The Dark Highlander Read Online Free PDF Page A

Exquisite Italian shoes and boots lined the floor.
    She began conjuring a fantasy image of him.
    He would be tall (she was
not
having short babies!) and handsome, with a nice body, though not too exceptional, and a husky burr. He would be intelligent, speak several languages, (so he could purr Gaelic love words in her ear), but not too polished, a little rough around the edges. Forget to shave, things like that. He would be a little introverted and sweet. He would like short, curvy women whose noses were in books so much that they forgot to pluck their brows and comb their hair and put on makeup. Women whose shoes didn’t always match.
    As if,
the voice of reason rudely popped her fantasy bubble.
The guy downstairs said you weren’t his usual type. Now get out of here, Zanders.
    And it still might not have been too late, she
still
might have escaped had she not moved closer to that sinful bed, peeking curiously and with no small amount of fascination at the silky scarves knotted about bedposts the size of small tree trunks.
    Corn-fed-Kansas Chloe was shocked. Never-gone-all-the-way-with-a-man Chloe was . . . suddenly breathing very shallowly, to say the least.
    Shakily averting her gaze, and backing away on legs that wobbled, she nearly overlooked the corner of the book poking out from beneath his bed.
    But Chloe never missed a book. An ancient one at that.
    Moments later, skirt twisted around her hips, purse abandoned on a chair, suit jacket tossed on the floor, she’d dug out his stash: seven medieval volumes.
    All
of which had been recently reported stolen by various collectors.
    Good God—she was in the lair of the nefarious Gaulish Ghost! And it was no wonder he had so many artifacts: He
stole
whatever he wanted.
    On her hands and knees, rooting about beneath his bed for more evidence of his heinous crimes, Chloe Zanders’ opinion of the man had taken a sharp turn for the worse. “Womanizing,
thieving
creep,” she muttered under her breath. “Unbelievable.”
    Gingerly, with thumb and tip of forefinger, she flung a black lace thong out from under the bed.
Eww.
Condom wrapper. Condom wrapper. Condom wrapper.
Sheesh! How many people lived here?
    Magnum,
the wrapper advertised smugly,
for the Extra-Large Man.
    Chloe blinked.
    “I’ve no’ yet tried it beneath the bed, lass,” a deep Scots burr purred behind her, “but if ’tis your preference . . . and the rest of you is half as lovely as what I’m seeing . . . I might be persuaded to oblige.”
    Her heart stopped beating.
    She froze, her brain stuttering over the fight or flight dilemma. At five foot three, fight wasn’t the most promising option. Unfortunately, her brain failed to process the fact that she was still under the bed when it downloaded the surge of adrenaline necessary to flee, so she succeeded only in cracking the back of her head against the solid wood frame.
    Woozy, seeing stars, she began to hiccup—a mortifying thing that
always
happened to her when she got nervous, as if simply being nervous weren’t bad enough.
    She didn’t have to back out from under the bed to know she was in very, very deep shit.

3
    A strong hand clamped around her ankle, and Chloe let out a little scream.
    She tried for a big scream, but an inconvenient hiccup turned it into an imploded screech that left her gasping.
    Ruthlessly, he tugged her from beneath his bed.
    Frantically, she grabbed her skirt with both hands, trying to keep it from bunching up around her waist as she slid inexorably backward. Last thing she wanted to do was make an appearance bare bottom first. Her panty line showed under this particular skirt (which was one reason she didn’t wear it often, coupled with the fact that she’d gained a little weight and it was snug), so she’d worn hose with no panties. Not something she did frequently. Figured she’d have to do it today.
    When she was clear of the bed, he dropped her ankle. She lay on her tummy on the carpet, hiccuping and trying