Page 117 of The Scot Beds His Wife

“Fuck you, Bradley,” she spat, her temper overcoming her fear, even her common sense. “That stunt you pulled in the stables this morning could have killed Bennett’s child.”

“You watch your whore mouth!” The butt of the pistol in Boyd’s hand sailed toward her jaw, and Samantha braced for the blow. For the blood.

“Ye’re already dead men.” The voice from the doorway carried such arctic vehemence, it froze time.

The blow never landed, though pain still exploded through Samantha’s entire body, caused by the undercurrent of fury burning beneath the ice in her husband’s words.

“But whether yer death is mercifully swift or agonizingly unhurried depends…”

Samantha almost didn’t recognize his voice. It was Gavin, but not. Gone were the silken tones of indolent sin, the leisurely indifferent confidence replaced by something as hard and unforgiving as the stones of his ancient keep. He sounded like a demon.

No. He sounded… like a Mackenzie.

“Depends on what?” Bradley could add impatience to his multitude of idiocies.

“On how she answers yer question.”

***

Somehow, Gavin knew the second that Callum had ridden into Erradale and informed him of the evidence of a few outlanders’ camps found in the forest that he’d have to kill someone today.

He hadn’t realized until this moment, just how much he looked forward to it.

His grip tightened on both the pistol he had in his left hand and the dirk in his right. He trained the gun on the big, dirty fucker who’d almost hit his wife. Boyd, she’d called him. And the bastard had recovered his wits fast enough to aim his own weapon right back at Gavin.

The dirk he held in his off hand was poised to fly in the direction of the man to his right, but a knife was much slower than a bullet, and the slim, rat-faced cowboy had his gun pointed at Eammon and Gavin’s mother.

Christ, he shouldn’t have let Callum go back to the woods to track them. He’d thought Inverthorne impregnable, and still some instinct had sent him racing home. He’d expected to take his wife into his arms and warn her that her enemies might be close. To assure her that he would protect her andhis childalways. To tell her he was sorry for how he’d acted this morning. That fear had made him crazy.

That love had made him furious.

What he’d found was torment enough to turn his heart into an iron weight in his chest. An empty stable and an open gate. The signs of a scuffle and dragging footsteps.

He’d no time to go to the tower for the key to the armory. So he’d drawn his dirk and the sidearm he’d taken to wearing since the night Erradale burned, and searched his home for intruders.

He’d never have guessed one had lived among them all this time.

“Alison?” For some reason, her name from his lips sounded wrong, even to him. Only the back of her dark head was visible above the damask arm of the chaise.

She didn’t look at him.

And in that moment, his heart turned from iron to ice as suspicion lanced him with a vengeance.

“Alison!” Boyd crowed the name as though it might be the most hilarious word he’d heard in his life. “You mean this poor bastardstilldon’t know who you are?”

“Boyd…” It was the first time he’d heard actual terror in his wife’s voice. She’d turned the man’s terrible name into a plea. “Boyd, don’t—”

Gavin itched to put a bullet right in the muddy brown eyes gleaming with the relish of a victorious predator about to rip out the throat of his opponent.

“You see, what we have here is what we call, back in the States, a Mexican standoff. You ever heard of that? It’s where every party has an advantage, and a disadvantage. The moment you try to win one way…” Boyd gestured to his pistol, still pointed at Gavin, and then to his brother’s gun, aimed at Gavin’s family. “You lose another.”

“Call it what ye like, ye still won’t leave this room alive.” No one entered a Highlander’s house, terrorized their women, and left with their heads attached to their shoulders.

“I ain’t so sure about that.”

“Ye should be certain enough to make peace with yer Lord before I send yer screaming soul to hell. Or maybe I’ll let ye live long enough to watch one more brother die.”

“Gavin.”His mother’s whispered gasp distracted him long enough for Boyd to strike out and drag his wife to her feet, turning her to use her slight body as a shield.