Beyond the Highland Myst(355)

She felt him return to her. The hair on the back of her neck tingled the moment he stepped beside her, but she refused to glance at him. At the same moment, a feminine purr from the other side of her asked, "May I help you?"

Gwen glanced up from the pile of T-shirts to find a tall, leggy, thirtyish saleslady, librarian glasses perched on her nose above a lushly pursed mouth, looking past her, eyeing the MacKeltar with fascination. "Wearing the old dress, are you now?" she spoke with a lilting burr, ignoring Gwen entirely. "Such a lovely weave. I've no' seen the pattern before."

Drustan folded his arms across his chest, his body rippling beneath the leather bands. "And you won't," he said. " 'Tis the Keltar's alone."

There went the lionlike toss of his head, which on a woman would have looked coy but on him was an irresistible come-hither-if-you-think-you-can-handle-me. Gwen didn't wait for the saleslady to start drooling. Or go hither. She thrust a pile of jeans and shirts into Drustan's arms, forcing him to unfold his arms and drop the he-man pose.

"Allow me to show you to a fitting room," the saleslady purred. "I'm quite confident we'll find something to satisfy your… desires… at Barrett's."

Oh, choke me on innuendo, Gwen thought, not caring one bit for the interest in the woman's eyes. He might be crazy, but he was her deluded hunk. She'd found him.

Blocking the aisle to prevent—she glanced at the woman's name tag—Miriam from latching on to him, she nudged Drustan toward the dressing room. Miriam sniffed and tried to step around her, but Gwen engaged her in a determined, irritated little dance in the narrow aisle until she heard Drustan close the dressing-room door behind her. Plunking her fists on her waist, Gwen looked down her nose up at leggy Miriam and said, "We lost our luggage. His costume was all he had in his carry-on. We don't need any help."

Miriam glanced at the fitting room, where Drustan's muscular calves were visible beneath the short white slatted door, then contemptuously examined Gwen, from her not-very-recently shaped eyebrows to the muddy toes of her hiking boots. "Found yourself a Scotsman, did you now, wee nyaff? You Americans are given to samplin' our men with the same thirst you turn to our whisky, and you canna handle our whisky either."

"I can most certainly handle my husband from here," Gwen snapped, louder than she would have liked.

Miriam directed a pointed look at her ringless hand and arched a meticulously shaped brow that made Gwen feel she had small, unruly bushes growing above her eyes, but she refused to be humbled and returned the stare in icy silence. When Gwen made no effort to explain why she sported no wedding band and displayed no inclination to quit blocking the aisle, Miriam moved off in a snit to fluff and tidy the sweaters Gwen had messed up on the display table.

Swallowing a catlike growl, Gwen moved to stand guard outside the fitting room, tapping her foot impatiently. A swoosh of fabric alerted her that he'd removed his plaid, and Gwen tried hard not to think about him standing behind the flimsy door, nude. It was harder than trying not to think about a cigarette, and her disobedient thoughts handled it as badly: The more she tried to not think it—the more she thought it.

"Gwen?"

Dragging herself from a fantasy in which she was about to drip chocolate syrup on him, she said, "Um?"

"These trews… och! By Amergin!"

Gwen snorted. The MacKeltar was pretending to discover zippers, and if he was wearing the plaid true to the sixteenth century (according to what their tour guide had told them), he had no underwear on. She heard a few more muttered curses, then a zzzzzp! Yet another curse. He sounded so convincing.

"Come out and let me see you," she said, struggling to keep a straight face.

His voice sounded strangled when he replied, "You'll have to come in."

Sneaking a furtive glance at Miriam, who had conveniently been accosted by a pimple-faced teenage boy, Gwen entered the dressing room. He was regarding himself in the mirror and his back was to her, and, heavens, but she would have been much better off if she'd never seen his tight muscled ass in a pair of tight faded jeans. His long black hair rippled over his shoulders and down his back, inviting her to plunge her fingers in it and trail them down the splendid ridges of muscle—

"Turn around," she said, her mouth suddenly dry.

He did so, with a scowl.

She eyed his bare chest and, with effort, forced herself to remember she was supposed to be looking at the jeans. Her gaze skimmed downward over his rippled abdomen and lean hips and—

"What have you stuffed in your pants, MacKeltar?" she demanded.

"Nothing that wasn't God-given," he replied stiffly.