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‘Go.. .yes, I know.’ His fingers spread to the base of her neck and felt her pulse beating a rapid tattoo. He frowned slightly. ‘You’re not frightened of me, are you?’

Rashly, Riona claimed, ‘No, of course not!’ too proud to say otherwise.

It put the smile back on the American’s face, as he suggested in return, ‘Then it must be love.’

‘I...don’t be absurd!’ Riona was more angry now than scared.

‘OK, sex, if you prefer.’ He gave a low, growling laugh as he caught her hand and pressed it to his chest. ‘Whichever, my heart’s racing to the beat of the same drum. Feel it.’

For a moment Riona could do nothing else. She felt his heart racing as he had said, and her own beat al the harder. She snatched her hand away,

only for him to clasp her by the waist.

Her eyes flew to his, in appeal, in panic. He stared back at her, no longer smiling, intent.

Desire blurred his features. She shook her head. He took no notice. Smal wonder.

The first kiss. His mouth lowered to hers, infinitely slowly. She could have escaped. She didn’t try. His lips on hers, a gentle caress at first, so light it was hardly felt. Oh, but enough. She betrayed herself. She opened her lips to him, opened her heart, her life.

He groaned his response, before his mouth covered hers, tasting her sweetness, desire turning to passion, demanding more, demanding al . She

moaned, scared, excited. He drew her to him, close, closer, until it wasn’t enough any longer, and his hands slid to her hips, lifting her body to his, forcing her to acknowledge his need of her.

Too powerful, his maleness. Too frightening to feel this way. One kiss and she wanted to...

‘No...!
No!’
She twisted in his arms, pushing away from him in sudden and total rejection.

It was a second before he understood, then a look of anger and frustration crossed his handsome face. But she didn’t have to struggle further. He let her go.

‘I’m sorry.’ Riona found herself apologising, only later asking why. ‘I can’t... I don’t...’ She shook her head.

Inarticulate mutterings, but he made something of them. The wrong thing. His dark look softened to wonder.

‘Hel , I didn’t realise...’ His eyes searched her face and saw the panic there. ‘I assumed... so few girls are these days.’

Are what? Riona could have asked, but she understood him wel enough. She was just too embarrassed to say anything.

The colour was high on her cheeks, revealing, misleading, as he went on, ‘I should have known. It’s written al over you. I just didn’t want to see it.’

Riona remained silent, but she shook her head, trying to tel him. He misread the gesture, too.

‘OK, kid. It’s OK.’ He backed away from her, holding up his hands in truce. ‘No problem. I came on too strong. It won’t happen again.’

‘I-I’m not...’ a now acutely embarrassed Riona tried to explain.

He didn’t give her the chance. ‘You don’t have to say anything. Just show me the door, huh?’ he suggested with a smile that mocked himself.

He was being so nice, so reasonable that Riona felt worse. She opened her mouth, but no words came. It was easier just to do what he suggested

and escort him to the door.

He left her with a wry, ‘Wel , it was fun while it lasted,’ and a warning, ‘Keep your doors locked tight, kid,’ before walking off to his car.

Riona stood in the doorway, watching until he circled the car round and headed off back down the hil . She should have been relieved that he’d been put off. Should have been glad he’d deceived himself.

And she was a little, for she knew ful wel she couldn’t handle such a man. He was too... too everything. Different from Fergus Ross and the other young men round Invergair. Different from anyone she’d ever met. He jangled her nerves and assaulted her pride and fil ed her head with such thoughts that she was on the verge of screaming.

But oh, he made her senses reel, too, and relief was nothing compared to the longing as she touched her lips and felt the imprint of his mouth stil .

Treacherous senses. Insane longing. Feelings that had to be smothered before they could leave her open to pain and disil usionment much greater than any she had ever suffered at Fergus Ross’s hands. She forced herself to remember her first and last disastrous attempt at love. To cal it love, of course, was a deception in itself. Perhaps she’d thought herself in love with Fergus, but, in truth, it had just been need and fear and loneliness on her part. And on his? Sure, he had professed love until they had gone to bed together, but hadn’t much bothered afterwards.

Riona hadn’t complained, for her own feelings had proved insubstantial, dying even as he took her virginity with clumsy passion. The pain had barely touched her and was more bearable than the terrible emptiness in her heart. She had wanted to love Fergus, wanted to believe his promises, had slept with him rather than risk losing him. But there had been no real love there, just desire and desperation laid bare during an unloving act of intimacy. She hadn’t complained when it had turned Fergus from attentive suitor to arrogant lover, because her own love had proved such a poor, false thing.

She’d just heaved an enormous sigh of relief that Fergus had to return to his ship the next day, and done her best to forget the whole sorry interlude.

She’d managed fairly wel , too, which said a lot about how little she had real y cared for Fergus. But it had left its mark on her, making her deeply distrustful of feelings, her own or anybody else’s.

Though her heart stil beat painful y hard, Riona didn’t put words of love to its erratic rhythm. The truth was more basic.

Cameron Adams desired her. She desired him. It was that simple. It was that dangerous. And there was no doubt what she should do. Go to any

lengths to avoid him.

Only a fool would do otherwise.

CHAPTER TWO

INVERGAIR covered a large area. In theory it should have been easy to avoid him, but things weren’t to work out that way.

The next day Riona cycled to the vil age for her groceries, and on the journey back the chain came off her bicycle. She emptied her basket and,

turning the bike upside-down, began the messy job of fixing it. She was stil struggling when the BMW happened along.

She saw him first, and kept her head down, but he drew to a halt and shouted from his window, ‘Need a hand, kid?’

She cal ed over her shoulder, ‘No, thanks. I can manage.’

‘Riona?’ He frowned in surprise. He hadn’t recognised her, dressed as she was in jeans and a T-shirt, with her hair tucked beneath a basebal cap.

Now he probably felt obliged to park his car on the verge and cross the road to help her.

‘I real y can manage,’ she insisted, only to be ignored.

Crouching down by the bike, he lifted up the oily chain and took one minute flat to do what she’d been trying to for five. ‘It won’t stay fixed. The chain needs tightening. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before.’

It had. Four times in as many weeks. But Riona decided he didn’t need to know that. He’d already made her feel incompetent enough.

‘I’l take you home, just in case,’ he went on, unsmiling, and, before she could protest, uprighted the bike and wheeled it towards his car.

Riona caught up with him, saying, ‘You can’t. You’re going the other way.’

‘No problem,’ he dismissed. ‘It should fit in the trunk.’

‘Trunk?’ For a moment Riona had visions of him packing her bicycle away in a box, then she caught on. ‘Oh, you mean the boot.’

‘No, I mean the trunk,’ he drawled back. ‘A boot is something you wear on your foot.’

Riona decided not to argue the point. Being an American, how could he be expected to speak proper English?

She confined herself to muttering, ‘I don’t think the bike wil fit,’ then wishing she’d kept quiet when she was proved wrong.

‘You want to get in?’ he suggested, after he had fetched her groceries and placed them in the boot, too.

No, Riona didn’t want to get in, but she didn’t want to make a fuss either. So reluctantly she climbed into the car and sat in silence while he did a three-point turn on the quiet country road, then drove back to her cottage.

The silence wasn’t lost on him, as he asked point-blank, ‘You sulking with me, kid?’

He made her sound childish and she claimed in response, ‘Of course not!’

‘Then could you possibly lighten up a little?’ he continued in his almost permanently amused drawl.

It drew a not very encouraging ‘Hmmph’ from Riona.

Cameron Adams, however, needed no encouragement. Having reached her croft, he turned in his seat to say, ‘I realise I came on a bit strong last

night, but it won’t happen again. So you can relax. OK?’

‘OK,’ Riona echoed reluctantly.

‘Friends?’ He offered her a hand to shake.

‘Friends,’ Riona agreed, and suffered his rather bone-crunching grip, before adding, ‘On one condition.’

‘Name it!’ He smiled.

‘Stop cal ing me “kid”,’ she said in al seriousness.

His smile broadened at the request and he responded easily, ‘You got it, ki—honey.’

‘God, no!’ Riona didn’t hide her distaste.
‘Honey— that’s
even worse.’

‘Al right, what should I cal you? Miss Macleod?’ he suggested with obvious irony.

‘That’l do,’ Riona answered drily, and, before he could argue the matter, climbed out of the car.

He fol owed, lifting her bicycle out of the boot.

‘Thanks.’ She forced out the word.

He shook his head at her, then left with a resigned, ‘See you around,
Miss Macleod.’

Not if I see you first, Riona thought, but didn’t quite have the nerve to say. He already considered her childish enough, having lost interest in her as a woman.

She should have been pleased about that. She told herself she was. She lied.

She decided the best thing was to keep out of his way. But it real y did prove impossible. The next morning, when she played organ in the vil age

church, he was there, sitting in his great-uncle Hector’s pew, in direct line of her vision. Every time she made the mistake of looking up from the music, he paused mid-song and gave her a slow, wry smile. She realised he must be laughing at her, enjoying her discomfort, wel aware she didn’t know how to handle him.

When the service ended and he seemed on the point of approaching her, she slipped out of the back door of the church and went overland to the

doctor’s house. The doctor was a non-believer who only attended church for weddings and funerals, but in Riona’s eyes he was one of the most giving men in the community. Since her grandfather’s death, he had insisted she join him for Sunday lunch.

The roast was prepared by his housekeeper, Mrs Ross, and sometimes the widowed lady sat down with them to enjoy it.

‘Three for lunch, today,’ Dr Macnab said when he’d taken off her coat and escorted her through the hal .

Riona smiled at the housekeeper as she appeared in the dining-room doorway. ‘You’re staying, Mrs Ross?’

‘Ach, no, lass, the company’s too exalted for the likes of me,’ the older woman replied with a shake of the head. ‘I’ve told the doctor. I’m away

now.’

‘Exalted?’ Riona had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

It was the doctor who answered, ‘Aye, the man himself,’ and, at the ring of the doorbel , added, ‘That’l be him.’

Him?
Riona didn’t need twenty questions. She knew. Even before she heard the doctor say, ‘Come away in, Cameron, man,’ and saw the

American’s large frame in the doorway.

He looked surprised to see her, too. Clearly the doctor hadn’t warned him.

‘You know Riona, of course,’ Dr Macnab said, as the two exchanged stares rather than smiles.

‘Miss Macleod.’ The American inclined his head towards her.

She fol owed his lead. ‘Mr Adams.’

The doctor raised a brow at such formality, but said nothing, as he led the way into the dining-room.

Though she’d lunched many times at the doctor’s, Riona was the one who felt ‘out of it’. While Dr Macnab and Cameron Adams chatted easily

about both local and world affairs, she sat largely silent. Several times the doctor tried to draw her into the conversation, but she was completely inhibited by the American’s presence.

She listened, however, and gathered that the American did not intend to sel the estate, as they’d al assumed he would.

‘Initial y I’l have to employ a manager to run it,’ he said to the doctor. ‘Apart from not having the experience, I’ve commitments in America.’

‘So you’l be returning home soon?’ Riona asked him.

‘Is that wishful thinking?’ he suggested drily, before saying, ‘Not for a few weeks. I’ve managed to wangle a month’s vacation from work.’

‘May I ask what you do?’ the doctor put in.

‘I’m in construction,’ Cameron Adams answered readily enough.

In construction? Riona wondered what that actual y meant. Was he a bricklayer, an architect, or what? He certainly had the muscles for labouring

work, but his manner implied more authority. Unless, of course, the air of authority came with his expensive clothes, which in turn came from his great-uncle Hector’s money.

‘You’re a builder?’ Riona dared to suggest.

‘You could say that,’ he replied, giving little away.

‘What do you build?’ she pursued.

He shrugged. ‘Mal s, mostly. The occasional cinema duplex. Condominiums, sometimes.’

‘I see.’ Riona absorbed this information with what she hoped was an intel igent nod. She wasn’t about to admit she hadn’t understood a word. Mal s, duplexes and condominiums, whatever they were, weren’t thick on the ground in Invergair.

‘I can see I’ve left her deeply unimpressed,’ Cameron Adams remarked to the doctor.

‘Not at al ,’ the older man tried to make up for her lack of response. ‘I’m sure it’s most interesting work.’

‘’Fraid not, Doc,’ the American laughed. ‘When you’ve built one mal , you’ve built them al . So, who knows? Maybe it’s time for a change.’

‘You mean—move to Invergair?’ Riona asked in alarm.

‘Why not?’ He smiled at her less than ecstatic expression. ‘I am half Scotch, you know.’