The Highlander Read Online Free PDF

before collapsing. Besides, she had just come in out of the cold and rain. She had no desire to turn around and face the elements again.
    And where would she go?
    While he was gone Sophie remained still, staring into the fire in a daze, looking but not really seeing, while exhaustion played with her mind. Barely conscious of the noise he made banging about in the kitchen, she was almost to the point of using up the entire stock of her mental and physical resources. She felt groggy. Her thinking was becoming muddled, and the thought of death, which had been with her throughout her ordeal, stayed with her, to imbibe her with a kind of drowsy cheer.
    Would it be warm and peaceful to be dead?
    She was in the twilight of evening, where everything is faint and diffuse, her mind somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, when he brought the soup and put it on a small table that he placed before her.
    She opened her eyes and inhaled the fragrant warmth, then realized she was ravenously hungry. Perhaps that is a good sign, she thought, although of what, she had no idea.
    Jamie grabbed the spoon and thrust it into her hands. "You can stare at it of course, but it will do you more good if you eat it. You do know how to use a spoon, don't you?"
    Without giving him a reply, she picked up the spoon and began to eat.
    "I will get a bed ready for you," he said, and grumbling, he left her in the room alone.
    Later, when he returned, she was fast asleep with her head resting on her arm. The spoon was still in her hand, but the bowl was empty.
    "Och, ye are a wee thing," he said, looking at her. A moment later, he scooped her into his arms, lifting her so easily that she might have been a sack of down.
    Sophie stirred in his arms and said with a long, stretching yawn, "I can w...alk."
    "You can't even talk. Go back to sleep."
    Her head flopped against his shoulder in spite of her determination to stay stiff, with her head erect. She felt as if her bones had grown as soft as her brain. It was simply too much effort to even think.
    He slid his hand down, over her derriere. "I think you are getting colder if that is possible," he said in a husky, desire-laced voice that was both teasing and confident.
    As a way to get her attention, it was effective. Unbelievable, she thought. Is he trying to shock me? Or is this his way of thawing me out—with heat-impassioned words?
    Held securely in his arms, she felt as though she was floating up the stairs. Once they reached the top and turned down the corridor she was dimly aware of the thud of his steps on the wooden floors, as well as the erratic thumping of her heart.
    Sophie's volatile emotions were running away with her. A man had never taken her in his arms and carried her like this before, and she found it altogether a pleasant experience. There was so much strength in this man, and in the feelings he evoked within her. She seemed at war with herself. He was overwhelming, and she could not deny his looming presence in her mind, any more than she could ignore his presence, or her preoccupation with it.
    It left her both attracted and frightened.
    He pushed the door to the bedchamber open with his foot.
    Sophie opened her eyes to mere slits, just enough to see a candle burning on a table next to a very high bed, turned back, with clean white sheets that looked better than anything she could ever remember seeing.
    He dropped her on the bed and she rolled over and burrowed into the sheets. She gasped, for they might look inviting, but they were icy cold. Her skimpy clothing was still clammy and damp beneath the plaid, and she could not control the spasm of shivering that overcame her quite suddenly.
    "You are cold to the bone. It will take a lot of heat to warm you."
    She hoped he was not going to offer his own body for warmth, for she was so cold, she would have found it more than difficult to turn him down.
    She burrowed deeper and reached for the covers.
    He grabbed her hand. "Not so fast. You canna