A Highland Werewolf Wedding - By Terry Spear Page 0,16

a title, aye. We need to pass the title down to successive generations. Society expects a public wedding. Though the good citizens don’t know we’re wolves. Invitations are presented only to wolf kind, generally speaking.”

Elaine seemed to mull that over for a few minutes, then she said, “So why did you go to the wedding? Did you think she would change her mind if she saw you there?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” He kept telling himself it was because Calla had asked him to come to the wedding. Maybe secretly he’d thought she might change her mind if she saw him there and remembered all that he’d said to her. She hadn’t heeded his words.

Now it was too late.

Chapter 4

Elaine Hawthorn genuinely liked Cearnach MacNeill and the way the braw Highland warrior wore his kilt, sporran, sword, and a dirk tucked in his stocking. Hot and sexy and dangerous came to mind. Not cute, like she’d said.

But rather than focus on that, she should be thinking about how she needed to contact the cousin she was supposed to meet. She’d use Cearnach’s phone back at his car. Yet, she wished she could delay the inevitable and spend more time in Cearnach’s company. Like that was a good idea. Not after the way they’d kissed and not when she still didn’t know why he’d wanted to protect her in St. Andrews so long ago.

He had to know how appealing he looked to her, so she’d tested him to see how he would respond to being called “cute.” She had been amused by his look of surprise, thinking that he’d be so conceited that he wouldn’t care what she said about his appearance. Then he’d regained his cocky arrogance, probably figuring she had been teasing him. Most likely no one had ever called him cute.

She noticed the sidelong glances Cearnach continued to give her, wolf that he was. Her dress was way too revealing, plastered to her body as if it were a redder version of her skin. The heater was going full blast, but the air still felt cold as it hit her wet dress.

He reached down and took her cold hand in his and squeezed. “Why did you really come between Vardon and me? Did you think you could stop that Neanderthal?”

“I suppose I did. Just like you might have believed you could change Calla’s mind about marrying Baird McKinley if you showed up for the wedding. I didn’t give it much thought. I just instinctively stepped into his path.”

“Do you often risk your neck for someone you barely know?”

She shrugged, not willing to tell him she’d always been that way—protective. She was used to being an alpha, not someone who melted into the background. Not like when her uncles had been hanged for pirating, making her fear for her life, and she had had to find her way back to America alone. That had been the hardest for her—tucking tail and running away.

“Have you ever risked getting hurt for someone who was well equipped to handle the likes of Vardon McKinley?” Cearnach asked, still trying to get her to reveal the truth.

“No,” she finally said. Then she gave him an impish smile. “Not usually.”

“Which means it wasn’t just instinct that propelled you into action,” he said, sounding smugly satisfied, as though he knew she had feelings for him and hadn’t wanted to see him hurt.

She reached up to touch her throbbing face where the infuriated Highlander had struck her, her fingers shying away at the last minute. She hadn’t expected to get a fist in the face, having hoped to stop the man from throwing the punch in the first place.

“If I hadn’t confined you, and you had managed to grab Vardon’s dirk, would you have known how to use it?”

She envisioned Vardon’s dagger poking out of the top of his hose. If she’d been able to pull free, she would have grabbed that dagger and threatened Vardon with it—just to get him to back off.

She had been serious about that. “Or I might have gone for yours.”

Silence.

She smiled.

Cearnach cleared his throat. “My dagger…”

“Aye,” she said, borrowing his brogue. The way she said the word still sounded American to her ear.

He chuckled. “You would not have been successful.”

“We’ll never know, will we?” she asked in a tone meant to challenge. “But, yes, I know how to use a dirk. A lightweight sword also.” Being from a family of pirates ensured that.

Thankfully, Vardon had seemed to come to his senses somewhat