Well Played (Well Met #2)(86)

“No. We can’t.” He pulled me back toward him, and I wasn’t terribly unhappy about that, despite his words. “The show’s about to start. The audience will see us if we try to leave. We have to stay back here so we’re not a distraction.”

I blinked up at him. “So you were just going to hang out here while the show went on?”

“No. I came back here to grab the shirts for the merch stand after the show. I wasn’t planning on being here while the show was going on.” He shrugged. “You kinda ambushed me here.”

“Oh.” I bit my lower lip. “Sorry.”

“I’m not complaining.” His hand flexed on the small of my back, and a smile teased at the corners of his mouth. My heart soared at that almost-smile. That was how far gone I was for this guy: a hint of a smile was all it took. “But I’m afraid you’re stuck in here with me till the show’s over.”

“Oh,” I said again. “Okay.” I looked back at the black curtain. “Any other MacLeans about to barrel through here?”

“Nope.” Daniel’s laugh was a warm chuckle in my ear, and I shivered despite the heat of the day. I’d missed him so much. “The others are out in the house, and they just hop on stage from there.”

Sure enough, as if on cue, the sound of a fiddle cut through the murmur of the chatting audience, quieting them down, and Dex’s voice rang out from the stage, roughly six feet from where we were standing, the same spiel I heard every summer, every time the Dueling Kilts started a show. That little bit of patter was what drove it home for me. This was what they did. Not just at our Faire, but everywhere. This same show, all over the country, all year long. It had to be repetitive as hell. But I still wanted in.

“What were you saying?” He pitched his voice low, since we were only a few feet from the audience, and I leaned in to hear him because there were also loud musical instruments just on the other side of the stage curtain.

Right. I forged ahead. “You said you had nothing to offer me. Nothing I’d want. But you’re wrong. This”—I gestured around us, taking in the stage, this tiny broom closet we were in, the entire Renaissance festival around us—“This is it. What you have is what I want. This life. Right here.” I took a step toward him, which pretty much closed the remaining distance between us. It was cramped back there. “With you.” I rested a hand on his waist; it felt so good to be touching him again.

His breath caught. “Do you mean that?”

“I do.” I nodded vigorously. “So, tell me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Tell you what?”

“Tell me,” I said again. “You said in your email that . . .” My voice trailed off as the music on stage finally filtered through my consciousness. It had taken a couple verses for me to realize what the guys were playing out there.


Weigh heigh and up she rises

Weigh heigh and up she rises

Weigh heigh and up she rises

Early in the morning



“Oh, listen,” I said. “It’s our song.” That got me another warm chuckle as Daniel’s other hand slid from my hip to the small of my back, and the heat of his skin through the cotton of my dress was almost too much to take.

“They don’t usually open with that. Tell you what?” he asked again, his voice low and directly in my ear, barely loud enough to hear over the music coming from the other side of the stage curtain.

Now my smile felt real, and not like a mask at all. We should have been somewhere private at a moment like this. But there was something very, very right about telling him how I felt here, in the heat and dust of a Renaissance faire, with his cousins performing a few feet away and an audience just out of sight.

I drew back in his arms, studying his face, loving the light that had come into his green eyes. “No more writing,” I said. “No more emails. Tell me to my face. Tell me how you feel. And I’ll tell you how glad I am that you aren’t your cousin.”

His eyebrows rose, and now the smile came full force to his mouth. The joy in his face looked like a sunrise. “You are?”

I nodded. “I’ll tell you that I’ve always had a thing for tall redheads that are on the lean side.”

“Oh, really.” He would have looked dubious if he hadn’t been smiling like that.

“Really,” I insisted. “Much, much more than huge, gross, muscly guys.”

“Thank God for that,” he said, just before he bent to me, and his kiss felt like coming home.

“I mean, eight packs,” I said against his mouth. “Ick. Who needs ’em.”

“Okay, that’s enough.” But I could feel his smile against my lips, which only made me kiss him harder.

Out on stage they’d done a couple verses of “Drunken Sailor,” and Dex started a brand new one:


Chuck him backstage with a blonde-haired wench



“Oh my God,” Daniel said, breaking our kiss. He looked over his shoulder toward the stage, and I burst into laughter, holding on to him more tightly.


Chuck him backstage with a blonde-haired wench

Chuck him backstage with a blonde-haired wench

Early in the morning



“Tell me,” I insisted. My smile felt enormous on my face, and this time it was all genuine.