At that point, she held up her hands, stood up from the table, and said, “I’m done. I’m all done today. I haven’t even showered or gotten dressed properly yet—and I still need to go into town to check in on Maggie, set up a bank account, and buy coffee. You kids are going to have to go outside and play on your own.”

Nikolas stood as well. “We got sidetracked by a great deal more information than we were expecting. That’s not a bad thing. All of it is useful, but I was going to ask you to do a reading.”

Now that she was no longer focused on something else, her hyperawareness of him returned. Not quite looking at him, she asked, “Can it wait until this evening?”

“Yes, it can. I need to find someplace to hide the Porsche.” He looked at Gawain. “We also need to show you the great hall in the manor house.”

“I poked around early this morning,” Gawain said. “There’s a gravel access road that goes to the back of the property. It leads to a field that’s lying fallow, so the road is a bit overgrown and obviously unused. You could tuck your Porsche back there, and nobody would be the wiser.”

“Sounds good.” Nikolas looked at Sophie. “Would you let us into the manor house before you leave for the afternoon?”

“Sure,” she said. “Let’s do that now.”

Together they walked across the lawn to the front doors of the house. Now that Sophie had felt her way to coming into alignment with the house once, she was able to do it much quicker a second time.

Nikolas braced his hands on the oaken door. When she gave the word, he shoved it hard and it opened with a creak. He said, “We need to oil those hinges. Not only will it make the doors quieter, it’ll make them easier to open.”

As Gawain peered inside, Nikolas twisted to pick out another broken flagstone, which he used as a doorstop to keep the door from shutting and locking the men out of the house again.

Now that the prospect of going into town was so close, Sophie felt eager to get some space from Nikolas’s intense presence and baffling behavior. As she turned to leave, Nikolas took hold of her arm. His fierce frown was back, making his handsome features intimidating.

“I don’t know that I’m comfortable with your going to town by yourself,” he said almost to himself.

Raising her eyebrows, she pulled away from his touch. “I don’t know that I care if you’re comfortable or not.”

“Sophie,” he said in an abrupt, clipped voice. “There may be Hounds in the town. Remember, we don’t know what they might know about you, and they can change at will. And you don’t know who belongs in town and who doesn’t.”

She squared her shoulders at the reminder, and after a moment, she nodded. “Point taken,” she muttered. “I’ll go armed, and I’ll be careful.”

He angled his jaw. “I still don’t like it.”

“We all have things we don’t like,” she replied with rather more acerbity than she had meant to. “I’m sure you’ll deal with it.”

As she started to turn away, he caught her hand. He tangled his long fingers through hers, and the warmth of his touch reverberated through her. She stared at him with a combination of exasperation and pain. He was the one who had walked away from her, so why did he keep touching her?

His dark, fiery eyes met hers. “Why didn’t you sleep well?”

Her mouth tightened. Maybe if she told him, she could get him to back off and leave her alone for a few damn hours.

“Because I don’t. I just don’t,” she whispered, the words exploding out of her with staccato force. “Every time I close my eyes I see that gun pointed at me. Every time I fall asleep, I try to run away from him, but I never get away, because that didn’t happen. I didn’t get away. He shot me, and he shot me, and I remember every single one. And my brain won’t let it go, so I keep reliving it.” She paused to take a breath. His expression had tightened, and she didn’t want to read what was in his eyes. If it was pity, she might haul off and hit him. Pulling her hand out of his, she told him, “When I’m ready to let it go, it’ll fade. Until then, I just grit my teeth.”

“Sophie,” he said.

“I told you I was done,” she snapped. “I’m really done. Back off and let me have a couple of hours to myself.”

“We’re not done talking,” he told her, even as he took a step back. “This is just on pause for now.”

If she said another word to him, she thought she might do something horribly humiliating and burst into tears. What the fuck, Sophie. So she turned her back and stalked away.

Back in the cottage, she caught Robin eating a pie. It looked like it might be the steak and kidney pie Nikolas had bought for supper the night before. It looked massive in his little monkey hands.

As the puck froze, she told him, “Eat it, sweetheart. Eat whatever you want. Is there anything you want from town? Just tell me, and I’ll bring it back for you.”

For a moment the monkey’s eyes lingered on her expression, and she thought he would finally break through his silence and tell her. She held her breath, but then he tucked his wizened face down to the pie he clutched close to him, and the moment passed.

“Never mind,” she said gently as she passed a hand down his small back. “You’ll talk when you’re ready. I’ll bring you back a cake.”

As the monkey’s eyes flashed with interest, she knew she had struck the right chord. Smiling, she went to shower and prepare for her trip to town. Taking Nikolas’s warning to heart, she painted both offensive and defensive spells on her arms.