Not tomorrow, now. Explain it now.
Her brain supplied all the proper things to say; her mouth simply refused to cooperate.
Instead she nodded, leaning in as he dipped his mouth to cover hers. He pulled her close and she was lost, wavering somewhere between reality and the dream world where they’d shared this moment so many times before.
“Keep yer distance from Flynn,” he whispered when he broke the kiss, his lips still so close his breath feathered over her heated face. “Dinna think to trust the man. He’s no what you believe him to be. He’s dangerous. Promise me you’ll no allow yerself to be alone with him.”
“I don’t . . .” She paused, refusing to even think about what he’d said. His words now made no more sense than anything else he’d said all evening. At this moment, she had no desire to talk and certainly none to argue. Not with him so close she could practically taste him. “Hush.”
As if he were an addiction, she stretched up on tiptoe and pressed her body against his, reestablishing the kiss.
She felt as much as heard his groan against her lips, and a shiver ran down her spine, lodging low in her stomach, agitating the pool of need already growing there.
He dropped her hand and grasped her shoulders, gently pushing away from her, a crooked smile on his lips.
“You should go inside now. Straight to yer bed-chamber with you. And lock yer door. I’ll see you on the morrow.” He bent his head once more to kiss her forehead. “Dinna forget what I told you.”
Abby stared after him, trying her best to rein in her stampeding emotions. What she felt when she was close to that man made no more sense than the words that came out of his mouth.
No more sense than the knowledge that, had he not walked away, she would have led him directly up to her room.
And not just to sleep in her bed this time.
He thought Jonathan Flynn was dangerous?
“You’re the dangerous one,” she whispered to the empty space where he’d been moments ago. Whether he was saying things that sounded crazy or touching herin a way that made her feel crazy, she couldn’t decide which was worse.
Abby turned and pushed open the gate, her mind filled with the memory of Colin as he’d been that first morning, gloriously naked in her bed with nothing but a thin bedcover draped across his hard physique.
Two steps down the walk, a prickle of unease colored the lovely image and she snapped her head up to find herself squarely in the intense scrutiny of her employer, Jonathan Flynn. Like some disapproving parent waiting for his only daughter to return from a first date, he stepped from the shadows of the ivy-covered porch, his arms crossed in front of him, an unusual frown creasing his face.
“I was worried about you.”
Was that accusation she heard in his voice? She walked closer, stopping at the bottom step. “You didn’t need to be.”
“Mackenzie seemed to think you and . . .”—he nodded his head in the direction of the road—“thatone had some sort of argument. She mentioned some concerns that you were upset when you left the pub and that he followed after you.”
So what if they had? Abby gritted her teeth against the irritation she felt. What went on between her and Colin was none of Mackenzie’s business and certainly none of Jonathan’s.
“After speaking to her,” Jonathan continued, “when you didn’t return, I quite naturally had concerns, too. I don’t like those feelings, Abigail. I don’t like having to worry over your safety.”
Abby took in a deep, sweet breath, holding it for a second before releasing it and, hopefully, all her irritation with it.
No such luck.
It didn’t matter, she told herself, stepping up onto the porch next to him. None of this mattered. No reason to let it annoy her. But it did.
“I’m sorry about how you felt, Jonathan. Your worry wasn’t necessary. Next time, you and Mackenzie both might try remembering I’m a big girl and you’re not my parents.”
As she stepped forward to push past him, he snagged her upper arm, drawing her up sharply, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her arm as he pulled her to within inches of him.
“Let me assure you, Abigail, of all the feelings I do have for you, not one of them is the least bit paternal.”
His eyes glittered with the same barely controlled emotion she’d seen that day at the dig. An emotion Abby wasn’t sure she wanted to understand.
The hair on her arms seemed to stand on end and it felt like a thousand tiny bugs were crawling over her skin. Her breath caught in her lungs and, for just an instant, she could have sworn Jonathan was going to kiss her, but not in a good way. Not like Colin had.
And then the instant passed and he dropped his hand from her arm, brushing past her without another word to stalk out through the garden and into the woods beyond.