Briarwood Cottage Read Online Free PDF Page B

collection, about to shatter.
    Although Cassandra had still possessed enough pride not to admit it, that was precisely how she’d felt.
    During all that time, he’d never once accused her of risking their unborn child’s life by putting herself in harm’s way. His only mention of her miscarriage was when he’d found her huddled in a tight ball in bed, silently weeping. He’d held her, dried the tears streaming down her cheeks, and assured her that everything would be all right. He loved her and they could have another child.
    As if, she’d thought bitterly at the time, children were replaceable, like a camera lens or the aviator sunglasses he was always losing. If Duncan had been anywhere near as heartbroken as she was, he’d certainly kept his emotions well hidden.
    Still not having come up with a strategy, she turned down the driveway toward a pretty, whitewashed, thatched-roof house, which a wooden sign proclaimed to be Briarwood Cottage . The only rental car available when she’d arrived at the airport was this tiny, two-seater the color of a kiwi. As she pulled up next to the big black Mercedes SUV that Duncan had undoubtedly snagged merely by flashing his killer smile at the tartan-clad woman behind the rental counter, Cassandra felt a stab of something that uncomfortably resembled jealousy.
    Damn.
    She drew in a deep breath and tried to find her center, as she’d been taught. To focus on the moment.
    “Okay,” she said, squaring her shoulders as she put the hood up on her jacket and extricated herself from the clown car, “here goes nothing.”

5
    D uring the short walk from the car to the cottage, the mist, known locally as Irish sunshine, turned to rain. Cassandra had just lifted her hand to knock on the bright blue door when it opened.
    Oh, God. Seeing Duncan again after all this time caused a flutter in her stomach and blurred her brain.
    “Cass.” His deep voice, known to television viewers all over the world, accelerated her pulse. “You’re looking well.”
    Knowing that jet lag wasn’t any woman’s friend, Cassandra supposed her appearance was an improvement over those days when her unwashed hair had hung limp over her shoulders and she’d been living in wash-worn pajamas and an oversized plaid robe that she’d bought on a trip to Edinburgh to cover the independence movement.
    “Thank you.” She cleared her throat. “You, too.” Discounting the yellowing around his eye that suggested one of the sailors’ fists had connected with his face.
    Dressed in a snug black T-shirt and jeans, he looked as hard and fit as he’d been when running around the mountains of Afghanistan, or some jungle chasing down a news story. Or, given the generations of Scots warriors running in his veins, as she’d so often fantasized him—clad in a kilt, fighting off hordes of enemies with a claymore.
    A dark stubble roughened his face, and his tousled dark hair looked as if it had been finger combed. When her fingers itched to brush back that lock that always fell over his forehead (and had even been given its own twitter account by news groupie fans), Cassandra realized she’d landed in deep, deep trouble.
    Despite her so-called reboot, Cassandra had miscalculated. She wasn’t ready for this.
    And she so wasn’t ready for him .
    “Why don’t you come in out of the rain?” he suggested. His eyes, the warm brown of the whisky his family had first made their fortune brewing, seemed oddly wary. Surely he wasn’t as uneasy about this meeting as she was?
    The moment she walked across the threshold, Cassandra felt an odd, inner strum, like harp strings being played. While interviewing the mothers of abuse victims, one, a pagan witch from County Kerry, had told her about thin places, also known as places of resurrection, where one’s spirit was totally whole, at home, with no longing or yearning to be anywhere else.
    Drawn across the room to the window, she looked out onto the view of a crumbling stone castle