Highlander’s Curse (4 page)

Besides, placing some distance between himself and all those men down below was more than desirable. In the years since his foolish encounter with the Faerie Queen, he’d learned to erect the mental barriers that shielded his mind. Even so, this many souls simultaneously crying out for their mates relentlessly battered even his best defenses.

Not to mention that, like Sim, he happened to agree with Dair’s tactical assessment. There was something about this place that felt eerily wrong, like treading over sacred ground. Even now a tingle of apprehension rose up his backbone and prickled his neck, as if every hair on his body stood on end.

When they entered the forest, his horse suddenly halted, pricking up its ears and pawing the ground nervously. A wave of dizziness swept over Colin and, as if the sun had settled below the horizon, the light dimmed to a pale, indistinct green cast.

Ahead of him on the path, Sim turned in his saddle to look back.

“By the saints!” Sim exclaimed. “What’s happening to you?”

Colin’s arms and legs refused to follow his commands as if he had turned to stone, and he could only watch as the faint green glow turned to a wavering emerald sphere surrounding him.

Like a swarm of angry midges on a late summer day, tiny dots of multicolored lights flashed and dived around his head, careening into one another and bouncing off the walls of the decidedly solid sphere. They moved faster and faster until they were but a blur, their brightly lit tails streaking out behind them.

Sim strained in his direction but Dair held him back with an outstretched arm. His words were barely audible over the buzzing and hissing of the manic lights.

“Stay yer ground. It’s the Fae.”

The Fae!
Dair must have the right of it. Nothing of this world could bring about such as he experienced now.

The walls of the sphere shimmered and solidified to the point Colin could no longer see through them. In the next instant, his stomach plummeted to his toes, leaving him weightless as if his body were being tossed through the air into a great, black chasm.

By the Fates, what more could the damned Fae possibly want of him now?

D
ENVER,
C
OLORADO
F
EBRUARY
P
RESENT
D
AY

H
is 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 jumping 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.