cheekbone. He too had a life she knew nothing about. They had a lot to learn about one another. Did she want to know about the man he’d become?
No.
Maybe…
Yes.
The best place to start, she supposed, was with herself, at least with a bit of what was important to her. If he didn’t understand, he could get the bloody hell out of her life right now.
“This is more than a job to me, Magnus. It’s an extension of who I am now. You don’t know me anymore or what’s important to me, but you need to understand I’ve made this job my life. I’ve got a shot at being a Finder, and nothing or no one is going to stand in my way. I will be a Finder.”
There. She said it. He could help, or he could get out of the way.
Magnus stared through the windshield like the road held the secrets of the universe. His jaw ticked and he suddenly got so stiff, she was sure she could bounce a quarter off any part of him. One large hand gripped the steering wheel with such force his knuckles turned white. He waited a full minute before he answered her. His voice was soft and so controlled, Daisy thought he struggled to contain his emotion. That was probably a good thing. If he blew up in the confined space of the car, it would be a long drive to Kilmartin.
“You’re wrong. I know who you are. I see you, Daisy. The real you. I always have.” He looked at her, far longer than he should have give the twisting road. His sterling-silver gaze saw into her, warming her from the inside out, touching her in ways no one else had before or since. “You’ve created your own worth since your first breath, but you’re wrong about your work being your life. You will always be more than what you do and how you make your living. You are more than your job.”
Magnus turned his eyes back to the road. “You can close your mouth now. I’ll bring out my horns again, don’t worry. Then you can go back to hating me.”
Daisy shut her mouth and settled back into her seat as she reviewed every word he’d just said. Not about the horns, she ignored that. The stuff before that. How does one go about ignoring or dismissing someone who meant it when he said: I see you…you’ve created your own worth…?
Disliking Magnus was getting harder by the second. She needed to get out of the bloody car.
“Are we there yet?”
Magnus laughed, the honest sound reverberating through her, melting a layer of protective ice she kept around her heart. Damn the man anyway.
CHAPTER SEVEN
They drove the rest of the way to Kilmartin in silence, which was just fine with Magnus. He was running out of things to say that didn’t start and end with “ let’s get naked. ”
He took the back roads north, switched back four times, and chose another route north again. No one followed them. Given who Daisy was, Magnus had to be on guard. That much money always brought out the crazies, and he’d been trained to deal with whatever threats came. In Daisy’s case, they were relatively few. She didn’t flaunt who she was, and most people didn’t associate the woman who did documentaries about Celtic society with the heiress she also was. It was probably the cargo shorts and hiking boots that kept her rooted in the earth. The fact that she was often dirt-streaked didn’t hurt her everywoman image either.
Daisy didn’t do tiaras and ball gowns. Not often, anyway. Her face was familiar to those who watched PBS and the BBC, but not to those who cruised the society pages. No matter what anyone accused her of, Daisy was no debutante. That didn’t mean he could let his guard down. He couldn’t. Magnus convinced Jordon not to send a team on this shoot. More bodyguards in this remote area would draw attention and word would spread. More men on the ground this time meant more threat, not less. There were two of Jordon’s men in the production crew that Magnus knew of, and probably at least one more he didn’t. They would have to make do with that.
The threat to
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Erin Butler