He took her mouth again, and she closed her eyes, sinking into the sensation of him wrapped around her.She’d been desired before, of course; she’d spent nine years as a married woman, after all. But Ian had approached her differently. He saw her value as an entire being—the inheritance she would bring into his control once her father passed, the additional power that wealth would bring to the MacCreath family. When Donnach had begun to express more than friendship she’d realized the same thing. He wanted what she brought to the table, the power and wealth she carried with her, wrapped around her like a cloak.
Callum looked at her differently. In his eyes, in his arms, she felt like a woman. A woman of flesh and bone desired by a man of flesh and bone. No numbers, no logic between them. Her money, her business ownership, fell to a very distant second, if it even mattered to him at all.
Unless that was just her, wishing for all that. But when he touched her, when he kissed her like this, as if he simply couldn’t keep his distance no matter what he might have preferred, she felt it. He wantedher.
Tangling her fingers into the back of his dark hair, she opened her mouth to his, seeking and tasting him as he tasted her. With her back pressed against the wall she could feel his strength. She could feel his power, how self-confident he’d become, how driven. Callum still burned, but he had a firm grip on that fire now. He’d set his gaze on Dunncraigh, but for this moment he looked at her. Perhaps she could save him, save both of them, if she gave in to what she wanted anyway, if she let herself fall for him as much as her heart ached to do so already.
The door bumped against her back. “Mama, I found my book. Come read to me.”
Swallowing and out of breath, Rebecca leaned her forehead against Callum’s. If she couldn’t stay awayfrom this man, she would need to explain some things to Margaretbeforeher daughter saw the two of them together.
“I’ll read to ye tonight, Mags,” he said, before she could gather her wits together enough to speak. “Will that do?”
“Oh, aye,” Margaret returned. “Yes, please!”
“Go upstairs and wait for me, lass.”
“Aye, Uncle Callum. Good night, Mama.”
“Good night, Mags.” Once the sound of Margaret’s footsteps retreated, Rebecca slipped out of Callum’s arms. “Are you certain you want to read to her? She’ll demand it every night if you begin it.”
“Ye said Ian read to her. I reckon I can manage.”
Rebecca searched his face. When he’d first arrived she’d thought him the devil himself. Perhaps he still was. But this devil seemed to genuinely adore his niece. And if the least of the conspiracies he claimed happened to be true, she couldn’t imagine a better protector for Margaret. Or for her, for that matter.
That all teetered on what would happen to him if his suspicions were correct. And what would become of him if his suspicions were wrong.
Chapter Ten
Callum dragged a chair over beside the pillow-heaped four-poster bed where his niece nested like a baby bird in an overlarge nest.
“No, no,” she said, lifting her head up over the edge of the pillow canyon. “You must sit here.” She pointed toward the far side of the bed.
“If I’d realized ye were going to be so strict, I’d have run away,” he commented, leaving the chair behind and moving around to sink down onto the bed beside her nest.
She handed a large, worn book over the top of the pillows. “No you wouldn’t,” she returned. “You’re wrapped around my little finger. You said so yourself.”
“Aye, that I did.” He turned the book over in his hands. Charles Perrault’sTales of Mother Goose. “I remember this book.”
“It used to be Papa’s, he said,” she returned, yawning. “I saw that someone squished a bug in one of the pages, and that’s when he told me about you.”
Callum smiled. “Aye, that was me.” He cleared his throat. “Which tale do ye wish tonight, my wee bug?”
Mags giggled. “I want ‘The Sleeping Beauty.’ It has ogres.”
Still running his fingers along the worn bindings, Callum flipped pages until he found “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.” He could imagine Ian sitting here, reading tales to Margaret with the wind whispering outside beyond the green and yellow curtains. What the devil had happened, for him to risk losing all this? Why hadn’t he, a man who thrived on thought and caution, been more cautious that night?
“Uncle Callum?”
He shook himself. “Aye. Are ye certain this willnae give ye nightmares?”
“The bad people get what’s coming to them. I like that.”
Out of the mouths of babes. “So do I, bug.” He lifted the book. “‘Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who were grieved, more grieved than words can tell, because they had nae children. They tried—’”
His thumb went through the binding. “Damnation.”
Her face appeared over the pillows again. “There’s no swearing in this fairy tale.”
