Tall, Dark and Kilted (16 page)

Big time.

But he’d stepped into the shaft of light slanting into the tower and he looked so rock-hard solid and gorgeous standing there that she just knew if she opened her mouth she’d babble something she’d regret.

Something like
oh, my, oh, my.

She moistened her lips, knew she was blushing.

He set down his shield and folded his arms. “I’ve been called many things in my time, but ne’er red-deviled.”

“I—” Cilla glanced briefly out the window arch. The bird was now a black speck above the moors on the other side of the Kyle. “I wouldn’t have called you that either if—”

“Nor—until this day—has anyone e’er suggested I might enjoy sprouting fur and growing fangs.” He sounded highly insulted.

“As for my kilt—”

“Oh, please!” Cilla tossed back her hair. She didn’t want to hear about his kilt.

Not when, just a short while ago, she’d wondered about what she’d see if she peeked beneath it.

“What was I supposed to think?” She indicated the mask with a flick of her hand. “I open the shutters to see that
thing
sailing toward me. Behag Finney—or whatever the cook’s name is—fainted from fright after it appeared at the kitchen window. Then I come up here to . . . to get away for an afternoon, and there it is again, popping up out of nowhere.”

“And you thought it was me.”

“Of course I thought it was you!”

He remained unmoved. “I see.”

“No, you don’t.” Cilla glared at him. “But you should. It’s uncanny the way you’re here, there, and everywhere.”

“That, sweetness, is what ghosts do.” He said that as if she should know it. “After seven hundred years, it’s become a habit.”

“Exactly, and that’s just what I meant. You’re a ghost. Since meeting you”—she waved a hand, struggling to find the right words—“I have to believe
anything
is possible.”

“Even flying red devils and werewolves?”

Cilla swallowed. “Even them.”

“Then, lass, I must correct you,” he stated, an odd note of regret in his voice. “There are some things that are
not
possible.”

Cilla started to argue the point—if
he
was possible, then anything should be—but he was suddenly directly beneath her, having crossed the tower without her having even seen him take one step.

“That’s another thing ghosts do, isn’t it?” She pointed out the obvious. “Move across a room in the blink of an eye.”

He shrugged. “Being a ghost does have some advantages. Moving quickly is one of the little things that amuses. It helps break the tedium of our daily . . . lives.”

“You call it a life?” The words slipped out before she could stop them.

He blinked. Then he ran a hand over his head and his chest as if assuring himself that he was really there.

Heat seared the back of Cilla’s neck, embarrassment scalding her as he held his arms out to his sides and wriggled his fingers. He examined first one hand and then the other, before looking back up at her.

“Aye, I call it a life.” His mouth quirked. “Such as it is. I am here. That is enough.”

“But how did you get here? You haunt Dunroamin.” Her brow knit. “I thought ghosts were bound to a particular place. Did you follow me here?”

He clapped a hand to his chest and pretended to reel backward. “So many questions,” he jested, his dark eyes twinkling. “Why don’t we get you down from there and I’ll answer them for you?”

Cilla blinked. She’d completely forgotten she was still stuck in the window recess. Even more startling, that one quick glimpse at his humor did funny things to her knees.

The man . . . no, the
ghost
. . . could smile!

But the smile disappeared when he spread his arms again and stepped closer to the wall.

He peered up at her, his expression earnest. “I told you, I may not be able to catch you here. But I should be able to
cushion
a fall if you slip. You need to turn around and climb down using the same footholds you used to get up there.”

Cilla’s heart dropped.

She couldn’t remember where a single one of the footholds were. Nor could she see them from this angle. Looking down, she measured the distance between her and the tower floor and frowned.

For once, she’d hoped—no, expected—him to help her.

It really was a long way down.

Her knees began to tremble. “Why can’t you catch me again? You did before.”

“Because this is not Dunroamin.” He said that as if it explained everything.

“I don’t understand.”

“It cost me much energy to come here.” A line etched into his brow on the admission. “Without my full strength, I cannot be certain I can catch you. I’ll no’ risk that. It’s safer if you climb down.”

So she did, dropping first to her knees and then scooting round so she could scramble down before any other thought could enter her mind except that his outspread arms would at least soften the worst of a possible fall.

Safely at the bottom, she dusted her hands to give her heart time to stop galloping. Then she took a deep breath and braced herself against
other
dangers.

The most notable being his proximity.

“So why did you follow me here?” She tilted her head, aware of his exotic sandalwood scent, heady in the closeness of the ruin. “Since you lose strength outside Dunroamin?”

To her surprise, he laughed.

But it was a humorless laugh, empty of the delicious tinge of bemusement that had lit his eyes when he’d pretended to stagger beneath her questions.

“Ach, lass.” He put his hands on his hips and glanced up at the sky above the roofless tower. “I didn’t follow you here. I was here well before you arrived.”

“But why? If you haunt Dunroamin—”

“I do not
haunt
Dunroamin.” Pride made Hardwick clarify. “If you would know the truth of it, ghosts have better things to do with their time than haunt people or places. I stay at Dunroamin because”—he paused, searching for the best words—“it suits me to do so.”

And I came here to get away from you.

“Why?”

“Why what?” He blinked. His mind was elsewhere.

Indeed, he’d scarce heard her. She’d bent to pick up the devil mask and in doing so, presented him with a tantalizing view of her shapely backside.

“Why what I asked you before.” She made it sound like he was a lackwit. “Why are you at Dunroamin and here? You don’t have a Highland name, so I don’t think you’re attached to Uncle Mac’s family and—”

“My mother was a Shaw.” He tried to tear his gaze from her bobbing buttocks and couldn’t. “Clan Macintosh and Highland to the bone.”

“That still doesn’t explain your business here.”

“You do not want anything to do with the reason I’m here.”

“Color me curious.” She straightened then, the devil face clutched in her hands, but the damage was done. And the way she gripped the mask, holding it fast against her, pushed up her full breasts so that they swelled against the clingy blue top she wore.

Hardwick swore beneath his breath. He could even make out the contours of her nipples. Chill-tightened and thrusting, they were as visible as if she once again stood damp and naked before him.

Damp. Naked.

The two words whipped through him, blotting reason.

His blood flamed and heat swept low, gripping his vitals and squeezing tight. So exquisitely tight that he reached for her, setting his hands on her shoulders and holding her still, lest she move again and cause her beautiful breasts to jiggle. Or worse, present him with another delectable glimpse of her plump little bottom.

Remind him of the sweet triangle of lush golden curls topping her thighs.

“Curiosity, lass, is no’ always a good thing.” He shook his head slowly. “No’ a good thing at all.”

Her chin shot upward. “Even so—”

“Nae, lass.” He couldn’t give in to her. “Trust me and leave it be.”

“Trust you?” Her eyes flashed blue. “When you won’t even answer the simplest questions?”

Hardwick raked a hand through his hair. In that moment, a crack widened in the wall of the ruin and where a moment before crumbled mortar had filled the narrow space between stones, several sets of fiery red eyes peered out at him.

He jerked, releasing Cilla just as a thin, papery hand reached out of the crack to crook a finger at him.

Oblivious to the jeering hags in the wall behind her, she stared at him, too. His heart racing, he ignored the crones and looked down at her, willing himself to see not her large blue eyes peering up at him so defiantly, but Bran of Barra’s ugly bearded face.

The Hebridean varlet owed him a favor or two, so he doubted the lout would mind.

He took it further, imagining his friend rocking back on his heels, then slapping his thigh in mirth. Roaring with the irony that for once, he—Hardwick, the rogue of all rogues—couldn’t just toss a lass o’er his shoulder, carry her off to bed, and air her skirts just because it pleased him.

Not that he’d treat this one thusly.

This lass begged a slow and thorough ravishing, hell hags or no.

He swallowed hard and reached for her again. But his strength was ebbing and he couldn’t grip her shoulders. Leastways, not as firmly as he’d hoped to do.

He
did
groan.

The exact groan men make just before they lower their heads to kiss a woman.

Cilla’s breath caught, her agitation forgotten. Her heart split. He was only testy because she was provoking him. And she was doing that because he made her nervous. Because ever since she’d spotted him limned in that ray of sunlight, she’d
wanted
to kiss him.

And now it was going to happen!

She was sure of it.

Despite every shrill warning bell in her head, she leaned up onto her toes and lifted her face to make it easier for him.

She even puckered her lips.

Pulse racing, she waited for his lips to close over hers, first brushing gently, then with increasing insistence until he crushed her against him and devoured her mouth in a rough, bruising kiss.

The kind Grant A. Hughes III had only given her in her dreams.

Pleasure she wasn’t going to enjoy now, either, because just when he leaned in so close she could feel his warm breath on her cheek, he released her again so quickly she dropped the devil mask.

Whipping about, he strode across the tower and snatched up his discarded shield. When he turned back to face her, he held the thing in front of him as if he expected her to run him through with a broadsword.

He did not look like a man who’d been about to kiss her buggy socks off.

He looked furious.

And he couldn’t even seem to meet her eyes, his gaze repeatedly darting past her to a spot on the crumbling, moss-grown wall.

Mortification swept Cilla. Heat jabbed into the backs of her eyes, making her humiliation complete.

Even Grant the rat fink hadn’t made her cry.

Scowling, he finally stepped up to her and reached to brush her cheek with his thumb.

“This, sweetness”—he glanced at his hand, the wetness glistening there—“is the reason you should not have come to Dunroamin.”

Cilla kept her chin raised and glared at him.

The blaze in his own eye could have lit a bonfire. “It’s also the reason I came here, to Castle Varrich, today. I’ll no’ make such a mistake again.”

Unable to bear having him see her embarrassment a moment longer, Cilla stooped to snatch up the devil mask. This time when she straightened, he was gone.

“Damn!” She swiped a hand over her cheek.

Then she tossed back her hair and started for the doorway. Beyond the jagged opening, she could see clouds building out over the Kyle. Soon it would rain. Already, she could smell the chill moisture in the air.

That and a lingering whiff of sandalwood.

Just enough to pinch her heart.

But as she hefted the devil mask against her hip to scramble out of the ruin, she knew two things she hadn’t known before she’d entered it.

Firstly—the mask was
not
the devil face she’d seen outside her window. She glanced at the name label sewn into the inside of the mask, sure of it. However the devil face came to be in the possession of a giant bird, it wasn’t sinister.

She’d seen the real thing.

This was simply a mask that had once been the property of one Erlend Eggertson.

She shuddered, not about to contemplate the implications when she had a long trek through dark and creepy woods awaiting her.

Instead, she considered her second and most important revelation. She’d almost been kissed by a medieval Highland ghost.

And she’d wanted that kiss badly.

So badly, in fact, that she meant to do everything in her power to find out why it’d gone wrong.

Then, if for once her luck would change, she just might be able to make things right.

At the very least, she meant to try.

Chapter 8

“It had to have been Gregor.” Aunt Birdie nodded for emphasis. “The big question is, where in the world did he get such a thing? A red devil mask here”—she gripped the edge of the small round table and leaned forward—“in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’m sure I can’t imagine where he got it.” Cilla popped a mini pretzel into her mouth.

Compliments of the Ben Loyal Hotel’s Bistro Bar, where they sat in a quiet corner, the tiny salted tidbits were addictive. Already, she’d nibbled her way through one rather full bowl. And this second portion—served with equal generosity—would soon be gone, too.

Especially since each bite she took helped take the edge off her worry about where
her
devil face had come from. The obvious answer—
hell
—was a road she didn’t want to go down. Not in her own mind and certainly not in a discussion with Aunt Birdie. She rather doubted her aunt’s ghost-friendly outlook would extend to the fiend of all fiends.

Frowning, she shoved aside the bowl of pretzels.

Too much salt wasn’t good for you.

Neither was dwelling on things that would only add flames—perhaps literally—to the already scary situation at Dunroamin. She also needed to stop fretting over almost-kisses that hadn’t and never would happen.