Countdown - Iris Johansen [51]
He was silent, looking down at the cord in his hand. “You’re going to hurt him?”
“MacDuff? I feel like throttling him.” She heard MacDuff mutter something beside her. “He shouldn’t treat you like that, and if you had sense you’d take a punch at him.”
“I couldn’t do that.” He stared down at the sketch for a long moment and then slowly put the cord in his pocket. “And you mustn’t do it either. I have to keep anyone from hurting him.” He glanced at the sketch again and a slow smile lit his face. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She smiled back at him. “If you really want to thank me, you could do me a favor. I’d like to sketch you. I promise it will turn out much better than your gardenia.”
Jock looked uncertainly at MacDuff.
He hesitated and then slowly nodded. “Go ahead. As long as I’m present, Jock.”
“I don’t want you, MacDuff.” She saw Jock begin to frown again and sighed with resignation. There wasn’t any use in making the boy fret. The laird seemed to have him firmly under his thumb. “Okay. Okay.” She turned and headed for the door. It was time she got back to Cira and Julius and away from this beautiful boy and the man who seemed to control his every move. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jock.”
“Wait.” MacDuff was following her down the row of stalls toward the courtyard entrance. “I want to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t like the way you treat that boy. If he has problems, he should have help, not coercion.”
“I am helping him.” He paused. “But you might be able to help him too. He didn’t react the way I thought he would back there. It could be . . . healthy.”
“To be treated like a human being and not a robot? I’d say that’s healthy.”
He ignored her sarcasm. “The rules are the same for you as for him. I’m with you when you’re sketching Jock. No exceptions.”
“Anything else?”
“If you tell Trevor, he won’t let you do it. He’ll think Jock will hurt you. He knows he isn’t stable.” He met her gaze. “It’s true. He could hurt you.”
“He couldn’t have been more gentle to me.”
“Believe me, all it would take is a trigger.”
She gazed at him, going over the scene that had just taken place. “And you’re the trigger. He’s very protective of you. You should try to talk him out of—”
“Do you think I haven’t?” he said roughly. “He won’t listen.”
“Why not? You don’t appear to be in need of protection.”
“I did him a favor and he feels obligated. I’m hoping it will gradually fade away.”
She shook her head as she remembered Jock’s expression when MacDuff had told him he was displeased with him. Total devotion. Total dependence. “If you wait for that to happen, it may take a long time.”
“Then it will take a long time,” he said harshly. “I’m not stuffing him behind bars and having him prodded and poked by a bunch of doctors who care not a whit about him. I take care of my own.”
“Bartlett said he was from the village, and Jock mentioned his mother. Does he have any other family?”
“Two younger brothers.”
“And his family won’t help him?”
“He won’t let them.” He added impatiently, “I’m not asking that much. I’ll keep you safe. Just be with him, talk to him. You said yourself you wanted to draw him. Have you changed your mind because there may be a risk? Yes or no?”
She had enough on her plate right now without helping that beautiful boy. Yes, she wanted to draw him, but she didn’t need another complication. She found it hard to believe that he was as unstable and dangerous as MacDuff claimed, but there was no doubt that it must have some substance if MacDuff felt it necessary to warn her. “Why me?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. He saw Trevor’s statue of Cira and asked me questions about what Trevor was doing here. He’s very visual, so I dug up the story on the Internet about Cira and you figured prominently in it.”
Cira again. “And he believes I’m Cira?”
“No, he’s not stupid. He just has