“There’s nothing like it, not that I’ve ever seen,” Gideon said softly, looking pensive. “And I’ve been traveling enough lately to know. Old seat of the Clan MacInnes, and my people never left. Except now, a lot have scattered to the cities. Glasgow, Edinburgh, London. But they always come back, if only for short periods of time. It’s beautiful country, peaceful, wild. Quiet.” Gideon paused a moment to study her. “Actually, you know, I think you’d like it.”
He was looking at her that way again, the way that made her flush all the way down to her toes, and Carly quickly sought to turn the subject. If she didn’t, she was pretty sure she’d spontaneously combust. “Um. So. Hunting Grounds. Like stomping grounds, I guess?”
“Yeah, sorry. Just what we’ve always called where we make our home.”
“And home is an estate you putter around at.” Carly pushed the last few pieces of chicken around on her plate without really paying attention, focused on Gideon. How, she wondered, had she come to have him sprawled in a chair at her little table at all? She knew she was a little sheltered, but even she could never have imagined something like this. Life in Podunk, New York, had never seemed blander than when Gideon talked about his own little corner of the world. A corner apparently populated by a large pack of werewolves. Wild. There are more things in Heaven and Earth, she reminded herself.
“Mmm,” he agreed, nodding as he chewed the last bite of his dinner. “The land’s been in our family … well, as you can imagine, quite a long time. The current main house is blended with what was left of the original castle. The guest cottages we rent out have existed, in some form or other, for a couple hundred years.”
Carly nearly choked on her wine. “Your family has a castle? Is it, like, picturesque Scottish or more, I don’t know … Frankenstein?” Sadly, the thought of Gideon skulking around a dark, mysterious ruin (and she was trying so, so hard to at least remove the flowing cape from this image) was attractive. Really attractive. Carly barely managed to fight off the impulse to start fanning herself with her napkin and inwardly cursed the now-empty bottle of wine.
She cursed it harder when Gideon’s deep, rolling laugh nearly got him a full-body tackle. “Ah, picturesque, I’m afraid. And it’s more a manor house now than a castle. A lot of the original structure had crumbled away—that’ll happen after eight hundred years or so— by the time my great-great-grandfather decided something had to be done. Opening the place up to guests has worked out well for us, and because of … I mean, there’s always been money. The Alphas have all tended that legacy well.” That probably wasn’t the half of it; Carly knew it from the way he’d caught himself. But what he was telling her was just too intriguing to allow her to really care. The Highlands had always seemed like a mystical place to her, almost unreal. Magical.
She had to admit, having Gideon suddenly appear from there hadn’t done much to dispel that impression.
“Iargail, we call it.”
“Iargail,” Carly repeated, liking the foreign, exotic feel of the word on her tongue. “What does it mean?”
“Twilight.” Gideon paused, lost in thought for a moment, then drank deeply from the nearly full glass of Cabernet Sauvignon in front of him. “A fitting tribute, I think, to where my kind exists.”
“Beautiful,” she sighed. He looked sad, now, Carly thought. Possibly he was homesick, though something told her there was more to it than just that. She wished it were otherwise, but instinctively, Carly knew that whatever it was, Gideon was going to keep it to himself. Quickly, she tried to lighten the mood. It was all she could think to do.
“So do you? Want it someday, I mean?” She thought of Gideon in ragged old jeans playing Mr. Fix-It, tanned and windblown and relaxing in a place that was his own, maybe stopping to chat up the occasional guest or friend, and felt another tug at the knot of desire she seemed to be carrying all the time now in her lower belly. He would be perfect in the setting she imagined. She wished—futilely, she knew—that she could see him in his natural element.
“You know, it’s funny,” he said, standing and taking his plate to the sink. “I wasn’t sure for a while, but now … yes, actually. I think I do. Wandering a bit has had its purpose, but,” he inclined his head toward the window over her sink, and the snow that continued to fall, white against the darkness, “turns out I like what I was running away from best.”
“I hear you,” Carly said as she stood as well and began to collect things from the table. “I ran too. College, first. Not too far, but far enough to get my feet wet. And all I ever thought about was coming home, starting my business here. So as it turns out, I ran exactly two blocks away from my parents’ house. But I can’t complain.”
Gideon turned, cocking his head at her. “And there’s that. I know I was there, but I wasn’t exactly looking around. What sort of business do you run, Miss Silver? I’ve got you figured for a lawyer or an accountant.”
An accountant? How did you look like an accountant? If her hotness level was actually that low, she was going to have to seriously reevaluate her wardrobe and makeup choices. Carly sensed a shopping trip with Regan coming on, and as soon as possible. Not, she thought as her heart sank a little, that Gideon would be around to appreciate the results. But there was always some future guy, she guessed. If she could ever get past the mere fact of Gideon’s existence long enough to let there be a future guy, that was. Encountering perfection was probably going to damn her.
Carly wrinkled her nose at him. “‘Miss Silver’ is a little better than ‘Carlotta,’ but you’re pushing it. Makes me sound like an old cat lady, which, I must tell you, I am still a few well-placed doilies and floral housecoats shy of, thank you very much.”
Gideon paused before the sink and gave her a casual, thorough inspection that warmed her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Carly could swear those amber eyes took on a faint, nearly imperceptible glow before he tore his gaze away from her. When he spoke, it was with something like reluctant admiration. “You’re a bit farther away from it than that, I think.”
“Oh. Well. Thanks.” Blushing again, damn it. She should probably just accept it as a permanent thing, at least for as long as Gideon was around, but why did she have to get the Pink Gene? And just like that, the two of them had rocketed straight back to awkward, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Carly struggled to collect herself, to pick up their completely unraveled thread of polite, interesting conversation.
“Actually,” she said, her tone sounding a little overly bright to her, “I own a bookstore.”
Gideon surprised her with a laugh, shaking his head as he rinsed off the dishes. “Of course you do. I should have known.” When Carly just looked at him quizzically, he elaborated. “The books,” he explained. “You’ve got them tucked into every little space. I thought it might just be an addiction. Instead it’s your job. It’s perfect, really.”
He turned back away from her, busy loading his things into the dishwasher while Carly tried to work up the nerve to get as close to him as she would need to in order to finish cleaning up. She’d been doing okay. That was, right up until she had to get close enough to Gideon to actually possibly brush against him. Now, Carly could feel every thudding beat of her heart as her lungs threatened to seize up completely.
Carly chewed her lip, staring at Gideon’s broad back while she worked up her nerve. It shouldn’t be this hard, she told herself. She was a little on the shy side with men, sure, but nothing ridiculous. And the fact that this particular man had a genetic predisposition to turning into an animal occasionally wasn’t even what was putting her off so badly. It was almost impossible to put her finger on exactly what had her so jumpy. But there was something about Gideon that had Carly less worried about what he might do than about what she was having a harder and harder time not doing.
She huffed out a soft, frustrated sigh. The effect Gideon had on her was decidedly unsettling. Even across from him at the table, Carly had felt Gideon’s presence in every cell, a helpless planet caught in his orbit. In fact, Carly wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that werewolves actually exuded some sort of gravitational pull. That would explain why all she wanted to do was get closer to him, to the probable point of crawling directly into his lap. It certainly didn’t help that the closer she got to him, the lovelier she felt. And then there was the way her skin still shimmered with heat in each place his eyes had touched, however briefly. Silently, she cursed her hormones.
“So what do you call it?” The rumble of his voice jerked her out of her thoughts.
“What?” Carly was glad he was turned around, because she was pretty sure she’d been standing there with her mouth open.
“Your bookshop. What do you call it?”
“Oh.” Bookshop? Did she have a bookshop? Where was she again? “Bodice Rippers and Baubles. Ah, because we sell some jewelry too, you see. Curios. Pretty things.”
When Gideon turned to look at her this time, the expression on his face said it all. “Bodice what?”
Steeling herself, Carly grabbed as much as she could carry and headed towards him. “I sell books with a romantic theme, thank you.” Her nose was in the air. She knew it, she couldn’t help it. But she really didn’t want to hear Gideon make fun of her life’s work and shatter her little fantasy of him as the perfect man. Or, well, almost-man. He surprised her, though, as he stepped aside to allow her better access to the sink.
“That’s an interesting idea, actually. I’ve never seen anything quite like that. I’d imagine you do quite well.”
“I don’t think,” she began, already launching into her standard defense, when what he’d actually said sank in. “I mean … oh. Well. Yes, I do. Thank you.” She placed her dishes in the sink, letting the water run over them, and glanced up to smile at Gideon. Maybe he was just flattering her because he was sort of there at her mercy, but she appreciated it nonetheless. He didn’t look insincere, though, Carly saw with a jolt as her eyes met his. He looked deadly serious.
