If only
he'd
stay vanished.
Better yet, if she'd stop letting him obsess her.
But it was too late, for he'd already kissed her. However briefly.
She could still feel his lips hushing across hers, the intimate warmth of his breath on her cheek. Remembered too well the jolt of sensual heat that one fleeting kiss had sent streaking through her.
An incredibly delicious heat, fluid and molten, shocking in its intensity.
She took a deep, shaky breath. Clearly her exhaustion and the lateness of the hour were getting to her. The man didn't deserve her, or any woman, rhapsodizing about his kiss.
Especially one that had been too swift for her to even get a taste of his tongue.
Damn!
Her heart skittered and her pulse leapt. Why did she have to think of that?
Blocking her mind before any further such nonsense could pop into it, she stood, pressed a hand to the small of her aching back.
It was high time she sought her bed.
"
My bed
," she emphasized as she started toward the door, old Ben plodding after her.
The silence and shadows trailed after her, too.
A palpable presence, closing in on her swiftly, giving her the willies.
As did the sound of stealthy footsteps approaching the library.
She froze, slid her fingers around Ben's collar.
Dragging him with her, she hurried across the room, plastering herself against the wall beside the door at the same moment someone eased it open.
She willed Ben not to bark, hoped she didn't make a sound either. But her jaw dropped and she almost gasped when Prudentia glided past her hiding place.
Garbed in a flowing silken gown of a dusky rose color, the heavyset cook held her arms extended before her and clutched something that looked like metal clothes hangers in her pudgy hands. Fully in her own world, she began moving about the library with the rolling gait of a drunken sailor.
Mara stared at her, her eyes widening by the moment.
Humming softly, Prudentia made ever-smaller circles around the room, coming close enough on one sweep for Mara to recognize that the metal rods she held weren't clothes hangers at all.
They were dowsing rods.
Mara's heart began to pound, her cheeks flaming.
Dowsing rods belonged in the same category as ghosts and other such bunk that went bump in the night.
Things she wanted nothing to do with.
Still, she watched with morbid fascination. Repelled and intrigued at the same time. Until the woman stopped in the
exact
spot where Alexander Douglas had been standing when she'd first seen him that afternoon.
To her horror, the metal rods in the cook's hands went berserk, clacking loudly against each other as she moved in and out of the area where he'd stood.
"Speak to me!" Prudentia urged in an excited whisper. "Come to—"
"
Stop that this instant
!" Mara cried, rushing forward.
Ben barked.
The cook spun round. Her large bosom heaved and quivered and a peculiar gleam lit her beady brown eyes. The dowsing rods stopped clacking and pointed straight at Mara.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" A muscle twitched in Mara's jaw. "Those are dowsing rods!"
Prudentia composed herself instantly, drawing herself into an almost regal posture. "So they are, aye."
"Get rid of them." Mara took a step closer. "I won't have such things beneath my roof."
The cook eyed her with a look that could only be called superior. "There is a very distressed spirit present and you'd be wise to show a bit of compassion. Such entities need our understanding."
"Our?"
Prudentia nodded. "Those of us still on the earth plane."
"I think you're the one who will be in need of understanding when I inform Murdoch about this."
Some of the woman's haughtiness slipped away. "I'm only trying to help," she said, slipping the dowsing rods into her pocket. "The new presence is very upset. I don't think he likes you."
"I don't care if he hates me. There is no such thing as a ghost, Mrs. MacIntyre. Not here, not anywhere."
"O-o-oh!" Prudentia winced, pressed fingers to her temples. "You shouldn't have said that. He says you've insulted him."
"I think it's time you went to your quarters." Mara placed a hand on the woman's elbow and steered her to the door. "If this doesn't happen again, I won't tell Murdoch."
Prudentia's mouth tightened.
"That auld pest would also do better to mind his tongue when spirits are present," she said, sweeping out the door.
Mara watched her sail down the dimly lit corridor, then let out a long breath the instant she disappeared around a curve at the far end of the passageway.
Strange or not, the woman
had
sensed something.
And the implication chilled Mara's blood.
Only a fool wouldn't recognize the coincidence that the dowsing rods had gone crazy in the exact spot where Hottie Scottie had accosted her.
Kissed her.
She shuddered. She didn't believe in coincidences.
But she did believe in fate. And hers was beginning to trouble her.
A chill went down her spine at the direction her thoughts were taking, so she squared her shoulders and turned back to the library.
She didn't step inside.
Tomorrow was soon enough to tidy the mess she'd made.
Even if she believed in destiny, she was also prudent. And the shadows in the corners looked darker than before. Closer, too. Long black fingers stretching across the carpet and pointing at her, just like Prudentia's dowsing rods.
And that wasn't all.
Moonlight played over a high wingback chair near one of the corners, and she could almost imagine a figure standing there. A masculine form, indistinct in the shifting light, but well enough defined to reveal height and broad shoulders.
And, impossibly, what could have been the dull gleam of mail.
Mara's heart thumped. She swallowed hard and blinked, and the illusion was gone.
"It won't work," she said, closing the door. "I am not afraid."
Especially not of a man-shaped moonbeam.
Even so, she took the winding steps to her bedchamber two at a time.
Alex materialized next to the wingback chair, all but choking on his indignation. He glowered at the closed library door where she'd stood framed on its threshold, every well-made inch of her limned by moonlight and the glow of the table lamp.
Fetching, she'd been.
A woman of spirit, all curves and ripe temptation, her coppery-bright hair tumbling round her shoulders and those lusciously full breasts straining at him. The hint of fine, chill-tightened nipples. Her large amber eyes flashing wide when she'd looked his way, seen him watching her from beside the chair.
And that's what annoyed him.
She'd seen him but refused to admit it.
Too bad she hadn't gone looking for him when she'd heard him play "Highland Laddie." Had she seen him then, she would've been presented with an eyeful too bold to deny. He'd piped in full Highland regalia, was hoping to catch her peeking at him from behind a curtain, planned to conjure a stiff wind just to show her what a true Highlander wore beneath his kilt!
But the wicked little spitfire hadn't seized the opportunity, and just as well.
His naked man-parts would surely have betrayed him had she goggled him.
"The lass is a plague," he growled, striding to the table where she'd worked, spent hours digging up every lie that had e'er been told about him. "Aye, the worst sort of plague."
But her scent lingered in the room, its bewitching, exotic notes making him crazy. And hard. Until he recalled the shuttered look that had come down upon her face when he'd revealed the truth.
Something he'd done for no other MacDougall.
Yet she still hadn't believed him.
"Lucifer's bollocks!" he swore, turning to the windows. He stared out at the storm-tossed firth, its dark waters gleaming like burnished pewter. Cold looking as the vixen's soul. Nothing he'd said had convinced her.
Once more, he'd failed.
Even pinning her nightclothes to the bed with his best dirk hadn't aided him in his quest to be rid of her.
Now he also wanted to be
in
her. Not just once, but again and again. Long, fluid strokes, slow and deep, then ever faster until… he groaned, rammed a furious hand through his hair.
Lusting after a MacDougall not only infuriated him; the very notion jellied his knees.
Ne'er would he have thought himself so… spineless.
Soon, he'd be little better than Hardwick.
"Nay, it shall not come to that," he vowed, dropping to his knees before the window seat. With a dark scowl and a single swipe of his arm, he knocked the tasseled pillows to the floor.
Then he leaned forward and rested his head against his folded arms.
Not that he expected the saints to listen to his prayers. Not now, in this maligned existence.
Colin MacDougall, that black-hearted whoreson, had made him into a
creature
.
A ghost.
A travesty of flesh-and-blood manhood whose pleas for guidance would likely be ignored by the Dark One himself, much less the good saints who followed the Holy Rood.
Even so, he muttered them.
After a time, he rose. Whether it pleased him or nay, he had work to do.
Mara MacDougall left him no choice.
It was time to give her irrefutable proof.
High above the library, in one of Ravenscraig's highest towers, Mara leaned against the closed and bolted door of the Thistle Room and heaved a great sigh. Silvery moonlight spilled across the floor and vaporous mists slid past the windows. Nothing stirred or stared back at her from the shadows, but a gullible sort could easily imagine the spirit of the past brooding all over the place.
Inside the bedchamber and in the wispy gray mist cloaking the battlements.
Mist she'd just ignore.
"Angry ghosts and dowsing rods," she panted, her heart tripping crazily.
Soon she wouldn't be hearing early-morning renditions of "Highland Laddie," piped by hunky Scotsmen, but the theme to
The Twilight Zone
.
Almost hearing it now, she pressed a hand to her breast, struggled to catch her breath. And her wits.
Her usual calm.
But she'd just careened through a maze of corridors and flown up three steep sets of stairs, one of which had been a dreadfully dark turnpike stair without a banister and with stone steps so narrow they must have been hewn for some
very
small people.
That one had also been much too medieval for her taste.
Better said, her present taste.
Until recently, she'd swooned over anything even vaguely reminiscent of her favorite period. But now, since a certain someone's arrival in her life, she much preferred things of a more modern era.
Safe things.
Normal things.
Such as people who neither claimed to be ghosts nor went in search of them.
She swiped a curl off her brow and tried not to hear the castle creaking and groaning around her. Night noises most likely caused by ancient water pipes, the wind, or the scuttling of insomniac mice.
Or perhaps…
him
.
Alexander of the roving fingers and fleeting kisses. He'd proven how quickly he could move. In more ways than one, she remembered, her every sense snapping to attention. He'd already breached the Thistle Room's tapestry-hung walls once.
That was before she'd known about the door to the battlements.
Now she knew better.
She also knew that almost all Scottish castles had secret passages. Many of them led to and from bedchambers. Hottie Scottie could've taken advantage of such a passage and might already be hiding in the room.
But a careful glance around the antique-filled bedchamber said otherwise.
All the same, she checked the door bolt and the locks on each one of the windows, even shoving a heavy upholstered chair against the door to the ramparts.
Feeling safe at last, she dropped onto her bed with a weary sigh. Someone had lit a fire for her, and the smoky-sweet scent of peat lulled her into a cozy mood.
The Thistle Room felt
good
.
Toasty warm, smelling of Scotland, and welcoming.
Smiling for the first time in hours, she kicked off her shoes, letting them drop where they fell. Within seconds, her stretch pants and turtleneck followed. She wiggled her toes, released a contented sigh. She loved sleeping in nothing but skin and dreams.
Being naked was her guilty pleasure.
Well, at the moment, almost naked.
She still had on her black lace bra and matching panties. She'd keep them on for a while, wouldn't get completely bare bottomed until she was absolutely certain she wouldn't be disturbed.
Not that anyone could get inside, but someone could knock on the door. At the rate she was going, poor dotty Innes might stop by to offer her advice for her wedding night with Lord Basil.
If the sweet old lady didn't faint from the shock of seeing Mara in her little-bits-of-black-nothing undies!
Hottie Scottie would surely have an entirely different reaction.
The kind that would make her heart pound, and slide right into her. Hot, hard, and deep. Slow and sinuous in-and-out glides, then fast and furious plunderings until she grew frantic and clutched him to her, screaming her need and losing herself in the glory of their pleasure.
The wild, uninhibited kind of sex that only happened in the pages of the steamiest romance novels.
And
wasn't
going to happen with a man who thought he was a ghost!
Even if his silky-deep Highland burr did make her wet.
She huffed in agitation, flipped onto her stomach. Maybe she should break down and buy herself a vibrator. Getting all hot and achy over the musical lilt of a crazy man's voice was about as low as a girl could sink.
Even a girl whose last boyfriend had been quicker than the lightning flashing outside her windows.