Page 24 of Enchantment of a Highlander

The market swirled around her and carried her forward into a maze of merchants and all their wares. It had become significantly more populated since she’d last visited. Obviously Alec had been doing good for the people as he’d promised.

She’d not seen any overthin children as she had in the past, and most faces were smiling or intent on their purchases, not turning over their shoulders with unease.

No one except her.

Stares settled on her with the tickling unease of an army of ants marching over her skin.

Something warm and dry clasped her hand and held firm.

“I’ve had enough of ye running from me.” Alec’s voice spoke next to her ear.

His tone stroked over her, tempting and dangerous all at once.

It commanded the hairs on the back of her neck to rise and the insides of her stomach to swirl.

She spun around to face him and pulled in a sharp breath. He was larger than she remembered—taller, more muscular, more imposing.

She wanted to believe her reaction came from anger or fear or even disgust, but she knew with sickening certainty it was desire.

His hand was almost hot against the iciness of hers. Hot and intimate in the way he gripped her with firm tenderness. The same way he’d held her before.

She wanted to wrap both her hands around him and savor the sensation, but she pulled herself free. Her goal in leaving was not to come back into the same situation.

“I wasn’t running,” she said.

His eyes were even more ice blue than she remembered and the shadow of a beard stood out against his sharp jaw. Had he always been so angular and hard?

“Why did ye leave?”

She should have prepared herself for the possibility of meeting him here. Truthfully, she’d thought about it, but in her mind, there was nothing to fear, nothing to consider.

“I wasn’t running from you, I was leaving the market.” Her voice was small.

“Why did ye leave me at the loch?” The lines around his eyes tightened.

That day surfaced in her mind. The heat of the sun, the chill of the water, the incredible pleasure their bodies had elicited together. “Because I couldn’t stay.”

He scrubbed his palm over his jaw. “I dinna understand ye. Ye willna talk to me, then ye happen upon me bathing and ye seduce me, then ye leave and I see ye now and ye act as though we’ve no ever shared—” He straightened and regarded her with a level expression. “I think ye’re scared.”

Her face went cool as the blood in her body rushed to her staggering heart. “I’m not afraid of you.” The word came out as a thread of a whisper.

Alec stepped forward and she caught the scent of outdoors and leather. His scent. She wanted to close her eyes against the burn in her chest.

“Ye were scared because ye dinna understand what to expect and all ye knew of me was the shite legacy my father left behind.” Something dark flashed in his eyes and his hand squeezed into a fist at his side.

Celia didn’t answer—she couldn’t, not with the way her throat thickened.

How could she give him an honest answer while maintaining the secrets she refused to share? What might he say if he knew she’d been in a dungeon as a girl? Or that she couldn’t sleep without a source of light to block out her nightmares?

Or that she’d been responsible for the death of the one person who ever gave her kindness and love?

She pressed her lips in the silence.

Alec sighed. “No matter why ye left, I’m glad to see ye back now. There are many who need ye, including me.” His gaze swept down to her waist and his jaw hardened. “I confess I worried ye might grow with my child and I wouldna ever know.”

“There is no child.” A pennyroyal tea that day had ensured his seed did not take root in her womb.

His lips thinned in a hard line and he nodded slowly, as if it pained him to do so.