By the Fates, what more could the damned Fae possibly want of him now?
Three
DENVER, COLORADO
FEBRUARY
PRESENT DAY
His hand, large and callused, stroked up her thigh to rest on her hip. She snuggled back against him, as if she could melt into the hard chest and powerful arms that held her. He drew her close, one strong hand slipping down to cover her breast. Her entire body tingled in response to his touch, her senses crying out for more. This was it. He was The One. She’d found her perfect man, her Soulmate.
Abby awoke slowly, keeping her eyes closed against the sun that filtered through her bedroom curtains. Dregs of the dream she’d been having still fogged her mind, not yet giving way to the reality of her waking world.
It had seemed so real she could still feel the heavy warmth of the man who’d held her in her dream. Still feel his arms around her. Still feel his roughened hand covering her breast.
Abby’s eyes flew open and she steeled herself not to move, not to scream.
The large, warm hand covering her breast was no dream.
Oh, damn! What had she done last night?
Scenes of her evening out with the girls flipped through her mind as if she were scanning through a Rolodex. Nothing. There wasn’t even an inkling of any man in her memory.
This couldn’t be happening. She never did anything even remotely like this. Not picking up strange men, and certainly not forgetting that she’d even done it.
Though she wasn’t foolish enough to deny she’d been about as drunk last night as she’d ever been, she still would have sworn she’d come straight home and gone to bed—alone! A quick glance down confirmed that she was wearing the boxers and T-shirt she thought she remembered putting on last night before climbing into bed. Alone.
And yet. . . here he was, his big, warm body cuddled around hers like he belonged here.
How could she remember dressing for bed but not remember climbing in with this man?
She shoved at the panic crawling up her throat, fighting to rationalize her way through this. Men didn’t break into houses just to climb into bed for a good night’s rest. They murdered you, or attacked you, or at the very least robbed you and then left. They didn’t just go to sleep. No, there had to be a logical explanation for the man warming her bed.
Like being totally drunk and dragging some stranger home with her? A stranger she couldn’t even remember meeting?
After a moment of indecision, she carefully slid out from under his hand and rolled to her side to have a look at the mystery man in her bed.
Okay. Time for a new dating rule. From now on Drunk Abby got to pick out all the new men to date.
This one was something to behold with the covers draped low across his hips. From the dark copper hair that brushed against his shoulders, to the shadowed line of his strong jaw, right on down to the solid wall of muscle that masqueraded as a normal man’s chest, this guy was exceptional.
And, unless he was wearing some amazingly low-cut underwear, he was also exceptionally naked.
Abby’s heart pounded in her chest. A naked Adonis in her bed. One who apparently spent the better part of his life in a gym, too, from the looks of him. Those arms were magnificent. If she didn’t think she’d risk waking him, she’d hunt down a measuring tape just to prove how truly magnificent they were.
She swallowed hard and glanced back up to his face only to find herself staring into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. They were so mesmerizing it took her a delayed moment to realize that not only was he awake, he’d also obviously caught her ogling his body.
Well, what could he expect? He was in her bed, after all. A man who looked like that? And wearing nothing but skin? Oh, yeah. A man like that was going to get stared at anywhere. He should be used to it.
Rationalization or no, her cheeks still heated. “Good morning.” She tried to ignore the nervous squeak in her voice. “Sleep well?”
Hell’s bells. She sounded like some inexperienced old maid trying to make small talk after a one-night stand.
“Aye,” he answered, his deep voice reverberating in her chest. “I suppose I did at that. Where am I?”
Gorgeous, built like the proverbial brick outhouse, and on top of all that, he even spoke with a brogue. That was it. She was never going to even attempt to meet another man without ten or twenty pretty little candy-flavored drinks under her belt.
“My house in the city. Denver. Colorado. You just flew into town last night? I guess we met at the bar, huh? At the hotel out by the airport?”
Great. Now she was babbling like some total idiot. So much for smooth and sexy morning after. Classy way to break the news that she had no earthly idea who he was or where they’d met. Wonderful impression she was making. No doubt he’d think she was some hotel-stalker sleazebag who picked up strange men on a regular basis and then dragged them home to. . .
Damn. What had she brought him home for? She had no idea whether they’d done anything other than actually sleep. She couldn’t even remember his name.
“Colorado.” He rolled the word around in his mouth, stretching out every vowel. “How did I get here?”
Apparently she hadn’t been the only one drinking more than her fair share of alcohol last night.
“Taxi?” She found herself helplessly shaking her head as she climbed out of bed.
“Taxi,” he repeated, his tongue caressing the word as if it were an alien concept.
“Taxi,” she confirmed, much more confidently than she felt.
What was with him anyway? He ran his hand in a slow caress, back and forth across the sheet where she had lain only moments before, his eyes darting about, scanning the room as if he wanted to miss nothing.
To hell with it. She couldn’t keep pretending like this, especially since there didn’t seem to be any way she was going to pick up enough clues from her overnight guest to figure out who he was. Honesty wasn’t just her best choice, it was shaping up to be her only choice. “I don’t seem to remember very much from last night. I was out with friends and then I guess I must have met you? I know this is probably going to sound like a line, but I don’t do things like this. Not ever. This really is beyond embarrassing, but I don’t remember bringing you home with me. I don’t even remember your name.”
He sat up and the covers pooled in his lap, his hands scrubbing over his face.
“Colin,” he mumbled through his fingers. “Colin MacAlister.”
God. Even his name was beautiful. Especially when uttered in that deep, rumbly brogue of his.
“And you, lass?” His gaze captured hers again. “What are you called?”
“Abby,” she answered, feeling unreasonably hurt that she’d made so little impression on him that he’d forgotten her name as they slept. “Abigail Porter.”
Just when she’d thought the moment couldn’t get any more awkward, a tiny click sounded from the alarm sitting on her headboard, followed by an ear-splitting blast of music.
Colin sprang from the bed as Abby dived for the clock, slamming her hand down on the little button to silence the offending machine.
“Sorry about that. I keep it really loud because I have a hard time waking up in the . . .” The words dried up in her mouth as she turned around. It was as if her brain had forgotten what words even were, let alone how to string them together to form sentences.
Colin hovered at the bedside, naked. Completely, gorgeously, take-her-breath-away naked. Head lowered, legs flexed, arms lifted, poised as if he were single-handedly ready to take on an entire army of bad guys.
The only thing at odds with his perfect Spartan warrior pose was the look of confusion on his face.
“That noise is meant to waken you?”
“Hello? Alarm clock.” She managed at last to drag her eyes back into her head and turn her back to him. “Jesus. You need to put some clothes on.” Really, really needed to. Either that or she was going to make a complete fool of herself by jumpi
ng him right here in the middle of her bedroom.
Heaven knew, he looked ready to be jumped. Every hard bit of him.
“I canna seem to find my plaid,” he muttered from behind her.
His what?
She waited, back turned, arms crossed tightly under her breasts in an effort to keep her hands to herself. “Did you leave your things in the bathroom?”
Her stomach tightened even as she asked the question, the answer assaulting her mind. He’d left nothing in her bathroom. She knew it in the same way she always knew where to look for artifacts on a dig site. She just knew. Neither his clothing nor any of his other belongings were anywhere in her house.
Good Lord. Had they climbed out of the taxi with him stark naked? If any of her neighbors were peering out the shades, they must have loved that. By now the taxi people probably had her name and address posted at every taxi company in town warning drivers to avoid her at all costs.
“Whatever,” she mumbled, as much for herself as for him. There was no way anything she had would fit him. Not even her biggest sleep T’s.
A whoosh sounded behind her, and she risked a peek to find he’d swept the blanket off her bed and was even now wrapping it around his large frame.
“What’s the day, Abby?” Though he spoke to her, his attention had been completely captured by the touch-activated lamp at her bedside. The light repeatedly blinked on and off in reaction to his finger tapping against the metal base.
Surely they had similar lamps in Scotland.
“Friday.” How long did he think he’d been here?
Once again his startling eyes rose to capture hers. “What year?”
Perfect. She should have known he was too good to be true. Proof that Drunk Abby wasn’t any better at picking men than Regular Abby. Naked as a jaybird and asking what year it was; this guy was apparently as mental as he was attractive. Either that or he was suffering from the world’s worst hangover ever.
She decided to keep it light. “No matter how your head feels, it’s still the twenty-first century.” Maybe that’s what happened when you combined massive quantities of alcohol with jet lag.
“Twenty-first,” he muttered, striding to the window and pushing aside the draperies. “Then I must find Mairi. She lives somewhere in this Colorado.”
Yep, perfect. Abso-freaking-lutely perfect. Not only had she brought a strange, possibly deranged man home with her, on top of everything else, he turned out to belong to another woman.
If her life got any better this morning, she’d simply scream.
Nothing to be done now but to get this nightmare over and done with. She might as well swallow her pride and get on with it. “Does this Mairi of yours have a last name?” She could only pray her question hadn’t sounded as snarky to him as it had to her.
“MacKiernan.” He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from the street in front of her house long enough to look at her when she spoke. “No!” he called as she started out of the bedroom. “She was to wed. Her name would be Navarro now.”
As if a two-ton weight had been lifted off her chest, Abby breathed in a great gulp of air. He didn’t belong to another woman after all.
Wait a minute . . .
“Mairi MacKiernan Navarro?” She’d taken a class in medieval studies with the woman a couple of years ago. Professor Navarro had known her subject matter so well, it had quickly become one of Abby’s all-time favorite classes.
“Aye, that’s my cousin’s name.”
His cousin. Humiliation on top of humiliation. Fate and Coincidence must have been drinking at the table next to her in the bar last night, just sitting around with nothing better to do than plot this bizarre fluke in her life. Now she’d get to call up a favorite ex-professor to confess she’d snatched the woman’s cousin from the airport hotel and spent such a wild night with him that all his belongings, including the clothes off his back, were completely missing.
Abby pushed a tumble of hair out of her face and headed into the living room to look up Professor Navarro’s phone number.
Come to think of it, she’d be best off to skip the whole wild-night thing.
Colin’s mother had always told him there were no coincidences when the Fae were involved. That being the case, he could only thank the Fates for what little favor they’d shown him. Like allowing him to remember the name of the place where his cousin Mairi had told them she lived. Like remembering what century she inhabited.
Most of all, thank the Fates that this woman in whose bed he’d found himself had been able to contact Mairi on that tiny box of hers.
Little else might make sense to him at the moment, but the one thing he didn’t doubt for an instant was that the Fae had sent him here, to this time, to this woman, for a reason.
Though as to what that reason might be, he hadn’t a clue.
And as to the woman?
He scratched his stubbled chin, feeling the smile that spread over his face. He’d found little in life quite so pleasing to his senses as Abigail Porter. And for a fact, nothing had ever felt so good in his arms.
Too bad she seemed to have no better idea as to why he was here than he did. Less of an idea in truth, since she’d apparently managed to convince herself he’d gotten here in some normal way, brought by something she called a taxi.
“They should be here soon.”
Unable to help himself, he stared at her as she stood in the doorway, a short, fluffy garment covering her, neck to knees, her hair wrapped in more of the same strange material.
“Feel free to help yourself to breakfast while you wait. There’s cereal in the cupboard next to the stove and I just picked up milk at the store yesterday, so it’s fresh. You’re welcome to whatever else you find in the fridge.”
Fridge? He shook his head in refusal, unwilling to admit he had no idea what she talking about. Mairi and Ramos would arrive soon, and they would help him make sense of this world. Until then he’d simply sit here on this amazingly well-padded chair and say as little as possible.
“You’re sure you don’t want coffee? Oh, duh!” She lifted the heel of her hand to the side of her head. “You’re a Scot. Of course. Tea? Would you like tea?”
“Nothing, thank you, my lady.”
With a shrug of her shoulders and a confused little frown, she disappeared back into the chamber she’d called her bedroom, closing the door behind her, leaving the scent of flowers wafting in her wake. The smell was new so it must have something to do with the shower she’d said she was going to take.
He sat quietly, allowing his eyes to explore all the mysterious wonders in this room, chief among them shelves and shelves of books.
“Okay.” She sounded breathless when she at last returned to the room and hurried to the window, as if she’d been rushing.
Her hair, brown and shining, had been pulled back from her face on either side. While the bulk hung down her back in long curls, one soft tendril lay over her shoulder.
His hand fairly itched to feel those curls sliding through his fingers.
“I’m sure they’ll be here any minute now.” She tugged on the curl at her shoulder, winding it around her finger nervously. “So. Where in Scotland are you from? I’m actually going to get to go there this summer.”
“My home is called Dun Ard.” And if he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine her standing on the great staircase there.
“Dun Ard,” she repeated. “Sounds lovely.”
She’d crossed her arms protectively under her breasts, a stance she’d taken repeatedly over the course of their morning together, and fixed her gaze out the window.
“I’m sure they’ll be here soon.”
It was likely nerves that kept her repeating those words, as if meant to reassure them both, a suspicion confirmed when she began to chew at her bottom lip.
“Unless my directions were . . . wait. Maybe this is them now.”
Colin rose and moved across the room to stand beside her. “It is.”
R
amos stepped out of one of the strange carriages he’d seen earlier through the window and walked around to the other side to open a door, allowing Mairi to emerge. Both of them looked as if they’d hardly aged a day since Colin had seen them last, nearly eleven years ago.
“Okay. So, I guess you’ll be on your way. You know, before you go, I don’t quite. . . um. . . know how to ask this without sounding like a total idiot but . . .” Her eyes cut up to his and quickly away as her cheeks colored an attractive red. “I’m not sure what, if anything, happened between us last night. Would you by any chance remember if we. . . uh, you know, did anything?”
She worried that he’d dishonored her?
“No, we did nothing.”
“Yeah, but . . . I mean, no offense, but if you didn’t even remember my name, how can you be so sure you’d remember anything that happened between us?”
So innocent and lovely, her face all but flaming as she spoke. Without thought, he opened himself to her, allowing himself to see the outline of her soul blazing around her.
Golden with ragged edges.
Lifting a hand to her neck, he urged her to look up at him before he responded. “I can assure you I would no have forgotten something as rare as coupling with a woman like you. To my great regret, it dinna happen. You may believe me, lass.”
He lowered his lips to hers, surprising himself as much as it might have surprised her. And yet it was as if there was no way to avoid it. Not even what he’d seen in that glimpse of her aura could stop him. He simply had no choice.
Even more surprising was her response. It was as if she melted into him, parting her lips when his tongue demanded entry. She tasted sweet, like honey and mint, and he had to force himself to break the kiss and step away.
“My thanks for yer kind hospitality, Abigail Porter, and for the loan of yer bed cover.”
Backing away from her, he opened the door and stepped outside to meet his cousins as they approached.
“Colin!” Mairi hurried forward and threw her arms around his neck. “Good Lord, what are you wearing? How did you get here? I want to hear everything.”
Ramos clapped a hand on his shoulder before the two of them hurried him off toward their odd transport.
Highlander’s Curse Page 3