“Is that sarcasm?”
“Who? Me?” Paddy’s grin was wicked. “Never.”
I thought back to that faraway world that had existed before I’d snoozed the night away in Rami’s lap. The one where Rami had told me in no uncertain terms how the life Paddy and I shared wasn’t one he could ever see himself living.“…don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not a man-of-the-mountain kind of bloke.”
Fair enough. But when I poked my head into the barn that had once housed my grandfather’s Highland cattle, I begged to differ. Wearing clothes I was pretty sure belonged to Safia, Rami was bottle-feeding a piglet with one hand, while hammering a nail into a broken trough with the other. With Charlie hanging off his back and the other kids at his feet, he seemed perfectly at home, anddamnif he didn’t look like all the man-of-the-mountain I’d ever need.
Easy. I shook my head, grateful no one had noticed me yet, but the moment I had to collect myself while I drank Rami in was brief. A fleeting moment of heat and warmth so intense it took my breath away.
Then Addie saw me. His face lit up and he came screaming across the barn with Mae hot on his heels.
The commotion startled Charlie. He tightened his arms around Rami’s neck, jumping out of his tiny skin. Rami dropped the hammer. It hit his foot and he cursed, loudly, in his glorious gravel-toned voice. “Fucking motherfucker!”
Snorting, I caught Addie before he barrelled into me, hooking one arm around his waist and the other around Mae’s, swinging them both over my shoulders the way their dad had with the superfluous firewood.
Their laughter was life. I spun around, making them—and myself—dizzy. I’d brought with me a soul-deep craving to set eyes on Rami, but I loved these kids. And for reasons I didn’t quite understand, they loved me too.
I brought them both upright, hugging them tight for a moment before I set Addie down. Mae was a snuggler—once she was attached to me, she liked to stay that way until she got a better offer.
Today, though, she squirmed to get down and slotted her tiny hand in mine. “Come see, come see. Uncle Rama and Charlie.”
She tugged me into the barn and presented Rami and Charlie to me as if I’d never seen them before, pulling them forward, one by one.
Charlie giggled and pointed at me. “Fenny!”
Rami?
Yeah. His smirk was everything I’d driven up here to see.
Wide and droll.
Dirty.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said dryly.
“Back atcha. Nice clothes.”
He laughed. “Guess I’m lucky my sister dresses like you.”
“My shirt looks better on you than it does on me.”
“I disagree.”
“Do you?”
“Yup.”
Rami grinned, but as gorgeous as he was when he smiled, the stress lines he’d brought up the mountain were still there, though he didn’t seem as monumentally knackered.
I bent and scooped Charlie from the floor, fitting him to my hip. He gave me a toothy smile. I pulled a piece of straw from his hair, then turned my attention back to Rami. “How’s things?”
“All right.”
“Really?”
Rami’s smile waned a touch. He ruffled Charlie’s hair, then grabbed Mae from his feet as if he didn’t quite know what to do with himself while I’d claimed Charlie. “Things are complicated. Safia thinks I should quit my entire life and move up here, and I think she’s bonkers.”
“Why?”