Younger Brother was a role she hadn’t seen Ethan play before this morning. It was fascinating to witness the Highland Poet transform into a teasing, grumbling sibling.
“Kirsty, I saw rocks over there . . . by that log.” Ethan pointed upriver toward a fallen tree in the distance. “Ye should take your Papa and go see.” He punctuated his words by directing a taunting lift of his eyebrows at Malcolm.
Kirsty clapped her hands in delight. “Rocks! Rocks!” she chanted and scampered off upstream, the yellow of her small dress a bright splash of color against the greenery of the riverbank.
Malcolm shot Ethan a long-suffering look that promised retribution and shook his head before turning to follow his daughter.
Allie finally laughed. “You are truly terrible.”
“Theywerescaring the fish.” Ethan grinned, wicked and unapologetic, glancing at his brother’s retreating back. “But I mostly didn’t want an audience for this. Come here.” He motioned with the hand currently not holding a fishing rod.
Shaking her head, Allie pushed to her feet, setting aside her wide-brimmed straw bonnet and fluffing the wrinkles out of her full skirts.
Grasping his hand, she permitted him to tug her atop the narrow rock where he stood. Given the poof of Allie’s skirts, the boulder barely accommodated them both. She had to wrap a hand around his upper arm to steady her feet, pressing her chest against his torso in the process. The hard feel of muscle under her palm and the close heat of his broad body set her head to spinning.
“It’s cozy up here,” she murmured, her nose practically buried in his collarbones. She resisted the urge to rise onto tiptoe and press her lips to the pulse fluttering beside his Adam’s apple.
“Well, that is rather the point, lass,” he said, his voice a whisper at her ear. “I need ye close in order to teach ye how to cast a fishing line.”
“Cast?”
“Aye.”
Leaning back, he gently spun her around to face away, holding her in front of him.Tightlyin front of him. So close her shoulder blades touched his chest and his strong thighs bracketed her hips.
Allie forgot how to breathe.
Seemingly unaffected, Ethan reached around to place the fishing rod in her right hand.
“Mmm,” she said, her fingers closing around the smooth hickory, “this seems like a rather flimsy excuse to embrace me.”
“Och, it is indeed. One of the many delights fishing can afford.” His low chuckle rumbled in her ear. Ethan wrapped his left arm around her waist, his body pressing that much closer. “But ye don’t seem tae be overset by it.”
Indeed, she was not.
Gracious, seeing The Swooner was bad enough. But feeling it as she could right now, thrumming against her frame . . .
Allie slowly filled her lungs.
Well, she had wanted to seize the day. Though with Ethan’s warm forearm banding her waist, she supposed he had done the seizing first.
Kirsty squealed in delight, her piping voice echoing down the gorge. Allie glanced right to see Malcolm hush the little girl before they rounded a bend in the river, the two of them disappearing from sight.
“Something tells me your brother understood your aims,” she said dryly.
“Malcolm is no slow top. He’s been fishing before.”
“Why do I think we are no longer speaking ofliteralfishing?”
A knowing laugh was Ethan’s only reply.
He covered her right hand with his, both of them now holding the rod together—skin against skin.
Heat blazed across her nerve endings. Allie nearly trembled from it.
Helplessly ensnared, she leaned her weight into him. Was that his heartbeat fluttering against her shoulder blades?
He clutched her tighter, his left arm circling her waist, fingers splayed across her right hip, his breath brushing over the shell of her left ear.
