Page 18 of Warrior of the Highlands (Highlands #3)

She fingered the cool metal between her fingers, contemplating the man before her.

MacColla was clearly so much more than the one-dimensional brute history had painted him to be.

She studied him. Up to that point, all she’d really registered were his strong, swarthy features, and his intensity.

But his face and body were relaxed now. Though his eyes were hooded and his expression impossible to read, she imagined his features were as open as he ever let them get.

Mostly she couldn’t get over how attractive he was.

Big and dark and strong, with flashes of warmth that melted some secret place at her core.

Haley didn’t want to admit to herself that she increasingly sought those flashes, encouraged them, just to see his features soften and feel the gratifying click of his gaze with hers.

“Okay,” she said quickly and a little breathlessly, “here’s the deal. You have to bounce the coin into the cup. If you make it, great. If you don’t, you have to drink the contents of the cup.”

He stared incredulously for a moment. “Are you certain, lass?”

“What?” She looked up and saw the bemused glint in his eye. “Ohhh, I get it. You think you might beat me.”

He laughed and reached for the coin, flicking it onto the table in a single motion. It clanked hard against the wood, flew up, and clattered onto the floor.

“Are you certain, MacColla?” She smiled and nodded at his glass for him to drink.

She reached her leg out and, pinning the coin with her foot, dragged it toward her, and then picked it up from the floor. Huffing on the silver, she made as if to polish it, holding his gaze to hers all the while.

Haley leaned over and, eyeing low along the surface of the table, shifted the glass as if she were making minute and critical calibrations.

Her preternatural skill at the drinking game Quarters had been legend around her twin brothers’ Boston College dorm. She thought she might as well get something out of it. “If I make it, you have to answer a question.”

“A question?” His eyes watched her hand bob up and down, warming up to her toss. “What manner of question?”

“Just”—she gently let go of the coin, which bounced back up to plunk easily into her glass—“a regular old question.”

His laughter exploded through the room and he startled them both when he reached over to clap her on the shoulder. “You’re a wily one.”

“Thanks.” Smiling at his approving nod, she slid the glass in his direction. “I’m a woman of many talents.”

“Aye?” He raised his brows in question.

The double entendre made her blush. “Aye . . . what?”

“What’s your question, lass?”

“Oh that. Of course.” Haley wondered what she should ask. She couldn’t just up and broach the topic of James Graham right away.

While she considered, again he tried to get the coin in his glass, and failed.

Before she could think too much about it, she heard herself ask, “So what drives you, MacColla?”

“Drives me?” he asked, and downed the whisky.

“You know, what compels you?”

He shrugged as if addressing the simplest question in the world. He refilled the glass and slid it back to her. “To kill Campbell, of course.”

She dropped the coin onto the table and bounced it neatly back into the cup.

Sliding it back his way, she asked, “So that’s the most important thing to you? More than family even?”

He tried again and missed. He drank then gave his head a quick shake. Haley made a mental note to slow it down. She wanted to get the man drunk enough to talk about James Graham, not put him under the table.

“You misunderstand,” he told her. He refilled the cup and eyed it in relation to the coin in his fingers. “My fight with the Campbell is about family. Clan is the most important thing to me.”

“No, I mean . . . Here,” she said impatiently, and scooted her chair nearer to his.

Haley took MacColla’s hand and bent his wrist slightly.

“I mean a family like, you know, a wife. Are you betrothed?” She tried to ignore the warmth of his hand in hers, the broad knuckles and the thick knots of muscle at his forearm.

Haley guided his arm slowly up and down, demonstrating the proper move. “Try like that.”

He slammed the coin down and it popped up and hit him in the forehead. She burst out laughing, and he looked at her accusingly.

“No.”

“I’m sorry,” she giggled.

“I meant, no, I’m not betrothed.”

“Oh.” Suddenly the air felt too hot. Haley had to concentrate on keeping her tone nonchalant. “Why not?”

“It’s never struck me.”

“Struck you?”

“Aye.” He chuckled and rubbed his thigh, evoking the place where she’d kicked him. “I can say truthfully that you’re the first lass ever to strike me.”

Haley knew she was supposed to laugh then, but somehow it didn’t come.

A charged silence hung once more between them. She refilled the glass, trying to think of something to say.

He took the coin from the table and stared at it, disgruntled.

“You need to be gentler,” she said finally.

She took his hand in hers, adjusting his wrist even more.

“You’re, you’re . . .” A nervous laugh escaped her.

She gathered herself then added as seriously as she could, “It’s like you’re trying to drive the thing clear through the table.

Just”—she guided his hand, and the coin bounced down and into the cup—“release it.”

He drank and refilled his glass. She was acutely aware of his eyes on her as she took aim for her own turn.

Just as she dropped the coin, he said, “A simple release , eh?” The unexpected huskiness of his voice made her hand slip, and the coin clattered to the floor.

“Now your turn to drink, Fitzpatrick.” He nudged the glass toward her, the devil in his eyes. “And it seems fair that I can now ask something of you.”

“ Fitzpatrick , huh?” A small, sad smile crooked her mouth. Her house had always been filled with a parade of her brothers’ friends, all of whom had, at one point or another, called her brothers just that.

“Aye, that is your name, is it not?”

“Is that your question?”

“You ken it’s not.” Smiling, he nodded at her glass, indicating that she still needed to empty it.

“I know, I know.” She picked up her glass, willing away the anticipatory roiling of her belly. Accustomed now to its bite, she gulped the whisky back and this time actually enjoyed the feel of its smoky fingers wending their way through her veins.

He merely stared silently at her. “I’ve never seen a lass able to stomach whisky.”

“Well,” she managed, “they do say it’s ‘spunkier than tea,’ right?”

“Do they, then?”

“Yeah, like the song.” She felt loose now.

Not yet drunk, but pleasantly tipsy. She poured another dram into the cup, and, holding it aloft, she sang a line from her father’s favorite Irish drinking tune.

“You’re sweeter, stronger, decenter, you’re spunkier than tea.

” She let it rip, her Irish brogue blooming round and thick in imitation of her dad.

“Ohh whisky you’re me darlin’ drunk or sohhh-ber. ”

He laughed again, and she laughed too, from deep in her belly, then instantly clutched her hands to her torso in pain.

“Och, easy lass.” MacColla shot to his feet. He looked unsure what to do, and took up the decanter to pour more into her glass. “More of this might help the pain.”

“Oh really?”

“Oh, aye, lass.”

“ Uhh . . .” Her tipsy good cheer was suddenly replaced by a searing melancholy. “It’s not helping.” The reason she wanted to get drunk in the first place slammed into her gut, as great a shock to her system as her torn muscles.

She was trapped, somehow sent back to the seventeenth century. Alone but for this man, famous for his vicious feats in battle. Alone, and with no way to get back.

“Come.” His voice was so low, she wasn’t entirely certain he’d spoken. And then she felt his hands. He’d moved to stand behind her, to massage the bruised muscles of her back and sides.

She’d studied those hands earlier, could picture them now in her mind’s eye.

The fingers, long and strong, and his palms, wide, coarse.

Those huge hands spanned her back easily.

Moved up and down, gently probing the tender spots between ribs until he found the source of her pain.

Haley had never considered herself a small woman—she wasn’t a small woman—and yet she felt almost delicate in that broad, muscular grip.

“I . . .” She attempted to speak, but couldn’t. She had to get ahold of herself. This was entirely unexpected. Alasdair MacColla. Giving her a back massage? It was too much. Desperate to regain the upper hand, her voice cracked, “What can you tell me of James Graham?”

He stilled for just a moment, then continued. “I think the question is, lass, what can you tell me ?”

“That he was captured.”

“Aye.”

“An . . . and . . .” His thumb grazed a knot.

She gasped, and MacColla kneaded it slowly, tenderly.

She hadn’t realized how clenched her muscles had been until his fingers found the knot, released it, loosening a warm rush of blood through her torso.

Her rib cage opened, and she took her first deep inhale since her injury. Oh God, pure heaven.

Wait. Concentrate. “And then . . . then he was paraded through the countryside.”

“All know that.”

She blinked her eyes for a moment, gathering her wits. The sudden openness in her chest made her light-headed. “And . . . hanged?” she ventured.

“So they say.”

“ Mmhm .” So they say. That’s just it , she thought. Fact? Or hearsay?

Haley was about to probe more, when MacColla’s thumb grazed the underside of her breast. It seemed innocent enough.

He was intent on massaging her tight muscles.

The brush was accidental. And yet, even as her muscles released, her breasts beaded tight.

Her breath came short, despite the newfound openness of her lungs.

“But . . . but did anyone see . . .” Her breath hitched. A quick, sharp inhalation. His fingers now, rubbing along the sensitive slope just underneath her nipple.

“See what, Fitzpatrick?” His tone was no-nonsense. Simply mild curiosity. He seemed not to have any suspicion of what she asked, or of what his touch was doing to her.

“See . . .” Oh God. She turned slightly. Purposefully. Angling toward him. She had to know if his touch was deliberate. God help her, she hoped it was.

“Aye?” His voice was ragged, low. Did she hear an echo of her own desire there?

A throat cleared, and MacColla was instantly apart from her. It was Scrymgeour, standing in the doorway, watching.

“I thought we could retire to my sitting room, MacColla.” Scrymgeour’s eyes scanned the room, and Haley wasn’t sure if what she read there was judgment, curiosity, surprise, or a little of all three.

“Aye.” MacColla’s nod was curt. “If . . . if you’ll excuse me,” he told her.

Excuse him. Were his words loaded? Had he meant to touch her just then? Had she sensed his intent, or was she simply imagining it?

“Yes,” she replied. “Of course.”

As he left, she shuddered an exhale. The movement caused a fresh twinge, sharp along her side. But with it came focus.

And so this time, Haley welcomed her pain.