Beyond the Highland Myst(710)

Forty minutes later, Jessi and Cian stepped in tandem from the elevator.

He was holding her hand, and although she’d never considered herself much of a hand-holder, she thoroughly liked the feel of her small hand in Cian’s big, strong one, and the snug interlacing of their fingers. She felt dainty, girly—actually, more like consummately womanly—beside this man.

She glanced up at him and inhaled a swift, shallow breath. He was devastatingly attractive. He was wearing faded jeans and a much-washed black Ironman T-shirt. His kilt was tossed over a shoulder, and his knife sheath was strapped blatantly around his thigh, the lethal blade now cleaned and returned to its protective casing. She’d tried telling him he couldn’t wear it that way, that he’d get them arrested. He’d replied that she could save her breath because Cian MacKeltar obeyed no laws but his own.

She’d not found that particularly surprising.

His muscular body rippled beneath the thin cotton fabric. With those crimson-and-black tattoos licking up his neck and encircling both powerful biceps, those wicked-looking wrist cuffs, his long braids, and his imposing height and brawn, he looked downright dangerous.

Considering that the clothing fit him, she wondered how he’d gotten it off of whomever he’d gotten it off of. It must have been one heck of a fight.

Then there was the matter of the clothing he’d brought her . . . smelling of another woman’s perfume. She had on hip-hugging Lucky jeans (with the cheeky words Lucky You stamped on the inside of her fly) that were X-treme Low Ride—as in, she sure wouldn’t be sitting down with her backside facing a roomful of people anytime soon—and a white, V-necked sweater so snug that it would have revealed every line of her bra.

If only he’d brought her one.

Oh, well. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. All she needed to do was get to her car and she could toss a jacket over it.

When he’d returned to the room and thrust the bundle of clothing into her hands, she’d exclaimed, Where did you get—

Hush, he’d said instantly. Dress and move. We must accomplish as much as possible as quickly as possible. When the glass reclaims me, we will have time to talk then.

Okay. She’d shrugged. She knew she couldn’t extricate herself from her current problems. Maybe he could. He’d already managed to accomplish two things she’d not thought she’d had a snowball’s chance in hell of accomplishing: body disposal and clothing procuring. Though she really would have liked a bra. Enthusiastic was hardly an adjective she would have applied to herself at the moment, but parts of her were acting downright perky with every step. She hoped she wouldn’t need to run for any reason.

The lobby was nearly deserted at this early hour. As they stepped into the long, gleaming foyer, her attention was drawn by a ripped, steroid-bulked man standing at the front desk with his arm around a sultry blonde who didn’t look nearly as distraught as he. Coincidentally, he looked like exactly the kind of guy who might wear an Ironman T-shirt.

The man was shouting furiously at two desk clerks. Good, Jessi thought. She couldn’t shake the paranoid feeling that any moment now a police officer was going to appear out of thin air and arrest them. Any distraction was a welcome one. Hopefully the clerks would be so busy dealing with the irate brute that they wouldn’t notice her and Cian skulking out. Although, with a six-and-a-half-foot-tall mirror tucked beneath his arm, nothing the six-and-a-half-foot Cian MacKeltar did remotely resembled skulking.

Cian’s hand tightened on hers. “Hurry, lass.”

She picked up the pace, jouncing jauntily along.

“I’m telling you, the man is one of your guests. I watched him go back up on the elevator. The son of a bitch took our clothes!” the man shouted.

Jessi blinked. Eyed the man and his wife. Glanced down at herself.

Glanced up at Cian.

He shrugged. “Not all of them. I left them their undergarments.” When her brows rose, he added, “They were our size. We needed clothing. I suspected they had more, and look, they do. I ran into them in the elevator. Keep walking, lass. Move.”

They were halfway across the lobby when the man abruptly threw his hands up in exasperation and whirled around.

Oh no, here it comes, Jessi thought, stiffening. We’re screwed. Now he’ll call the cops. We’re going to jail.

“There he is!” the man roared furiously. “That’s the prick who made my wife take off her clothes!”

Jessi noticed the sultry blonde wasn’t looking too terribly upset by it, not nearly as upset as her husband seemed to be. She had a sudden vision of the pretty woman stripping down to her panties and bra in front of Cian and had the weirdest urge to go punch her. As if anything was the blond woman’s fault.