That and her gun. Or, maybe her knife instead. Knives were handy for cutting off appendages, after all. Maybe it’s time she quit making empty threats. She’d definitely take her knife.
Emma wrapped the towel around herself, and while tugging a brush through her hair, walked back into her bedroom where she stopped short. Her dress wasn’t the only thing lying on her bed.
She clutched her towel tightly against her breast. The rose was back on her pillow—as was the man who’d delivered it. “MacRae!”
Dair whistled soft and slow as he levered himself to a seated position. “Texas, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“You think your eyes are sore now, wait until I scratch them out,” she threatened, her voice flat and serious. “I have to tell you, MacRae, I can’t say that I’m impressed by your Scots hospitality. Leave my room now.”
The cad smiled, then shook his head. “I’d really rather not. We’ve talked about fate before, but do you believe in evil, Emma? Do you feel it in this house the way I do? Maybe it’s my Celtic blood, but every time I walk in the door I feel a real sense of loathing. It’s spooky. I feel shaky. Nauseated, even. I know it sounds crazy, but last night when I peeked in on you, I realized that your room is different. This is the only room in this house that isn’t…dark.” He twirled the rose by the end of its long stem. “I’ve put the place up for sale.”
“The only evil I sense is you,” she snapped. “Be gone, MacRae. If you don’t want to meet me downstairs we can talk in the back garden. We can talk in the street for all I care.”
“I don’t mind talking here, Texas. The scenery is much nicer here than in the garden.” He ignored her sputtering and continued, “I have a lot to tell you, but before we get started, I want to point out that I did as you asked. I stayed away and I stayed quiet. However, that sort of approach won’t work from here on out. I’m not trying to break faith with you. I’m being up front with you because I’m trying to earn back your trust. Now, the man we’ve come to see is back in town today. We need to—”
“Stop!” she demanded. “Stop right there. I’m not about to hold this conversation with you in my bedroom while I’m next to naked and you’re fully clothed and lying on my bed.”
“I certainly don’t mind, but if that’s the way you feel…” Dair rolled off the bed, then started unbuttoning his shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting half-naked to equalize things. I’ll even strip completely if that’ll make you more comfortable.”
Emma’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water as he shrugged out of his shirt. The man robbed her of speech. “That’s not…I didn’t…for heaven’s sake, Dair!”
He laughed, his gray eyes going warm with affection as he watched her. “Ah, Emma, I’ve missed you. The women I’ve been around during the past week pale in comparison to you.”
That comment cleared the fog from her mind in a snap. Her gaze raked over him, searching for sores or some other sign of disease. “The women?”
“For clarity’s sake, you should know it was work, and I didn’t bed any of them.” Moving quick and graceful as a mountain cat, he sprang off the bed, grabbed her hand, then pulled her back onto the bed. On top of him. Emma’s pulse throbbed and reckless energy kindled, then sizzled along her veins. His voice rumbled a dark, erotic purr. “The very idea of it left me cold.”
He rolled them and she found herself on her back. “You’re in my blood, Texas. I only want you.”
Then he lowered his head and kissed her. Dair’s mouth was soft and persuasive. He nibbled at her lips, slid his tongue over and around, coaxing them to open for him. When she surrendered to the tender seduction, he slipped his tongue inside, deepened the kiss, and clouded her senses.
Passion hummed inside Emma. She reveled in the weight of him atop her, and the hard press of his body made everything inside her go soft. When his clever hands made the towel float open and flesh touched flesh, breast rubbed against chest, a wild, reckless yearning surged through her. Emma wanted.
As, undoubtedly, had legions before her.
Breathing hard, she tore her mouth away from his. Her hands pressed against his chest attempting to shove him away. “Get off of me! I swear if you’ve passed along Venus’s Curse to me I’ll make your life hell on earth.”
Dair propped himself up on his elbows and stared down at her in shock. “What?”
“There’s no such thing as Malaysian Yellow River Syndrome.”
He rolled back on his haunches. “Wait a minute. Wait one damn minute. You think I gave you the clap?”
She grabbed for the towel to cover herself. “Did you?”
His silver eyes flashed. “Where would you get a ridiculous idea like that?”
“What’s wrong with you, MacRae? Why the headaches? Why the loss of consciousness? What have you exposed me to?”
He spat a filthy curse and rolled off the bed. Emma scrambled to fasten the towel around her once again as Dair prowled the room like an angry mountain cat. “I do not have the goddamned clap. That is the most insulting…what sort of man do you take me for?”
Emma climbed from the bed. “Just tell me the truth. Don’t try to fool me with some illness you pulled out of the air. It was you, wasn’t it? Not the doctor? What did you do, bribe him?”
Guilt flashed so briefly across his face that she’d have missed it had she not been watching for it. Emma’s stomach sank. “You did.”
“I didn’t want to tell you.” Dair raked his fingers through his hair, then braced his hands on his hips. “It’s private, Emma. I swear to you it’s not a venereal disease, and it’s certainly not contagious. Can’t you just take my word that it has nothing to do with you? There’s no danger to you from me?”
“No.”
He growled low in his throat, then dropped his head. Emma’s bare foot tapped against the hardwood floor. When he finally looked up, he stared her right in the eyes. “It’s alcohol. I have a drinking problem.”
She almost laughed at his poor performance. What a liar. Emma had grown up in a frontier town. Back before he went respectable, Emma’s father had owned a saloon. She might not know the signs of syphilis, but she darned sure knew what a drunk looked like.
Dair MacRae didn’t have broken capillaries in his face or trembling hands or a raspy voice. His skin tone wasn’t yellow. And, recalling a tidbit she’d overheard from a discussion between her father and her brothers, neither had Dair MacRae lost size in his testicles due to overconsumption of alcohol. Therefore, the man was a liar. She’d told him how she felt about liars.
Emma pursed her lips. “A drinking problem. I see.”
“I try to control myself,” he explained. “Sometimes I slip.”
“Yes. I understand that a dependence on spirits can do that to a person.” Wait until he saw what an angry woman can accomplish.
“I’m ashamed, Emma, but I’m not contagious. You need not concern yourself over that.”
Now that had a ring of truth to it. Either his acting was improving or he was telling the truth.
Had to be better acting. The cad. “Well, then. That is a relief. I admit I was quite frightened at the thought.”
He scowled and hooked his thumbs at the waistband of his pants. “It’s insulting that you’d think so little of me, Emma. The clap.” His scowl deepened to a glare.
You think that’s insulting? Wait until you see what I have up my sleeve, MacRae. Or, to be more precise, beneath my towel.
“Well, we can just put that behind us now, can’t we?” she said, smiling seductively and taking a step toward him. “In fact, I think we should move forward, don’t you?”
His gaze dropped to the finger she ran along the swell of her breast rising above the shielding towel. “Forward is good.”
“If the bookseller is back and the time has come to move forward in the quest to solve the mystery of my ruby, then I think we should put
all
the unpleasantness behind us.”
“I’m perfectly agreeable to that.” He never looked above her shoulders.
Got you, you predictable idiot.
“Shall we seal the deal? With a…” Emma braced herself to follow through, then boldly dropped her towel “…kiss?”
“Emma.” He said it like a growl and took two steps toward her.
She shifted sideways, held up her hand. “No, we’ll be on equal footing this time.” Deliberately, she dropped her gaze to where the evidence of his desire was very much in evidence.
He stripped in seconds, then naked as she, again stepped toward her.
Emma’s laugh was honest. The man was predictable and easily swayed with a little show of skin. She shook her head slowly, shook her finger no. “Allow me to set the rules for this…compact, Alasdair. Allow me my fantasy. Follow my lead?”
He nodded. “For as long as I can bear, Emma.”
It was, she thought, as good as she was likely to get. She stepped into his arms and lifted her face for his kiss. “You must think of me and only of me, MacRae.”
“That won’t be a problem,” he replied in a raspy tone.
Even as his mouth touched hers, she wrapped her arms around him and started to move, to twirl. Kissing him, moaning into his mouth, fitting her body against his, she demanded his focus, captured his complete attention. Pouring every ounce of passion she could summon into the moment, she backed him up to the french doors’ threshold. Then, Emma kneed him in the groin, not viciously, but hard enough to make him gasp and release her. She set her hands against his chest and gave him a hard shove before darting inside, slamming and locking the French doors.
As the catcalls began to rise from the street and fury flooded Dair’s eyes, she smiled. “Lie to me again, boyo, and next time I’ll use my knife.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A
S FAR AS
D
AIR WAS
concerned, all bets were off. She wanted to fight dirty? Fine. He was an expert at dirty fights. Emma could use some lessons. She’d only knocked his jewels up into his stomach.
Doubled over, he worked to regulate his breath. Fury burned in his blood like raw whisky. Emma Tate might not know it, but she had more than met her match.
When the pain finally eased, he straightened and stared into the room. He’d expected her to have run off. Hit and run. That’s what women did, wasn’t it?
Instead, he discovered that she’d tugged on a robe and now stood on the other side of the doors, her arms folded, her chin up, watching him with fire in her eyes. God, she was gorgeous. All flame and fury. A dusky nipple peeked through the V in her robe and despite his lingering discomfort, arousal stirred.
Glutton for punishment,
his good sense whispered.
Dair could have gone right back through the French doors—he could have used wire from the hanging basket of flowers to pick the lock in seconds flat. He could have her on her back on the bed before she could draw a breath to scream. The tease. The termagant. Knee him, would she?
Instead, cognizant of the truth of the old saying that revenge was a dish best served cold, he decided to take a more subtle approach. So to speak.
From the building across the street, he heard his elderly neighbor call for her sister. “Hurry! You can’t miss this.”
“Heaven,” came the sister’s voice. “I saw some prime meat in my day, but never so fine a sight as Mr. MacRae’s bare behind.”
From down below, came the sound of a younger female voice, a startled gasp, then a man crying out, “She’s fainted. Quick. Get her out of the street before—stop! You there in the wagon!”
Crash.
Squeals. Shouts. Dair didn’t turn to look. He didn’t take his gaze off Emma.
“Silly twit,” came the neighbor’s voice. “Fainting in the street. It wasn’t the wagon driver’s fault he swerved into the orange cart. She should have to pay for all the fruit.”
Dair ignored all the commotion—along with that perky nipple—as the anger flowing through his veins spiked his desire. He braced his hands on his hips and helped matters along by recalling the moment Emma Tate dropped the towel. He pictured the fullness of her rose-tipped breasts, the slimness of her waist, the curve of her naked hip. The allure of the delta between her legs. Stimulated by such an erotic vision, his pride rose to the occasion, issuing the promise he’d intended.
On the other side of the glass, Emma’s eyes widened and she took an inadvertent step back. Dair winked at her, then with long-practiced ease and grace, he swung his arms and leaped up, grabbing hold of a water pipe and using it to crawl like a cat up to the balcony one floor above. As he turned to raid a flower basket for wire to pick the lock, he gave his wide-eyed neighbors a jaunty salute.
“I can die a happy woman now, sister,” he heard the woman say as the lock clicked open. He blew her a kiss before disappearing indoors.
In the privacy of his suite as the rush of anger faded, Dair allowed himself a few minutes to brood. Blast the woman. She’d led him around by the spigot and caused him to bare his ass to Edinburgh. Literally. It was humiliating. Embarrassing. When was the last time he’d allowed a woman to get the best of him?
Never, that’s when. Emma Tate was a first.
Almost against his will, his mouth lifted in a rueful grin. Damn, but she was a spitfire. Spirited. Saucy. Smart. She’d found his weak spot and capitalized on it. A man had to admire that. As much as he appreciated beauty, Dair had always found intelligence in a woman equally alluring. Emma Tate packed a double punch.
The more he thought about the situation, the better he felt. Once he could get past the embarrassment of flashing his backside to the neighbors, he realized he could now let go of any lingering guilt about his departure from Chatham Park. He and Mrs. Tate were even on the humiliation point. Also, by using sex as a weapon, she’d made it fair for him to draw his own gun, so to speak. Seduction was now back on the table. Thank God.
Of course, before he got around to that he’d better disabuse her of the notion that his illness had anything to do with his sexual health. The clap, for God’s sake. Where had she come up with that idea? And how could he make her believe him? What excuse for the headaches could he use now that Malaysian Yellow River Syndrome was no longer an option?
He’d chosen poorly with the alcohol excuse, and he had no one to blame but himself. He’d underestimated her. He should have had a backup sickness at the ready.