Page 17 of The Scot Beds His Wife

If Alison Ross planned to stand in his way, then Gavin decided he’d do whatever it took to get her on her back. Beneath him.

In his infamously extensive experience with women, he’d found that denial of desire, more often than not, increased the pleasure of the final effect.

Not, however, in thisfuckingcase.

Acquiring Erradale wasn’t merely his pleasure, nor was it a flippant desire, it was a necessity.

Which was why he didn’t consider himself above orchestrating what should have been a simple gambit on a persistent interloper. He and his footman had planned Miss Ross’s arrival andimmediatedeparture over a shared snifter of brandy, drunkenly naming their maneuver “the swoon and scoop.”

Had everything gone according to plan, the spoiled socialite would have arrived at the tiny station on what must seem to her the edge of the civilized world—a place she’d previously insisted she had no desire to visit—and she’dinstantly be robbed. The little scamp would grab a bit of her hand, along with the bag or valise or whatever she used for her feminine incidentals, and tug hard enough to topple her into Gavin’s strong, waiting arms.

Thus terrorized, the poor lass would decide the Highlands were too desolate and too dangerous for a young, lonely city dweller such as herself, and she’d be a great deal more susceptible to her handsome white knight’s tremendously generous offer.

He’d rescue her from a millstone property, and she’d be the grateful damsel.

Well, he was certainly paying the price for one gigantic assumption.

The lass was no damsel.

He’d prepared himself for a hard sell, one that might require a few extra knee-weakening smiles, perhaps so much as a seduction, but he’d never in a million years expected the disaster that landed his arms.

The disaster named Alison Ross. Light as a feather, she was, and devastating as a tornado. All long limbs and electric eyes.

The moment his arms surrounded her, his body had responded in a way completely antithetical to his purpose. And suddenly, all his hands could do was find ways to keep themselves attached to her.

Hewas supposed to be seducingherwith all the practiced calculation he’d garnered over decades. So… why in the name of all the bloody Scottish saints had he been the one with the unsteady knees?

Because he wanted her—no,Erradale—he wanted Erradale. So fucking much.

That had to be it.

Once, whilst traveling in the Orient, Gavin had suppedwith a monk who’d told him that desire was at the root of all suffering.

Gavin had scoffed at the idea at the time.

Now, with his every desire within reach, yet thwarted by a smart-mouthed American chit, he was beginning to believe the monk had the right of it.

After the infuriating encounter at Strathcarron Station, it had taken him only two minutes of exasperated calculation to concoct a stratagem as to how, exactly, he’d approach his erstwhile neighbor to the north.

The two days in which he’d deemed it essential to wait passed with all the alacrity of eternity.

But certainly not because he wanted to see her again.

Miss Ross, tiny as she was tempestuous, would be hungry by now, he surmised as he allowed Demetrius, his shire steed, to pick his own lazy way along the Alt Bàn-ghorm, the river separating Inverthorne lands from Erradale. The shallow tributary’s name literally translated to Light Blue River, thus deemed for the uniquely colored stones beneath the crystal stream.

Gavin found himself appreciating the shade in a way he’d not done before, as it conjured to mind the singular hue of Alison Ross’s clear, impertinent gaze.

An unbidden smile touched his lips as he pictured the brash American heiress losing a great deal of her self-assurance once she’d crested Gresham Peak, as he did now, and truly beheld her legacy.

He’d have given his eyeteeth to carry the treasured memory of her distress.

Erradale Estate was little more than an aged, one-story manor home amid a gathering of crofter’s cottages and a lone, dilapidated stable. The buildings were scattered like chaotic white marbles on a lush carpet of wintry,amber-green grass. Aside from Gresham Peak, only very gentle hills interrupted the wide swaths of open moors stretching west and north until black stone cliffs abruptly crumbled into the sea. Ominous clouds, pregnant with a looming storm, huddled together over the distant Hebrides, and made their leisurely way toward the mainland on a biting breeze.

To a spoiled American raised in the garish and gold-rich city of San Francisco, California, it must have seemed like the loneliest, chilliest corner of perdition.

To Gavin, it was paradise.

It was home.