The Capture of Highland Desire (The Mac Coinnach Brothers) Read Online Free PDF Page B

before.
    She made her way down the narrow, winding stairs to the main hall, pausing at the bottom in the shadows of the doorway to take in the scene before her.  Dinner wasn’t being served yet, and dozens of men and far fewer women were milling around the large room, talking and laughing with one another, or enjoying drinks in front of the huge open hearth.  There was no fire burning, since the summer night was balmy.  Allia didn’t know a single one of the people she saw, and so she stayed where she was and just watched, feeling completely out of place.  She wasn’t willing to just walk into the hall all by herself, with no one to talk to.  The feeling was not unfamiliar to her, as many times as she’d started over in a new place.  Her eyes scanned the crowd, looking for any sign of her uncle, but she didn’t see him.  Another small crowd of men poured in through the main door.  Good lord, how many people ate dinner in this hall every night?  Or was this some kind of special occasion?  She didn’t remember there ever being this many in the hall when she was a child, but then she and her mother had usually taken their meals upstairs, away from the chaos and general drunken bawdiness of the main hall, which was really no place for a child. 
    Her gaze moved across the room again, searching for a familiar face that she could latch onto.  Suddenly her eyes stopped cold one man.
    He was standing near the far wall, apparently holding court with a group of fawning women, though by his posture it seemed he was somewhat bored… or distracted. Although she couldn’t be sure, she thought he was the same man she had seen in front of the inn, and if he was, he had managed to utterly capture her attention yet again.  Oh yes, her heart was speeding up its rhythm even now.  Who on earth was he, anyway?  
    Grateful for a diversion while she waited, and because she was barely able to look away even if she wanted to, Allia watched him.  After a moment she had re-affirmed that he indeed had ‘bad-boy’ written all over him.  Even from here, where she couldn’t quite see the details of his face, she could tell he was the kind of man women flocked to, even knowing he would just use them and break their hearts.  She had dated a guy like that once, about a year ago, and oh yes, quite predictably, he had broken her heart.  Of course she’d known on some level that because of her circumstances, their relationship could never go anywhere, but when she’d caught him with another girl, he hadn’t even tried to make up an excuse.  That’s how little Allia had meant to him, and that hurt far worse than the cheating had.  Lesson learned, both in this time and the other. Drop-dead gorgeous bad-boys: great to look at, fine for a one night stand if you were into that kind of thing, but not good relationship material.  Maybe life, and men, in some ways, were more similar here than she had thought.  Of course they were, because even though technology had changed through time, human beings and their behavior essentially hadn’t changed at all.
                  And of course women, no matter what time in history, liked to look at handsome men, and this one was definitely worth looking at.  As he slowly moved through the crowd and drew closer to where she stood (and was immediately surrounded by more women), Allia’s heart jumped with recognition and began pounding erratically.  It was the man from in front of the inn, the one who had locked his gaze on her as she rode by.  She looked at him now more closely, confident that he couldn’t see her from where he stood.  He was tall, built like a classical Greek statue, and had devilishly handsome features: a strong jaw with a squared, dimpled chin, broad, high cheek bones, and a wide, full mouth.  But it was his hair that really drew her attention.  It was dark brown with chestnut highlights from the sun, and fell in loose waves to just below his shoulders.  He