Until he growls, “Tell me why you’re here.”
I take a deep breath and state the simple truth. “To beg for your help.”
2
JAMES
I gave instructions to a cute kid on how to find me if the worst happened. A forbidden woman has arrived.
Mia takes my breath away. I knew she was missing from Barnes, but didn’t dare hope she’d come to me, my courageous lass. I’m going to murder my informant. He told me she was shy and reserved, but fundamentally safe and happy under her uncle’s care. How could he not have found out about something so important that she fled all the way to Scotland?
She licks her lips and her eyes go wide, the pupils blown. Her hair is damp since the snow on it has begun to melt, and she’s shaking from the cold.
I want to pull her into my arms and heat her with my body. I release her chin. Mia needs to warm up before we have this conversation.
“I’ll always help you. But a hot drink first.”
She nods gratefully.
I take her to the kitchen and while I make tea—with an obscene amount of sugar for her—I watch as she examines everything silently. I remember with a pang that she only ever knew me as a person in one space—the restaurant where we used to meet. She never saw my house in Chiswick. She takes in the abstract paintings on the wall. The plethora of ingredients in jars on shelves and the plush but unashamedly stark furnishings. It’s simple, my home.
I can’t believe she’s here.
It brings back memories of the night Duncan died, not that they’re ever far from my mind. Perhaps I should have gone on running the Chiswick mafia, but I’d been planning to get out for a long time, and Duncan’s death felt like a fucking massive celestial hint. A message that, yeah, you’ve pushed your luck as far as it will go. No more.
Mia was tucked away in the Barnes’ compound with her grief. I staked it out for a few days and she was with her uncle when I glimpsed her. Pink eyed and sad and so heartbreakingly young, she’d given him a wan smile. Any thoughts of taking her from her home died then. She needed her family, not to be taken to a lonely old Scottish castle.
Even so, I waited at the restaurant evening after evening for a week, thinking maybe she’d arrive and choose me. The grief gnawed away at my insides and told me she wasn’t coming, and was better off without me.
I gently touch my palm to the small of her back to guide Mia to a big squashy chair in the living area and she slips her boots off and nestles in with a cautious glance at me, like a stray kitten waiting to be shouted at for curling into a blanket. Just like she used to when she was a kid, removing her shoes and sitting cross-legged on the benches of the Indian restaurant.
But there’s no need for her fear. As long as she’s in my home, she’s welcome, and no one will tell her off for making herself comfortable.
She’s wearing leggings and a grey sweatshirt. Her honey-blonde hair is loose around her shoulders, and those big blue eyes blink up at me.
“What happened,” I prompt, and the weather obliges the moment with an ominous rumble of thunder.
“I don’t want to get married,” she whispers miserably, eyelashes fanning her cheeks as she looks at the floor. “I want freedom and to go to university, not to be gifted to a grunting mafioso.”
Ah fuck. That sort of bullshit should have gone out of fashion along with powdered wigs and arsenic wallpaper.
“Your uncle is forcing you to marry?” He’s dead. No one forces my lass to do anything she doesn’t want to. I’ll rain death and destitution on his pathetic life and crush his bones under my heel.
She drags her white teeth over her plump bottom lip and looks so sad my heart breaks as she nods.
I should have killed that bastard years ago. Duncan was too indulgent of his younger brother.
“Does he want you to marry someone in particular?” Because, you know, if he wanted her to marry me, he’s still dead but I’ll compromise on the bone crushing.
“One of his henchmen.” She wraps her hands around her mug of tea like without it she might blow away. “I think he’s my second cousin.”
Back to his bones being powder then.
I nearly decree that I’ll murder her fuckwit uncle and keep her safe here with me. But I hesitate, because she’s eighteen and probably had enough of older men making decisions for her.
“And what did you hope I would do?” That leaves her the choice. Nominally. I’m still going to murder Logan Anderson.
“I thought…” Her gaze slides from mine and she fidgets. “I don’t know. I thought you might be able to talk with my uncle?”
