The Dark Highlander

Dageus MacKeltar. What a name.

Nothing against Zanders, Grandda had often said, it’s a fine name, but it’s as easy to fall in love with a Scotsman as an Englishman, lass. A weighty pause. A harumph. Then, inevitable as sunrise, Easier, actually.

She smiled, remembering how he’d endlessly encouraged her to get a “proper” last name for herself.

Her smile froze as she stepped into the bedroom.

Her desire to know what he looked like escalated into obsession territory.

His bedroom, his sinful, decadent bedroom, with the enormous hand-carved, curtained bed covered with silks and velvets, with the exquisitely tiled fireplace, the black marble Jacuzzi in which one might sit sipping champagne, gazing down over Manhattan through a wall of windows. Dozens of candles surrounded the tub. Two glasses had been carelessly knocked over on the Berber carpet.

His scent lingered in the room, scent of man and spice and virility.

Her heart pounded as the enormity of what she was doing occurred to her. She was snooping through a very wealthy man’s penthouse, currently standing in the man’s bedroom, for heaven’s sake! In his very lair where he seduced his women.

And from the looks of things, he had seduction down to a fine art.

Virgin wool carpet, black velvet draping the monstrous bed, silk sheets beneath a sumptuous beaded velvet coverlet, ornate museum-worthy mirrors framed in silver and obsidian.

Despite the warning bells going off in her head, she couldn’t seem to make herself leave. Mesmerized, she opened a closet, trailing her fingers over fine hand-tailored clothing, inhaling the subtle, undeniably sexual scent of the man. Exquisite Italian shoes and boots lined the floor.

She began conjuring a fantasy image of him.

He would be tall (she was not having short babies!) and handsome, with a nice body, though not too exceptional, and a husky burr. He would be intelligent, speak several languages, (so he could purr Gaelic love words in her ear), but not too polished, a little rough around the edges. Forget to shave, things like that. He would be a little introverted and sweet. He would like short, curvy women whose noses were in books so much that they forgot to pluck their brows and comb their hair and put on makeup. Women whose shoes didn’t always match.

As if, the voice of reason rudely popped her fantasy bubble. The guy downstairs said you weren’t his usual type. Now get out of here, Zanders.

And it still might not have been too late, she still might have escaped had she not moved closer to that sinful bed, peeking curiously and with no small amount of fascination at the silky scarves knotted about bedposts the size of small tree trunks.

Corn-fed-Kansas Chloe was shocked. Never-gone-all-the-way-with-a-man Chloe was … suddenly breathing very shallowly, to say the least.

Shakily averting her gaze, and backing away on legs that wobbled, she nearly overlooked the corner of the book poking out from beneath his bed.

But Chloe never missed a book. An ancient one at that.

Moments later, skirt twisted around her hips, purse abandoned on a chair, suit jacket tossed on the floor, she’d dug out his stash: seven medieval volumes.

All of which had been recently reported stolen by various collectors.

Good God—she was in the lair of the nefarious Gaulish Ghost! And it was no wonder he had so many artifacts: He stole whatever he wanted.

On her hands and knees, rooting about beneath his bed for more evidence of his heinous crimes, Chloe Zanders’ opinion of the man had taken a sharp turn for the worse. “Womanizing, thieving creep,” she muttered under her breath. “Unbelievable.”

Gingerly, with thumb and tip of forefinger, she flung a black lace thong out from under the bed. Eww. Condom wrapper. Condom wrapper. Condom wrapper. Sheesh! How many people lived here?

Magnum, the wrapper advertised smugly, for the Extra-Large Man.

Chloe blinked.

“I’ve no’ yet tried it beneath the bed, lass,” a deep Scots burr purred behind her, “but if ’tis your preference … and the rest of you is half as lovely as what I’m seeing … I might be persuaded to oblige.”

Her heart stopped beating.

She froze, her brain stuttering over the fight or flight dilemma. At five foot three, fight wasn’t the most promising option. Unfortunately, her brain failed to process the fact that she was still under the bed when it downloaded the surge of adrenaline necessary to flee, so she succeeded only in cracking the back of her head against the solid wood frame.

Woozy, seeing stars, she began to hiccup—a mortifying thing that always happened to her when she got nervous, as if simply being nervous weren’t bad enough.