Beyond the Highland Myst(463)

"Curious lass, aren't you? I suspect it oft gets the best of you." He gestured toward the food. " 'Tis cooling. What would you like?"

"Anything you eat first," she said instantly.

A look of incredulity crossed his face. "Think you I would poison you?" he said indignantly.

When he said it, it sounded like a patently ridiculous and perfectly paranoid thought. "Well," she said defensively, "how am I supposed to know?"

He gave her a chiding glance. Then, holding her gaze, he took a full bite from each plate.

"It might only kill in large doses," she countered.

Raising a brow, he took two more bites from each dish.

"My hands are tied. I can't eat."

He smiled then, a slow, sexy, shiver-inducing smile. "Och, but you can, lass," he purred, spearing a tender slice of salmon and raising it to her lips.

"You've got to be kidding me," she said flatly, clamping her lips shut. Oh, no, he wasn't going to harm her, he was just going to torture her, tease her, pretend he was being seductive, and watch Chloe Zanders turn into a stammering idiot while being hand-fed by the most incredibly gorgeous man this side of the Atlantic. No way. She wasn't going there.

"Open," he coaxed.

"I'm not hungry," she said mulishly.

"You are too."

"Am not."

"You will be on the morrow," he said, a faint smile playing about his sensual lips.

Chloe narrowed her eyes at him. "Why are you doing this?"

"There was a time, long ago in Scotland, when a man would select the finest from his trencher and feed his woman." His glittering golden gaze locked with hers. "Only after he'd sated her desires—fully and completely—did he sate his own."

Whuh. That comment went straight to her tummy, filling it with butterflies. Went straight to a few other parts, too, parts it was wiser not to think about. Not only was he a womanizer, he was smooth as silk. Stiffly, she gritted,

"We aren't in long-ago Scotland, I'm not your woman, and I'll bet she wasn't tied up."

He smiled at that and she noticed what had been bothering her about his smile then: Though he'd smiled several times, his amusement never seemed to reach his eyes. As if the man never quite dropped his guard. Never relaxed fully. Kept some part of himself locked away. Thief, kidnapper and seducer of women: What other secrets did he hide behind those cool eyes?

"Why do you fight me? Think you I might slay you with my fork?" he said lightly.

"I—"

Salmon in her mouth. Tricky thief. And it was good. Cooked to perfection. She swallowed hastily. "That wasn't fair."

"But was it good?"

She glared at him in stalwart silence.

"Life isn't always fair, lass, but that doesn't mean it can't still be sweet."

Disconcerted by his intense regard, Chloe decided it would be wiser to simply capitulate. God only knew what he might do if she didn't, and besides, she was hungry. She suspected she could argue with him until she was blue in the face and get nowhere. The man was going to feed her and that was that.

And frankly, when he was sitting there on the bed, all sinfully gorgeous and playful and pretending to be flirtatious… it was a little hard to resist, even though she knew it was just some kind of game to him. When she was seventy years old (assuming she survived unscathed), sitting in her rocking chair with great-grandkids trundling about, she could reflect upon the memory of the strange night the irresistible Gaulish Ghost had fed her bits of Scots dishes and sips of fine wine in his penthouse in Manhattan.

The brush of danger in the air, the incredible sensuality of the man, the bizarreness of her situation were all combining to make her feel a little reckless.

She'd not known she had it in her.

She was feeling… well… rather intrepid.

Hours later, Chloe lay in the dark, watching the fire sputter and spark, her mind racing over the events of the day, reaching no satisfying conclusions.

It had been, by far, the strangest day of her life.

Had someone told her that morning, when she'd tugged on her panty hose and suit, how this ordinary, chilly, drizzly Wednesday in March would unfold, she'd have laughed it off as pure nonsense.

Had someone told her she would finish the day tied to a sumptuous bed in a luxurious corner penthouse in custody of the Gaulish Ghost, watching a fire burn down to embers, well fed and sleepy, she'd have escorted that person to the nearest psychiatric ward.

She was frightened—oh, who was she kidding? Embarrassed though she was to admit it, she was every bit as fascinated as she was frightened.

Life had taken a decidedly loopy turn and she wasn't as upset about it as she suspected she probably should be. It was a little difficult to work oneself into a satisfying fit of fear-for-one's-life, when one's captor was such an intriguing, seductive man. A man who cooked a full Scots meal for his prisoner, built a fire for her, and played classical music. An intelligent, well-educated man.