The Dark Highlander (3 page)

When she’d first arrived in New York last year, she’d known instantly that she would never be in the same league with city women. Polished and chic, they were Mercedes and BMWs and Jaguars, and Chloe Zanders was a . . . Jeep, or maybe a Toyota Highlander on a good day. Her purse never matched her shoes—she was lucky if her
shoe
matched her shoe. Still, she believed in working with what one had, so she did her best to put a little feminine charm into her walk, praying she wouldn’t break an ankle.

“I have a delivery for Mr. MacKeltar,” she announced, curving her lips in what she hoped was a flirtatious smile, trying to soften them up enough that they’d let her go drop the blasted thing off where it would be a bit more secure. No way she was giving it to the pimply teen behind the call-desk. Nor to these beefy brutes.

Two leering gazes swept her from head to toe. “I’m sure you do, honey,” the blond man drawled. He gave her another thorough look. “You’re not his usual type though.”

“Mr. MacKeltar gets
lots
of deliveries,” his dark-haired companion smirked.

Oh, great. Just great. The man’s a womanizer. Popcorn and God-only-knows what else on the pages. Grr.

But she supposed she should be thankful, she told herself a few minutes later, as she rode the elevator up to the forty-third floor. They’d let her go up to the penthouse level unescorted, which was astounding in a luxury East-Side property.

Leave it in his anteroom; it’s secure enough,
the blond had said, though his smarmy gaze had clearly said that he believed the real package was
her
, and he didn’t expect to see her again for days, at least.

If Chloe had only known how true that was—that indeed he wouldn’t be seeing her again for days—she’d
never
have gotten on that elevator.

Later, she would also reflect that if only the door hadn’t been unlocked, she would have been fine. But when she arrived in Mr. MacKeltar’s anteroom, which was overflowing with exotic fresh flowers and furnished with elegant chairs and magnificent rugs, all she’d been able to think was that Security might let some bimbo up, just as they had her, and said bimbo might tear a page out of the priceless text to wad up her chewing gum in, or something equally sacrilegious.

So, sighing, she smoothed her hair and tried one of the double doors.

It slid silently open on—heavens, were those gold-plated hinges? She caught sight of her gaping reflection in one. Some people had more money than sense. Just
one
of those stupid hinges would pay the rent on her tiny efficiency for months.

Shaking her head, she stepped inside and cleared her throat. “Hello?” she called, as it occurred to her that it might be unlocked because he’d left one of his apparently myriad women there.

“Hello, hello!” she called again.

Silence.

Luxury. Like she’d never seen.

She glanced about, and
still
might have been okay if she hadn’t spotted the glorious Scottish claymore hanging above the fireplace in the living room. It drew her like a moth to the flame.

“Oh, you gorgeous, lovely, splendid little thing, you,” she gushed, hurrying over to it, promising herself she was just going to place the text on the marble coffee table, take a quick glance, and leave.

Twenty minutes later, she was in the midst of a thorough exploration of his home, her heart hammering with nervousness, yet too enthralled to stop.

“How
dare
he leave his door unlocked?” she grumbled, frowning at a magnificent medieval broadsword. Casually propped against the wall in a corner. Ripe for the plucking. Though Chloe prided herself on sound morals, she suffered a shocking urge to tuck it beneath her arm and make a run for it.

The place was full of artifacts—all Celtic at that! Scottish weapons dating back to the fifteenth century, if she didn’t miss her guess, and she rarely did, adorned a wall in his library. Priceless Scots regalia: sporran, badge, and brooches in mint condition lay beside a pile of ancient coins on a desk.

She touched, she examined, she shook her head disbelievingly.

Where previously she’d felt nothing but distaste for the man, she was growing fonder of him by the moment, shamelessly seduced by his excellent taste.

And growing more curious about him with each new discovery.

No photos, she noticed, glancing around the rooms. Not one. She’d love to know what the guy looked like.

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.

She didn’t have to back out from under the bed to know she was in very, very deep shit.

3

A strong hand clamped around her ankle, and Chloe
let out a little scream.

She tried for a big scream, but an inconvenient hiccup turned it into an imploded screech that left her gasping.

Ruthlessly, he tugged her from beneath his bed.

Frantically, she grabbed her skirt with both hands, trying to keep it from bunching up around her waist as she slid inexorably backward. Last thing she wanted to do was make an appearance bare bottom first. Her panty line showed under this particular skirt (which was one reason she didn’t wear it often, coupled with the fact that she’d gained a little weight and it was snug), so she’d worn hose with no panties. Not something she did frequently. Figured she’d have to do it today.

When she was clear of the bed, he dropped her ankle. She lay on her tummy on the carpet, hiccuping and trying desperately to gather her wits.

He was behind her, she could
feel
him staring at her. In silence.

In terrible, awful, disconcerting silence.

Swallowing a hiccup, unable to summon the nerve to look behind her, she said brightly, in her breathiest ditz voice,
“Je ne parle pas anglais. Parlez-vous français?”
Then with a stilted French accent (pretending to be dumb in Latin seemed a bit far-fetched to her), “Maid Service!” Hiccup. “I clean zee bedroom,
oui
?” Hiccup.

Nothing. Still silence behind her.

She was going to have to look at him.

Gingerly rising to her hands and knees, she smoothed her skirt, pushed herself into a sitting position, then managed to stand on trembling legs. Still too distraught to face the man, she focused on an empty glass and plate atop a table beside the bed and, determined to convince him she was Maid Service, pointed at it, chirping, “Dir-tee dish-es.
Vous aimez
I wash,
oui
?”

Hiccup.

Heavy, ponderous silence. A rustling sound. What
was
he doing?

Taking deep breaths, she slowly turned. And all the blood drained from her face. She noticed two things at once, one absolutely irrelevant, the other terribly significant: He was the most breathtakingly gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life, and he was holding her purse in one hand, slipping the battery out of her cell phone with the other.

He dropped the battery on the floor and crushed it beneath his boot.

“M-M-Maid Service?” she squeaked, then lapsed into French again, too nervous to do more than babble her way through, amid hiccups, elementary weather conversation she’d learned in freshman French, but he wouldn’t know that.

“Actually, it’s
no’
raining, lass,” he said dryly in English with a pronounced Scots burr. “Though admittedly ’tis one of the few moments it hasn’t been in the past week.”

Chloe’s heart plummeted to her toes. Oh, blast it—she should have tried Greek!

“Chloe Zanders,” he said, tossing her license at her. She was too stunned to catch it; it bounced off her and dropped to the floor.

Shit. Merde. Bloody hell.

“From The Cloisters. I met your employer a quarter hour past. He said you awaited me here. I would never have guessed he meant in my bed.” Dangerous eyes. Mesmerizing eyes. They locked with hers and she couldn’t look away.

“Under the bed,” she babbled, abandoning her overblown French accent. “I was
under
the bed, not in it.”

His sensual mouth curved with a hint of a smile. The mild amusement did not touch his eyes.

Oh, God, she thought, staring wide-eyed. Her life was quite probably in danger and all she could do was stare. The man was beautiful. Impossibly so. Terrifyingly so. She’d never seen a man like him before. He was her every darkest fantasy sprung to life. Scottish blood was stamped all over his chiseled features.

Clad in black trousers, black boots, a cream fisherman’s sweater, and a buttery-soft leather coat, he had silky black-as-midnight hair that was pulled back at his nape from a savagely masculine face. Firm, sensual lips, the lower one much fuller than the upper, proud, aristocratic nose, dark, slanted brows, bone-structure a model would die for. A perfectly sculpted dusting of a beard shadowed his perfect jaw.

Six foot four, at least, she’d guess. Powerfully built. The grace of an animal.

The exotic golden eyes of a tiger.

She suddenly felt like so much fresh meat.

“’Twould seem we have a wee bit of a problem, lass,” he said with silky menace, stepping toward her.

Her hiccups vanished instantly. Sheer terror could do that. Better than a spoonful of sugar or a paper bag anytime.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she lied through her teeth. “I just came to deliver the text and I’m so sorry I got distracted by all your lovely treasures, and I sincerely apologize for invading your home, but Tom is expecting me back, actually Bill is waiting just downstairs for me, and I don’t see any problem.” She gazed wide-eyed at him and concentrated on looking soft and stupid and feminine. “What problem?” Demure batting of the lashes. “There’s no problem.”

He said nothing, merely let his gaze drop to the stolen texts scattered around her feet amid thongs and condom wrappers.

She glanced down too. “Well, yes, you certainly do have an active love life,” she murmured vacuously. “But I won’t hold that against you.”
Womanizer!

The look he gave her made the fine hair on the nape of her neck stand on end. His gaze drifted meaningfully to the tomes again.

“Oh! You mean the books. So you like books,” she said lightly. “No big.” She shrugged.

Again he said nothing, merely held her with that intense golden gaze. God, the man was stunning! Made her feel like . . . like that Rene Russo in
The Thomas Crown Affair
—ready to throw in with the thief. Run off to exotic lands. Stroll about topless on a terrace overlooking the sea. Live beyond the law. Pet his artifacts when she wasn’t petting him.

“Och, lass,” he said, shaking his head, “I’m no’ a fool, so doona insult me with lies. ’Tis plain to see you know precisely what they are.
And
whence they came,” he added gently.

Gentle from him was dangerous. She knew it instinctively. Gentle from this man meant he was about to do something she really
really
wasn’t going to like.

And he did.

Crowding her with his powerful body, he backed her toward the bed and gave her a light push that sent her sprawling backward across it.

With the grace of a tiger he followed her down, pinning her to the mattress beneath him.

“I swear,” she babbled hastily, “I won’t tell a soul. I don’t care. It’s okay with me if you have them. I have absolutely no desire to go to the police or anything like that. I don’t even
like
the police. Police and me have never gotten along. They gave me a ticket once for going forty-eight in a forty-five zone; how could I possibly like them after that? It doesn’t matter one
whit
to me if you steal half The Met’s medieval collection, I mean, really, they have six thousand pieces, so who’s going to notice a few missing? I am an
excellent
secret-keeper,” she practically screeched. “I definitely, most assuredly, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to . . . er, will not breathe the teeniest word. Mum. Mum’s the word. And you can take that to the—”

His lips took the rest of her words along with her breath.

Oh, yeah. Rene Russo here.

Those sensual lips closed over hers, brushing lightly, tasting. But not taking.

And for an absolutely insane moment, she wanted him to take. Wanted him to crush her mouth in a hard, starving, bruising kiss and help her find that red-hot button of love that had never once hit lukewarm. The man filled a woman’s head with fantasies she would have
sworn
she didn’t have. Her traitorous lips parted beneath his. Fear, she told herself, it was just that fear could translate swiftly into arousal. She’d heard about people facing certain death suddenly getting a sexual charge that just wouldn’t quit.

So bizarrely, intensely aroused, she didn’t even notice that he was knotting a scarf around her wrist, until he swept it tight, and it was too late and she was tied to his bed. His sinful, decadent bed. Moving with inhuman grace and suddenness, he deftly knotted her other wrist to the far post.

She opened her mouth to scream, but he caught it with one powerful hand. Lying atop her, staring dead into her eyes, he said quietly, carefully, enunciating each word, “If you scream, I will be forced to gag you. I prefer not to, lass. It bears considering that no one can hear you up here anyway. ’Tis your choice. What will it be?” He lifted his hand infinitesimally, just enough that he might hear her reply.

“D-don’t hurt me,” she whispered.

“I have no intention of hurting you, lass.”

But you are,
she was about to say, then realized with a flush that that hard thing digging into her hip was not a gun, but a magnum of another sort entirely.

He must have seen something in her eyes, because he raised himself slightly.

Which meant, she concluded with a huge flood of relief, that he wasn’t going to rape her. A rapist would have shifted a few inches to the right, not raised his hips.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep you for a time, lass. But you’ll suffer no harm at my hands. Mind you, however, one scream, one loud noise, and you’re gagged.”

There was no mercy in his gaze. She knew he meant it. She could either be bound, or bound and gagged.

She shook her head, then nodded, befuddled by whether she was supposed to say yes or no. “Won’t scream,” she promised stiffly.
No one can hear you up here anyway.
God, that was probably true. On the penthouse level walls were thick, there was no one above, and the elite were given wide berth unless they requested something. She could probably scream her
head
off, and no one would come.

“There’s a bonny lass,” he said, lifting her head with a palm and slipping a plump pillow beneath it.

Then, in one swift, graceful move, he pushed away from the bed and stalked from the bedroom, closing the door behind him, leaving her alone, tied by silken scarves to the sinful bed of the Gaulish Ghost.

She was the kind a man kept.

Dageus cursed softly in five languages, recalling his earlier thought, palming himself roughly through his trews. It didn’t help. Indeed, made it worse. Happy for any attention.

Scowling, he went to stand before the wall of windows, gazing sightlessly out over the city.

He’d handled that badly. He’d frightened her. But he’d not been able to offer her soothing words, for he’d had to get away from her, quickly, lest he give his blood what it had been howling for. Though he told himself he’d pressed his lips to hers only to distract her while he bound her, he’d kissed her because he’d needed to, because he’d quite simply not been able
not
to. It had been a brief, sweet taste without tongue, for had he crossed that barrier, he’d have been lost. Lying atop her had been sheer agony, feeling the darkness rustle and flex within him, knowing tooping her would drive it back. Feeling cold and hungry, trying desperately to be human and kind.

He’d gone to The Cloisters, pleased with how firmly he’d put all thoughts of the Scots lass from his mind. There, he’d discovered the parcel was en route to him, while he was en route to it. The cocurator had, with much fawning and gushing, assured him Chloe Zanders would be waiting for him, as someone named Bill had already returned, having left her at his address.

But the lass hadn’t been downstairs and Security had, with much winking and grinning, told him that his “delivery” awaited him upstairs.

Not finding the woman from the museum in the anteroom, he’d glanced about the living room, then heard noises upstairs.

He’d loped swiftly up the stairs and walked into his bedroom, only to discover the loveliest pair of legs he’d ever seen, poking out from beneath his bed. Succulent thighs he wanted to nip with his teeth, slender ankles, pretty little feet clad in delicate high heels.

Beautiful feminine legs. Bed.

Those two things in close proximity had a tendency to divert all the blood from his brain.

The legs had looked alarmingly familiar and he’d assured himself he was imagining things.

Then he’d plucked her out by an ankle and confirmed the identity of the lass attached to those heavenly legs, and his blood had simmered to a boil.

Staring down at her shapely backside as she’d lain unmoving on her tummy, a legion of fantasies riding him hard, it had taken him several moments to realize what she was lying amid.

The “borrowed” books.

The last thing he needed was the twenty-first century’s law enforcers hunting him down. He had much to do, and too little time in which to do it. He couldn’t afford complications.

He wasn’t ready to leave Manhattan just yet. There were two final texts he needed to check.

By Amergin—he’d nearly been done! A few days at most. He didn’t need this! Why now?

He inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. Repeated it several times.

He’d had no choice, he assured himself. He had been wise to immediately restrain her. For the next few days, until he finished, he was simply going to have to hold her captive.

Though he could use magic, a memory spell to make her forget what she’d seen, he wasn’t willing to risk it. Not only were memory spells tricky and oft damaging things, taking more memory than intended, he used magic only if there was no human way to handle the situation. He knew what it cost him each time. Tiny spells to obtain the texts he needed were one thing.

Nay. No magic. The lass would have to endure a short time of comfortable captivity while he finished translating the final tomes, then he would leave, and release her somewhere along the way.

Along the way to where?
his conscience demanded.
Do you finally accept that you’re going to have to return?

He sighed. The past few months had confirmed what he’d suspected; there were only two places he might find the information he needed: in Ireland’s and Scotland’s museums, or in the MacKeltar library.