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“You,” was all he managed to say for his guts descended into an explosively messy overdrive.
“Oh, let me introduce you to my sister,” the blonde said from very far away to his ears. “Catriona Emily McTavish.”
The room fell into a graveyard silence as their eyes met with all the noise found in London. Twice over.
“Mr McKendrick.” Her saying his formal, wrong title took him out of his silent rage into a very vocal one.
“What the deuce in happening here?” The growl came accompanied with a crumpled stance.
“Catriona?” Anna asked with a rather worried look at her sister.
The name brought a random realisation. He had never understood why he thought the missish Emily did not fit the woman. Catriona suited her immensely: strong, bold. And Scottish.
“I believe I have…reacquainted with the gentleman during this last trip to Scotland,” she informed the blonde, her sister, without tearing her dark gaze from him.
Reacquainted? The damned woman did more, much more, than reacquaint! She had explored every inch of him, hands, mouth, and tongue. She knew him. Intimately, beyond the flesh, further than any other person aside from his family, or even them.
“You never told me anything,” Anna complained.
“I was going to,” the impossible lass paused briefly, “at a more convenient time.” Those marvellous dark eyes were still on him, doing things he preferred not to put into words. He remembered none to describe the jumbled emotions sloshing in him at this second.
Surprise, exhilaration, confusion. Lividity.
And that never-dousing craving to pick her up and carry her somewhere quiet to—
“You are a McTavish!” he barked, his control slipping fast.
“Well, of course she is,” Anna ventured. “She’s my sister,” the girl completed.
This made the woman turn to her. “Anna, do you think I could talk to our visitor for a moment?”
Anna’s blue eyes shifted from her to him and back with quizzical silence for several moments before answering. “Certainly.” She left in elegant steps, closing the door behind her.
“You lied,” he accused as soon as they found themselves alone.
Her chin lifted in that defiance which annoyed and aroused him in the same breath. “I did not.” Her riding habit clad bosom expanded in an inhale. “My second name is Emily, as you heard Anna say. And my mother was a Paddington.”
His nostrils flared. “But you omitted the fact that you are Scottish and a McTavish!”
“What would you have done had I informed you of it?” she asked.
For an instant there, he did not conjure anything to reply. Good question. What, really? “I would have taken you to your father faster than a hundred horses.” Would he? The insidious question popped in his mind. He had wanted her form the start; would he have given her up that quickly?
“That’s what I imagined.” The comment came filled with that awareness of women who had no say in their destinies.
“It’s what I’d be required to do.” He braced his legs and crossed his arms over his chest, daring her to contest him. Required, yes, but whether he would in reality do, he would never know.
“And what about Fiadh
aich?” she asked.
His mind was full of unanswered questions. She did not need to add one more. “I would have managed.”
“Like you had when I arrived?”
Curse it all!
“Damn it, Catriona!” Her name felt delicious in his mouth, like the woman herself. “The things we did.” Every one of which he wanted to repeat. His hand raked his hair in exasperation.
