Free Defending Destiny (The Warrior Chronicles) by Leigh Morgan Page B

some of what he’d just taken, surprising her with the tangible magic and mystery he was able to capture through his lens. When it came to his art, Gerry Butler had no peer.
    Gerry was as comfortable shooting stills of bikini-clad women for Sports Illustrated as he was shooting mothers cradling their bullet-ravaged children in war-torn areas of Bosnia, Afghanistan, or tribal Africa. His work was so raw, so haunting and in some cases so elementally beautiful, it graced museums all over the world. To see one of Gerry’s photos was to be drawn into the story it told. Lauren had several of Gerry’s photos in every one of his museums and galleries.
    Daisy marveled at how different the man was from his work. Gerry seemed to pour every ounce of true emotion into his work. All that he let the world see of him was the devil-may-care man who took little seriously, even his own safety. On the outside, Gerry appeared to have the sincerity of a gnat.
    Yet, when she needed a friend, he’d appeared, saying exactly the right thing to make her laugh at herself. He was very welcome indeed.
     
     
    …
     
     
    Magnus saw Daisy’s easy camaraderie with Gerry the naked cameraman, through the second-story window of what he’d staked out as Daisy’s bedroom in Kilmartin House. The man was about as welcome as a plague of locusts or an infestation of killer bees.
    Magnus heard Lauren come up behind him, but he didn’t turn. “She needs someone to laugh with,” Lauren said.
    Magnus grunted.
    “You’re not going to get her to open up to you playing the surly, put-upon neanderthal. You’re acting like it’s her job to woo you,” Lauren said, sounded vaguely disappointed in him.
    “You should be taking every opportunity she gives you to be close to her. You’re the one who has something to prove here. Daisy lives with more passion than any woman I know. You made her heart hurt. It’s up to you to heal it. Step up to the plate, man, or get off the field.”
    Lauren was right. He’d been a sanctimonious ass. Again. At the rate he was going, not only was he not going to find Daisy in his bed, he was going to push her into someone else’s.
    That’s no’ gonna happen.
    How in the bloody hell was he going to get her to smile at him so freely, when he just told her she had to purchase his body with her heart?
     
     
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
     
    Magnus waited until he heard Daisy rustling around in her room to make himself known. He’d watched her interplay with Gerry, feeling insanely jealous, not of the physicality between them, although that was there too, but for the way Daisy smiled at the man. Butler had her smiling at him like she enjoyed his company. Like in that moment, he was the only man in her universe.
    Daisy used to look at him like that. All the time. Magnus wanted that I only want to be with you light back in her eyes when she smiled at him.
     
     
    …
     
     
    By the time Daisy got back to New Kilmartin House, bedrooms had already been assigned. She knew which one was hers because her bags were at the foot of the bed. She made a quick survey of all seventeen bedrooms in the house, two of which should have been designated towel closets, and decided that, had she been allowed to choose, she would have picked the same room. It was spectacular.
    She had a marvelous view of the hills and the surrounding countryside through the southern windows, and a bird’s-eye view of the museum and the churchyard from the east. The glen and the cairns, ancient burial mounds comprised of hand-sized stones, and even the edge of the closest loch, were visible toward the north. The panoramic view made her bedroom the best in the house as far as she was concerned.
    The room itself was bright and cheery, done in shades of yellow, blue, green, and purple. Small paintings of thistles, daffodils, and images of the seaside hung on the walls, accentuating instead of competing with the exterior landscape.
    Her favorite part of the room was the large