“I’m angry with myself,” Damian confessed. “I’ve behaved like the rankest amateur.”
“You haven’t done so badly.” I groped for his knee and patted it reassuringly. “You kept Percy from saddling us with a posse that would have led us astray.You made sure Cassie would be safe by sending her back to the pub with Kate and Elliot as an escort. And let’s not forget that you saved my bacon upstairs in the church. I would have fallen into the hole if you hadn’t knocked me over in the nick of time. Take credit where credit is due.”
Damian grunted disparagingly.
“I don’t understand why the islanders shut us up in here,” I mused aloud. “We’re the laird’s special guests. They must know we’ll be missed.”
“It may be another scare tactic,” Damian reasoned. “Or they may hope that we’ll kill ourselves attempting to climb the cliffs. There’d be no way to prove that we hadn’t lost our way in the fog and fallen from the coastal path.” He sighed explosively. “I’ve been playing this game too long to make so many basic mistakes. I should never have allowed myself to be caught up in an affair that has nothing to do with my assignment.”
“I’m glad you did,” I told him. “Otherwise I’d be sitting here with only the monks for company.”
“Yes,” he retorted, with considerable asperity. “I can easily imagine you chasing after Peter on your own. I should have locked you in the suite when I had the chance.”
“I would have tied my sheets together and swung down from the balcony,” I responded airily.
“Lori,” he snapped, his temper flaring. “You still don’t understand, do you?” He swung sideways and leaned in close to me. “My mistakes get people killed.”
His words hit me like heat from a blast furnace. My frivolous mood evaporated, and I lapsed into a pensive silence.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a few moments had passed. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“You haven’t.” I hesitated, then asked, in a voice that was barely above a whisper, “Damian . . . how did you get those scars?”
He sat unmoving for several minutes. Then, without speaking, he reached across my body for my right arm, found my hand, and guided my fingers to his left shoulder.
“Knife,” he said, and moved my hand to his collarbone, his chest, his ribs, saying in turn, “Gun, gun, knife again. A round from a Kalashnikov grazed my right buttock as I was pushing Sir Percy to the ground one memorable evening, but since I’m sitting on the souvenir, we’ll pass that one by.” Finally he pressed my fingertips lightly to the scar on his temple and said, “A reminder of the bullet that killed me.”
He released my hand, but my fingers stayed at his temple. As I grappled with a thousand churning thoughts, one sentence came back to me, something he’d said the night before, after he’d removed the poker from my shaking hand: You can’t know what you’re capable of, until you’re put to the test.
Here was a man who’d been tested, who knew precisely what he was capable of doing and enduring. The warmth of his skin beneath my cold fingertips brought home to me as nothing had before the magnitude of the sacrifice he was willing to make. Damian Hunter, a man I’d known for less than a week, would, without hesitation, lay down his life for me. I felt like a child beside him.
I drew my hand back. “What happened, Damian? How did you . . . die?”
“I was assigned to guard the teenage daughter of a government official in a part of the world where kidnapping is common.” He spoke casually, as if he were recounting an ordinary incident in a routine day. “She gave me the slip one night, for a lark. By the time I caught up with her, two men were forcing her into the boot of a car at gunpoint. I took out one, but the other took me out. Luckily, my partner arrived in time to pick off the shooter, rescue the girl, and get me to hospital. I was dead on arrival, but they revived me. The girl and my partner told me later what had happened. I have no memory of the event.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to ask,” he said. “You’re not the sort of person to let questions go unanswered.”
“I’m the kind of person who should have her mouth stapled shut,” I said bitterly. “My God, Damian, I teased you about your scar. I said you were stagnant.”
“You said I wasn’t completely stagnant,” he corrected.
“I called you an action hero. I made fun of you.” I covered my face with my hands, distraught. “I’ve said so many asinine things to you I’ve lost count. I haven’t taken you seriously. I’ve treated you with appalling disrespect. I’m surprised you haven’t pushed me off the balcony.”
“I’d prefer to keep you on the balcony,” he said.
“Why?” I asked brokenly. “Why would you risk your neck to save a fool like me?”
“Because you’re worth saving,” he replied.