He grinned.
And Wanton, mortified by her own tenderness, cleared her throat violently. "Medically," she amended. "I won't let anything hurt you medically. Emotional injury remains outside my jurisdiction."
His lips twitched. Slowly. "Aye, I see."
But he held still.
Perfectly still.
And Wanton's heart performed a scandalous pirouette.
She tied the bandage tight, breath catching as her knuckles brushed his skin. The lamplight turned everything intimate—his lashes too dark, his gaze too intent.
Field Observation 42.2: Low, flickering illumination significantly increases perceived romance levels, softens male jawlines, and—according to one dubious 18th-century pamphlet—raises the probability of unplanned offspring by up to forty percent.
He watched her with an expression that stripped away every layer of irony she'd ever hidden behind.
After a long silence, he said quietly, "Do ye ken why I won't sell the land?"
She looked up, startled. "Because you're stubborn?"
He smiled faintly. "Aye, that too. But mostly…" He glanced toward the flap of the tent, where the wind whispered over the hills. "My father's bones rest in this soil. So do half the clan's. Ye canna sell what keeps ye alive."
Wanton's throat tightened. Logic fluttered, failed, and fled. "That's…illogical," she murmured. "And magnificent."
He laughed quietly, a sound that wrapped around her like warmth. "Ye're impossible, lass."
"I prefer improbable," she said, voice catching.
He reached for her hand, calloused fingers closing around her ink-stained ones. "Improbable, then."
Their eyes met, and the world stilled.
He leaned closer. So did she. Objectively, she should have avoided this.
But his gaze—steady, storm-dark, infuriatingly sincere—tilted all her internal instruments.
Perhaps… perhaps it was wiser to allow him to kiss her.
Once.
For the sake of data integrity.
A scientific kiss.
Controlled variables, limited duration, minimal emotional contamination.
Purely to observe the effect of Highland proximity on soft tissues and cardiac stability.
"Yes," she reasoned silently, heart tripping over itself, "this is necessary research."
Her chin lifted half an inch.
She braced for contact like a natural philosopher preparing to witness an eclipse.
(Reader, here we witness the scholar in her most vulnerable state: foolishly certain she can resist the mating display of a Highlander.)
Their lips met, and it was a wonder that the earth kept its orbit. Heat surged through her, a brilliant, reckless current that rewrote every theorem she had ever trusted. Tavish's mouth was hot, sure, startlingly gentle at first—then deeper, firmer, as if he'd been waiting for this exact moment since the Highlands formed.
