Chapter 2
Bright light blazed across Dougal Murdoch’s closed eyelids, jolting him from slumber to wakefulness in half a second. He kept his eyes shut, his hand curling around the handle of the blade he kept underneath the blankets.
A warm hand touched his shoulder, giving it a gentle push as if they were trying to shake him awake. That had been their second mistake.
“Excuse me?” a soft, feminine voice whispered, followed by a second push against his shoulder.
Dougal sensed how close she was, her shadow stretching over him. And that bright light continued to bob across his face, irritating him.
What right did this woman think she had to wake him up? He had come down to his private sanctuary for the very purpose of avoiding others, so he could finally rest after weeks of fighting.
Tryin’ to ingratiate herself with me. Hopin’ to get pregnant with me bairn, nay doubt.
He waited until he felt the woman lean further over him, her hand pushing his shoulder more urgently. “Excuse me?”
His eyes snapped open, his hand shooting out to catch the woman by the wrist. Meanwhile, he kept his other hand closed around the dagger handle, under the blankets. If she gave him no reason to use it, he would not.
A soft thud vibrated through the bed, and that bright light vanished, followed by the loud clatter of an object hitting the ground. She had dropped something. Not that it was any concern of his. His only concern was getting her out of his room as quickly as possible.
“Who are ye?” he growled, sitting up sharply, his hand still gripping her wrist.
Green eyes flitted down to his bare chest, a rush of pink flooding smooth cheeks in the low light of the room, an arousing gasp slipping from plump lips. A sound he did his best to ignore, though his loins seemed to think otherwise.
He would not make love to the intruder, no matter how pretty she was. And she was rather beautiful…
Tendrils of golden hair framed her extraordinary face, her beauty foreign to him. She had strong features that should have made her appear masculine but instead gave the impression of a divinely feminine woman.
The sort of woman who should have been sculpted and heralded as a goddess, the sort of woman who could make any man bend to her will with one of those soft gasps. But it was the “unfamiliar” air about her that caught his attention.
“Did me braither send ye here?” he demanded to know, his hand gripping her wrist tighter. “Ye should leave while I’m feelin’ generous. I’ve nay need for company in me bed right now.”
The woman’s alarmed, and momentarily embarrassed, expression transformed into a scowl of pure fury. She wrenched her hand back, stronger than he had expected, and glared down at him with a fire in her eyes that did not need the reflection of the torchlight in the room.
“I beg your pardon?” she hissed, standing up straighter.
“I’m not here for you. I don’t even know you.
What, do you just expect every girl to swoon and fall into your bed because you’ve got a bit of muscle and some brooding thing going on?
No, thanks. Call me crazy, but the bad-boy vibe has never been my cup of tea.
You got issues, you talk them out with a therapist, like everyone else. ”
He observed her, trying to place her accent. It did not sound like anything he had heard before, but it definitely was not native. Nor was he certain he understood most of what she was saying, but he did not want her to know that. He understood enough to be annoyed… and somewhat intrigued.
Besides, she seemed to find his silence unsettling. That was precisely what he needed.
“Anyway, you and your brother shouldn’t be here,” she went on, averting her gaze.
“So, why don’t you get your ass up, get your brother, and get out of here.
We’re about to start working on this site, and the last thing I want is to have to get the local police to cart you out.
So, yeah, up and at ‘em. You’re going to need to find some other place to crash before you get into trouble for trespassing. ”
She dropped down beside the bed, scraping around, trying to find something. Ignoring him. Speaking to him as if he were a common scoundrel, instead of what he was. He could tolerate many things, but disrespect was not one of them.
He threw back the blankets and rose to his feet. He watched her scrabble around on her knees, and he rather enjoyed the sight.
A pity ye have such an insolent tongue…
He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet, at the same instant her hand closed around something on the floor, beneath his bed. Her eyes widened, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the object tighter, likely on the verge of dropping it again.
Clumsy.
He cast a dark smile at the woman. “Nay, lass, it appears that ye’re about to be in trouble.”
Jane had dealt with her fair share of arrogant men on both sides of the pond, but never on her own in the subterranean depths of a castle, with her only shot at help somewhere up a winding stone staircase that definitely wasn’t safe to climb down, in hindsight.
She could still feel the throb in her wrist where this idiot had grabbed her, but she tried to keep a level head as she stared back at him. She had been through worse, she told herself over and over, letting the mantra give her courage.
In fact, with the light so dim, and the thud of distant waves striking up that heartbeat sound again, she could almost imagine she was in a dingy club somewhere. Familiar territory… aside from him being half naked, with the kind of honed physique that couldn’t be natural.
Well, at least he’s handsome enough to be this arrogant.
Her mouth went dry as she looked at him harder.
Tall, dark, and handsome didn’t begin to describe him.
He towered over her, his shoulders so broad that she felt dwarfed by just his shadow, his abs rippling with every harsh breath he took.
A scar sliced through his left eyebrow to almost above his lip, but instead of taking away from his looks, it only added to them.
Meanwhile, raven black hair fell to his shoulders in tousled waves, his skin tanned and freckled, more scars and a few fresher cuts and bruises scattered across his chest, abdomen, and powerful arms.
He hadn’t just read the book on bad boys, he’d likely written it.
“If you don’t let go of me, I’m going to scream, and my friends are going to come running,” Jane warned. “They’re going to call the cops, you’re going to get marched out of here in handcuffs, and you’re going to wish you’d listened when I told you to leave the first time.”
She heard the slight quaver in her voice and hoped he hadn’t.
“Ye dare to tell me to leave?” he snarled, his hand still holding her arm.
“Look, pal, I don’t have time for this,” she muttered, unlocking her phone with her free hand.
The screen was cracked in a couple of places, but it was still working. Through the cobwebbed cracks, she could still see the picture of her and Adeline, taken a few years ago.
They were smiling, their arms around each other, wearing birthday hats. But Jane couldn’t remember if it was her birthday or Adeline’s when the picture was taken.
She dialed Hellen as fast as she could, bringing the phone up to her ear.
There was no robotic woman’s voice, no ringtone at all.
Frustrated, Jane checked the screen. It showed no signal, and the time and date were glitching. The LED light might be working, but the phone itself clearly wasn’t.
Something important must’ve been knocked loose when she dropped it, or it had given out because she was so far underground, on such an isolated outcrop of Scotland.
Either way, she was on her own.
“Seriously, you’re going to regret this,” she said to the ridiculously hot, half-naked stranger as she tried to dial Hellen again.
The man glared back at her, releasing her arm at the same moment he snatched the phone out of her hand.
“Hey!” Jane tried to grab it back, but he batted her away easily as if she was an irksome, little fly.
“What is this?” he asked gruffly, turning the phone over in his hand.
Jane rolled her eyes. “Sure, very funny. Mock the girl with the out-of-date phone. Not all of us have the spare cash to buy every new model, and it still works, so, hey, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”
She lunged at him, attempting to snatch the phone back, but he just turned around as though she was a kid throwing a tantrum. No matter which way she attacked, he just kept turning his body, the sheer bulk of him like an impenetrable fortress.
He’s like a furnace, a voice in the back of her head whispered as her fingertips scratched at his bare skin, desperate to get her phone back.
Rock hard, too.
It wasn’t like she could help running her hands over his body when he seized her only way out. The fact that it felt so nice was neither here nor there—probably just an odd reaction, like laughing at a funeral.
But it did feel nice. And, if she was being honest, she might be touching him a little more than she needed to, considering she didn’t stand a chance of actually snatching her phone back from him.
“Give it back, unless you want to add theft to your increasing list of crimes!” Jane urged, noting the scars that ran across his muscular back.
He’s been in some fights, this one.
Just then, the lock screen lit up, revealing another photo of Jane and Adeline. Taken nearly two years before Adeline went missing, at JFK, the day that Jane had set off for the UK, not knowing when she’d come back.
The man sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes darkening. “This is… ye,” he hissed, his anger radiating from his skin as he turned to glower at her. “What kind of sorcery is this, eh? And who is that blue-haired witch next to ye? Did she give ye this? Is she tryin’ to steal me soul?”
“What?” Jane’s brain felt like it was about to explode as she eyed the picture.
The ends of Adeline’s hair had been blue back then, though she’d changed the color as often as she’d changed her socks. It had been purple when she’d gone missing, and there was no knowing what color it was now, wherever she was.
However, Jane had bigger things to worry about.
“Listen, if you’re trying to scare us off this land, it’s not going to work. We’ve been invited here,” she said hesitantly, trying to decide if he was hired muscle or some kind of actor.
Maybe the local authorities had set this up to show the castle’s potential as a tourist attraction—a house of historical horrors kind of thing. Or the third option, that he was a psychopath, and she’d just walked into his domain.
“Nay one has invited the likes of ye,” the man retorted, squinting at the photo. “Nay witch or witch’s associate is welcome here.”
Jane snorted. “A witch? Oh, come on. You need new writers, if that’s the angle you’re aiming for. We’ve got a couple of amateur actors in the team, they could take a look at the script and polish it up for you.”
He didn’t seem amused, his lip curling. “Who sent ye to these chambers? What manner of sorcery is this?” He waved the phone.
If he was an actor, he was unnervingly method.
If he was a psychopath, she needed to get to the door and make a run for it now.
If he was a… weird sort of recluse who’d spent too many years underground with no grasp of the real world, creating a fantasy land in the belly of a ruined castle, then she figured she should probably get him some help.
And maybe, once he’d recovered from whatever mental break he was having, she could take him for coffee and—
For crying out loud, Jane! Just because you haven’t seen a man shirtless in ages, that doesn’t mean you should start creating a fantasy land of your own!
The man loomed over her, leaning in until he was within kissing or headbutting distance. “If ye dinnae want to die, speak.”
Okay, that’s a no for coffee, then.
But what was she supposed to say that hadn’t already been said?
Was she meant to play into the fantasy, to calm him down?
She’d never been much of an actor herself, but with Hellen all the way up the staircase, no signal to call for help, and the walls so thick that she doubted anyone would hear her scream, she believed the man’s threat.
The trouble was, fear had tightened her throat. She couldn’t get a single word out.