Aldan, Pennsylvania, A Pleasant and Respectable Delaware County Borough
Twelve Years Later…
Kira Bedwell had a dirty little secret.
A towering plaid-hung secret, masterful and passionate, impossibly addictive.
Maddening, too, for he came to her only in her dreams.
Deliciously heated dreams that called to her now, teasing the edges of her sleep and flooding her with tingling, languorous warmth until she began to stretch and roll beneath the bedcovers. She reached for an extra pillow, hugging it close as the walls of her apartment’s tiny bedroom shimmered and shimmied, taking on a silvery translucence. As always, her pulse leapt at the transformation, the rippling luminescence giving her a view of the cliffs and the sea, a sheep-grazed hill and tumbled, mist-clad ruins.
Ancient ruins, well loved and remembered.
Kira sighed, her heart catching. She bit her lip and splayed her fingers across the cool linen of her bed sheets. She could imagine him so well, her darkly seductive Highlander. If she concentrated, she could almost see him in the shadows, waiting. Mist swirled around his tall, strapping form, a strong wind tearing at his plaid and whipping his raven hair. His hot gaze would make her burn, the raw sensuality streaming off him flowing over her like pure, molten lust, rousing her.
He’d step closer then, a slow smile curving his lips, the sheer eroticism of him and his own insatiable need almost letting her forget she’d fallen asleep in her clothes.
Again.
The third night in a week if she wished to keep note, which she didn’t. Once was more than enough and three times bordered on seriously bothersome.
If she weren’t mistaken, this time she’d even kept on her shoes.
She frowned and flipped onto her side. Yearning still swept her, but she cracked an eye, her dreamspun ardor spinning away as she peered into the darkness.
Her silent bedroom stared back at her, cramped, cluttered, and shabby chic. Pathetically empty of hot-eyed Scotsmen. But the pale glimmer of a new moon fell across the little polished brass carriage clock on her bedside table, the piece’s stark black hands showing the hour as three a.m. Give or take ten minutes.
She blew out a frustrated breath. Like so many of her carefully accumulated treasures, the antique clock wasn’t perfect, keeping time to its own rhythm. Sometimes accurate, sometimes ahead or behind, and every so often not at all.
Like her dreams.
They, too, couldn’t be forced.
Aidan MacDonald, medieval clan chieftain extraordinaire, only slipped into her fantasies when it suited him.
Or so Kira thought.
Just as she assumed her bold, dream lover could only be the MacDonalds’ legendary leader. After her one trip to Scotland years ago, she’d spent months researching Clan Donald and Castle Wrath, finally determining Aidan as her Highlander.
The tantalizingly gorgeous Celtic he-god she’d glimpsed so briefly.
And never forgotten.
A man of any less mythic status couldn’t possibly invade her sleep and ravish her with such wild, heart-pounding sex. Just the imagined scent of him made her dizzy with longing. Remembering the cool silk of his glossy, shoulder-length hair, or the hardness of his muscles, was enough to make her breath quicken. Thinking about his kisses, the skillful glide of his hands on her body, did things to her she never would have believed possible.
Watching him stride toward her, his sword hung low on his hip and a predatory gleam in his eye, positively melted her.
He was the essence of her deepest, darkest fantasies.
Her secret lover, he’d ruined her for all others.
Kira sighed, her fingers curling into the bed covers. Warmth pulsed through her just thinking about him. More than just a fantasy lover, he’d influenced her life in ways she’d never have believed. He’d initiated her into her special gift of far-seeing, the ability to catch a visual or mental image of the distant past. An inherited talent kept secret in her family and one she hadn’t been aware of at all until the day she’d hoped to picnic at Castle Wrath and had peered down a ruined stair, looking straight into Aidan’s torch-lit hall and his dark, smoldering stare.
Kira shivered. She wanted his gaze on her now.
Ached to see him.
Instead, nothing stirred except a chill wind whistling around her old brick apartment house. The faint tap-tap of tree branches against her window. All was still and quiet. Through a chink in the curtains she could see that the sky was low with clouds, the night cold and damp.
She stared out the window and sighed. Any other time she would have smiled. She liked cold and damp. Throw in a handful of mist and a bit of soft thin rain and her imagination could transport her to Scotland.
That other world where she longed to be, not here listening to the night wind sighing around Aldan, Pennsylvania’s seen-better-days Castle Apartments, but hearing Hebridean gales blowing in from the sea. Long Atlantic breakers crashing on jagged black rocks.
Rugged cliffs and slate-colored seas, the tingle of salt mist damping her cheeks.
That was what she wanted.
Needed.
Unfortunately, on her budget, the closest she could hope to get to Scotland was dusting the framed tea towel of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile that hung above her sagging sofa. Frustration welling, she twisted onto her side and pulled a pillow over her head. Truth was, she cherished that tea towel. Like the small tartan-covered armchair beside her bed, she’d found the tea-towel at a garage sale. Along with the worthless wooden frame she’d used to mount it.
A thin purse sparked creativity.
Penning supposedly true tales of the strange and inexplicable for Destiny Magazine, a popular monthly focused on all things supernatural, didn’t generate enough income for luxuries.
Even if some of her stories were fact.
Like her most recent. The reason she’d barricaded herself inside her postage-stamp-sized apartment and wasn’t answering her phone or e-mail.
Kira groaned and knocked the pillow aside. Impossible, how a mere week could turn someone’s life upside down. One excited phone call to Destiny from a group of wannabe archeologists, and there she was, using her far-seeing ability to help them locate the remains of a Viking longboat resting proudly at the bottom of a river-bisected Cape Cod lake, her discovery proving beyond a doubt that Norsemen were the first to land on the New World’s shores. Overnight, she’d become everyone’s most celebrated darling.
Or their worst nightmare.
Depending on whether one favored silver-helmed, ax-bearing sea marauders or the tried and true. Either way, even if Destiny inflated her salary to match her sudden and unwanted notoriety, the proponents of a certain Mediterranean mariner weren’t too keen to see their hero’s glory dinted.
A shudder rippled down Kira’s spine and she clutched the covers tighter. She’d lost track of how many historical societies wanted her head, each one raking her over the coals for her blasphemy.
Christopher Columbus may have died centuries ago, but his spirit was alive and well in America.
His fans active.
Out there, and sharpening their claws.
She frowned. No, a raise wasn’t going to help her. The means to purchase an air ticket meant tiddly-squat if she ended up tarred and feathered before she could ever reach the airport.
Not to mention a Glasgow-bound plane.
Judging by the hate mail she’d been receiving, such a mob might even seize and burn her passport. Already, she’d found two nails thrust into her car tires and some exceptionally witty soul who clearly lived in her apartment building had smeared some kind of unidentifiable goo on her doorknob. Icky, foul-smelling goo. Kira swiped an annoying strand of hair off her forehead. At least fretting about such nonsense took her mind off him.
The gorgeous, incredible-in-bed medieval Highlander she shouldn’t be fantasizing about when she was in a pickle.
She sighed and shut her eyes, doing her best to forget him. The alpha Gael who not only could melt her with one heated, sensuous glance, but who knew better than any real man how to ignite her passion.
A fool’s passion, imagined and unreal, regardless of how exquisite.
She pressed a hand to her forehead and massaged her temples. The broadcast reporters and television cameras camped in the Castle Apartments parking lot were real and she’d had enough of them. As the daughter of a ceramic tile salesman and a high school art teacher, she wasn’t used to the limelight.
Nor did she like it.
Especially when they all seemed determined to make sport of her.
“Sleep.” She breathed the word like a mantra, repeating it in her mind as she rubbed two fingers between her brows. A good eight hours of oblivion was what she needed.
Maybe then she’d waken refreshed, the snarl of television crews and other suchlike long-noses gone from outside her apartment’s ground floor windows, the world a new and bright place, free of problems and cares.
Yes, she decided, settling an arm over her head, sleep was just what she needed.
Lass, your raiments.
Deep and rich, the mellifluous words seduced the darkness, pure Highland and buttery-smooth. Familiar in ways that slid right through her sleep to curl low in her belly, warming and melting her. Making her tingle and sizzle in all the right places.
Aidan MacDonald’s sinfully sexy burr could do that.
That, and many other things.
All delicious.
Her eyes snapped open. He stood in the dim moonlight near her window, his hands on his hips and his head angled as he looked at her. All male dominance and breathtakingly handsome, he caught and held her gaze, the heat of his own already stroking her, making her burn.
“The raiments,” he said again, stepping closer. “Have done with them.”
Kira’s breath caught. Her heart leapt. Somewhere in the distance a siren wailed. Not that she cared. Her body refused to move. She could only stare, desire and need streaking through her, embarrassment flaming the back of her neck, scalding her cheeks.
He wanted her naked, as was his wont.
But unless she was mistaken, getting that way might dampen his ardor.
She was wearing her comfy, granny-style panties. High-waisted, white-cotton, and boring. Equally bad, she had on her favorite oversized training suit. The baggy one with the little tear in the knee.
She swallowed. “I wasn’t expecting you tonight. It’s been a while.”
He shrugged. “I’ve had matters to see to,” he said, flicking a speck of lint off his plaid. “That doesn’t mean I haven’t hungered for you. I have, and my need is great.”
“I missed you, too,” she stalled, trying to calculate how quickly she could rid herself of her less-than-flattering clothes and assume a seductive pose.
In dreams, anything should be possible, but her limbs remained stubbornly frozen, her fumbling fingers impossibly clumsy.
He started toward her, his own hands already unbuckling his sword belt. His eyes narrowing, he paused just long enough to set aside his great brand and whip off his plaid. Then, as was the way with sexual fantasies, he flashed a smile and was naked, without even having to stoop to yank off his rough-leathered shoes.
“Ah….” Kira’s palms began to dampen. “Maybe tonight isn’t a good time.”
Towering over the bed now, he cocked a brow. “Sweetness, I’ve told you,” he began, his gaze flicking the length of her, “any time we have is good.” For an instant, his face clouded. “It isn’t always easy to find you.” He folded his arms, looking serious. “I dinnae ken what powers let us come together. Only that we must seize the moments we have.”
Kira swallowed, her heart pounding. “But?”
“But you know I have ne’er cared for your way of dress.” His eyes narrowed on her sweatshirt. “‘Tis passing strange.”
Kira burrowed deeper into the covers. Wait till he saw her granny-panties.
“Clothes shouldn’t matter in dreams.” She met his gaze, her heart still hammering. “Besides, they’re all I have-”
“I say you have an abundance, beautifully so.” He reached for the covers and whipped them off the bed, some Highland slight-of-hand or dream-inspired magic leaving her unclothed.
Just as naked as he was.
She blinked. So much for cotton underwear and baggy sweat pants.
He looked at her, the covers dangling from his hand, her clothes nowhere in sight, and an expression of intense satisfaction on his handsome face.
“That’s better.” He let the blanket fall.
No, it’s better than better, Kira wanted to say but the words lodged in her throat. She moistened her lips, her gaze flicking over his magnificence. Her heart swelled, her chest tightening even as her tender places went soft and achy. Just looking at him excited her. Need flamed through her, tingling and urgent as his dark eyes heated, flaring with passion as they swept her own nakedness.
“Sweet lass, were you not a bruadar, I’d keep you in my bed for a sennight.” He reached to smooth strong fingers along the curve of her hip. “Nae, seven days wouldn’t sate me. I’d double that, ravishing you again and again for a fortnight.”
Kira sighed, her limbs going liquid.
But one thing he’d said troubled her. A word she didn’t know.
“A broo-e-tar?” She could hardly speak, his touch and his buttery-rich burr, working the usual magic on her. “You’ve never called me that before.”
“Mayhap I do not speak the word for I wish it were not so. Bruadar is the Gaelic for a dream. I would have you as a full-blooded woman, hot and alive in my arms.” His eyes darkened. “Mine, alone.”
“I am yours.” Kira’s heart pounded, the truth of those three words slashing across her soul. The impossibility of them, damned her. “You are the dream.” She met his gaze, her own challenging him to deny it. “You’re here in my bedroom. I’m not in yours.”
“Say you?” One raven brow arced in a look of sheer male authority. “Yon walls look like mine to me,” he said, flashing a glance at the windows.
Windows no longer there.
Kira gulped, unable to deny that her windows were gone. Likewise her carefully sewn tartan window dressings and even the entire wall. In their place, proud whitewashed stones gleamed with the soft glow of candles and the tasseled edges of a richly-colored tapestry fluttered in the draught of an unshuttered window.
A tall arch-topped window.
Very medieval-y.
Definitely not hers.
Her eyes widened. She could even feel the chill night breeze. Catch the brisk tang of the sea; the pounding of waves onto a fearsome, rock-strewn shore. Then the illusion faded, leaving only the fragile luminescence of her dream, her plaid-patterned curtains faintly visible again, staring mutely from behind the shimmering silver. And instead of the roar of Hebridean waves, she heard only the tic-ticking of her clock.
The familiar light branch scratching at the glass of her apartment windows.
Irrefutable evidence of just where she was and that despite the intensity of his stare, she was indeed only dreaming.
“Dinnae fash yourself, lass. It doesnae matter. No’ where we are.” He looked at her, his gaze going deep. “All that matters is that I want you. And” – he paused, desire blazing in his eyes - “that you want me. You do, don’t you?”
“O-o-oh, yes.” She reached for him and he obliged her, gathering her close for a hungry, lip-bruising kiss. Tightening his arms around her, he plundered her mouth, the mastery of his tongue blotting everything but sensation.
The wild thundering of her heart and the slight creaking of her secondhand bed when he stretched out beside her, the full hot and hard length of him pressed skin-to-skin against her own trembling softness.
The creak made her frown, its intrusion reminding her this was all fantasy. A dream that could be so easily shattered, and often was.
Determined to hold on to him as long as possible, she slid her hands up his powerful back, gripping his shoulders as he rolled on top of her. At once, that very special hot, hard and glorious part of him probed her, seeking their bliss.
Still kissing her, he slipped a hand between them to cup her breast. His fingers splayed over her fullness, teased her swollen nipple. “You are mine,” he growled, his breath warm against her lips. “I will ne’er let you go. No’ if I must search to the ends of the earth to find you.”
Something inside her broke on his words and she clung to him, returning his kiss with all the passion she had, refusing to accept the futility of his vow.
Aidan the magnificent, as she sometimes thought of him, could search for her through all time, even turn the world on end, and never would he find her.
Too many centuries stretched between them.
That truth scalding the backs of her eyes, she opened her mouth wider beneath his, welcoming the mad thrust of his tongue, needing the intimacy of his soul-searing kisses.
Wanting all of him.
Understanding her desire as only he could, he deepened the kiss, swirling his tongue over and around hers as he eased himself inside her. The silky-smooth glide of each rock-hard inch into her eager, clutching heat sent waves of pleasure spilling through her.
She matched his thrusts, losing herself to the elemental fury of their joining, reveling in the sexy Gaelic love words he breathed against her lips. Dark, lusty-sounding words, full of an untamed, earthy wildness that thrilled her, his every passionate utterance driving her closer to an explosive, shattering release.
Her own cries loud in her head, she writhed and arched her hips, her need breaking even as her cries turned shrill. Sharp, jangling cries so annoying and harsh they could never be coming from her throat.
Not now, on the verge of her climax.
The noise kept on, growing insistent, seeming louder with each passion-zapping shrill until she came awake with a start and recognized the sound for what it was.
Her telephone.
Kira groaned.
Aidan was nowhere to be seen.
If he’d been there at all as a peek beneath the covers proved she was still wearing her comfy training suit. The whole grungy works, complete with tennies. Worse, if her heavy-eyed grogginess and the bands of light sneaking in past her drawn curtains meant anything, she’d slept way too late.
Almost afraid to look, she groped for her little bedside clock, glanced at it, and then groaned again. Ten thirty a.m. A new record, even for her, notorious un-morning person that she was.
And still the phone rang.
Wishing she’d slept with earplugs, she scrambled to a sitting position and grabbed the phone. Squinting at the caller ID display, she didn’t answer.
Much as she loved her, her mother wasn’t someone she cared to talk to before at least two cups of coffee.
Strong black coffee, the kind you could stand a spoon in.
Bracing herself, she drew a deep breath, determined to sound awake. “Hello?”
“Carter Williams called, dear,” her mother gushed. “He wants to speak with you.” She paused for a breath and Kira could hear her excitement bubbling through the phone. “I told him we could have coffee at three. Here at the house. He-”
“Wait a minute.” Kira sat up, warning bells ringing in her head. “Who is Carter Williams?”
“Kira.” Her mother gave an exasperated sigh. “Would I invite him over if he weren’t important?”
No, she wouldn’t have, but Kira wasn’t about to point that out to her.
“Who is he?” she repeated instead.
Blanche Bedwell hesitated.
A pause that made Kira’s stomach clench.
The only men wishing to speak to her lately were icky-pot media hounds. Worse, her mother not only worried about status, she was also a notorious matchmaker who believed every female under thirty should be married and having babies.
Like Kira’s sisters.
“Well? Who is Carter Williams?” Kira was sure she didn’t want to know.
“He’s with the Aldan Bee. A nice young man who’s going places. I play bridge with his mother. He only wants to ask you a few questions about your Viking ship.”
“It isn’t my Viking ship. It’s what’s left of a foundered Norse longship and a few ancient mooring holes and other artifacts that prove-”
“Whatever, dear.” Kira could almost see her mother waving an airy hand. “Carter Williams might give you an in at the Bee if you-”
“An in at the Bee?” The tops of Kira’s ears started getting warm. “I don’t want to work for the Bee.”
“It would be a real job.”
“I have a job.” Kira glanced at the papers and books piled on her tiny desk across the room.
Research for her next assignment: My Three Month Marriage To A Yeti.
Suppressing a groan, she threw back the covers and stood. “Destiny Magazine pays well enough for me to cover my monthly bills. And” – she shoved a hand through her hair – “writing for them let’s me stretch my imagination. The readers who buy the magazine are entertained and I can pay my rent.”
“Making up tales of alien abductions.”
“If need be, yes.” Kira shot another glance at her stack of Yeti books. She wasn’t about to admit that she, too, was growing weary of penning such drivel.
Even so, she wouldn’t barter her soul by working with the kind of wolf pack presently prowling the Castle Apartments parking lot. They were still there, the snarkies, as a glance out her window revealed. If she weren’t mistaken, they might have increased in number overnight.
Like the plague of the giant toadstools she wrote about a few years ago.
Cringing at the memory, she turned away from the window and dropped onto the edge of her bed, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
“Kira, child, Carter Williams is-”
“Not all my stories are about aliens.” Kira frowned, thoughts of aliens and mutant toadstools making her testy. “The Norse longship is an important discovery. The excavation has drawn some of the nation’s top archeologists. Destiny understands my special gift. No other magazine or paper would let me-”
“Carter Williams is single.”
That did it.
Kira shot to her feet. “So am I. Happily.”
Her gaze slid to the glittery clump of granite sitting in a place of honor beside her computer’s keyboard. At once, Aidan’s face flashed before her and she could almost hear his deep burr again.
You are mine.
I will ne’er let you go. No’ if I must search to the ends of the earth to find you.
Crossing the room, she picked up the stone. “Carter Williams will just have to do without me.” She inhaled, closed her fingers around the piece of granite. “You know I’ve gone off men for a while. I told you that the last time you tried to set me up with someone.”
Her mother made an impatient sound. “There was nothing wrong with Lonnie Ward. Your father says he’s certain Lonnie will be the next manager at the Tile Bonanza. You could have done worse.”
Kira glanced at the ceiling. “Lonnie Ward doesn’t like dogs.” She tightened her fingers around the granite. “You should have seen him brushing at his pants after a dog ran up to him and sniffed him in the park. You know I could never be happy with a dog-hater.”
“You don’t have a dog, dear.”
“I will someday.”
As soon as she didn’t live in an apartment the size of a fishbowl.
Her mother drew a breath. “I believe Carter Williams has a dog. I’ve seen him about town with a spaniel. And his mother has two-”
“It won’t work, Mom.” Kira puffed her bangs off her forehead. “I’m not biting.”
“You’re still mooning over that Highland chieftain,” her mother said, and Kira almost dropped the phone. She’d never told anyone about her dreams. Not even her sisters. And especially not her mother. “It isn’t healthy to obsess over someone who lived centuries ago, poring through history books and decorating your apartment like the set of Brigadoon.”
“Lots of people love Scotland,” Kira returned, relief sweeping her that her mother hadn’t somehow guessed the truth about Aidan. “Even Kerry and Lindsay devour romance novels set there.”
Blanche Bedwell sighed. “Your sisters are also well-balanced young women who have other interests.”
Kira rolled her eyes. Her younger sister, Kerry’s, only goal in life seemed to be squeezing into clothes too tight for her under-five-foot Rubenesque figure, eating sweets, and producing babies. Her older sister, Lindsay, was a hypochondriac tree-hugger and such a clinging vine, Kira wondered how she managed to spend enough time away from their parents to run her own household much less raise her two children.
“You should follow in your sisters’ footsteps,” her mother added. “Marry and raise a family.”
Kira set down her stone and glanced at the drawn curtains. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel the Carter Williamses of the world out there, clogging the parking lot, waiting for her to show herself.
She shuddered, her stomach knotting at the thought of facing them. But then she put back her shoulders and stood straighter. Silly or not, she knew Aidan wouldn’t approve of a spineless woman.
Not in his century and not in her dreams.
As soon as she’d showered and had her coffee, she’d go outside and tell the long-noses to buzz off. Find someone else to make the centerpiece of their snarkfest.
She wouldn’t cooperate. Nor would she be intimidated.
“Perhaps you’re right, in part,” she admitted. “Maybe I do need other interests. But don’t forget, it was your own Great Aunt Minnie’s inheritance that got me into all this.” She left out that her life might’ve taken an easier course if her mother hadn’t kept mum about some females in the family having far-seeing talents.
A trait that had lain dormant for generations and that Blanche Bedwell had hoped would never surface again.
Unfortunately – or not – it had, and its startling arrival that day at the Wrath ruins had changed Kira’s life.
“Great Aunt Minnie lived in a different time,” her mother sniffed. “People were more impressionable then. You have the means to channel your talents into a more sensible direction.”
Kira bristled. “Maybe I like the direction I’ve taken. I’m interested in the paranormal, though I wouldn’t mind a better paying job where I wouldn’t have to spend half my time making up nonsense about angels amongst us and Bigfoot sightings. It’s the true supernatural that fascinates me. Ghosts, reincarnation, that sort of thing.”
Her mother sighed.
Ignoring her, Kira began pacing. “I’d like to work quietly and behind the scenes, without being plunged into the limelight.”
“Limelight isn’t necessarily bad,” her mother countered. “Such attention could draw the notice of-”
“Just the kind of man I’d not be interested in,” Kira finished for her. “Not if flash and brass topped his list of the important things in life.”
Her mother tsk-tsked. “You’ve set your sights too high, my dear. Phemie’s stepdaughter is the only soul I’ve ever heard of who married a Scottish laird and went off to live happily ever after in a castle. Such things don’t happen every day.”
No, they didn’t, Kira knew.
The quick flash of green-tinged heat jabbing needles in her heart proved it.
A Scottish laird and living in the Highlands. In a real castle. She shot a glance at her desk, the silver-framed photo of the ruins of Castle Wrath claiming pride of place right next to her piece of granite. Her heart squeezed and the green-tinted heat began spreading through her chest, making each breath difficult.
“Phemie and the girl’s father went over to see the couple last year,” her mother was saying. “Though Phemie couldn’t stomach sleeping in the castle, saying it was too damp and musty and full of ghosts. She-”
“Phemie as in Euphemia Ross?” Disbelief washed over Kira. “The sharp-tongued little wisp of a woman in your bridge club? The one everyone calls the Cairn Avenue shrew?”
“Now, Kira.” Blanche Bedwell used her most placating tone. “She’s Euphemia McDougall these days. And, yes, her stepdaughter, Mara, married a real live Highland chieftain. Sir Alexander Douglas, I believe Phemie said. Their castle is near a place called Uban or something.”
“Oban,” Kira corrected her. “The gateway to the Hebrides. It’s on Scotland’s west coast. My tour years ago stopped there. We had a whole hour’s look at Dunstaffnage Castle.”
“Well, dear, if ever you go back, I’m sure Phemie would give you Mara’s phone number and address. She’d surely be pleased to see you. Just-”
She broke off as the doorbell trilled in the background. “That will be Lindsay. She made a batch of organic brownies for your father. Call if you need me.”
“I will,” Kira said as her mother rang off.
Not that her mother – or anyone – could assist her with what she needed.
Knowing she couldn’t even help herself in that regard, she put down the phone and began peeling off her rumpled clothes, heading for the bathroom. Naked, she yanked back her thistle-covered shower curtain and made to step beneath the steaming, pounding spray.
Until her phone rang again. Her landline. She listened as her answering machine clicked on and Destiny Magazine’s executive editor’s voice rose above the sound of running water, the man’s tone giving her pause.
Dan Hillard sounded excited.
Kira, girl, his booming voice filled the bathroom, I know you’re in hiding and may even want to quit, but I’ve got a new assignment for you.
“O-o-oh, no, you don’t.” Kira grabbed a towel and slung it around her as she hastened back into her bedroom to click off the machine. “Not for a while anyway.”
This is one you won’t want to miss, Dan’s voice cajoled, almost as if he’d heard her. It’ll get you away from this media circus.
Kira hesitated, her fingers hovering over the answering machine. Something in his voice was getting to her, making her heart skitter.
Far away, Kira. All expenses paid.
She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, ready to reject—
Another voice broke in, interrupting Dan. Come, lass, I’m waiting for you.
Kira whirled around, the towel dropping to the floor. But only her empty bedroom stared back at her. Even if the echo of Aidan’s voice still rang her in ears. Dark, rich, and sexy, and so full of longing her knees watered.
He’d called to her.
She was certain of it.
Trembling, she stooped to pick up her towel, waiting for Dan to say something else. But he, too, was gone. Nothing remained of her boss or his cryptic message except the insistent little red light blinking on the answering machine.
Not that she needed to hear the words.
Her heart already knew.
She was going to Scotland.