Free Spoken For by Emma Briar

From what Liam’s told me, I don’t know… I’m calling a team in to take a good look at it.”
    “I’m sorry, too, Kee,” Liam says around a mouthful of his ham roll. “Thank God you’re okay. I can’t believe I lost control that easily. Hell Roman, maybe I panicked. There’s a lot of power under that hood, maybe more than I could handle.”
    I slide down the bed a little to get more comfortable, clutching a pillow between my neck and shoulder.
    It’s not just me, then. The accident has pulled down the walls of formality between them as well. Liam. Roman.
    I should probably have eaten something because the sedatives hit me hard, thickening my head. There’s a smile on my lips, though, as I drift into sleep.
    The next time I open my eyes, the room is awash in twilight shadows. My throat is dry, my stomach hollow.
    As I shuffle onto an elbow, I become aware of the fact that my boots have been tugged off and a comforter has been thrown over me.
    “You’re awake,” Roman’s deep voice calls to me.
    My eyes flick to the seating arrangement in the corner, find him seated low in the armchair, one leg squared over the other.
    “How late is it?” I ask, thinking it must be close to supper. My stomach’s growling.
    He checks his watch. “Nearly seven. The sun will be up soon.”
    The sun will be up soon? “Seven in the morning?”
    “Nearly.” He stands, rolling his shoulders back. “How are you feeling?”
    “Fine.” My head clears and I realise what his presence here means. “You spent the night in that chair, watching over me the entire time.”
    “Not the entire time.”
    A grin softens his jaw and the effect on me is velvet: a velvet stroke to my pulse.
    He steps closer, his head cocked as he runs a hand through his hair. “I must have dozed off for long stretches.”
    “You didn’t have to do that. I mean…” I look into his eyes, not sure what to do with this darkly beautiful stranger who calls me Keegan , grins softly and watches over me while I sleep. “I mean, thank you, but you didn’t have to.”
    “I didn’t want you to have nightmares from your experience yesterday. Besides, the sedatives may have had an adverse effect.” He pauses at the end of the bed. “Maggie is usually up and about by now. Should I ask her to bring up some coffee?”
    “That would be great.”
    He nods, turns to go, and as my gaze follows him out, the hollow feeling in my stomach fills with a fuzzy warmth that I’m loathe to analyse.

15
     
     
    CONNOR IS REALLY sweet, making a fuss over me I until I reassure him for the hundredth time that I’m right as rain. Roman spends most of the day on the phone, chained to the enormous leather-padded desk in the library.
    “Making arrangements for the Lam,” Connor informs us.
    Although from the snippets I’ve overheard, it’s not just the car. He’s taking business calls, catching up on some of the slack of these last two days.
    “I wish there was something I could do,” Liam groans. “I feel so bad, and he won’t even let me apologise properly.”
    “There’s no use fretting,” Connor tells him. “If Roman were upset about it, you’d already know.”
    After lunch, Liam and I are half-heartedly considering a hike up the mountain behind Kleighnorm when Connor mentions he has a couple of bikes in the shed.
    “Will you join us?”
    “Don’t see as why not,” he decides. “You two push on ahead, mind you, if I slow you down.”
    The seventy-plus-year old man is more spritely than my twenty-two year old bones. In the end, I’m the one forced to dismount, waving them on as I push my bike up the steeper stretches of the winding road.
    The air is dry and crisp, just cold enough to keep me pushing instead of planting myself down on the edge of the mountain to wait for them to collect me on the way down.
    My thoughts churn in no particular order.
    The ashen pall that hung over Roman for most of yesterday. The depth of his concern. The accident…or more