Page 45 of The Scot Beds His Wife

The breeze turned from cold to bitter, and he detected a shudder start at her shoulders and roll down her lithe body.

Her nipples were puckered, he knew. And Lord, what he wouldn’t give to warm them.

With his tongue.

“I came to talk sensibly. Perhaps without guns this time.” He allowed irritation to edge the arousal out of his voice.

“If you’re truly talking sense, you’ve nothing to worry about from my guns.”

He opened his mouth to deliver a cautious and practiced apology, but what came out was, “Why are ye here, lass? It’s cold and gray unforgiving. Yer family home is falling down around ye. It willna be easy to put this place back together.”

She paused at the fourth bullet, but still didn’t look at him. “Nothing that matters is easy,” she said, continuing her reload.

For fuck’s sake. He wasn’t starting to… respect her, was he?

Fighting a shudder of his own, he turned away to collect himself.

“Regardless of what you’ve heard about me, I’m not a wealthy woman,” she stunned him by admitting. “Once my mother died… I was disinherited by my stepfather. I truly have nothing left to my name but Erradale. Ineedthis place. Do you understand? I need it to survive.”

He whirled on her. “Nay. Nay, ye doona. Not when I’ll pay ye an entire fortune for it. Enough to keep ye yer entire life. Anywhere ye want to go. In some places, even yer children could live like kings. Yer grandchildren could—”

Her big, wan eyes silenced him as they finally looked up into his. The indecision in her gaze did cause a bit of hope to flare somewhere south of his throat.

“Say I sell to you. What would Idothen?”

“Anything ye wanted.”

“But I’d be alone. I’d have no one.”

“How is that different from now?” He regretted the question the moment it escaped him. She studied him with an exhaustion he hadn’t before seen. A desolation he’d not known she’d hidden behind blue flames and a tarty vocabulary.

Suddenly he felt like the biggest shite to ever walk on two legs.

“I have Locryn and Calybrid,” she said quietly.

“What about in ten years when they’re gone?”

That brought a suggestion of the smirk he’d been missing back to the corners of her mouth. “I think you underestimate them.”

“I’ll give ye that.” He chuckled.

“There’s Callum.” She shrugged. “Someone has to entice him out of the caves every now and again.”

Gavin’s smile died an instant, painful death. Was she implying that she had Callum… or that she’dhadhim? Just by what means did she entice him out of those caves? He’d known Callum a long time, and the man had never been much of a skirt chaser.

But Alison Ross wasn’t wearing a skirt.

Had they…?

A sick darkness curled deep in his gut, and he pressed his lips together so the question churning inside didn’t escape as some covetous demand.

Oblivious to the direction of his thoughts, she surveyed the cattle lining the far pasture, and the new mother and calf in the round corral. “My entire life I’ve felt like I’ve been waiting for something to happen. I’ve been staring across the empty desert of the future with restless desperation, and never finding a path that was mine. Here, I havepurpose. Something I’m good at. A safe home for…” She let the thought trail away.

“But what about the ghosts that haunt these moors? The reminders of all ye’ve lost.” Of what his family did to her.

To his utter astonishment, she shrugged. “The past is a place that only gets bigger and farther away… it’s not all darkness. Erradale doesn’t have ghosts for me. It has potential. Possibilities for a life I really need right now. A lifeyou’retrying to take from me.”

“Tobuyfrom ye. Goddammit. I’m not the villain here.” He stabbed a thumb at his own chest. “That was my father. Do ye truly believe I should be punished for his sins?” Hadn’t he been punished enough?