But now he couldn’t seem to control what was inside his head. It was almost as if part of her was flowing into him, taking over his head, his thoughts.
He had thought himself immune to women. None of them touched him, deep inside. None struck a fire in him. No woman interested him enough to make him want to learn about her, to understand how she thought.
He didn’t see her in the same way he saw other women. He didn’t see her the way he saw the female immigrants he helped. She was different. When he looked at Amy, he didn’t only see her with his eyes. He saw her with his heart.
Something that scared the hell out of him.
His pulse pounded like the distant surf when she touched him. He picked up her hand. His pulse pounded like the distant surf when he touched her, too. His heart was beating like waves in his ears. Why was this woman able to make him forget he didn’t particularly like women? What was it about her?
He examined her hand, almost as if by doing so he thought he could find the answer. But there was no answer there.
He turned over her hand and ran a finger along her palm, following the line of life that wound its way across it. He opened his own hand and looked at his palm. He placed it beside hers.
His hand was big and blunt; hers was small and elegant. Her nails were shaped like half-moons; his were square, like the sails on a ship. Calluses from hard work had bubbled on his hands. Her palm was soft and pale and looked new compared to his. His skin was so much darker than hers, as different as their moods.
He put her hand down and straightened the covers, even though they didn’t need straightening. There was a peace about her, which he found ironic.
When he looked at her, when he was with her, or when he thought of her, peace was not what he felt. He experienced a storm of feelings, strong and full and consuming.
It was something he didn’t want to put a name to even though he thought he knew what it was. Something he had thought he was beyond feeling.
But he wasn’t. When he looked at Amy, what he felt was as old as time. What Calum felt was intense. It wasn’t love. No, not love. It was passion.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Always act like a winner,
even if you’re losing.
—Anonymous
Georgina found the kitchen with little trouble. She might be stuck on an island where none of her escape plans worked, but her nose still worked. She followed it until she stood before a set of large paneled doors.
She pushed them open, descended the two steps down into a large room with a wide window along one wall. The wall to her right was all rock and had another one of those huge fireplaces.
She turned at the bottom of the steps and froze.
Eachann MacLachlan was sitting at a massive pine table in the center of the room. His big feet were propped on the corner of the table and his chair was pushed back and teetering on two legs. He had something that looked like a towel pressed against his face, so all she could see was his stubborn jaw.
“Hi, George.”
The man had an uncanny ability to know where she was at every moment. It was unsettling. He had never even looked at her.
“There went my appetite,” she muttered. She took a deep breath and crossed the room to stand at the opposite end of the table. She gripped the back of a pine chair.
“Sit down and eat,” he told her. He still hadn’t looked at her.
There were two places set at the table, his and the seat next to him. She released the chair and crossed over to the spare place, gathered up the plate and utensils, then turned to go back to the end seat.
His chair legs slammed to the floor at the same moment he grabbed her arm. “Sit here.” His voice was muffled; it came from behind the towel.
She looked down at him. He took away the towel and she stared down at his swollen face.
She almost flinched. Almost, not quite.
He looked like the very devil. One eyelid was turning bright purple and swollen shut. There was a jagged and brownish-red cut on his lower lip—a lip that was twice its normal size. He had a round ugly bruise at the base of his chin that seemed to grow as she stood there. She could almost see the outline of his brother’s knuckles.
“Sit down.”
