Highlander in Her Bed (24 page)

"I was but speaking as your friend," Hardwick said, sounding offended. "You are incapable of seeing into your heart."

"
I
have no need to do so."

Hardwick shook his head. "You err, my friend. No man's need is greater."

"I'd be tending those needs about now—had I not had the misfortune of running into you," Alex snapped, but Hardwick was already gone.

And Lady Galiana was reaching for him, pulling him with her up the curving stairs.

Unfortunately, each upward step hammered Hardwick's words deeper into Alex's mind. The meddling bravo had achieved at least one of his goals.

He'd ruined Alex's evening.

As for his other intentions, he'd wasted his breath. Alex didn't need to search his heart. He already knew it.

Only too well.

He did love Mara MacDougall.

May the saints have mercy on him.

Tick, tick, tick.

Mara tossed in her bed, punched her pillow a few times, then pulled another one over her head. When had her alarm clock turned so ridiculously loud?
Tick, tick, tick
. It sounded more like Big Ben than a travel-sized number no bigger than the palm of her hand.

"O-o-oh, stop," she pleaded, rolling onto her stomach. She frowned into her pillow. Why didn't she just admit it? She knew exactly when the ticking had become so grating.

The moment Hottie Scottie had stepped into her dreams and loomed above her, resplendent in his great plaid, a huge Celtic brooch gleaming at his shoulder, his Highland
magnificence
dangling right above her!

She drew in a sharp breath, dug her fingers into the pillow. In truth, he hadn't dangled for long.

It had taken little more than her startled gasp for him to run full stretch. And even less for the sight to make her all hot and shivery. The sheer eroticism of watching him fill and lengthen had undone her, filled her with a desperate, streaming need she doubted would ever be quenched.

She was
still
damp.

Still aching.

On fire and tingling, just as she'd been when she'd reached for him, closing her fingers around his hardness, reveling in how hot, silky, and hard he felt as she stroked him, how she'd struggled to hear only his husky moans of pleasure—and not the incessant ticking of her travel alarm.

But the tiny clock had won, its annoying clatter overpowering her sexy Highlander's purred encouragement until she heard nothing else and even the hard, male length of him was suddenly no more than a thick fold of MacDougall plaid clutched tight in her hand.

A very thick fold.

Mara groaned, desire winding tight inside her, her frustration almost devouring.

"Damn," she cried, blinking back the stinging heat wetting her lashes.

They'd come so close!

She'd felt him in her hand, breathed in the rich muskiness of his clean male scent. One, two more strokes and she just knew he would have whipped aside his plaid and yanked her up against him, taking her with all the fierce, urgent passion she needed.

"No-o-o," she choked, places deep inside her hurting so badly she could hardly breathe. She bit back a sob, willed her body to stop burning for him, tried to ignore the maddening blaze enflaming her. The shattering of her heart.

Instead, the infernal ticking grew louder by the second, each metallic
click
making her crazy. Fisting her hands on the pillow, she lifted her head and glared at the offending timepiece.

Two-thirty in the morning.

She hadn't slept a wink.

Not that anyone could blame her. Sitting up, she crammed a few pillows behind her and surveyed the room, finding it worse than she'd feared. The night shadows didn't begin to hide the damage. The Thistle Room looked ransacked, demolished by a lunatic.

A lunatic named Mara McDougall.

She snorted, swiped a hand across her cheek. Who but a deranged person would listen to the advice of a crackpot like Prudentia and turn an exquisite tower room fit for a princess into something best described as a haven for aura readers and other such New Age fruitloops?

It was pathetic.

Her entire life was pathetic.

Most pathetic of all was her raging frustration in losing her dream. Mercy, even in imaginary form, Hottie Scottie throbbed with more sensual heat than any flesh-and-blood man she'd ever encountered.

And she wanted him.

Ghostie or no. She didn't care.

If she could just have his kisses, touch him without having him vanish, she'd die a happy woman. He didn't even have to really take her if he couldn't. Just sitting before a cozy fire with him, enjoying his smile and listening to his husky-deep voice would be enough.

If she could just have him.

But she doubted she could, and the unfairness of it gutted her.

All her life, every supposedly good thing had always come with a catch. Every bowl of soup, a fly in it. And everything she'd wanted always seemed to skip along ahead of her, just inches out of her grasp.

Especially love.

"Love," she scoffed, snatching a crushed delphinium from beside her pillow and throwing it toward the fireplace. It sailed in a promising arc but didn't make it past the end of the bed. Like so much in her life, it missed its mark, and landed with a damp splat against one of the bedposts before sliding down to settle in a wilted clump on the bed coverings.

No, a stinking clump.

Mara wrinkled her nose. No wonder she hadn't been able to sleep. The room smelled awful. Damp wool, dead flowers, old incense, and the pungent scent of burned sage contaminated the entire bedchamber.

American heiress dies of asphyxiation after inhaling antighost-charm fumes in Scottish castle.

Hah! Such a headline would set the tongues wagging. Back home and beyond. Puffing a curl off her brow, she imagined the repercussions.

The sniggers and scandal.

The Cairn Avenue shrew's beady eyes glinting with I-knew-she'd-come-to-no-good satisfaction. Her father's sorrow and mortification. Kindly old Solicitor Combe overcome with guilt and remorse. Antighost fumes, indeed. Her lips twitched in an almost-smile.

Thank goodness.

If she could see humor in her plight, she hadn't completely lost it.

Feeling somewhat better, she slipped from the bed, swirled a plaid around her shoulders, and crossed the room. A swift yank was all she needed to pull aside the newly hung MacDougall drapes and allow silvery light to flood inside.

Moon glow alone wouldn't dispel the stench of her foolish attempts at exorcism.

She needed fresh air.

Lots of it.

And not just for her room. More than anything, she needed to clear her head.

"That, and banish Hottie Scottie and his Highland
magnificence
from my mind," she muttered, opening the door to the wall walk and stepping outside.

She went straight to the crenellated wall and leaned against one of the merlons, lacing her hands on the cold stone and staring out across the firth. The isle-strewn waters looked almost translucent in the clear silver light, and a pale half-moon glimmered in the pearl-hued sky.

She shivered and drew the plaid closer around her shoulders. She would not imagine a tall, splendidly built Highlander standing beside her, sharing the night's magic.

And it
was
a magical night.

She could feel it in her bones, in the way the soft air hummed with… romance.

Simmer dim
, the Highland Scots called these nights of luminous half-light, and the beauty of it up close and shimmering all around her was almost more than she could bear.

Leastways tonight.

But she'd be damned if she'd flee the battlements as easily as she'd run from her bed. Not even if her bare feet froze to the icy stone flags of the wall walk.

What was a little cold when she might never again see the man she'd come to love so deeply?

If you could call a ghost a man.

Mara lifted her face to the wind. She would not bemoan her fate. Sir Alexander Douglas was more than enough man for her. All she needed. The only man who'd ever truly stolen her breath, filled her with impossible dreams, or made her heart weep with wanting him.

But he wasn't here now, and there wasn't much she could do about it, so she stared down at the dim, shining water, the odd green glow at the base of the cliffs.

Odd green glow?

She blinked, looked closer. The glow was definitely green and strange. And, worse, it was pulsing.

She opened her mouth to gasp, but nothing came out. Instead, she clutched a hand to her throat, her eyes widening as the faint glow grew into a whirling shaft of iridescent green light.

Radiant, otherworldly light moving slowly down the shingled strand. And coming in her direction! Too stunned to move, she watched in fascination as the glowing column took the shape of a woman.

A beautiful woman, lit from within.

And as transparent as glass. Mara could see the curve of the shore right through her.

The woman was a ghost. And with the realization came a horrible suspicion.

Maybe Hottie Scottie had sent her?

Mara's heart stopped. She couldn't believe it. That she'd been standing out here, shivering in the cold, aching for him and wishing him back, only to have him send a see-through female friend to do what he hadn't been able to do—scare her away.

No, it couldn't be so.

She refused to believe that. Nor was she going anywhere.

Not tonight. And not in a year. Ravenscraig was hers now, and she had no intention of giving it up.

If the green beauty had other reasons for drifting along Ravenscraig's cliff strand in the middle of the night, perhaps to lay a claim to
her
Highlander, she'd be in for a surprise.

Mara wasn't about to share him.

Whoever the ghostie was, she wasn't giving Mara much of a chance to challenge her, for she'd already disappeared.

Vanishing almost before Mara was even sure she'd seen her. But she had. The trembling in her knees and the pounding of her heart proved it.

Whether the woman was gone now or not.

She'd been there.

"No kidding," Mara gasped, reaction making her mouth dry.

Holding fast to the merlon, she leaned out as far as she dared and stared down at the deserted strand. Nothing but moonlight shone on the water, and no iridescent female shape glided among the rocks.

Everything looked as it should.

And she felt silly.

She took a deep breath and pushed away from the wall, the lure of sleep suddenly overwhelming. As quickly as she could, she sought her bed, pulling the covers to her chin.

A green lady! Had she imagined the whole thing? Perhaps seen the Scottish version of swamp gas?

She didn't know and it didn't really matter.

All she cared about was making Hottie Scottie hers.

The sooner, the better.

Chapter 11

"Does this please you?" Lady Galiana shifted Alex's bare foot in her lap, drawing it closer against the vee of her thighs. "Is the oil warm enough?"

"O-o-oh, aye." Alex leaned his head against the rim of the cloth-lined bathing tub and gave her a slow smile, every inch of him tingling with pleasure. "I am well pleased."