Love in the Time of a Highland Laird (A Laird for All Time Book 3) by Angeline Fortin (whitelam books .TXT) 📗

She’d been blessed with more tits and ass than any woman of just five feet should have, but her abundant curves draped in a lab coat didn’t usually garner the kind of male appreciation she saw in his eyes.

Assuming she was reading him correctly.

His gaze dropped once more before he glanced away and Al shivered, but for a very different reason this time.

Yes, he’d taken note. A man who looked like that.

Looking at her. Like that.

Suddenly, the same savagery that had her quaking in her sensible heels and kept her from telling him everything he wanted to know was working against her in a way Al would never have anticipated.

He’d shed the heavy jacket he’d worn before under the length of tartan draped over his shoulder, as well as his scabbard and sporran. She could see the deep tan of his skin straight through the thin linen of his shirt. Could fairly feel the muscles popping and bunching across his broad chest when he crossed his arms and glared at her once more.

Oblivious to the physical awareness now setting her nerves on edge in a much different way than before, he fingered the lapel of her white lab coat then flicked at the edge of her laminated Mark-Davis personnel I.D. as if it would bite him.

“If ye willnae answer one question, then answer me this. What are ye wearing? This outlandish jacket?”

His question hardly registered, though she’d been rendered too speechless to even consider an answer. Perhaps she’d read too many romance novels, but there was just something about him…

She’d always loved tales of hot men with bunches of lovely muscles wearing kilts. And this man was just that.

Those novels were her secret passion. Fantasy and escape from the trials and tribulations of everyday life. But what else was there to do when she lived alone with no one but her cat for company?

Horror struck and washed away the budding desire.

“Oh, my God! Who’s going to feed Mr. Darcy?”

“Darcy?” the man repeated, clearly puzzled by her response. The first coherent sentence she’d yet to utter, yet it was all obviously nonsense to him.

“Are ye friend or kin to the Darcy of the West March? Are ye a Sassenach, lass?”

Al had read enough novels to know that when a Scot—if that’s what this man truly was—asked you if you were a Sassenach in a tone bearing such disgust, the smartest recourse was to respond with a resounding ‘no.’ The best she managed was a shake of her head.

“Speak true for I shall ken if ye speak false.”

“N-no,” she cried, tugging at the chain binding her as if she might be miraculously freed. The fight was as useless as thinking she might find a way home. “No, he’s my cat. Poor Mr. Darcy! He’s going to starve.”

“A cat?” There was so much confusion in his voice, there could be no doubt she’d completely thrown him for a loop. With a finger, he lifted her chin and pierced her with a fiery gaze. “Ye weep for a wee puss? Och, if ye think the welfare of a wee animal is going to gain ye freedom from answering my questions, ye’ll be mightily disappointed. There will be nae escape for ye.”

No, there was no escape for her. Al knew it without a doubt or a shred of hope. Fielding would never give a minute’s consideration to trying to find a way to retrieve her. Todd and Marti would be bound by their nondisclosure agreements never to breathe a word about what had happened to her.

Best case scenario, someone might think to notify her mother of her ‘accidental demise.’

But that was it. The most she could hope for. There would be no rescue. No knight on a white charger swooping in to save her.

“No,” she said, drawing another deep breath to calm herself. “I know there will be no escaping this place. Or you. I’m a realist.” And a scientist mere steps away from a PhD in quantum physics. A depressing combination. Neither allowed for any wiggle room contrary to the facts.

This was it for her. She couldn’t replicate the science to get back home. Barring any mystical fairy rings, enchanted Celtic stones or ancient gypsy magic she would never return.

There was no point bemoaning her fate or casting about fruitlessly for a solution to a problem that was beyond solving. Al’s future was here in this place and time… wherever and whenever that was.

She was on her own.

It was a terrifying thought, but not a new one. Al had been on her own for quite some time. And had been alone for some time as well.

She was only beginning to understand what being truly alone might be like. “No, believe me, I know I’m never getting out of this.”

Poor Mr. Darcy aside, she had to consider her own future and unless she wanted that future to begin and end in a dark, dreary dungeon, she would have to make something happen like the bold, fearless heroines in one of her books.

Though this was not at all what she dreamed it might be like in her own romantic fantasies…

Okay, perhaps the hot kilted man before her.

And perhaps the chains…

Just a little.

Chapter 5

Keir regarded the curious female speculatively.

He knew she feared him—as well she should—but for some reason, he didn’t think she was truly afraid of him.

It made no sense as one contradicted the other. And if Hugh’s life wasn’t hanging in the balance, he might have the time to be more intrigued by this wee enigma. She was a rather fetching lass for all her oddities with her mussed blonde hair and scantily covered limbs.

But he didn’t have time to let his baser nature interfere now, for his own life might be endangered as well. Following their victory at Culloden, the Hanoverian army would act swiftly to squash any lingering bravado the Jacobites might possess. They would be prompt in searching out Prince Charlie and taking prisoners