If You Dare (7 page)

Of course, she would have. Everyone always said Annalía was just like her mother.

When Annalía had first arrived at The Vines, one of the older girls had whispered, “Watch out for that one with the gardener. She's
Castilian.”
They'd regarded her and determined things about her that she hadn't recognized at that young age, and they hadn't even known that Annalía's mother had been caught making love to her family's former stable master. Before
and after
her marriage to Llorente.

She ran her fingertips over the choker at her neck. The stone attached was a reminder she was never without—

“Why are you pacing?” The Highlander. His voice was a rumble she
felt.

She exhaled in irritation, then faced him. Her first impulse was to leave the room, but she'd tired of running in her own home, tired of him taking over everything that was hers, and instead she sat behind the desk. She ignored his question and asked, “Why are you here?”

“I want whisky. Occurred to me that even you people might have some.”

She closed her eyes to get her temper under control. When
she opened them, he was at the liquor cabinet, noisily opening the crystal decanters, smelling their aromas, then setting them down. The silver tags on each decanter clacked against the glass.

“You can read the labels rather than smelling each one. That is,
if
you can read.”

“Canna read them in this light.”

He was right. She'd bought them in Paris for Aleix, delighted with the flourishing engravings, but soon realized they were difficult to decipher even in daylight.
Pretty but serving little use.
No wonder she'd bought them. She almost laughed.

“By all the saints . . .” he said, finally finding one that kept his interest. He poured a generous draught into a crystal glass. And placed it directly in front of her. She stared at it as if he'd just positioned some dead thing there, something foul like what the barn cats insisted on gifting her doorstep, and vaguely heard him pouring one for himself.

Drink in hand, he sank into the spacious chair across from the desk. Llorente had always wanted whoever was on the other side to feel small and insignificant. She rolled her eyes. Of course, the deep chair fit the Highlander perfectly, and he leaned back, seeming surprised that it suited him so well.

Wait.
He'd shaved. How had he . . . ? He'd pilfered her brother's belongings! And his cast was gone? She'd probably find the remains of it chewed off beside his bed. Brainless man. . . .

Yet after Pascal's letter, she just didn't have the energy to vent her annoyance. Instead, she stared while he swirled the whisky as if with reverence. His hands were large and callused, but he held the glass gently, his dark gaze fixed on its flickering colors by the candle's light. When he finally took a drink, he exhaled with pleasure.

The scene was like watching someone relish a meringue. Soon all you could think about was eating meringue. She
looked on in horror as her hand shook its way to her glass. Brows drawn, she lifted it. She glanced at him; he smirked at her—the horse-thieving Scot—expecting her to back out.

Why not drink it? It was imperative to wipe that look from his face.

She'd never touched spirits, never overimbibed rare tastes of table wine. She'd never done
anything
she shouldn't have. And look where her life was culminating.

As Pascal's bride.

The glass shot up to meet her lips, her hand and head tilting far back. Fire rushed down her throat in a long continuous stream. Propriety demanded that she stop. Alas, she and propriety were losing touch. She continued until the glass was drained.

Refusing to gasp, she stared at him defiantly through watering eyes, then choked back a cough until she could reduce it to a gentle clearing of her throat behind her hand.

“A woman who likes her whisky,” he said while refilling her glass. “Careful that you doona steal my heart, Annalía.”

“It figures that the one requirement you'd have for your woman is ‘whisky drinker.' ”

“Aye, but that's only after ‘walks upright.' ”

He'd said the words in his customary low and threatening voice, making it sound cutting, but she felt warm, and her lips slowly tugged into a smile.

He stared at her lips, at her smile, and strangely his jaw tensed, bulging at the sides. He had such a squared jaw.
Far
too masculine.

“Opposable thumbs rate high as well,” he said, shooting her a significant glance, but she didn't know why.
Opposable thumbs?
She wasn't familiar with the phrase in English. Her English was flawless, as was her French, Catalan, and Spanish, her vocabulary in each language stellar. For this brute to know something she didn't rankled.

He probably made it up.

Still, the way his gaze moved over her, lingering, with an expectant look, made her blush all the same. She felt it heat her face and creep to her neck.

Immediately, he asked, “What's the stone you wear at your neck?”

She brushed her finger over it. “Peridot. It's called peridot.” “I've never seen the green-gold color. It matches your eyes.”

Embarrassed, she quickly murmured, “It was my mother's. It's said to have been Cleopatra's favorite gem.”

“You have something in common with the lusty Cleopatra?”

“I didn't say
I
liked the stone,” she bit out.

He raised his eyebrows at her tone, as if noting her reaction, then changed the subject. “So whose whisky am I enjoying? Your father's . . . ?”

“No. My father is deceased.”

He inclined his head to her slightly. In a moment of insight, she thought that's how a gruff Highlander might say, “I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Your brother's, then? The big bastard whose clothes I wear?”

“He's no bastard!”

Studying. “It's a figure of speech. No' literally.”

Her face colored again, and she brought the glass to her lips. “Oh. Yes, it's his.”

“And where is he, leaving you alone like this?”

She set the glass down. Had it wobbled? “He's away on business, but is expected to return this week.”

“Is he, then? This very week?” he asked, plainly disbelieving her.

“Is that not what I just said?” She sounded exasperated.

“How is it you speak English as well as a native? Spanish and French, I understand, but no' the queen's English.”

She frowned at the abrupt change in topic. Polite conversation followed rules. Topics were sequential, orderly, and flowed from one to the next like a gentle current when all those conversing were skilled. Why deliberately disrupt it? She sighed in a put-out way, then replied, “I went to school abroad and learned it there. English, you might not have heard, is the worldwide language of the nobility.”

The truth was she'd had to learn it to communicate with many of her schoolmates. The Brits and Yanks couldn't seem to string together a foreign phrase to save their lives, though everyone else was at least trilingual. Worse, the Yanks polluted the language with irregular phrasings and slang that were difficult to keep pace with. As difficult as they were secretly amusing.

“Which school?”

“It's very exclusive. I'm sure
you
wouldn't have heard of it.” She absently tapped her nails against her crystal glass. Apparently, he took that as a sign to refill it. Since it was empty.

“Try me.” “It's called Les Vignes.” “Aye, The Vines. Just outside of Paris in Fontainebleau.” She just stopped herself from dropping her jaw. How had
he
heard of it?

He smirked. “Aristocrats and heiresses.”

“Indeed,” she said in a pained tone. His gloating look rattled her, but also simply thinking about the school made her yearn for her time there. Life had been simple then. She'd loved it there, loved acquiring knowledge, but most important, Annalía had attained her coveted aura of worldliness.

Unfortunately, this worldliness was, as yet, a façade. She'd never been farther north than Paris or farther south than just past the border with Spain. She had never even seen the sea. The Highlander, just by virtue of his traveling from Scotland to Andorra, was worldlier than she.

But MacCarrick would never know it because she could put on a grand show. She'd learned contemporary American sass and slang from a princess of railroad royalty, fashionable disdain from a pouty French inheritrix of some medical patent, and British loftiness from a “fifteenth from the throne” duke's daughter.

“It's very exclusive,” she repeated absently. In fact, she'd scarcely been received. Annalía wasn't so closely related to a throne, unless you followed Pascal's insane despot logic, of course. However, she was distantly related to
eight
of them.

“Yet you were born and raised in archaic Andorra.”

Her expression felt brittle. She should have known he would cut through the façade and go straight to the heart of her insecurities. When she didn't answer, he continued, “I've always said there are just no' enough Andorrans in the world.”

“And what makes you so sure I was raised here?”

“I've heard you speak Catalan to the people here. You've never spoken it to anyone outside of Andorra, have you?”

She'd yearned to visit other Catalan-speaking countries, but Llorente had forbidden it. “Why do you ask that?”

“This country hasn't changed much since medieval times and neither has its language.”

“Are you saying I speak with a medieval dialect?” She couldn't.

He leaned back and nodded with obvious enjoyment.

“And with you being a Highlander, I'm sure you recognize medieval when you come across it.”
Ha!

His lips curled at the side. Not quite a smile. “So the Scot and the Andorran. We're no' so different.”

She was decidedly different from
everything
that he was. “I'm
Castilian,”
she snapped, surprising herself. That information rarely came out sounding like a declaration. Next to a Scot she could be proud of anything, she supposed.

“A hot-blooded Castilian, then? Collared with Cleopatra's
jewel.” Never taking his eyes from hers, he lifted his glass and growled over the rim, “Fascinatin'.”

She barely prevented her lips from parting in disbelief.
Straight to the heart.
How did he manage to brush so closely to her secrets? He didn't
know
her. He knew nothing. He was merely provoking for reaction. . . .

The next several minutes were odd. If she tilted her head, his eyes narrowed. If she touched her hair, he scrubbed his good hand across the back of his neck. When she drank more, he stilled, as if awaiting something. That was one thing she realized about him—he was always scrutinizing, always weighing, and deciding. She wondered what he'd decided about her.

Here she sat drinking with her worst enemy—well, worst after Pascal—but not because she wanted to be near the man. Certainly not that. And not because she'd forgotten what he was. He was a Highlander, and it was because of people like him and his miserable kinsmen—those cursed killers for hire—that the general had enough power to force her to his will. He was her enemy and she didn't care.

She'd heard that liquor made one brash, but now Annalía knew it also made one uncaring. Underhanded, even.

Because she would use him.

What if
she
could hire him and his men to help her? What if she could tempt him to
want
to help her? If she was one of
those
women—if the whispers about her were true—then surely she could have some effect on a man.

What did she have to lose by trying?

Before her courage failed her, she stood, then walked around the desk toward him. When he quickly stood as well, she stopped and reached back for her glass—just one more little sip for courage. . . . She turned back and he was directly in front of her, looking at her face in his intense, watchful manner.

He took a gentle, shuffling step closer, as though he didn't want to frighten her away. She backed up to the desk, but he kept drawing nearer, surrounding her with his body, with his appealing scent. And some common, base part deep inside her reveled in his size, reveled in the heat she could feel from his skin.

His gaze caught hers, as if he couldn't stop looking at her. Up so close, she could see how much his eyes had cleared, could see how remarkably dark they were, the irises black like obsidian. And the
way
he looked at her . . . as though he was hungry for her. As though he
lusted,
and understood like no man had before how incredibly much she did, too. She felt like she'd caught fire.

She set her palms against the edge of the desk, wrapping her fingers around it, then nervously licked her lips, unsure of what to do. He must have realized she wasn't leaving, wasn't moving from this spot, because he appeared baffled, his brows drawn. It was as though she could hear him thinking. She knew he was suspicious of her behavior. She also knew he would decide to enjoy now and figure it out later. As if on cue, his expression changed to one of intent.

As she'd seen women do on bridges across Paris at sunset, she brushed her hands up over his chest and then rested them on the back of his neck. When her fingers twined behind him, his breaths hastened. “MacCarrick,” she murmured. “Do you . . . like me?”

His gaze was flickering over her face, sometimes resting on her lips, but now meeting her eyes. “Right now I like you very much.”

She threaded her fingers in his hair. “After tonight, do you want to be my . . . friend?”

His voice was deep and husky when he said, “Among other things.”