Blood In Fire (Celtic Elementals Book 2) by Heather R. Blair

Heather!"
    Heather shrugged. "Tell her she should have been careful what she wished for then. Damn though, Lace. Your man is really robbing the cradle."
    Lacey threw a pillow at her.
    “You can talk! Aidan is almost as old as Ronan, you know. Give or take a century or three.”
    The look on Heather’s face sent Lacey into hysterics again.
     
    Aidan and Ronan’s talk wasn’t quite so long and didn’t involve any hand holding or hugging.
    By the time they got to the main house, Aidan was in considerable pain from the rising sun, even though the sky was only starting to grey. What with that, and being furious with himself for leading what was surely going to be a nasty matter right to Ronan’s front door, then the encounter with Bav on top of his worries about dealing with Abhartach and his minions—and wondering just where in the hell Heather fit into this nasty little puzzle—he was in a rather pissy mood.
    It didn’t help things when Ronan cut right to the chase, even as he set about making them both a cuppa. His big friend should have looked ridiculous bustling around Moiré’s kitchen, and mayhap he did a bit, but for once, Aidan wasn’t in the mood to take the mickey out of him for it.
    “Wee bit odd, ye running into Lacey’s best friend, donna ye think?”
    “Bit more than odd, ye ask me. But I dinna just ‘run into’ her, Fitzpatrick. At least no' just since I’ve been in Ireland again. We met afore. Last week, in fact. When I left Istanbul so fast…it was her I skipped out on.”
    “Aye, well.” Ronan didn’t so much as blink as he set the mugs on the scrubbed wooden table that was the focal point of the kitchen. He grabbed one ladder-back chair, turned it around backwards to the table and dropped into it with a frown.
    Ronan coiled a large arm around the chair back as he considered the steam coming off his tea. “She was with ye when ye had the dream from Bav then. The dream about me. Did ye tell her about it?”
    Aidan snorted and blew a stream over his own tea, watching the ruffling waves of fragrant hot liquid. “Gods, no, man. It weren’t… well, I only had met the chit a couple of nights before that.” The men’s eyes locked over their cups. “She donna know nothing about me, or ye or any of it. At least she dinna, not before tonight. I imagine Lacey is giving her an earful or two now.”
    Ronan shrugged. “She has to hear it, Aidan. After Bav, after Abhartach . Hell, she’d have to hear it anyway, seeing as what she and Lacey are to each other. Ye canna expect any less.”
    Rolling his shoulders was Aidan’s only response. He didn’t like that Heather was going to hear what he was from someone else. Gods knew why. It really didn’t matter.
    It wasn’t as if the goddamn chit was anything to him, for fuck sakes.
    “What is she to you, Aidan?” Ronan seemed to pluck his thoughts from thin air and Aidan’s lip curled. Who was the damme psychic here anyway? “It mayhap be none of me business, at least normally, but considering…”
    “Aye, considering,” Aidan sighed. “She is nothing, mate. Just a diversion.”
    Ronan’s eyebrows raised and he took a measured sip of tea without commenting.
    Aidan rolled his eyes. “Oy, donna give me tha' look. Some of us enjoy a bang now and then. No strings attached. As I remember it were nae so long ago, ye’d been the same—”
    “Actually, mate, no' counting the day before last, it’s been damme near a thousand years since I last saw ye,” Ronan said mildly.
    “Time being relative to present company then,” Aidan snapped. “She is just a fuck, Ronan. Nae more, nae less.”
    “Like tha', is it? Good to know.” Ronan leaned back with a curious expression on his dark face.
    “What?” Aidan snapped again, certain he was being led into some kind of trap and too tired to think what it could be.
    “Well, just trying to get a handle on what kind of woman this friend of Lacey’s is.” Ronan’s cool tone made Aidan set down his