her to a rock wall.

“Vertigo got ye?” he asked.

She twitched, her thoughts jerking away from memory of the frames upon frames of film she’d shot of him with those kids … to the same man standing in front of her, a concerned look on his face despite the levity in his tone. “No, I’m fine,” she said. She felt shaky, all right, but it wasn’t a physical issue. “I was just …” She glanced at him, and she felt the same tug she’d felt
looking through those shots of the wedding party and the guests—the tug of honest and real affection they had for one another, the tight bonds that had been forged through a lifetime of hard, unified work to keep their island colony thriving and alive.

She looked at him … and she felt the tug of wanting to be part of something significant. Not a wandering, anonymous member of the world at large, and not self-contained and safe within herself. But part of something—one thing—that was meaningful. And lasting. And unified. And very, very specifically not alone.

She lifted the camera and took a picture of his face, cheek pressed against the rock, green eyes laser sharp and focused on her. She got off three shots before he straightened slightly away from the wall. He kept his gaze on her, and his arm was still bracing her as he slid her closer to him. She didn’t question him, or try to stop him as he edged her a few inches around the rocky outcropping, then eased her onto a curve in the rock … and pinned her there with the full weight of his body.

Wordlessly, she let the camera drop between them and slid her hands onto his shoulders, then around his neck. He was already lowering his mouth to hers. She kept her eyes on his until the last possible second. When his lips brushed hers, she let her eyes close so she could sink fully into the kiss. With no sense of the precarious ledge they were on, or of why he’d chosen that particular moment, she let him kiss her.

He didn’t tease her like before. There was nothing playful or tentative or inviting about the kiss. Neither was it the lust-filled assault of the first kisses they’d shared.

It was … a plea. And a promise. He was kissing her like … like she meant something. Like the narrow edge beneath their feet could crumble at any moment, and it might be the only time he had to let her know how he felt. There was no desperation in it. It was ardent, but reverent.

He eased her mouth open, and she moaned a little as he took her fully. Her hands twined tightly around his neck and she was
swamped with his scent, his taste, and everything he was becoming to mean to her. It was as if he was making love to her mouth, slowly, rhythmically, and she groaned at the way it pulled at every single part of her. She wanted him buried deep inside her, assuaging the stark, almost painful physical need she had for him. She wanted to stay, pinned in the protective shield of his body, connected only by their mouths in a way that was more intimate, more exposed, more vulnerable, than any mating she’d ever experienced. He was being open, honest, and raw with that kiss. It was fierce, emotional, and impossibly sweet.

She needed—wanted—to be a part of it, not simply a recipient. She needed him to know she was fully engaged. She slid her fingers into his hair, then touched his face, stroked his cheek. She didn’t try to take control; she just wanted—needed—to touch him, so he’d know she was feeling all the things he was pouring into the kiss, into her.

Instinctively, she pressed her palms to the sides of his face, and gently disengaged him from the kiss. He looked at her, and there was such rampant need and hope … and fear in his eyes. She wanted to keep the first two and erase, forever, the last. But she knew she couldn’t. Because she was scared to death herself.