Lucan removed his hand from the screen.
She was gone. But for a moment there, he’d had her.
Vibrant and young. By his measure, so very, very young.
Beyond that—an enigma. Concealed by shadows he couldn’t penetrate. Who was this woman with Cian MacKeltar?
Usually if he was able to secure a connection, he could deep-listen, probe, and get more than the general sense of her he’d gotten, which was why he’d attempted the contact to begin with. He’d wanted to see if there was anything he could learn about her and pass on to Eve so she could expedite matters.
People were so concerned about viruses and identity theft, and so oblivious to the true risks of plugging themselves into the World Wide Web, wiring themselves to any and everything that might be out there, hungry, waiting. They worried about cons and killers, sexual molesters enticing their children. They had no notion how thoroughly they could be violated, probed, and coerced by a skilled practitioner of the Dark Arts across a phone line.
Still, he’d not gotten far with this woman. The moment he’d pressed at Ms. St. James, he’d encountered some sort of barrier.
Flipping open Roman’s file, which contained the dead assassin’s thorough evaluation of his targets, including photos, addresses—both real and cyber—vehicle registration, birth certificate, passport, lines of credit, available funds, and other pertinent facts, he studied Ms. St. James’s picture again.
Her driver’s license supplied her vital stats. Twenty-four. Height: five feet six inches. Weight: 135 pounds. Eyes: green. Hair: black. Organ donor: no.
She was a lovely woman.
He had no doubt Cian MacKeltar wanted her. The Highlander would be as fascinated by her resistance to probing as was Lucan. He and the Highlander weren’t quite as different as the condescending bastard liked to believe.
Closing the file, he punched in a series of numbers on his phone and conveyed a change in plans to Eve’s associate: The mirror was still the priority, but make every effort to bring Ms. St. James in alive.
He’d enjoy cracking her open and studying her. He’d not been intrigued by a woman for a very long time.
He would do it while the Keltar watched from his powerless perch high up on his study wall.
“Oh, now that’s just not going to work,” Jessi said flatly when Cian stalked out of the bathroom. She hopped off the bed and moved to regard him from a safer vantage, over near the window. Sitting on a bed with that man in the room just didn’t seem wise. “You go back in there and get dressed,” she ordered.
Funny thing was, she’d just been placing bets with herself about what condition the archaic Highlander would exit in: kilt-clad and modest, in a towel and semimodest, or in-your-face nude and on the predatory prowl.
She’d decided on in-your-face nude. She owed herself five bucks.
He placed his thigh sheath and jeweled blade on the writing desk, wearing two towels: one at his waist and the other wrapped turban-style around his head. It was barely better than nude. In fact, it only made her want to peel those offending towels away.
As if reading her mind, he ducked his head and unwound the first towel, sponging the excess water from his dark mane. Righting himself, he tossed his hair back over his shoulders, metallic beads clinking. Tiny rivulets of water ran down over his magnificent tattooed chest, a thin channel of it slithered over that tattooed nipple. Muscles bunched and rippled in his tattooed biceps.
She moistened her lips, wondering what on earth was wrong with her. She’d never had such an intense reaction to a man before.
She had only to look at him to get all shaky-feeling inside. And it wasn’t as if she’d never dated a good-looking man before. She had. Kenny Dirisio had been a Grade-A-Italian-Stallion-Extraordinaire. Even brainy Ginger, who was every bit as focused and driven as she was, had said, “Jessi-chick, take my advice, drop a few courses this term and hop on that one. They don’t come along like that often.”
But she hadn’t—hopped on him, that was. In fact, she’d volunteered to teach another seminar and they’d broken up over it, and now she knew why. While her brain had appreciated Kenny’s incredible looks, her body had just never quite kicked in. It never really had with any of the guys she’d dated.
With Cian MacKeltar, however, despite the fact that her brain wanted nothing to do with him, her body wanted to do everything with him that was possible between a man and a woman. Her body had done more than kicked in; it was stoking up the oven for the baking of little MacKeltar buns.
With a man that called a mirror “home.” This was not good.