“I meant here in Boston, not here at this house. Although that too.”
His eyes washed over my face, seeming to caress every minute aspect of it, and blood rushed to my cheeks. “Fuck, I’ve missed you,” he confessed hoarsely.
My stomach fluttered. Since the moment he’d stepped onto the porch, hope had risen within me. Was it possible that Lachlan Adair did love me? “You came all this way because you missed me?”
“I came all this way because I was scared that if I didn’t follow you here, you’d make up your mind to not come home.”
His words hit my chest, expelling a shocked exhalation. “Home? Is Ardnoch my home?”
He pushed up off the chair and knelt at my feet. He reached for my hand and placed my palm against his chest. I could feel his heart pounding hard beneath it. “Braveheart, I want your home to be where I am because my home is wherever you are.”
Tears filled my eyes at his beautiful words.
But he wasn’t done.
His expression turned fierce. “I am so sorry I let you walk away. That I ever allowed you to think that my love for you isn’t real.” His grip on my hand tightened, pulling me toward him. “So many people have failed you, made you feel like you aren’t a priority. I don’t want to be one of those people. Not when you are the most important person in my life. You consume me. You are beyond a priority at this point. You’re … fuck, you’re everything. Robyn, I don’t know if I deserve you … but I can promise you, no man will ever try harder than me to be worthy of you.”
My tears, tears of pure relief and joy, spilled down my cheeks as I threw myself at him, almost taking him off his knees. Lachlan grunted and regained his balance as I peppered his face with kisses. When my lips met his, his laughter filled me, and then he was kissing me back, his arms strong, tight bands of steel, not letting me go.
But I didn’t feel caged.
I felt bound by belonging.
“Does that mean you’ll come home?” he broke the kiss to demand gruffly.
I stared up at his face, a face I’d come to love more than any other and asked, “Is that where you’ll be?”
He nodded, grinning that mischievous, boyish smile I hadn’t seen in weeks.
I beamed, so happy, I could die from pure bliss. “Then that’s where I’ll be.”
41
Robyn
The whir of the automatic blinds prodded through my consciousness, followed by a stream of light tickling my eyelids.
I groaned, peeling my eyes open and blinking against the sunlight streaming into the master bedroom. One wall of the room was made entirely of glass bifold doors. The fitted blinds were on a timer to rise at six o’clock. Lachlan was happy to change it so I could sleep longer, but I liked getting up at the same time as him, not wasting the day.
I reached across, feeling the warm but empty spot next to me in bed. He was already up. I heard the fall of the shower in the bathroom and imagined Lachlan standing under it. From memory. We’d had plenty of shower sex these last three months.
Remembering Lachlan called last night to say he’d be home late and that I’d fallen asleep before he returned, I felt a tingle waking between my legs. The club had been unbelievably busy over the last three months, and there were many late nights for Lachlan, but he promised things would wind down soon before the winter guests descended.
I could go join him in the shower, which would be better for him, but I couldn’t get my ass up off his mammoth, comfortable Low Tokyo bed.
Not his, I reminded myself.
Ours.
Anytime I called something his and not ours in the house, it pissed him off.
“If you don’t start referring to it as such,” he’d said one day, belligerent, “I will sell everything in here so you can pick out new furniture, if it means you claiming it as yours.”
I’d tried not to laugh because he was genuinely put out. “I claim you as mine—isn’t that enough?”
Lachlan liked that, but he still wanted me to feel like the gorgeous home looking out over the water, next to Thane’s, was mine too.
And it was slowly but surely coming to feel like it. It would even more so with the special building Lachlan erected next to us for my business. The structure itself was complete. Soon the interior would be, too, and for the first time, I’d have a dedicated space for my photography business. That, and the fact the house was a mere five-minute drive from Mac’s cottage, made it as perfect as anything could be.
While Mom and Seth took me leaving hard (though they promised they were happy for me), I’d left with the assurance I’d return to Boston for the holidays.
I’d left with the utter certainty that Ardnoch was my home.
Lachlan was here.
Mac was here. Mac, who was over the moon to have me back so we could continue getting to know each other.
My new life was here.
I still wanted to travel, and in fact would need to if I wanted to grow my business. Lachlan was talking about hiring a manager for the estate so he could travel with me. For now, everything was on hold while we waited for Lucy’s trial to start. In the three months since I’d moved back to Scotland, the process against Lucy had been slow. But being a cop who’d once dated a lawyer, I already knew that it would be.
Lachlan and I had some things to distract us from the case, beyond our seemingly never-ending appetite for one another. I’d gotten to meet Brodan, for one. Lachlan’s middle brother returned from filming to check on Lachlan. As tall as his brother, he was less rugged. Brodan was good-looking in more of a Scottish Captain America way and had a devil-may-care attitude that came more naturally to him than it did to his big brother. He flirted with me and any woman in his vicinity, other than Eredine, whom he treated with a measured respect that made me like him even more. But Brodan’s eyes held shadows that I knew Lachlan saw and worried about. His brother insisted he was just exhausted, but instead of recuperating at home, he’d left as soon as he could.
It felt like he was escaping the people who knew him best.
Lachlan suspected it, too, and my overprotective guy brooded for days after Brodan’s departure.
Arran finally contacted Lachlan as well, but he didn’t make any promises to come home. He was in Thailand, working at a bar, doing his thing. He was fine. Maybe he’d be home at Christmas, he said.
I had a low opinion of Arran. Who didn’t come home when a family member was almost murdered?
Suffice it to say I felt the same way about Regan, but I couldn’t think about my sister.
It hurt too much.
Instead, I focused on my new life as much as I could, trying to push through the fact that Lucy’s fate was still unknown. There would be no plea bargain for her because there was so much evidence regarding Fergus’s murder. Her part in stalking Lachlan and in McHugh’s murder was harder to prove, but she was facing a lengthy prison sentence for killing Fergus, kidnapping Lachlan, and attempting to murder us both. At present, Lucy’s defense team had brought in forensic mental health professionals to evaluate whether she was a candidate for the insanity defense.
I wasn’t a psychologist—and wouldn’t be so bold as to diagnose Lucy with a personality disorder—but it seemed likely considering her extreme behavior, narcissism, and fixation. We didn’t know if the abuse she’d spoken of really happened or if it was all part of her manipulation to make us see her as the victim, but no accusation of abuse should be ignored, and I hoped the mental health professionals assigned to her case helped her as much as they helped the police look into it. A part of me was incredibly sad for Lucy, despite the terror she’d put us through.