Page 51 of Finding the One (River Rain #7)

Wet Leaves

Blake

S hit.

“Am I fucking lost?” I asked the misty fog that was hiding the huge-ass house I should be able to see from here. Surely.

I was giving myself one hell of a moisture facial out in this weather.

But for goodness sake, I’d turned back at least half an hour ago, and by now I should be seeing the house forming through the fog.

This just cut it.

Lose my shot at love and life and children with a man who unbuckled my shoes and took them off for me, then die of exposure maybe a hundred yards from my ancestral home.

“I hope Rix doesn’t mind being daddy to the next Marquess of Norton,” I muttered into the mist. “Or Marchioness.”

I kept tromping, pretty sure my cute Jimmy Choos were a loss to the mud and wet, also realizing I chose poorly with footwear, considering the cold and wet was oozing through the knit.

And as I walked, I saw a figure forming in the mist coming toward me.

Oh God.

How embarrassing was this?

Christine got worried about me and came out to fetch me.

Some English aristocrat I was. I couldn’t even take a walk on my own estate without needing a rescue.

But…

Wait.

That wasn’t Christine.

The figure was too tall.

The shoulders too broad.

It was a man.

No, it was the man.

I stopped dead.

Holy hell.

It was Dair.

What was he doing there?

Panicked, I stared at him.

He kept prowling toward me.

Even more panicked, I looked left then right.

All I saw was fog, drizzle and the bleary outline of some faraway trees.

Totally panicked, and not thinking, I turned on my Jimmy Choo and started running.

“ Blake! ” Dair bellowed.

I kept running.

In my dash, I tripped over a rock (or something), flew forward while careening, nearly went down, jarred my back with the effort not to (and it hurt like crazy), but I righted myself and kept going.

“Oh my God, how do people do this ?” I wheezed as the trees started to take shape through the mist.

“Blake!”

That sounded closer.

A lot closer.

I kept running.

I heard him bounding after me.

Trust me to get in a foot chase with a professional athlete.

Someone shoot me.

I hit the woods and zigged and zagged through the trees.

“Bloody hell, stop!” Dair shouted from what sounded like right behind me.

I zigged again.

Then it felt like a cinderblock, or twelve, hit me square in the back, and I went down on my stomach in the wet leaves, a heavy weight landing on top of me, and I did this with an “ Oof! ”

I hadn’t even begun to get my breath back when he wrenched me lower under his body, turned me then dumped all his weight on me.

“ Oof! ” again!

“What the fuck are ye doing?” he growled in my face.

“Running,” I panted.

“Through thick fog where ye can’t see a goddamned thing? Ye nearly broke an ankle back there.”

He was still growling.

What he was not doing was panting or even breathing heavily.

Ugh!

He was the worst .

“Get off me,” I demanded.

“No fucking way. Ye might run again.”

I was never running again in my life .

“You tackled me,” I accused.

“Aye, because you were running from me.”

“Take a hint, hotshot, a woman runs from you?—”

His big hand covered my mouth, and that pissed me off so badly, I felt my eyes nearly pop out of my head.

“You’ve said your words, lassie, and now I’m going to say mine.”

I glared at him, even knowing I looked like a moron lying in damp leaves, my hair a wet, tangled mess. I hadn’t put makeup on that day (which turned into a boon because in this weather, it’d be all over my face). And I was doing this under a mountain of muscle with his hand wrapped over my mouth.

But what else could I do?

“Are ye going to keep quiet so I can talk?” he asked.

“Fuck no,” I said behind his hand, which came out as “Fug nah.”

He understood it anyway, which was why he said, “Fine. We’ll do it like this.”

I tried to heave him off.

I didn’t so much as budge him.

God!

I kept glaring.

“I’m in love with ye.”

I stopped moving entirely.

I even stopped breathing.

“I dinnae give a shite if ye were a bitch to your sister,” he carried on.

“Or ye were arrested. I want to know the houseboat story, but I dinnae give a shite if ye come off bad in that one too. That isn’t the woman I fell in love with.

” He pressed everything into me, his body and his hand over my mouth. “ This is.”

I remained frozen beneath him.

“And dinnae take that as me giving a shite about any of that at all, lass. It’s you. It’s what made you. It was the path you took that led you to me. And since it was, I’ll take all of it and be glad to have it when it comes to you.”

Oh my God !

He’d just winded me again (without landing on me).

And he wasn’t done.

“Ye are not Helena,” he asserted. “You’re not one thing like Helena.”

Oh God.

I started squirming.

“Stay still,” he grunted.

I bucked.

He didn’t shift an inch.

God!

I gave up.

He kept at me.

“You were a girl who was lost. You found yourself, Blake. Dinnae lose yourself again because I was piss poor in communicating my shite to you.”

I went back to glaring.

“I got in my head. You mentioned we should be freaked at how good it was between us, then Rix told me about Alex, and I got stuck in my head. I did that because it started the same with Signe. Nothing but good.”

With that, I began struggling in earnest.

He took his hand from my mouth to grab both my wrists and pull them over my head.

“Get off me, Dair!” I shouted.

He transferred both wrists to one hand, held them easily (he was totally the worst !), and put the other over my mouth again.

GAH!

His face came so close, he had to be speaking against his hand.

“You are not Signe either. My concerns were relevant. I got burned. I fell in love with a woman who didnae exist. That boiled up and it made me fuck up. I should have explained that to ye better. I should have explained where my head was at. But I treated you like a child. And I said shite to you that should never have come out of my mouth.”

“Yes, you did,” I said into his hand. But it came out “Hes, hu deh.”

His beautiful gray-blue eyes melted, and he whispered, “Baby, I’m so fucking sorry.”

Oh no.

That got to me.

I turned my head away and his hand came with it.

So he rested his forehead against my temple and spoke in my ear.

That got to me too.

“I ken who ye were, and I ken how ye changed. When I told Mum what I did to you?—”

Shocked he spoke to his mother about us, I righted my head with a snap, which wrenched my back, and damn.

I had a feeling I might have actually hurt myself.

“She tore me a new one, hen,” he said quietly after he caught my eyes. “It was only me promising to come down and sort it with ye why she’s not down here herself, blackening my name and disowning me.”

I just stared at him.

“You two girls were alone. Ned was lost in the fuckup of picking Helena. But Mum told me that you were the focus for Helena. You bore the brunt of it. Maybe she was jealous of ye. Maybe she thought she was doing what she was supposed to. I dinnae fucking know, and I dinnae fucking care. She didnae mark you. She scarred you. And I didnae take that into account when I spoke to you. I didnae take into account ye just lost her and you were trying to understand how you felt about it. I didnae look after my woman, and if I lose ye because of it, I’ll regret it ’til my dying day. ”

Damn.

That got to me too.

Because, how could it not?

He took his hands from my mouth and wrists so he could frame my face with both of them.

“It’s miraculous what ye made of yourself, darling,” he said tenderly. “You were given no foothold at all, but ye found a way to climb out of the pit she tossed you in anyway. And that’s amazing.”

“You don’t have to do this, Dair,” I said shakily. “I’ll call Kenna in a few days and tell her it’s all good. It’s for the best. You need someone who knows how to love. I don’t know how to do that.”

Now Dair was staring at me.

This went on a while.

So long, I requested, “Um, if I ask nice, will you get off me?”

“No.”

I glared again.

“Ye dinnae ken how to love?” he asked.

“Well,”—I flipped out a freed hand—“obviously.”

“Obviously?”

“Are you going to repeat everything I say?” I demanded.

“Until you start making sense, aye.”

“Dair—”

“Ye took care of everything for your sister’s wedding.”

“You should know, I had a wedding planner for mine, and I treated her like shit too.”

Dair ignored me. “You made Marlo feel welcome in your family, for her, but mostly for your dad because you adore him.”

“That wasn’t hard. She’s?—”

“Nora dropped everything to come out and plan your mother’s funeral. All your friends dropped everything to be there for you.”

“They were there for Alex.”

“The G-Force wasn’t there for her.”

This was true.

Hmm.

Dair wasn’t finished lecturing.

“And Alex isn’t the new Marchioness of Norton. Alex didnae have important people she had to impress with hymn choices and floral arrangements. Aye, they were there for Alex, and they were there for you .”

I decided to stop speaking.

“Ye looked after my mum in Arizona after all that happened with Dad. You were pissed on my behalf when ye thought Dad or Signe upset me.” He paused, considered me, then asked, “Am I getting through to you at all?”

“You’re crushing me.”

In one lithe movement (bloody athletes), he rolled off and to his feet, and he offered me his hand.

I ignored it and tried to get up myself.

My back spasmed, and the pain was so bad, I fell to my ass in the wet leaves, which made the pain worse.

“Babe, take my hand,” he ordered.

I tried to get up on my own again and winced.

He instantly crouched down beside me.

“Are ye hurt?”

“Why, yes, Dair,” I snapped. “A huge man chased me through a forest and tackled me to the leaves.”

He grinned.

Stupid Dair.

“Know my tackle didnae hurt ye, lassie. I ken my tackles.”

“Well, on top of jarring my back when I tripped, it?—”

I said no more because he frowned, then, before I could blink, I was up in his arms.

Good Lord.

This was worse!