The Dark Highlander

After a few moments, she shrugged and the moment was lost.

“What kind of information are you looking for?”

“ ’Tis a long story, lass,” he evaded, with a mocking smile.

“If you let me go, I really won’t tell anyone. I far prefer to stay alive than get all hung up on moral compunctions. That’s always been a no-brainer for me.”

“No-brainer,” he repeated slowly. “Simple decision?”

Chloe blinked. “Yes.” She peered at him. Between some of the words he used and the way he occasionally paused, as if mulling over a word or phrase, it occurred to her that perhaps English wasn’t his native tongue. He’d understood French. Curious, testing him, she asked him—in Latin—if Gaelic was his first language.

He answered in Greek that it was.

Sheesh, the thief was not only gorgeous, he was multilingual! She was starting to feel treacherously like Rene Russo again. “You’re actually reading these things, aren’t you?” she said wonderingly. “Why?”

“I told you, lass, I’m looking for something.”

“Well, if you tell me what, maybe I can help.” The minute the words left her mouth, she was appalled. “I didn’t mean that,” she retracted the offer hastily. “I did not just offer to aid and abet a criminal.”

“Curious lass, aren’t you? I suspect it oft gets the best of you.” He gestured toward the food. “ ’Tis cooling. What would you like?”

“Anything you eat first,” she said instantly.

A look of incredulity crossed his face. “Think you I would poison you?” he said indignantly.

When he said it, it sounded like a patently ridiculous and perfectly paranoid thought. “Well,” she said defensively, “how am I supposed to know?”

He gave her a chiding glance. Then, holding her gaze, he took a full bite from each plate.

“It might only kill in large doses,” she countered.

Raising a brow, he took two more bites from each dish.

“My hands are tied. I can’t eat.”

He smiled then, a slow, sexy, shiver-inducing smile. “Och, but you can, lass,” he purred, spearing a tender slice of salmon and raising it to her lips.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said flatly, clamping her lips shut. Oh, no, he wasn’t going to harm her, he was just going to torture her, tease her, pretend he was being seductive, and watch Chloe Zanders turn into a stammering idiot while being hand-fed by the most incredibly gorgeous man this side of the Atlantic. No way. She wasn’t going there.

“Open,” he coaxed.

“I’m not hungry,” she said mulishly.

“You are too.”

“Am not.”

“You will be on the morrow,” he said, a faint smile playing about his sensual lips.

Chloe narrowed her eyes at him. “Why are you doing this?”

“There was a time, long ago in Scotland, when a man would select the finest from his trencher and feed his woman.” His glittering golden gaze locked with hers. “Only after he’d sated her desires—fully and completely—did he sate his own.”

Whuh. That comment went straight to her tummy, filling it with butterflies. Went straight to a few other parts, too, parts it was wiser not to think about. Not only was he a womanizer, he was smooth as silk. Stiffly, she gritted, “We aren’t in long-ago Scotland, I’m not your woman, and I’ll bet she wasn’t tied up.”

He smiled at that and she noticed what had been bothering her about his smile then: Though he’d smiled several times, his amusement never seemed to reach his eyes. As if the man never quite dropped his guard. Never relaxed fully. Kept some part of himself locked away. Thief, kidnapper and seducer of women: What other secrets did he hide behind those cool eyes?

“Why do you fight me? Think you I might slay you with my fork?” he said lightly.

“I—”

Salmon in her mouth. Tricky thief. And it was good. Cooked to perfection. She swallowed hastily. “That wasn’t fair.”

“But was it good?”

She glared at him in stalwart silence.

“Life isn’t always fair, lass, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be sweet.”

Disconcerted by his intense regard, Chloe decided it would be wiser to simply capitulate. God only knew what he might do if she didn’t, and besides, she was hungry. She suspected she could argue with him until she was blue in the face and get nowhere. The man was going to feed her and that was that.