The Dark Highlander Read online

  “And all the other things you’ve stolen?”

  “What other things?”

  “All that Celtic stuff. The knives and swords and badges and coins and—”

  “All of that is mine by right of birth.”

  She gave him a skeptical look.

  “’Tis.”

  Chloe snorted.

  “’Tis Keltar regalia. I am a Keltar.”

  Her gaze turned measuring. “Are you saying the only things you’ve actually stolen are the texts?”

  “Borrowed. And aye.”

  “I don’t know what to make of you,” she said, shaking her head.

  “What does your viscera”—nay, that wasn’t quite the right word—“instinct tell you?”

  She looked at him intently, so intently that it was intimate. He wondered if a lass had ever looked at him so piercingly before. As if trying to probe the depths of his soul, down to the blackest heart of it. How would she judge him, this innocent? Would she damn him as he’d damned himself?

  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.

  And frankly, when he was sitting there on the bed, all sinfully gorgeous and playful and pretending to be flirtatious . . . it was a little hard to resist, even though she knew it was just some kind of game to him. When she was seventy years old (assuming she survived unscathed), sitting in her rocking chair with great-grandkids trundling about, she could reflect upon the memory of the strange night the irresistible Gaulish Ghost had fed her bits of Scots dishes and sips of fine wine in his penthouse in Manhattan.

  The brush of danger in the air, the incredible sensuality of the man, the bizarreness of her situation were all combining to make her feel a little reckless.

  She’d not known she had it in her.

  She was feeling . . . well . . . rather intrepid.

  Hours later, Chloe lay in the dark, watching the fire sputter and spark, her mind racing over the events of the day, reaching no satisfying conclusions.

  It had been, by far, the strangest day of her life.

  Had someone told her that morning, when she’d tugged on her panty hose and suit, how this ordinary, chilly, drizzly Wednesday in March would unfold, she’d have laughed it off as pure nonsense.

  Had someone told her she would finish the day tied to a sumptuous bed in a luxurious corner penthouse in custody of the Gaulish Ghost, watching a fire burn down to embers, well fed and sleepy, she’d have escorted that person to the nearest psychiatric ward.

  She was frightened—oh, who was she kidding? Embarrassed though she was to admit it, she was every bit as fascinated as she was frightened.

  Life had taken a decidedly loopy turn and she wasn’t as upset about it as she suspected she probably should be. It was a little difficult to work oneself into a satisfying fit of fear-for-one’s-life, when one’s captor was such an intriguing, seductive man. A man who cooked a full Scots meal for his prisoner, built a fire for her, and played classical music. An intelligent, well-educated man.

  A sinfully sexy man.

  When not only hadn’t one been harmed, one had been quite tantalizingly kissed.

  And although she had no idea what tomorrow would bring, she was curious to find out. What could he be looking for? Was it possible he was no more than what he presented himself as? A wealthy man who needed certain information for some reason, who—if he couldn’t obtain the texts he needed by legitimate means—stole them, intending to return them?

  “Right. Color me stupid.” Chloe rolled her eyes.

  Still, throwing a wrench into the works, impairing her ability to neatly labe
l him a thief, was the fact that he’d donated valuable, authenticated artifacts in exchange for the third Book of Manannán.

  Why would the Gaulish Ghost do such a thing? The facts just weren’t adding up to the profile of a cold-blooded mercenary. She was bursting with curiosity. She’d long suspected it might one day be her downfall and, indeed, it had landed her in quite a pickle.

  After dinner, he’d untied her and escorted her to the bathroom adjoining the master suite (walking a bit too close for her comfort, making her painfully aware of two hundred-plus pounds of solid male muscle behind her). A few minutes and a knock later, he’d informed her he’d placed a shirt and sweats (he’d called them trews) outside the door.

  She’d spent thirty minutes in the locked bathroom, first snooping for a convenient person-sized heating duct—the kind one frequently saw in the movies but never found in real life—then deliberating over whether writing an SOS message in lipstick on the window might accomplish anything. Other than him finding it and getting aggravated. She’d opted not. Not just yet anyway. No need to alert him to her intention to escape at the earliest opportunity.

  She’d not felt brave enough to risk nudity and showering, even with the locked door, so she’d washed up a bit, then brushed her teeth with his toothbrush because there was no way she was not going to brush her teeth. She’d felt strange using it. She’d never used a man’s toothbrush before. But after all, she’d rationalized, they’d eaten from the same fork. And she’d nearly had his tongue in her mouth. Honestly would have rather liked his tongue in her mouth, so long as she had a firm guarantee it would stop there. (She wasn’t about to become the next pair of panties beneath his bed, not that she had any to leave.)

  She drowned in his clothes, but at least when he’d retied her to the bed, she hadn’t had to worry about her skirt riding up. The sweats were drawstring—the only saving grace—rolled up about ten times, the shirt fell to her knees. No panties was a bit disconcerting.

  He’d tucked her beneath the coverlet. Tested the bonds. Lengthened them slightly so she might sleep more comfortably.

  Then he’d stood at the edge of the bed a moment, gazing down at her with an unfathomable expression in his exotic golden eyes. Unnerved, she’d broken eye contact first and rolled—inasmuch as she was able—onto her side away from him.

  Sheesh, she thought, blinking heavy-lidded, sleepy eyes. She smelled like him. It was all over her.

  She was falling asleep. She couldn’t believe it. In the midst of such dreadful, stressful circumstances, she was falling asleep.

  Well, she told herself, she needed her sleep so her wits would be sharp tomorrow. Tomorrow she would escape.

  He hadn’t tried to kiss her again, was her final, slightly wistful, and utterly ridiculous thought before she drifted off.

  Several hours later, too restless to sleep, Dageus was in the living room, listening to the rain pattering against the windows and poring over the Midhe Codex, a collection of mostly nonsensical myths and vague prophecies (“a massive muddling mess of medieval miscellany,” one renowned scholar had called it, and Dageus was inclined to agree), when the phone rang. He glanced at it warily, but did not rise to answer it.

  A long pause, a beep, then “Dageus, ’tis Drustan.”

  Silence.

  “You know how I hate talking to machines. Dageus.”

  Long silence, a heavy sigh.

  Dageus fisted his hands, unfisted them, then massaged his temples with the heels of his palms.

  “Gwen’s in the hospital—”

  Dageus’s head whipped toward the answering machine, he half-rose, but stopped.

  “She had untimely contractions.”

  Worry in his twin brother’s voice. It knifed straight to Dageus’s heart. Gwen was six-and-a-half-months pregnant with twins. He held his breath, listening. He’d not sacrificed so much to bring his brother and his brother’s wife together in the twenty-first century, only to have something happen to Gwen now.

  “But she’s fine now.”

  Dageus breathed again and sank back down to the sofa.

  “The doctors said sometimes it happens in the last trimester, and so long as she doesn’t have further contractions, they’ll consider releasing her on the morrow.”

  A time filled with naught but the faint sound of his brother’s breathing.

  “Och . . . brother . . . come home.” Pause. Softly, “Please.”

  Click.

  5

  Dageus was perilously close to losing control.

  “That means ‘bridge,’ not ‘adjoining walkway,’” she was saying, peering over his shoulder and pointing at what he’d just scribbled in the notes he was taking. Some of her hair tumbled over his shoulder and spilled down his chest. It was all he could do not to slip his hand into it and tug her lips to his.

  He should never have untied her this morn. But it wasn’t as if she could escape him, and it bordered on barbaric to keep her tied to the bed. Besides, the mere thought of her tied to the bed was obsessing a dark part of his mind. Still, it was no better having her flitting about, examining everything, pestering him with incessant questions and comments.

  Each time he looked at her, a silent growl rose in his throat, scarce repressed hunger, need to touch her and taste her and—

  “Doona be hanging over my shoulder, lass.” Her scent was filling his nostrils, inciting a lustful stupor. Scent of lush woman and innocence. Christ, didn’t she sense that he was dangerous? Mayhap not overtly, but in the way a mouse took one look at a cat and kept wisely to the shadowy corners of a room? Apparently not, for she chattered on.

  “I’m just curious,” she said peevishly. “And you’re getting it wrong. That says, ‘When the man from the mounts, high where the yellow eagles soar, takes the low . . . er, path or journey . . . on the bridge that cheats death’—how curious, the bridge that cheats death?—‘the Draghar will return’ Who are the Draghar? I’ve never heard of them. What is that? The Midhe Codex? I’ve never heard of that either. May I see it? Where did you get it?”

  Dageus shook his head. She was irrepressible. “Sit lass, or I’ll tie you up again.”

  She glared at him. “I’m only trying to be helpful—”

  “And why is that? I’m a thief, remember? A barbarian Visigoth, as you put it.”

  She scowled. “You’re right. I don’t know what got into me.” A long pause. Then, “It’s just that I thought if you really were going to return them”—she gave him a searingly skeptical look—“the sooner you finished with them, the sooner they’d go back. So I’d be helping for a good cause.” She nodded pertly, looking inordinately pleased with her rationalization.

  He snorted and motioned her to sit down. ’Twas evident the lass was obsessed with antiquities and curious as the day was long. Her fingers actually curled absently whenever she looked at the Codex, as if she was aching to touch it.

  He’d like to see her aching to touch him like that. Worldly women all but pushed him into bed. He’d never seduced an innocent before. He sensed she would resist. . . . The thought both amused and aroused him.

  Huffily, she plunked down on the sofa opposite him, folded her arms and stared at him across piles of texts and notebooks on the marble coffee table between them. Lush lips pursed, one foot tapping.

  One wee, bare delicate foot, with shell-pink toenails. Slender ankles peeking from his rolled-up sweats. Clad in one of his linen shirts, the sleeves pushed up to the elbows, which was also where the shoulders dropped to on her delicate frame, her hair mussed about her face, she was a vision. The fickle March sun had decided to shine for the moment, like as not, he thought, just so it could spill in the wall of windows behind her, and kiss her curly coppery-blond tresses.

  Tresses he’d like to feel spilling over his thighs. While those lush pink lips . . .

  “Eat your breakfast,” he growled, turning back to the text.

  She narrowed her eyes. “I already did. I’m going to lose my job, you know.”
<
br />   “What?”

  “My job. I’m going to get fired if I don’t show up for work. And then how will I live? I mean, assuming you really mean it about letting me go.”

  She gave him another haughty glare, then glanced toward the door for the dozenth time, and he knew she was wondering if she could make it to it before he stopped her. He wasn’t worried. Even if she made it out the door, she’d never make it onto the elevator in time. He knew also that earlier, she’d stood behind him, her gaze drifting betwixt a heavy lamp and the back of his skull. She hadn’t tried to bash him with it, wise lass. Mayhap she’d seen his tense readiness, mayhap she’d decided his skull was too thick.

  He inhaled deeply and released it slowly. If he didn’t get her out of the room soon, he was going to leap the table betwixt them, pin her to the sofa, and have his way with her. And though he fully intended to, he needed to finish the Midhe Codex first. Discipline was a crucial part of controlling the evil within him. The first portion of the day was for work, the evening for seduction, the wee hours for more work. He’d been living that way for many moons. ’Twas imperative he keep things neatly compartmentalized, for he could too easily become a man consumed by indulging whatever momentary need or whim struck him. Only by rigidly maintaining his routines, never deviating, did he prove to himself that he was indeed in control.

  The Draghar, he brooded. This was the third mention of them he’d encountered. The peculiar phrasing did seem to encompass his actions. The man from the mounts . . . the bridge that cheats death. But who or what were the Draghar? Were they mayhap some faction of the legendary Tuatha Dé Danaan? Would they return from their mythic hidden places to hunt him now that he’d broken his oath and violated The Compact?

  The deeper he dug into tomes that neither he nor Drustan had previously spared a thought for, the more he realized that his clan had forgotten, even abandoned, much of their ancient history. The Keltar library was vast, and in his thirty-three years he’d scarce made a dent in it. There were texts no Keltar had bothered with for centuries, mayhap millennia. There was too much lore for a man to absorb in a single lifetime, and verily, there’d been no need to. Over the aeons, they’d grown careless and content, looking forward not behind. He supposed it was man’s way to relinquish the past, to live in the now, unless suddenly the ancient past became critical.