Page 103 of What a Highlander’s Got to Do

“And what about your parents? Is your mother a lesser creature in your father’s eyes?”

“Again. They are different.”

“How?”

Honestly. Sometimes Catriona could be so irritating. Isobel sputtered for a moment and then pronounced, “Both men are Scots.”

“Ah. So if Nick were a Scot—”

“He’s half Scot.”

“I fail to see how that signifies.”

“Besides, both my father and yours love their wives.”

“Because they’re Scots.”

“Exactly.”

“So Nick, because he is half English, could only half love you?”

Isobel stopped short, propped her fists on her hips, and glared at her friend. Such serpentine logic made her head hurt. “Love is not at issue here,” she snapped.

Catriona’s smile bordered on a smirk. “I beg to differ. You just admitted that love makes the difference between a happy marriage and bondage to a man.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You most certainly did.”

Isobel sucked in a deep calming breath and then let it out slowly. “What is your point, Catriona?”

Her friend shrugged. “No point. I was just trying to understand why you are so determined to escape marriage from a man you clearly adore.”

“I doona adore him—” Once the words were out, she bit her tongue. She rather did adore him.

It wasn’t love, or anything like it, she was quite sure of that, but adoration? Certainly. He was handsome and funny and charming and sweet and kissed like the very devil. And she wanted to spend every moment she could with him. If that wasn’t adoration, she wasn’t sure what was.

But not love.

Love was too . . . frightening.

Too forever.

Love could consume a woman.

Make her lose herself.

Yes. That was probably the root of her resistance.

She didn’t want to lose who she was. She didn’t want to submit to a man and let him remake her.

The fact that she couldn’t imagine Nick trying to do so was something she needed to ignore.

* * *

“Well, you’ve done it now.”

Nick winced at Tully’s sardonic tone. He tried to slump lower into the great chair by the fire in the library, but it was too late. His friends had found him. They gathered around, tsking and shaking their heads.