But she knew her brother. His ruthlessness, and his tenacity. He would have been prepared to face a werewolf… or a murderer.
“A man who killed his own father.” Those had been Cecily’s words. And Morgan admitted it. But he had not hurt Niall. Her heart filled with the conviction that he had deliberately allowed Niall to attack and leave him for dead, so that he would not be compelled to kill her brother.
She could think of only one reason he would risk his own life to spare Niall’s.
“If you are a murderer,” she said, “it would be easy to kill a man you hate.”
He stared at her, stubbornly mute. He would force her to draw her own conclusions rather than do anything to clear his name, or his worth in her eyes.
So it was up to her. She must decide: whether to believe Cecily and Niall and Morgan himself, or look beyond the cold facts to the man behind them. The man whose goodness shone like the biblical light under a bushel. The man she loved.
Words were inadequate. Here, in the wilderness, the two of them sat in the snow unaware of the cold or the nakedness that would have killed a normal man or woman.
Here, human language had no power to express the feelings that crowded her chest and seared her throat.
But there was another kind of communication far more eloquent. Suddenly and most acutely she was aware of her nakedness in a new and tantalizing way—hers, and Morgan’s.
Morgan seemed to read her thoughts. He tensed his muscles and tried to stand, but his knee buckled. He caught himself against a fir and leaned there, breathing hard. Athena bit back a cry of alarm.
“We are both weary,” she said. “We need rest before… before anything else.”
“Are you ill? Your legs…”
Naturally he would worry about her and not himself. “I am tired. My legs hurt, and we need time to recover.” And to decide what to do. She left those words unspoken, but he heard them.
“I’ll take you to the ranch.”
So that Niall has another chance to kill you ? So you can run away for the last time?
“No. Not yet.” She kept her voice tranquil, her expression calm. “I just need to rest. Somewhere quiet. Please, Morgan.”
The muscles in his jaw flexed. “There is a cave not far from here. It isn’t much better—”
“It will do” She started to rise and Morgan rushed in to support her. She felt the vibration of muscles under his skin as he tried to lift her. “I can walk,” she insisted. “Take me to the cave, Morgan.”
He withdrew instantly, and she realized he believed that she didn’t want him to touch her. The thought sickened her, but she swallowed her protest and let him move ahead, forging through the snow at a pace too rapid for a weakened man to sustain. Even so, he glanced back at her every few steps to make sure she followed.
They hadn’t far to go. His path led through the trees and to a granite escarpment that formed a stairstep of ledges up the hill, ending in an overhang crusted with icicles. Beneath was the dark mouth of a cave. Morgan entered, moved around inside, and emerged a few minutes later.
“It’s safe,” he said, addressing the air over her head, refusing to look at her body or into her eyes. “A bear denned here once, but not for a long time.”
She nodded and stepped over the lip of the entrance. Morgan pressed himself against a rock so that she would not touch him by accident. Her feet shuffled among dried leaves and pine needles, redolent of several former inhabitants. It was a soft, warm, and comforting scent, like that of a well-worn nursery blanket. The roof of the cave just cleared the top of her head.
This would be the place. Here Athena Sophia Munroe would do something her former self could not have dreamed of, just as she had never dreamed of walking again.
She knelt on the mat of leaves and watched Morgan come in, hesitate, and settle against the curved stone wall near the entrance. “I can make a fire,” he offered.