“Ye want me to convince ye,” Archer growled, and he took several steps forward.
They were only a few inches away now. Emilie could feel the body heat rolling off of him. She wanted to lean into him, to place her head on his chest and listen to his steady, beating heart while she reveled in his warmth. But she couldn’t do that. Not yet.
“I have thought about ye every second since the moment that ye walked out that door,” Archer explained, his voice gruff as he spoke. “I have pondered what ye were doin’ and if I made the right decision. When I asked ye to leave, I thought I was doin’ the right thing.”
“When I went to Thrums that day,” he continued, his words coming out of him so quickly that Emilie was having a hard time keeping up. “I found out that someone, a competitor, had tainted me stores of whisky. It might have been poison, we have nay wayof knowin’. I thought about ye in that storage room with me, and how, had ye asked, I would have given ye some of me own drink without thinkin’ about it at all. I thought it was only a matter of time before someone got to ye to hurt me.”
The story made Emilie’s head spin. She hadn’t known anything about what had taken place at Thrums. She hadn’t even known where Archer had gone when he’d left that day.
It made sense. From everything that she knew about him, she knew that he would want to run when something like that happened.
Archer thought himself a monster, thought that he was a danger to all those who grew close to him. So, when faced with the possibility that others would want to harm those around him? That they would be fighting on all fronts, and in danger from both him and everyone else in the world?
It made sense that he would run. But that didn’t mean that Emilie had to accept it.
“Ye should have talked to me about it,” Emilie insisted, straightening her spine.
She didn’t want to forgive him. Not just yet.
“I ken,” Archer admitted, taking another step forward.
They were a hair’s breadth away from each other. All Emilie had to do was flinch, and she would be touching him. And she wanted to touch him so badly.
Her fingertips itched with the urge to reach out and run along his chest. But she would not do that.
“I should have talked to ye,” Archer admitted. “I should have told ye what happened and let ye make yer own choice.”
He stared at her, and she stared at him. Emilie could tell that he expected his words to be enough.
But they were not.
“Say it,” Emilie commanded, voice laced with steel. “I need to hear ye say it.”
“Say what?” Archer asked, that same exasperation seeping into his tone.
Emilie just cocked an eyebrow at him. Archer knew exactly what he needed to say, knew exactly what she needed to hear. She was not going to lead him to it, not any more than she already had.
Finally, Archer sighed.
“I should have never asked ye to leave,” he said, tone filled with honesty. “I am sorry.”
There it was. The words that Emilie had been so desperate to hear, soothing over the pain of the last few days like a balm to the soul.
She grinned at Archer, stepping forward and touching him, finally, at long last.
Emilie wrapped her arms around his waist, gazing up into the eyes of her husband.
“That’s all I needed,” she murmured, going up onto her toes and kissing her husband.
The kiss was long and luxurious, filled with all the things that neither of them wanted to say in that moment. She allowed herself to lean into it.
When they parted, they were both panting, and Archer grinned down at her.
“Let’s go, wife,” he murmured, causing butterflies to dance within her belly. “We need to get ye home.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“Ye look well,” Archer murmured, turning slightly so that he could eye Emilie up and down. “The abbey treated ye all right the last couple of days?”