Page 49 of Savage Blooms (Unearthly Delights #1)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Eileen
“What’s the damage?” Eileen called, cupping her hands around her mouth to help the sound carry.
Finley was balancing at the top of a rusty ladder they had hauled out of the gardening shed, taking stock of the state of the roof.
In response, he tossed a few crumbling shingles down onto the ground.
They landed at Eileen’s feet, ancient and useless.
“I’ll take that as an indication we might be looking at repairs,” she said.
Finley dusted off his hands, then climbed down the ladder and came to stand at Eileen’s side.
He had left his coat in the house, and his forearms were slick with the mist hanging in the air.
Eileen was bundled up in her biggest tweed coat, a newsboy cap protecting her hair from the damp.
She had slept nearly twelve hours last night, and woke to the undeniable sense that something had happened in her house when she was asleep, something that she would have very much liked to be consulted about beforehand.
Finley’s guilty-dog look when she caught him in the kitchen told her most of the story, and the confession he had made when she pulled him into the pantry for privacy told the rest.
Eileen put on a good show, pretending not to care.
Why should she? Finley wasn’t her husband, and she wasn’t his wife.
They had always run around with other people, even if Eileen’s options had been limited.
And Adam and Nicola were the right people to run around with, if it came right down to it.
Anything to bond them all more tightly together, to make Adam feel like he never wanted to leave, and to encourage Nicola to support him in his desire to stay.
And if Eileen felt a little bit left out, and like her health had prevented her from participating in a game she would have liked, that was her wound to nurse.
She had laid into Finley about locking her in her room, at any rate, and he had insisted it was for her own protection.
It felt good to fight with him about something, fighting felt familiar, made her feel like there was life left in her yet.
And she had won that fight, by such a landslide that Finley had offered to do that chore he had been putting off and look at the roof to make amends.
“Lots of the shingles are shredded from weather, and others have been ripped off altogether,” he pronounced. “Your parents didn’t ever have this roof replaced, did they?”
“I doubt it. Even then, there wasn’t much spare money for large repairs.”
“Well, add the shingle damage to the accumulated wear and tear of the years, and we’re seriously overdue for calling in a contractor.”
Eileen wrinkled her nose and shook her head.
That simply wouldn’t do.
“No outsiders,” she said. “We’ll fix it ourselves.”
“Eileen, I’m not a roofer. If I don’t break my neck from climbing up there, I’m liable to do more harm than good to the house.
I’ve done what I can to keep the grounds clean and make essential repairs, but I don’t have the expertise for this.
I know you’re tight on money, but this isn’t something you ignore. Call a contractor.”
Eileen shook her head again, more forcefully this time. Craigmar had stood for hundreds of years, and it would stand for hundreds more. She was Craigmar, it was in her blood. It wouldn’t fall while she lived.
“You want me to bring a stranger in and tell them that my house needs to be defended against supernatural creatures, is that it?”
Finley sighed long-sufferingly in a way that made him seem twice his age. Eileen resented him for his old-man habits; they only served to remind her that he was technically a couple days older than her, and that he liked to act like it.
“I’m not saying anything like that. I know you don’t like bringing in outsiders—”
“It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s that it’s dangerous.”
“But exceptions have to be made. You see the doctor, don’t you? Well, your house needs a doctor now.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child,” Eileen said, turning and walking towards the house with long, determined strides. God, she was furious with him. Any of the goodwill he had earned by promising to fix the roof while trapped in the pantry had completely evaporated.
Finley jogged to catch up with her, then caught her by the wrist.
“I need you to listen to me, Eileen. This is getting serious, and I don’t think—”
“It’s been serious for me from the start,” she bit out, her temper snapping like a dry twig. “It’s been serious since my parents were murdered. This place is my albatross, Finley, my home, mine. I don’t expect you to understand.”
A dark warning flashed behind Finley’s eyes, an indicator that she was skirting too close to a sore subject, but she pressed on, gathering momentum as her anger mounted.
“You can leave anytime you want. You could move to Edinburgh, or go back to university, or go live with your father on Skye. Nothing is holding you here but some misplaced loyalty to my family, from which I release you. I can’t leave, Finley, and I never will.
I was born here and I’ll die here, so I’ll make the decisions about what happens to the house. ”
“Release me?” Finley said, barking out an unkind laugh. “You want me gone now, is that it?”
“I don’t care what you do,” Eileen said, even though she knew she did care, to a desperate, sickening degree.
It was just so hard to control her tongue when she was angry, or frightened.
She couldn’t stop thinking about how close she had been to losing Adam, to destroying an innocent life and her only hope at survival in the process.
There was so little holding the fae back from devouring Craigmar whole, just old promises and tenuous magic she didn’t totally understand.
Eileen marched back to the main door, but Finley caught up with her again on the threshold. This time, he grabbed her by both shoulders and forced her to face him.
“Let me go or I’ll scratch your eyes out,” she ordered.
“I’m not here because of loyalty to your family, Eileen; hang your family. I’m here because of you, and you know that. How can you say all that when I—”
“Oh, you know I hate it when men grovel; don’t start.”
Finley shook her hard enough to rattle her earrings, and now he was mad, in that way that made the meanness coiled deep inside him strike like a pit viper. Eileen glowered right at him as he laid into her.
“I’m tired of giving you everything and having you throw it back in my face.
You can hardly take care of yourself, and you beg me to boss you around and act like your father just so you don’t have to think about anything, then you turn around and treat me like a servant the moment I displease you.
You’re an ungrateful, spoiled headcase and I’m the only one who fucking sees that, but I’m still here.
You owe me, Eileen. The things I have done for you, the lines I have crossed, the—”
He bit off the rest of the sentence, all the blood draining from his face.
Eileen looked over to find Adam standing in the doorway, Nicola close behind him.
She thought they had been gazing into each other’s eyes, or having tender missionary sex, or doing whatever else normal young couples spent their time doing.
Eileen wouldn’t know. All the gazing and fucking in her life had always been coupled with fighting, with manipulation and pain and power struggle.
“I heard shouting,” Adam said unsteadily, his eyes flickering from Eileen’s face to Finley’s tight grip on her shoulders.
Eileen wanted, in a dark, cruel rush, to hit Finley, really hit him. All her carefully laid plains and meticulously placed breadcrumbs of information, and he was about to blow it all in front of the Americans because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
Eileen shoved Finley away. Hard. He stumbled back a few steps, then moved to grab at her again, but Adam was quicker. With a speed of a track runner, he was out of the house and between Finley and Eileen, gripping Finley’s upper arm.
“Everybody take a lap!” Adam barked, holding Finley back. Eileen nearly stumbled in the gravel from the efficiency with which Adam had broken up the fight. “Eileen, go inside. Finley, you’re with me.”
“Stay out of this,” Eileen snarled. “I don’t need a white knight to protect me from this stupid—”
“Eileen!” Nicola called, holding out a hand. “Come on, let it go. I hate fighting.”
“That’s right,” Finley said sullenly. “Take the princess to her tower room and serve her tea and crumpets; why should she ever have anything but the best? Why should she ever consider for one instant the way her actions impact other people—”
“That’s enough now,” Adam said, in that good-natured but firm way that had probably broken up a few bar fights. “Take a walk with me, will you? Nicola, take Eileen inside.”
Eileen had half a mind to throw Adam to the ground so she could get to Finley herself.
Who did Adam think he was, stepping into something he couldn’t possibly understand?
She and Finley fought, and they made up.
It was the way of things. They had grown up tangled in each other like ivy, starving each other for light, and they were the only ones who really understood each other.
She never asked for help. She didn’t need help.
A touch on her wrist gave her a jolt, and Eileen turned to find Nicola standing at her side.
“Try to breathe, okay?” Nicola said. This simple act of sweetness was so unexpected, so ridiculous, that it broke the spell anger had been weaving around Eileen.
She found herself following Nicola into the house, looking over her shoulder to see Adam sling his arm around Finley’s neck in that effortless way of men, bending in to say something soothing.
Then the door swung shut behind her.
“Tea is what you need,” Nicola said. “Calms the nerves.”