Run Among Thorns (35 page)

Authors: Anna Louise Lucia

BOOK: Run Among Thorns

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Jenny hadn’t thought it was possible to feel both languorous and enervated at the same time. Apparently, it was.

She stretched lazily against Kier, enjoying the brush of her skin along his, the faint abrasion of his chest hair on her ridiculously sensitive nipples.

They’d talked, later, talked for hours. Set things right, talked them out, and laid them to rest. They’d talked till the words dried up, and then they’d found other ways to communicate. But there was still one thing they hadn’t talked about.

She lifted her chin to look up at him and found him watching her. His eyes were hooded, and a smile curved his lips that was so knowing, and, being knowing, so erotic, she shivered delightfully.

“Mmmmm?” he said, his voice deep and husky.

“Mmmmm,” she said and pressed her face against his chest, curving her lips there against his flesh. His muscle jumped under her mouth, and he shifted, moving his arms so he could grasp her hips lightly, bringing her flush against him, teasing her waist with his thumbs. She hummed her pleasure as she felt him, hard and needy, against her belly.

“Wait,” he said.

“Wait?”

“I want to ask you something. Stop that.”

“Well, ask then.”

“Will you marry me?”

She stilled, breathless. “Yes.”

The hands on her hips clenched. “Wait.” He gasped, shifting under her. “Wait, I’m not done.”

She chuckled.

“Jenny, love, I’d like … if you’d like—”

“Spit it out, McAllister.”

“I’d love to have kids with you, if that’s what you want. There’s no rush, but we didn’t use anything, and—”

She smiled, while her throat grew tight and her eyes burned. “Kier?”

“Jenny, love?”

“We already rushed.” She swallowed, feeling his whole body stiffen against her. He sat up and pulled her up with him, grasping her upper arms, ducking his head so he could look in her eyes.

“Tell me. No jokes, no riddles, just tell me.”

“Kier. I’m carrying your child. I’m six weeks pregnant.”

“Jenny,” he said. “Jenny!” and his voice was choked and thick, and his mouth shook as he kissed her, hauling her up against him, wrapping his arms about her, holding her so close, she had trouble breathing. She muttered soothing nonsense when she could, and then grew impatient, feeling that familiar shivery heat spreading over her. She wriggled against him purposefully, shifting her legs around him.

“More?” he muttered thickly.

“More …”

And there was more. Lots of it. Now. Forever. For always.

Epilogue

T
he spade cut deeply and cleanly into the peat with a satisfying squelchy thwack.

Jenny bent her back to her task, feeling the sun warm upon her shoulders, careful not to disturb three-month-old Kirsty in a sling against her chest.

The peaty mud was drying on her fingers, hot from the sun and just starting to flake in the gentle breeze. Her senses seemed magnified, somehow. The drying peat pulling at the skin of her fingers, the damp, earthy smell rising from the “T” cut she had made in the ground, the sun heating her hair on the back of her head. Kirsty’s little breaths against her heart.

She slipped a hand into the bag at her side, and worried a tiny bare-rooted Scots pine free. She crouched down gingerly, and tucked its feathery roots firmly into the notch she had cut for it, standing up and pressing it in firmly with the ball of her booted foot.

She straightened, stretching her back and smiling, cupping a supporting hand around her baby. With her other hand she shaded her eyes, looking out across hundreds of tiny newly planted trees and, farther, beyond those, to the strong saplings rising up the slope. This season some of them had grown taller than Kier.

And on that thought she saw him, making his way out from the extended cottage, across the new sturdy bridge and up the slope to her, carefully leading Andrew by the hand. Kier’s head was bowed, listening to their son’s ceaseless chatter with thoughtful attention and patience. Andrew was three this weekend.

She’d planted the first lot of trees shortly after he was born. Slowly and steadily, a few at a time, with Kier hovering solicitous and frustrated by her elbow. It was her job, though, and she’d done it, finding a place for the new trees among the stumps of the old dark forest, felled while she was still pregnant.

Kier had gone quite, quite mad when she’d stated a desire for them to keep the longhouse, and turn it into a weekend getaway. He’d built an extension, lengthening the original ground plan, turning it into an “L’ shape and adding a glazed-in porch around the south side, hidden from the front. There was running water, electricity from a generator, and,
oh, joy!
A bathroom.

He had also had the old unnatural planting felled. Her husband had been afraid the place would hold dark memories for her, and, though it bothered her not in the slightest, she’d realised he needed to do something to wipe the slate clean.

So she had started planting a new one. A new wood for both their children, trees of the sort that would have flourished in the ancient Caledonian forests of old. Trees to bend in the storms, to take water from the earth and power from the sun, to grow with them, to know them. Trees to shelter this precious place, long after they were gone.

Drawing near, Kier lifted his head and grinned at her. She wondered if the sight of that glorious smile on his face was ever going to stop inspiring in her a sense of wonder and awe. She hoped not.

Kier bent and hefted Andrew onto his hip, tucking his free arm around her. She leaned against him, and somehow he worked his hand round her neck, gently stroking Kirsty’s downy head with a featherlight touch that didn’t wake her.

She ducked her head under his chin, and listened to the steady beat of his heart for awhile, while Andrew rooted around in her planting bag. But she’d just planted the last one, and he came up empty.

Kier spoke finally. “Alan called. He wants to come up for the weekend and pitch his tent by the burn. I said I was sure that was fine, and you’d call him.”

“Mmmm. That will be lovely.” It had surprised her how soon Alan and Kier had settled into their relationship. Now the only conflict between them was spawned out of their determination to sample the entire beer production of the US and the UK, and compare notes. “Which brewery is it this weekend?”

“Leatherbritches.” Kier said, comfortably. “Alan reckons their Take the Pith is worth a try.” He set the wriggling Andrew down, who promptly started playing with the squidgey peat on the spade.

“You sure you can cope with both him and my parents? We’re not exactly spacious, you know,” he said.

“Well, they’ve coped before, and they don’t seem to mind camping out indoors. I like having them here.”

She knew when he smiled, even without seeing it. “So do I,” he said.

They stood there, contented and silent, and enjoyed the sunshine, keeping an eye on Andrew, who was making a spirited attempt to get peat on every item of his clothing.

“Jenny.”

“Hmmmm?”

“They said they’d take the kids out for the day. And Alan, too, if he wanted to go. So we could have some time to ourselves.”

“Really?” she murmured.

“Mmmmm.”

She turned her head and kissed him, sliding her lips against his, feeling his breath shiver over them. “How … nice.”

“Mmmmm.”

She remembered the early days of their marriage, when she had been so convinced she would somehow lose that delirium of happiness, and there had always been the shadow of fear at the back of her mind. She had learned, with Kier’s steady, loving help, that their happiness was real, and their love permanent.

Now, there wasn’t a day when she wasn’t happy, touched with wonder, kissed with bliss. The promise of forever had been fulfilled. And they had barely started.

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