Mature content removed because of rating (another attempt at smut that is absolutely not worth reading can be found on AAO).

-6-

They fell asleep while the storm raged on. At some point during the night, a particularly strong wind rattled the house and woke Geralt up. The air felt hot and humid, a thin layer of sweat clung to his skin. Disgruntled, he got out of bed to take off his shirt and pants.

Hours later Kit woke up. Geralt, who had been unable to fall asleep again, noticed how she got up as she disentangled herself from his embrace.

She took off her robe, probably for the same reason he had undressed, and now stood in the dark, wearing only her strangely frustrating nightgown while she looked at him. It was too dark for her human eyes to actually see anything, but not for Geralts' enhanced eyes to observe her. For several minutes she lingered, unsure of what to do. He wondered what kind of debate she was having with herself.

But then Kit sighed and carefully climbed back into bed. To his surprise, she did not turn her back to him. She squeezed herself between his arm and chest, her face nestled against his neck, one hand resting on his stomach. Without thinking about it, Geralt turned a little so that he could wrap his other arm around her to embrace her fully. His reaction was a reflex more than anything else – his body simply acted without consulting him first. Her closeness and the weight of her felt so indescribably good, not so much because of the ripples of warmth that her touch sent through his body, but because it seemed she was willing to forgive him. Geralt bent his neck to plant a kiss on her forehead, which left his lips tingling long after the fact.

Kit's hand wandered from his stomach up to his face and cupped his cheek. Searching for him in the darkness, she lightly touched the tip of her nose with his'. Geralt felt her breath on his lips before she kissed him, hesitantly, softly, like a whisper. There was a hint of salt in the way she tasted.

Her reaction surprised him, this tenderness was the last thing he had expected. Did she really forgive so easily?

"We've hardly ever spent a night apart. These last few days…," Kit whispered. "I hated every second without you."

Her confession, stated so matter-of-factly, baffled him. There she was, making herself vulnerable as if it was the easiest thing in the world. What a rare thing, thought Geralt, who had hardly ever met people who did not leave him guessing their intentions. Yennefer would not have been caught dead making such an admission.

"Didn't like sleeping here without you, it felt wrong but I didn't know why."

Kit hummed.

"I can't let you go," she said quietly.

At her words, he felt a flutter in his stomach.

"I'm not going anywhere," he insisted once again.

Geralt grabbed her hand that was resting on his cheek and kissed her palm before pressing it back to the side of his face. He longed for her touch. He had felt alien in this new world because he had not understood that she was an integral part of the life that he had built. He had fought against the idea because he had not known any better. He wondered if things had gone differently, if he had not kept her at arm's length and instead given in to his desires to begin with. Maybe he would have never left, would have never caused her so much hurt.

"Does that mean you finally found a reason why you'd want me to stay?" Kit asked.

Geralt froze at her question. It was the one that had started the misunderstanding that had caused him to leave.

He swallowed, afraid to repeat his mistake.

"I cannot think of a single reason why I wouldn't want to be with you," he tried. "My question was poorly worded. Only meant to ask what it was, when I found you, that convinced me to take you home."

"If that was what you meant, it was indeed very poorly worded."

"Exceedingly poorly," he agreed.

"My pants," Kit said after some hesitation.

"Pants?" he said confused.

"Yoga pants. You had never seen anything like them. They are truly something out of this world. The way they are knitted, the fabric itself… It also squeezes your butt into a very nice shape, so naturally..."

"I've got to see those pants one day," he said, chuckling, wondering how pants could possibly be so exciting that they would entice him to take a stranger home with him based on that alone.

Kit ran her fingers over his chest, following the lines of muscle, bone and scars.

"You said I treated you like a person right from the beginning. That was something that was rare for you back then. You said that's why you started to like me. Because I knew nothing about you and still treated you like a person."

That was something that Geralt immediately understood. How many days, weeks, months had he spent without agreeable company because all everyone ever saw in him was either a monster hunter or a monster himself? He could see how she would have quickly swayed his opinion of her because despite the pleasant interactions of the last weeks, he still perceived them as an exception and not the rule. His past and the decades of mistreatment easily outweighed this brief period of being welcomed and treated with respect. Consequently, he had no trouble to imagine how he must have yearned for a connection back when he had met her.

Kit's fingers moved over his chest, her energy tickling and invigorating him. He did not wish to sleep any longer, he wanted to stay awake and enjoy every moment, to commit every detail of it to his memory: the heat of her skin, her smell, the swirls she painted all over his body, the softness of it all.

Absorbed in his thoughts and the pleasant feelings she caused, he reached for a strand of her hair to twist between his fingers. Was is always like this? He hoped it was.

"I have a question and I need you to answer it honestly," she suddenly demanded.

"Of course," Geralt replied and twisted a lock of her hair around his finger.

"Do you believe, really believe that I love you?"

"Yes," he said without hesitation, although the question seemed strange to him. Didn't women usually demand to know if a man loved them and not the other way around?

"Good."

"I'm not leaving," he repeated. I won't take you for granted, I won't hurt your feelings, he thought to himself. He felt some tension drain from her body and hugged her a little tighter. If she needed to be reassured, then this would be his penance.

"And I don't want to hold a grudge."

Geralt pressed another kiss on her forehead, thankful, that she was willing to make it easy for him.

"I just realized, I told you so many things. But I might have just completely skipped over the most outrageous thing that has happened in the last few years," Kit said, her tone now much less serious. "Well, most outrageous from your current perspective anyway."

"Hm?" Geralt, still puzzled by her quick change of mood, wondered what this could possibly be about.

"Dandelion became a father. You could say he is now… Daddylion." Kit grinned over her own joke. Geralt could not help but had to laugh at the ridiculous idea that the bard should have taken on such a responsibility.

"Dandelion, the bard – a father?" were the only words he could get out while struggling to wrap his head around the idea.

"Their names are Edith and Delilah. Edith calls him Dada."

Geralt burst out laughing again and then Kit started to chuckle as well. She told him the entire story: how they had gone to Novigrad and discovered that some missing children had been turned into rats. When they had been restored to their human form, most of them had run away, but the two girls had nowhere to go to. Dandelion had intended to put them in nice dresses and find adoptive parents for them, but once Edith had started calling him 'Dada' he had simply decided to raise them instead.

"He's not doing such a bad job, you know?"

"Good story, but a little too exaggerated to be realistic. And this is why I have trust issues. You have to stop fucking with me." Geralt was torn if he really believed her or not. This was insane. But for all he knew, she had never lied to him.

She drew circles with her finger on his stomach and looked at him innocently.

"In all these years you've never made such a demand."

He looked at her, confused.

"What demand?"

She brought her lips close to his ear and playfully bit his earlobe. He tensed when she breathed: "You've never used the words 'stop' and 'fucking' in one sentence. Sorry, but I don't think I can fulfill your wish."

Geralt inhaled sharply when he had finally understood what she was talking about.

"Well then, is that a promise?" he asked and quickly turned her over so that he was lying on top of her, supporting himself up by placing his hands next to her head.

"Hm," she pretended to think about it. "No."

He looked disappointed. But then she continued:

"It's a fact. Based on ten years of experience." She arched against him, the sweet pressure leaving him breathless. "You have been severely derelict in your duties as my husband these past few weeks. I expect you to make up for it." Then she hooked her legs around his waist, forcing his growing erection against her own heat. Geralt's body began to tingle from top to bottom. He was not sure if he wanted to crumble in front of her or fuck her.

[...]

"Will you forgive me?" he asked, as he held her head and ran his fingers through her tangled hair. He feared the answer.

She said nothing for a while as if she needed to think about it first.

"I don't want to live without you. I'll take any version of you, any, if it means I can stay with you. I don't want to live without you," she reiterated, sounding broken and defeated.

He kissed her head, feeling terrible that he had taken something so vital from her.

But then something echoed in his mind.

I don't need you. I can live without you. But I don't want to.

The answer to a very important question: Will you leave now that you don't need me anymore? Something about the palace offering her work, about her balancing precariously on the ledge of a fountain, about him wondering if he still had a place in her life. He saw himself kissing the insides of her hands, fearing she would leave him.

Was it a memory? He was uncertain, maybe he should ask her. But what if it was not? Then he would be giving her hope and that would be a terrible thing if it merely turned out to be a figment of his imagination.

He took the hand that she had placed on his chest and pressed a kiss to her palm – just as he had done, possibly or possibly not, back then. Whenever that had been.

I'll take any version of you. Would that really be enough for her? And what about him? Would he find it acceptable to be just a consolation prize?

Yes, he decided. He had made up his mind when he had left the inn. He had caused her so much pain, the least he could do was to bear these remarks for now.

Exhausted, Kit climbed off of him and lay down next to him. Geralt, still reeling from what had just happened, did not want any distance between them. He laid his head on her belly and grabbed her possessively around her waist.

Kit responded by running her fingers through his hair. All tension simply vanished from Geralt's body as she drew swirls on his scalp and neck.

As Geralt fell asleep, he murmured: "I'm a fool."

As the sun began to rise, Kit got out of bed and tried to tame her hair back into a braid while looking at herself in a small mirror next to the window. Geralt watched in fascination as the long, neat braid finally fell down her bare back. The sun, it's warm and red light, rose over the hills at that very moment and bathed her in her in a red glow, so that only the silhouette of her torso was recognizable. The sight felt comfortingly familiar.

The feeling of familiarity would strike him at the most random moments throughout the next day. In the morning it was the smell of freshly baked walnut bread that made him stop, the mouthwatering scent wafting from the kitchen. In his mind's eye, he suddenly saw Marlene in the kitchen, spreading flower, its particles dancing in the light of the fire, kneading and stretching and folding the dough. It was a memory, he was certain. At least once a week he would to find her in the kitchen very early in the morning, after hunger had driven him out of bed, baking that bread for him. He would watch her for a while, talk to her, before going back to bed.

Or maybe he had never done any of these things and it was just his imagination running wild.

During breakfast, Kit, who sat on across from him, stretched out her legs and rested her feet on his thighs. He had grabbed one of her feet and started to massage it with one hand before he even wasted a thought on why he was doing that, all the while continuing to eat. But judging by the smile on Kit's face, it was probably something he did all the time. And just a moment later he knew for sure that this was the truth.

When Geralt met someone, he sometimes had an inkling, the vaguest idea about that person: If he liked them, why he knew them. Sometimes, very rarely though, he actually remembered a name or an event involving said person.

Occasionally, when he looked at Kit, his heart would start to flutter and without warning a wave would sweep over him leaving him warm and full of desire for her.

As the days went by, the feeling of familiarity overcame Geralt more and more. The progress was fast and undeniable. He wondered what had changed. Was whatever had happened to him wearing off? Did he naturally regain his memories? Was it the sex? Now that he had given in to his desire, his physical longing for Kit had become desperate. And whenever they had found each other, a rare kind of peace, that he thought he had never known before, engulfed him.

Or was it perhaps the fact that he had now fully embraced the idea that his life had changed so drastically, instead of fighting it? Once he had done that, he did not dread poking around in the dark quite so much anymore when anyone asked him a question. It helped that he had found notebooks that he had written in the early years of him owning Corvo Bianco, full of information from every book he had ever read, mixed with his own personal experiences. It turned out that growing wine was not so complicated after all – at least if someone had figured it out for you and left their notes.

Kit was oblivious to the changes. Geralt had said nothing to her, sometimes he even pretended to be particularly clueless to avoid raising any suspicion. He did not want to raise her hopes under any circumstances, because he himself was not certain yet to what extent his memories would come back to him.

At noon a few days later, he and Kit were standing in front of a part of their garden, discussing whether or not it made sense to start weeding when the soil was still soaked from the big downpour and several smaller ones that had followed in the days after the first storm.

"My elbow was right, as always," an old man said suddenly as he approached them from behind. His smile was crooked and missing a few teeth, and one of his legs was dragging, but he seemed to be in a fantastic mood regardless.

"As always, Guss," Kit agreed, smiling back at him.

Guss, the vagabond who could predict the rain with his elbow, Geralt guessed. Kit had mentioned him a few days ago when she had tried to cover up his lack of knowledge about watering the vines.

"You should visit Marlene, I think I saw her preparing some food baskets this morning. I'm sure there's one for you as well."

"Too kind, as always," he said with a small bow of his head, moving away from them, but then turning back.

"I was wondering… What happened to the ghost, Geralt? Did you find it?"

"What ghost?" he wondered.

"The… ah, what was it? Noon wraith, I think you called it? Somewhere around the abandoned village near Dunn Tynne Hillside? A few days ago, you told me you wanted to go there because someone had mentioned there was a ghost."

"Turned out to be nothing," Geralt waved it off while exchanging glances with Kit, since he had no recollection of having gone there. By the way Kit looked at him with raised eyebrows, he understood that they had found their first clue as to where Geralt had gone shortly before he had lost his memory.

They waited until old Guss was out of earshot.

"Dun Tynne… The name rings a bell. I should go there, have a look around."

"And possibly lose your memory again? Or even more of it, or however that works? Absolutely not. I'm coming with you," Kit declared in a manner that left no room for disagreement.

"So you can lose your memory too? Brilliant idea," Geralt remarked.

"I want my Geralt back, all of him. If there is the slightest clue to be found as to what happened to you, I want to see it as well."

My Geralt. Her comment stung. He wanted to be that person. But he also wanted to be enough. Enough as he was, without telling her that he might remember things. Pride was an odd thing. At least the truth was out now. Just any version of him would not be enough.

The realization tasted bitter in his mouth. Geralt tried to swallow his disappointment. But who was he to criticize her anyway? For weeks she had done everything for him, taken care of his every need, made a fool of herself to get him out of sticky situations without outing him. She had bent over backwards, tried to make his every desire come true, which was a number in itself because sometimes he himself had no idea what his desires were. All because she loved him so much. And his way of repaying her so far had been to do the one thing she had begged him not to do: run away. It was only natural that she wished him to be the person he used to be – this new version of him had not exactly behaved very honorably. Maybe neither of them had, but that was no excuse, he had to get over it and try to salvage what there was to salvage.

His expression must have turned somber because Kit quickly avoided his gaze when he looked at her.

"It could be dangerous," he warned then, ignoring her rejection of his current persona.

"Then you should better come with me and protect me."

They were on their way by early afternoon.

"If it really is a noon wraith, we should be safe, noon is long gone," Kit theorized as they trotted along on their horses.

Geralt grunted. He really hoped that they would find nothing, because he feared that Kit might get hurt if they did. This particular fear also seemed rather familiar to him. He looked at her profile, still wondering what had brought the two of them together and yet acknowledging that he was grateful for it.

The long-abandoned village lay before them, silent and overgrown. The storms of the last few days had subsided into a gentle breeze, rustling the leaves and the high grass, which no one had kept in check for what seemed to be several years. Geralt listened for a sign of life, or rather a sign of undead activity, searching for any sound, any danger, but so far there was nothing.

"Stay behind me, if you have to follow me," he ordered as he rode ahead.

Suddenly he noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye, something grey, there, between two dilapidated huts. Would this turn out to be a very persistent noon wraith after all?

Silently, he dismounted Roach and signaled Kit to stay back. He drew his sword and stepped forward without making a sound.

There was his wraith. But it was not a noon wraith, not even close. It was a tattered bedsheet, caught in a variety of dried shrubs, flapping in the wind. The sheet had probably come lose from a clothesline and had been hanging there for weeks, if not months. By how torn and dirtied the sheet was, Geralt could not fault anyone for thinking that this could be an actual wraith. Most people knew the stories and would have run away at the slightest sign that something supernatural was awaiting them – and rightly so. No one in their right mind would want to investigate something that could potentially turn out to be a dangerous monster. And so bedsheets became ghosts.

He put his sword over his shoulder and sheathed it.

"False alarm," he said as he walked back to Kit, who was standing next to Nugget, looking worried. Kit poked her head around the corner and deflated at the sight of the bedsheet.

"What a bust."

"Would you rather have found an actual wraith?" Geralt asked.

"I would have preferred to find… something." Frustrated, she kicked at a small stone and regretted it immediately when she realized that her toes were not very well protected in her sandals.

"Ouch," she whined as she looked down at her stubbed toe. Her frustration was clearly written in her sulking face. Geralt wanted to find that off-putting, but he realized that he could not, because the only reason she acted like that was because of him. She was so in love with him that she would even make do with this version of him, while clearly missing the other man who loved her more than he could even imagine at this very moment. Which was not to say that she did not already occupy most of his thoughts.

He stepped closer to her and hugged her tightly, wrapping his gloved hand around the back of her head. Geralt found her weight against his chest comforting. The illusion of familiarity was strong at that moment. It felt as if there was a whole world somewhere in his head, separate from everything else, to which he had no access. A wealth of memories seemed to tickle his nose, waiting to get out. If he could just hold on a moment longer, maybe…

His medallion vibrated gently. At the same moment, Kit gasped and jumped, freeing herself from his embrace, all while shaking one of her legs.

"Eww, ew, ew, ew!" she cried. Something went flying through the air before landing on the ground between them.

Geralt crouched down to examine it.

"Is that… a scorpion?" he wondered as the small creature, that had landed on its back, tried to get back on its many feet.

"Seems like it. It's pretty small though, don't you think? I had no idea they were native to Toussaint. I don't remember seeing a single one of these in all my time here." She shuddered.

Geralt, more or less immune to poisons of any kind, picked up the scorpion by its tail. The small creature, barely longer than his index finger, fiercely grasped at the air with its tiny pincers.

"This one certainly isn't from here. I happen to know this species, they're native to Zerrikania and there's no chance they'd survive the winter in Toussaint." The shiny black chitin of the scorpion's body glistened in the sun. Here, in the tall, untouched grass, it was easy to miss.

"It didn't sting you, did it?" Geralt wondered.

"No, I don't think so." Kit examined her leg. "Well, that's not what I was hoping to find here."

Geralt hummed, the scorpion still dangled helplessly with its tail stuck between Geralt's thumb and forefinger. He could not take his gaze off the miniature arachnid. Something in the back of his mind tried hard to come forward.

Finally, he gave up and let the scorpion fly a good distance away from them with a flick of his wrist. A single scorpion would hardly do any harm.

"Back to square one," Geralt said.

"I'm sorry for what I just said," Kit whispered before Geralt could even begin to think about where to go next.

He cocked his head, not sure what she was referring to.

"You're just as good as my Geralt. You're not less than him, that's not what I wanted to say. I just wish you'd remember me," she confessed, looking down at her feet.

Geralt raised an eyebrow. So she had taken his reaction to heart. What a relief that was.

She looked up at him, not sure what his silence meant.

"Even if we find out what happened to me, there's a chance that I'll never remember. Have you considered that?" He did not really believe his own words. He knew there was something brooding beneath the surface, something that was just barely out of reach. But he was not ready to give her hope as long as his memories only manifested as vague inklings and hunches, and not actual, complete memories.

Kit shook her head. No, no, she had not given this outcome a thought. The corners of her mouth dropped.

"In that case, we'll have to get reacquainted again anyway. I'm not gonna leave again," he promised in an attempt to mend their relationship. With her by his side, there was an unmistakable feeling of home. Which was strange because, strictly speaking, he had never had a home and should have no idea what that felt like at all. And yet… he needed her – probably more than he realized.

"But what if you don't like me?" Kit asked suddenly.

"I liked you before, why shouldn't I like you now?" The question seemed silly. He only had come back because he liked her, because she was a good person.

Kit shrugged.

"I'm different now, not the same person who came here so many years ago. I'm more selfish than before…"

"The reason I trusted you is because you are anything but selfish. Where did this foolish thought come from?" The idea seemed so strange to him.

"We live in this little paradise that we have created for ourselves. People close to us benefit from it. But everyone else? How many people could I heal if I went out there? But I'm scared after what happened the last time I healed a stranger. So I'm keeping away, sewing dresses for dolls and supporting soup kitchens as a way to make up for all the things I should be doing. Can you really love someone so selfish?"

Geralt wondered what kind of incident she was referring to, but he felt it was irrelevant.

"It's my job to protect people for money. Even if they are poor, I need them to pay me, or else I will starve. Does that make me selfish?"

"Of course not," Kit protested. "But this is different. You need to eat, and you deserve to be paid for risking your life all the time. It should be up to the state to protect the people – after all, they pay taxes. That's what taxes are for. To provide common goods and services."

Geralt grinned.

"Is that so? And providing a place for people to go when they're sick or injured is not one of those services?"

"This is different. Healers cannot do what I can do."

"True. They can't do half of what you can do, and yet they also demand to be paid. Besides, even if you never slept again, you still wouldn't be able to help everyone."

"But…"

"Stop it, woman. I might not know what happened to you, but I do know with absolute certainty that you've felt guilty about it for a long time."

"How do you know that?"

Geralt just realized what he had said. He had no idea where it had come from, but he knew it was the truth.

"Not sure." He went quiet and bit his tongue. Kit looked at him with narrowed eyes, probably trying to gauge if he had slipped up and told her something he did not want to, or if he was just guessing. "In my line of work, it's important to be able to read people," he added quickly.

Which is something she would know if she had known him for an entire decade. And hell, he had no idea if he had actually been able to read her before the memory loss – maybe he had never been able to do that. How was he supposed to know?

Feverishly, he tried to think of a way to lend his lie more credibility.

But he never managed to. A strange sound caught his ear and his medallion rumbled again, stronger this time. He whipped his head around, trying to assess where the sound was coming from.

"Do you hear that?" he asked, his eyes wandering.

"No, what?" Kit had been caught off guard by the sudden change in his demeanor.

"Like…" He listened carefully. Suddenly he understood, just a moment before he saw them coming. "Legs, many legs." The sound of spidery legs, hundreds, no thousands of them, accompanied by the clicking of pincers. A swarm of scorpions marched through the tall grass toward them, surrounding them in an instant.

"What the hell? Geralt?" Kit squealed.

There were so many of them that they nearly appeared as a homogenous black mass. Most of them were tiny, others a little larger and few were even as big as cats. The latter category worried Geralt – certainly they had no business growing this large.

"Shit!"

The scorpions had started to try and climb up Kit's legs. They did the same with Geralt, which did not worry him because they could not penetrate his boots and leather pants – but Kit with her sandals and loose, airy pants was different.

She frantically tried to shake the creatures off her legs with only moderate success.

"Fuck," Geralt grumbled. He grabbed her by the waist and threw her over his shoulder, holding on to her with one arm and using his free hand to brush the remaining scorpions from her legs. The sound of carapaces cracking under his heavy boots began to mix with something wet and sticky as he stomped on and more scorpions got in his way.

He looked around and marched towards what once might have been a pigsty. He set Kit down on the its roof.

"Wait here!"

Kit did not need to be told. She kept checking her legs for the nasty spider-like creatures before pulling them to her chest, eyes wide with fear.

"Be careful!" she shouted.

Geralt noticed the crack in her voice with some satisfaction. She cared, and that was all that he wanted.

He was mildly pissed at this point, and made his displeasure known by beginning to roast the mass of scorpions with bursts of fire. They made a strange sound as they burned – like many tiny kettles left on the stove for too long, whistling with steam.

"Disgusting," fire, "little," fire, "shits!" He cast Igni to create a ring of fire around him, incinerating the last of the little critters.

Panting, he looked around. There, in the charred mass, was a survivor. Geralt unceremoniously introduced him to the heel of his boot.

"Are you all right?" he asked, turning back to a very pale Kit.

She nodded. Geralt helped her down from the roof. He could feel her knees shaking as he held her hand.

"That was unexpected," she managed to say while she scanned the ground.

Geralt watched her. What a strange choice of woman for him, he thought. So entirely unsuited to his way of life.

"Why were there so many of them if they aren't native? I've heard plenty about invasive species, but they can only be invasive if the climatic conditions allow for it, which, according to you, isn't even the case here. And why did they suddenly attack us?" Kit wondered aloud.

Her voice was still trembling, but her head was clear, her questions valid. She might not be the most courageous, but she definitely had her qualities. "And where did they come from? Is there a nest somewhere around?"

Geralt had burned away some of the high grass, but since it was black and burnt, this had not been very helpful when it came to locating the black little critters.

"They must have come from over there," Geralt guessed since they had come from behind him. "Stay here, I'll go and have a look."

"No, don't leave me, please," Kit begged and grabbed his hand. She was still looking down and running one of her feet along the calf of her other leg in an attempt to shake off imaginary scorpions.

Geralt sighed and took off his boots.

"Here, put them on."

"What about you?" Now she actually looked at him.

"Just put them on. Your sandals won't help you here."

"What about you?" she asked again.

"I'm immune to poison, nothing will to happen to me."

"And I'm sure I'll just heal if something stings me."

"I hope so. But you're still fighting off imaginary scorpions. So please put on the boots. That, or I'll put you back on the roof."

Kit smiled and did nothing for a moment.

"What?" Geralt asked.

"I owe you a bigger apology. I said you weren't him, but you are exactly like him." She gave Geralt a weak smile and a look so apologetic that it almost broke his heart.

"Appreciate it, but now is not the time."

"Right, right," Kit agreed and hastily slipped into his boots. She took a sandal in each hand and brandished them like weapons. Under other circumstances it would have been quite comical.

"I'm ready."

At least she had calmed down, her heart beating a little slower now. Maybe he ought to give her more credit. It seemed that once she got over the initial shock, she was not quite the coward he had assumed her to be.