The Striker Read Online Free PDF

over.”
    Fin made a sharp sound. “I doubt it. All you ever think about is battle. You’ll just be planning for the next one.”
    His friend was probably more right than Eoin wanted to admit. He was saved from a response, however, when they passed from the Great Hall to the solar where he and Bruce were playing and he noticed a wall of men blocking the doorway. They seemed to be gathered around something protectively.
    â€œWonder what that is all about?” Fin asked.
    Eoin frowned. “Let’s find out.”
    They pushed past the first few men when Neil Campbell, one of Bruce’s closest friends and advisors, said something to the earl and nodded in their direction. Bruce turned. There was a strange expression on his face; he seemed to be trying to prepare him for something.
    â€œCousin, I’m afraid . . .”
    Eoin didn’t know whether it was Bruce’s expression or the fact that he called him cousin, which he didn’t usually do, that caused him to turn and look to the left where the game was set up. Or at least where the game had been set up.
    Bruce was saying something, but Eoin was too busy storming across the room to listen. “Bloody hell!” He looked in disbelief at the destroyed game. The pieces had been moved. His eyes narrowed. Not just moved, they’d been purposefully positioned into the design of a heart. He turned in outrage to his kinsmen. “By God, who did this? If this is some kind of joke . . .”
    He’d kill them. Two days, damn it. And he’d been a few moves away from victory. He pictured the pieces in his head, trying to remember where they’d been placed.
    â€œIt was an accident,” Bruce said.
    â€œAccident?” Eoin picked up the piece of wood etched with the words Do Not Touch. “Did the idiot not read the sign?”
    An uncomfortable silence fell across the room. Vaguely, Eoin was aware that someone had come up beside Bruce.
    His gaze shifted, and he received the second blow of the morning. This one far more devastating. He felt like he’d been clobbered in the head with a poleaxe; stunned and more than a little dazed, as he stared—gaped probably—at one of the most sensual looking creatures he’d ever beheld.
    She smiled, and that clobbered-by-a-poleaxe feeling dropped to his chest. “I’m afraid the idiot is me. I didn’t see the sign until it was too late.”
    Ah hell. The discomfort in the room became clear. Although she did seem to be taking the offending words with surprising good humor. Most lasses he knew would be stricken with embarrassment. Instead it was he who felt the heat on his face. “I apologize for my ill-mannered words.”
    She waved him off with a deep, husky laugh that made his bollocks tighten. “I’ve been called far worse by my brothers. I’d never seen the game before, and didn’t realize it was so important.”
    Sensing she was amused by that fact, he frowned.
    His cousin, always the gallant knight, rushed to reassure her. “And I was just assuring Lady Margaret that it was nothing.”
    Eoin hoped his eyes didn’t widen as much as it felt like they had at the word “lady.” From the look of her, he’d assumed something else entirely.
    Very little about the lass conjured up the image of a lady. Her gown was plain, simple, and cut low and tight enough around the bodice to have made a tavern wench proud.
    Her beauty wasn’t quiet and restrained like a lady’s, but bold and dramatic. Too bold and dramatic, the lass would draw attention, particularly masculine attention, wherever she went. Her lips were too red, her mouth too wide, her gold-hued eyes too seductively slanted, her breasts too big—not that he couldn’t appreciate that particular excess—and her hair was red. A vibrant, dark red that wasn’t plaited modestly behind a veil, but rather left loose to tumble