But the look in his da’s eyes … it had said he’d believed there was no hope. Horrified, Dageus had fled through the stones, determined to find a way to save himself.
And now he’d come full circle, back to asking his clan for aid. He hated it. He’d not asked for help, not once in his life. ’Twas not his way.
Exhaling sharply, he accepted the scotch he’d requested from the flight attendant, and downed it in a single swallow. As the heat exploded inside him, the tightness in his chest first intensified, then eased. What could he say? How to begin? With Gwen, mayhap? She could work her feminine miracles with his brother. God knew, she’d been a miracle for Drustan.
He pondered various ways to approach him, but it was more than he could stand thinking on, so he forced his attention back to the text, needing something tangible to work with.
An hour later, just before landing, he paused, hand poised above his notebook. He’d finally found something worthwhile. The only mention he’d yet discovered about the fateful war that had occurred after the Tuatha Dé Danaan had left. Naught but a brief paragraph, it spoke of thirteen outcast Druids (so that was how many were inside him!) and of some heinous punishment they’d suffered. Though it did not elaborate further, beneath it was a notation that referred to the fifth Book of Manannán, as he’d suspected.
And if memory served him, the fifth volume was in the Keltar library.
Chloe mumbled softly in her sleep, drawing his gaze again. Reminding him that someone had tried to kill her—because of him.
He glanced at her bandaged hand and fierce protectiveness flooded him. He would let nothing harm her ever again.
He needed answers, and he needed them fast.
• 11 •
For the second time in as many days, Chloe had the strange and immensely irritating experience of walking down a crowded street with Dageus MacKeltar. The first time had been in Manhattan yesterday, and the same thing had happened there.
Men got out of his way.
Not because he was impolite or barged rudely down the sidewalk. On the contrary, he moved with the sleek grace of a tiger. Sure-footed, perhaps a bit predatory. And men instinctively circumvented him, going out of their way to give him wide berth.
The women, now they were a different matter. They were the irritating part. They’d reacted the same way in New York, but yesterday it hadn’t bothered her as much. They moved aside, but barely, as if unable to resist brushing up against him, their heads turning twice, three times. One woman had shamelessly pressed her breasts against his arm in passing. On several occasions, Chloe cast an indignant glance over her shoulder, only to catch several of them ogling his behind. She might be small but—blast it all—she wasn’t invisible, walking along at his side, with his arm around her, his hand resting on her shoulder!
Not that he noticed the rubbernecking going on. He seemed oblivious to his effect on women. Probably so used to it that he no longer paid it any heed.
She longed for such oblivion, because watching so many women eye him hungrily was putting her in a bad mood. She cast more than a few pissed-off looks behind them.
The intense intimacy on the plane had stirred dangerously mushy feelings in her.
Face it, Zanders, you aren’t the kind of girl who can be physically intimate with a man without getting emotionally involved. You’re just not wired that way.
No kidding, she thought grumpily. She was having territorial feelings. Feelings she couldn’t afford, for he’d certainly not evidenced any territorial feelings about her. Fortunately, as she watched women stare at him, irritation was making short work of softer emotions. She savored the anger, preferring it to waffling in uncertain emotions. Anger was refreshingly tangible.
The moment they’d stepped off the plane in Inverness he’d grown cool again. Preoccupied. Businesslike. Collecting their luggage, striding briskly to the rental car agency. She’d had to repeat three times her request that he stop in Inverness for a coffee she desperately needed after traveling for fifteen hours. She wasn’t about to meet his family in the throes of caffeine withdrawal.
After so thoroughly losing control of herself on the plane, his detachment hurt. He’d kissed her into a stupor, given her her first-ever climax, then withdrawn in every possible way. She should have known, she brooded. What did you expect, Zanders? A declaration of intimacy just because you let him touch you intimately?
Damn it, she knew better than that. The two did not necessarily go together where men were concerned.
When they entered Gilly’s Coffee House, she stood beside him at the counter as he ordered, peeking at his profile. She wondered what he was thinking about, what had changed his mood so completely. The man ran hot and cold. That’s a good comparison, she thought, he’ll either scald me or freeze me; either way it’ll hurt.