It didn’t take an advanced degree in engineering—which, by the way, Devlin had—to figure out what had happened. The van’s fuel tank cap lay alongside a half-empty bag of sugar by the back tire. That, coupled with the fact that McGill, Blackie, and an ancient Land Rover—according to Dev, the only other vehicle the kennel owned—had vanished told the story.
Blackie had been dognapped.
“Your manager has stolen my dog!”
Dev frowned, unwilling to trust his eyes. He’d spent the previous evening on the rugby field muffing every other play he’d been involved in until finally his teammates had permanently sidelined him. He hadn’t cared. He’d spent the hour thinking about her: her round American accent, the naughty-nice quality of her grin, the way her blush tinted her skin, the Caribbean sea color of her eyes…but mostly her response to their kiss; the way her soft breasts had flattened against his firm chest, the tip of her tongue meeting his.
He’d gone to sleep fantasizing about her, awaking aroused and uncomfortable, cursing himself for an idiot, but nonetheless spending the day hanging about waiting for a call that hadn’t come. He’d thought about driving in to Strathcuddy, but was afraid that if he did, she’d call while he was en route, and he’d miss her altogether. But now she was here, demanding he hand over his dog.
“Listen,” he said, having a hard time getting fantasy and reality to jive. “McGill wouldn’t steal Blackie. Any more than he’d sell him. Blackie isn’t even his to sell. He’s mine.”
“Yours?” She’d shed the atrocious “Sassy Lassie” T-shirt and was wearing something soft and pink that accented the highlights in her hair. The color in her cheeks was a delicate woodland bramble rose, and—
“Well?”
“What? Oh. Yes. Mine. I hand-raised him. I trained him. I even ran…” Dev trailed off as he met Toni’s eye.
“Who the hell are you?”
“I thought you didn’t like bad language?”
“Some situations warrant it,” she said crossly.
What had happened to the sloshed hero-worshiping, or rather Outlander-worshiping, lass of yesterday? Oh, yeah. She’d sobered up. And looked to be paying a penalty for yesterday’s indulgences, too, if the dark circles beneath her blue eyes were any testament.
“Now, who are you?”
“Devon Angus—”
“Who are you?”
“I, ah, I own the castle.”
Her amazing eyes widened. “You’re the laird?”
He hated to kill the soft light of grudging adoration dawning on her face, but he couldn’t pose as something he wasn’t. “Down, Lorna Doone. There is no laird, at least not officially. Hasn’t been for generations. It’s more a tourist come-on nowadays, and I don’t have anything to tour.” He waved his hand around.
“But if there was a laird, would you be it? Or your father?”
He snorted. She was tiptoeing around a case of Highland worship. He’d seen the signs before, mostly down at the local pub when the tourist bus came through. But while his mates weren’t averse to using Robert Burns’s more lurid prose to their advantage when they encountered an attractive tourist, Dev never had. However, looking at Toni Olson, he was willing to make an exception. “My dad, I suppose.”
“And McGill is…what? A trusted family retainer,” she breathed. Then, as though caught with her pants down, she scowled fiercely.
“I guess so.” McGill had run the kennels for his family for the past forty years, as had his father before him. And McGill was certainly trusted and excellent with the dogs. It was the making money part that McGill had trouble with, which was why Dev was here, fixing up one of his family’s decrepit castles and hoping to make a go of the kennels.
The Montgomerys were bright and charming, but earlier generations had also been notoriously impractical.
Consequently the family had as many failing businesses as they had varied ones. His generation couldn’t afford such dilettantism.
He could see in Toni’s face her struggle to sublimate her rising rapture—Scandinavian practicality versus American romanticism.
“Well,” she said sternly, “your retainer just made off with my dog.”
Scandinavian pragmatism one, American mawkishness zero. Damn.
“I have the contract that proves the sale right here.” She snapped open a sheaf of papers.
“Listen,” he said, holding up his hands in a pacifying gesture, “I believe you. You have a bill of sale for my dog, signed by McGill. But first things first. I’ve got to find McGill and Blackie, and then we’ll get this sorted out.”
“Fine. Where’d they go?”
“Specifically? I haven’t any idea.”
“That’s just great.” A little note of fear had crept into her voice, and all sorts of manly protective instincts Dev hadn’t even known he’d possessed came roaring to the front. He stepped closer to her and touched her arm. She was too miserable to even note the familiarity.
“What’s the matter?”
“I told you yesterday. I have nonrefundable, nontransferable tickets. I’ve made reservations for Blackie to be on the same flight with me three days from now, out of London. If I miss that flight—I can’t miss that flight.”
An unpleasant suspicion took hold of Dev. “Does McGill know about this?”
She thought a minute. “Yeah? So?”
“He’s gone to ground,” he told her flatly. “As far as McGill is concerned, he only has to stay out of your way until your plane leaves, and he figures he’s home free.”
“The…the…”
“Blackguard?” Dev suggested.
“I was thinking of something a bit more colloquial,” she said.
Dev smiled in spite of her grim expression. She might be a much cooler and more remote woman than the tipsy lovely he’d kissed yesterday, but the humor was still there.
“And let me tell you, Mr. Montgomery,” Ouch. “Your manager has figured wrong. I may be forced to leave here without my dog, but I won’t give him up. I’ll get a lawyer. A really nasty Scottish lawyer.”
“Hold on,” Dev said. He couldn’t afford a lawsuit. Not that he wouldn’t spend his last penny protecting what was his if he thought his principles were being tested—he would. But he wasn’t certain right now who was right and who was wronged. Clearly, Toni didn’t have any such moral dilemma.
“McGill hates cities. Doesn’t trust the motorways, and he’s driving an ancient Land Rover.”
“Yeah?”
“I think I know where he’s headed.”
“Where?” she asked.
“The Great Hebrides Sanctioned Trial on Mull starts tomorrow. McGill was planning on attending. I know he entered a dog. I thought that’s where he’d gone when he came in and fetched Blackie. If you wanted to stay lost for a few days and you had a Border collie, what better place to hide?”
He started past her, but she caught at his arm. The touch was electrifying, stopping him as effectively as a brick wall. “Where are you going?”
“To Mull.” He couldn’t think very clearly with her holding his arm like that. The scent of her herbal shampoo filled the air between them, along with a heated wave of awareness. The memory of their kiss ambushed him in a stampede of desire.
“How?” she asked. “He ruined my car, and he took yours.”
“I got me bike,” he answered in thick Scottish brogue, trying for a brashness that would disguise her effect on him.
“Motorcycle?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I’m going, too.”
He frowned. “No. The roads are too rough, and the bike’s suspension is old. You’d shake some teeth loose, and I don’t want to be responsible for your orthodonture on top of everything else.”
“Aha!” she crowed, “then you do concede that the dog is mine!”
“I don’t concede anything. Except that this is a mess, and we need to get it straightened out. And I’ll be able to do that a good deal faster without you coming along for the ride.”
“Listen,” she said, stepping nearer and tapping him in the sternum with one finger, “I have a vested interest in this. How do I know you won’t just putter off to Oban for the afternoon and leave me here with no way out?”
He felt himself stiffen. “Because you have my word.”
“Yeah. Well, I had McGill’s word, too, and his signature, for whatever good it did me.”
“Ow. That was cold.”
His words drew a quickly suppressed grin from her. “I’m a businesswoman, whatever you might think. My actions yesterday were entirely out of character—”
“Lord, I hope not,” he said with a lopsided grin.
She blushed prettily and scowled. “Don’t try and sidetrack me, Montgomery.”
Okay, he thought, marginally better than Mr. Montgomery.
“Now, I don’t want to call the cops on your trusted family retainer, but I will unless you take me with you.”
He eyed her speculatively. She was standing with her hands on her hips, but there was a shadow in her eyes that belied her aggressive stance, a touch of pleading. She didn’t want to call the cops but clearly felt her back was to the wall.
His thoughts took an improbable and devious turn. If he took her with him, there would be other compensations. He’d have a chance to be with her, to see if attraction this potent had at its base something more than pure animal lust. Not that he was deriding animal lust. Not at all.
“Okay. Get your money and whatever things you might need for a night on the town, providing the town has a population of one-fifty. Meet me down at the garage. And put on a jacket,” he advised, looking out at the gathering clouds. “Rain jacket.”
She darted out, leaving him to make a quick call to his mother’s house in Aberdeen so that his youngest brother could come out and watch over the dogs. As he’d hoped, his brother was happy to assist. Anything to get out of one of their mother’s dinner parties. Then Dev stuffed a change of socks, underwear, and another shirt into a pack and went down to meet Toni at the kennels.
She was waiting for him. She’d put on a Burberry and donned a pair of red cowboy boots in place of her Adidases. They brought all sorts of wicked thoughts boiling to the surface of Dev’s imagination, of her long legs still in those red boots, wrapped around his… Steady, boy.
He opened the garage door, went inside, pulled the drop cloth off his bike, and rolled her outside. Toni sucked in an appreciative whistle, thereby rising in his already high opinion of her. Not only did she have looks, wit, and a love of dogs, but she could appreciate a work of art when she saw it, too. What more could a man ask?
He donned his helmet, straddled the shining black Harley, and stomped on the gas pedal as he turned the throttle. The rebuilt 1958 engine purred to life. He held out his hand, the spare helmet dangling from his fingertips. She put it on quickly, shoved a black backpack under the bungee cords he’d strapped across the back rack, and scrambled aboard, hesitating a second before positioning her hands gingerly on his flanks.
He grinned and gunned the motor. The bike jumped. Toni gasped, plastering herself against his back, her arms flying around his waist as she held on for dear life. She felt good clinging to him. There was strength in her arms, and her long legs bracketed him with fascinating pressure. Her hot face burrowed comfortably against the back of his neck. Her warm breath brushed his ear.
His grin broadened. With a little finesse he could make the trip to Mull last hours.