Free Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) by Cindy Brandner Page A

apparent even through the pounding of the rain against the pipes. “Imagine what it does to a man to know that another has touched his wife far more intimately than that, over an’ over again, an’ with her permission to do so.”
    “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it,” she said, feeling the terrible drop in her stomach that the mere mention of Love Hagerty still caused.
    “Well, I can’t stop thinkin’ about it,” he said, breath chill in her ear. Then he pushed away and walked off into the rain without so much as a backward glance, leaving her against the bricks alone.

    Later, she never could remember how she managed the drive home, though the torrential rain had forced her to go slowly, wiper blades whipping like fury. Her own rage was entirely doused by the guilt that dogged her every step since the first time she had considered betraying her husband in order to save his life.
    Inside the house, she went directly upstairs. She was wet and chilled to the bone so she stripped off in the bathroom, grabbing the white cotton nightgown that hung behind the door. She wrapped a towel around her hair and lit the bedroom fire, stacking pine in a neat tripod to give the fire the air it needed to burn hot. The baby was quiet now, a hard, solid weight firmly fixed within its watery world.
    She sat down in the chair beside the fire and waited for her husband, eyes fixed on the flames but every nerve trained for the sound of the door, and for the weight of Casey’s step over the threshold.
    It was another hour before it came and she had almost given up hope that he would come home that night. She could hear him banking the fire in the Aga and checking the downstairs as he did each night, making certain the doors and windows were secured against the night and the world beyond.
    He came up the stairs quickly, light step belying his emotional state. He hesitated at the bedroom door and she thought her heart might stop right then with the agony of not knowing exactly what had brought him home.
    Several very long moments passed before the door opened and he came into the room. She sat forward in the chair, clasping her cold hands tightly in her lap. He didn’t look at her right away for his face was hidden in the muffling folds of a towel. He was soaked to the skin.
    “Are you alright?” she asked. Casey’s head emerged from the towel, hair whorled in a clockwise spin of dark curls. He put the towel down and pushed the hair back from his face.
    “I feel a wee bit foolish, truth be told,” he said, and indeed he did look slightly shamefaced. “I don’t know what came over me in there. I just wanted for a minute that ye should feel the pain as I do.”
    She took a breath, but it wouldn’t force its way past the constriction in her chest. Casey wasn’t one to waste time on small talk nor to pretend that the scene outside the pub had not occurred.
    “We can’t go on this way, Casey,” she said softly.
    “Aye,” he swallowed, the line of his throat tight with emotion. “I don’t suppose we can.”
    He sat on the edge of the bed, keeping a distance between them. She looked at him, noting the weariness in his face—as though he bore a terrible burden that he could not put down. And so if he could not, it was up to her to take it from him, no matter the cost.
    A chunk of wood shifted in the fire, sending up a spray of sparks. The movement broke the tight silence that lay between them.
    “You once asked me to let you in—to give you all of myself or nothing. You said,” she fought for control of her voice, throat tight with longing and fear, “that half a loaf wasn’t enough to fill a man. And now I’m asking you the same thing, to let me in that I may go with you.”
    There was wary surprise on his face. “What?”
    “Casey, you’ve been holding back something every time we’ve made love since—since you found out about Love.”
    He took a deep, shaky breath and stood,