Oh, God, she was doomed.
“Carly.” Her name sounded like a caress.
So, so doomed.
“Mmm?” Her hands stayed where they were. Maybe, she reasoned, if she didn’t look at him, he would simply disappear.
“Carly, I’m so sorry about last night. I understand you’re upset, but we really need to talk.”
No such luck, then. Damn. She removed her hands from her eyes, looked at him, and sighed. “Why don’t you just go talk to Celestine? Because I’m not really in the mood.” It was irritating, she decided, that she couldn’t even sustain a decent mad at him. All she really felt was a simmering stew of hopeless attraction, hurt feelings, and general mistrust, all of which together made for a basic and unflinching misery.
Gideon didn’t move from the doorway, just stood there watching her with unnerving intensity. The surface was calm, but Carly had a sneaking suspicion that she couldn’t even begin to guess at half of what ran beneath it. At this moment, she wasn’t particularly sure she even wanted to. Still, despite everything, Gideon managed to quirk a half smile at her.
“I’d rather talk to you, if it’s all the same. Her, I’ve had to pat on her head and send on her way, although I’m not quite sure she knew where she was going. Not to be rude, and she seems a lovely woman, but your friend seems a bit … medicated.”
Carly snorted. “Yeah, right. With the elixir of looove. As though you don’t know.”
Now he just laughed, a rich, deep roll that had Carly’s belly clenching with an unwanted wave of lust.
But she’d be damned if she’d let him know. It was going to take a hell of a lot more than a great laugh to get back into her good graces at this point. Even if the way his butt looked in those jeans was giving him a slight advantage.
“Christ, woman. You do have a way with words. Not that I shouldn’t have expected it.” He swept his hand around to indicate the shelves full of boxes of books. “Words seem to be what you do.”
Carly gave him a tight smile. “Did you come in here to impress the customers and flatter me? Because I was under the impression you wanted something worthwhile. Otherwise, I have work to do.” She bet that was all it took with the other girls, Carly thought irritably as she watched his smile fade. And of course he had other girls. Probably enough to populate a small country. She’d been a pathetically easy target, she was sure. And with that, Carly noted with a sort of dull satisfaction, she had made herself nauseous. What a barrel of fun she was this morning.
Gideon pushed a hand back through his hair, which she was starting to notice he did whenever he was uncomfortable. Good. She was all about sharing.
“Look, Carly, what I came to say was, I know … last night. I didn’t mean to … and I know I said …”
Carly leaned a hip against the shelving unit beside her and said nothing, simply raising an eyebrow. She couldn’t think of a single earthly reason why this should be easy for him.
Gideon seemed to sense it. He stopped, took a deep breath, and started again. “Someone is trying to kill me.”
Hearing it, the truth of it, rattled her more than she’d thought. Still, she managed to keep her tone carefully even. “It would have been nice if you’d mentioned it to start with.”
“I know it isn’t much of an excuse, but I couldn’t take the chance that you’d tell me to go. I needed to heal, to rest. And I truly, truly thought I would be gone before anything else happened. I wasn’t counting on a bloody snowstorm. You have to at least believe that.”
Carly sighed, looked away. Chewed a little at her bottom lip. He was right, she supposed, even if she didn’t agree with the rest of it. If he’d known her, though, he’d have known she’d never have tossed him out in the condition he was in. She would have at least found him somewhere else to stay. But then, that was the point, wasn’t it? He didn’t know. Just as she knew so little about him. And if they were going to get on any kind of an even footing, get to a decent place to start over, that was going to have to change. Starting now.
“I think you’d better tell me everything, Gideon. And not just the condensed, government-approved BS version this time. I deserve at least that.”
He looked a little grim, but he nodded. And he was keeping his distance, not moving from the doorway, as though he wasn’t at all sure she’d ever want him near her again. But it couldn’t possibly be that bad. Could it?
“I suppose the best place to start is with my family.”
“Which is a pack of Scottish werewolves, right?” Carly was still amazed she could get that out in a serious tone of voice, but there it was.
A ghost of a smile played around Gideon’s lips, as though despite its truth, it still sounded a bit odd to him too. “To put it bluntly. It’s a small group, perhaps two hundred of us at any given time, and scattered at that. Our traditional home, what we call the Hunting Grounds, is an estate called Iargail, near the village of Lochaline on the Sound of Mull. It’s perfect for a bunch of werewolves, I suppose. There’s room to run, tucked away from the rest of the world. Most of the Pack left, eventually. But the Guardians never did. And we never will.”
Nor did he want to. Carly could hear it in his voice, see it in the way his eyes went far off when he spoke of home. “Twilight, right?”
Gideon nodded. “Which is where we seem to exist, as far as general humanity is concerned. And that’s fine. We have to, really, because of what we are. And what we do.”
“It sounds so lonely. I guess. You’re young. Not that you’d necessarily want to live in party central, but I wonder why you’d deliberately choose that kind of isolation.” And for the first time, Carly began to feel just how great the distance between their worlds actually was.
Gideon, for his part, leaned against the doorway looking pensive. “Exactly the reason most of the others only come for gatherings and visits. The reason, as a matter of fact, I’m here now. And oddly enough, at least part of the reason why I’m going back.” He laughed, though there was little humor in it. “It seems I’m not a party central kind of guy.”
“Well, I get that, believe it or not.” And she did. Knew that some of it was what drew her to him. Like often sought like, Carly had always heard, and this estate of his, what was undoubtedly a lonely, windswept, altogether lovely place, sounded like a little slice of heaven to her, and only partly because her image of the place included Gideon.
“So what is it, then? What do your, um, people do, what’s so important that you need to go back and be alone? Because I’m guessing that this is what you really came here to tell me.” Enough, already, Carly thought. She hated herself for it, but she couldn’t stand to see Gideon looking so damned miserable. It was time to rip the band-aid off, and all at once. Then, maybe, they could go on from there. Because seeing him again like this, if nothing else, had convinced her that no matter what her common sense said, that was exactly what she wanted to do.
His gaze returned to her from where it had wandered, across the room to her tidy little desk. It was sharp, alert, the scar that slashed across his one eye making it that much more predatory, like a scratch in the thin veneer of civilization that had been placed over something much more dangerous. Much more wild. Carly felt her skin chill.
“It’s more what I’m in line to do that seems to be the problem. My father is, as I’ve mentioned to you, what we call the Pack Alpha. It is, for better or for worse, a hereditary position.”
Alpha. Cute, she thought. Apt. But she doubted he’d appreciate the reaction. “And you’re the firstborn.”
“Exactly. The Alpha oversees the upholding of our laws, our traditions. He administers justice, when necessary, with his Guard. And, most importantly, he himself is the guardian and guard of an ancient secret. One that has been in our possession since Saint Columba brought us out of the wilds of our land, gave us a clan, law, our faith … and one sacred thing to keep until the time came when it could be used again.” He paused, and Carly found herself holding her breath, feeling the importance, the weight, of what he had decided to tell her. And despite her curiosity, she was compelled to stop him.
“Gideon, if you’re going to get in trouble for telling me this …”
His laugh was a frustrated bark. “I’m already in trouble. A bit more won’t hurt. And I owe you the truth, I think, since I went and involved you.” He shoved his hair back again, sighed. “Tell me, have you ever heard of the Lia Fαil? The Stone of Destiny?”
It rang a bell. Carly frowned. She’d run across it somewhere, although she read so much, things tended to get either lost or smashed together only semi-recognizably in her memory. It took a moment of digging, but finally, she thought she had at least a bit of it. “Wasn’t that the stone they used to crown the kings of Scotland on? The one the British stole? Although I thought I read in the paper that they gave it back, or loaned it back, or some stupid thing recently.” She raised her eyebrows at him, waiting for confirmation, and he did nod, although this time, the laugh that went with it was genuinely amused.
“Saint Columba crowned the very first Scottish king atop it back in the sixth century, and all after that until the end of the thirteenth, when Edward the First took it.” Gideon gave a smug-sounding snort. “As though we would ever have given it up that easily. Never did occur to bloody idiots why, with all of our fierce and proud warriors, we gave up our treasure without so much as a fight. Or why, when in all the legends it was described as either a black or white ornately carved stone, we had supposedly been crowning ourselves all that time on a plain chunk of native limestone with a simple cross hacked into the top.” He shook his head, chuckling.
Carly cocked her head, intrigued. “So what, may I ask, have the British been crowning themselves on all these years? Because I do remember now that they still use it for that, to show their sovereignty over the Scots. Which was why they just loaned it back to be displayed at Edinburgh Castle. Sweet, considering they stole it in the first place.”