Covered in fur again, Cian bellowed one more time as he stomped through the dumbstruck mob who wisely gave him a wide berth. Twenty feet away, he spared one too-brief look at me, then focused all his attention on Phillip.
Uh, oh.
The son of Vikings found it all terribly entertaining and did what the big man had done earlier—put his hands on his hips, like a king waiting for some visitor to present himself at his feet. He looked Cian up and down and gasped, “I will be damned.”
“Aye,” Cian said, not slowing. “Ye will.” He shifted his weight from his boots up through his body and into his fist, which connected with Phillip’s jaw and sent him flying backward to land on his back.
Slipping one hand around my waist and behind my back, Cian pulled me against him, then searched my eyes. “Have ye missed me?”
“You have no idea. But…Cian, why would you hit him?”
“Fer all the hurt he’s caused ye.”
I bit my lip and swallowed hard, trying to get my heart to go back where it was supposed to be. “Thatis Phillip. A fellow skier. He was happy to see I had been found, that’s all.” Cian glanced over my shoulder at the still prone blond being fawned over by a highly amused Margo. “I think she’s his wife.”
Cian huffed out a breath and stared at my mouth. “Must I apologize now, or can it wait?”
“Mmm. I think you’d better do it now. Maybe take off the furs first.”
He lowered me into the red chair and held up a hand in a silent command not to move. Then he pulled off his fur cap and shrugged off the rug thing sitting on his shoulders. He kicked off his fur boots, and my Yeti-man was nothing more frightening than a massive Highlander wrapped in his clan colors, with his street clothes beneath.
In stocking feet, he moved carefully to Phillip’s side and offered him a hand up. The blond stared at the hand for a few seconds, then smiled and took it.
Cian pulled him to his feet. Even without his boots, they two stood eye to eye. “I ask yer forgiveness, Phillip. I mistook ye for the bastard that once was her husband. I was told he had come fer her.”
“I’m still her husband,” Nick said, and stupidly stepped to the side of my chair and put his hand on my shoulder in some stupidhe-man move, like he was ready to fight over a stick, or turkey leg. He may as well have shouted, “Mine!”
“Nick?”
“Yeah?” He barely glanced at me.
“You’re going to want to remove your hand.”
His chin lifted. “I’m not out of your life yet, Matty. And I won’t be bullied?—”
Cian smirked. “Aye, but ye will.”
Nick wasn’t done arguing, but none of the rest qualified as words. It was more like one continuous noise of someone who is losing their balance, being hefted into the air, and tossed onto a low chandelier made of stag horns.
Cian dropped his fists to his hips—just like the others had—and looked up at my ex-everything. “Ye’ll be oot o’ her life, and without a quibble, as soon as we’re back in the States. Do ye understand? Or shall I pull ye doon and make it more plain?”
When Nick didn’t answer, Cian reached for the nearest horn and Nick whimpered. “I think the only place you’re going is to jail, sir. You assaulted me, and that other man, and we have all these witnesses.”
“Nay, ye don’t.” Officer Reid held a beer with one hand and his wife with the other. “Anyone see a witness aboot?”
The mob chuckled and shook their heads, looked at one another, shrugged their shoulders, and laughed again.
Cian reached for the chandelier again.
Nick recoiled, which sent it rocking. “Okay, okay! I get it! Now, somebody get me down from here!”
I didn’t observe what happened next, so I could only go by what I heard—that the folks of Aviemore left Nick on the chandelier for another hour or two, until they wore themselves out dancing beneath him.
Cian tookmy hand and we ran for it. I hadn’t looked for a back staircase to sneak him up to my room, so we headed for the main one. Unfortunately, the reporter and her cameraman stayed glued to us, and when we hit the stairs, she called out.
“Do ye wish to revise yer story, Matty? Tell us what really happened out there, while these people were risking their lives searching for ye.”
Caught off guard, I couldn’t think of how to answer.
