Hit Me With Your Best Scot (Wild Wicked Highlanders #3) - Suzanne Enoch Page 0,90

in his voice making her heart race. “Did ye sleep well?”

“After Jane finally left my room I did,” she lied. It was better for Jane, and better for her, even if she did feel a bit guilty about it. “I had very sweet dreams.”

That earned her a grin. “I nearly brought the barouche,” he said, visibly shaking himself to take the parasol from Jane and hand them into the vehicle one after the other. “But I looked outside and noticed everyone bundled up to their ears and scurrying about like wee scared mice, so I borrowed this beast instead.”

“This weather doesn’t trouble you?” Jane asked, blowing into her cupped gloved hands.

“It’s nae weather if ye can still make out the horizon,” he returned, sitting next to Amelia-Rose and then reaching up to pound his fist against the ceiling. “Did ye have a pleasant luncheon, adae?” he asked, sitting back in the well-sprung coach.

“Yes, I did. Thank you for asking, skellum,” she responded, using every ounce of willpower she possessed not to kiss him. “Where are you taking us?”

“Oswell House.”

Of all the places she’d imagined he might take her, his family home hadn’t been one of them. “Not some secret garden filled with Scottish herbs or a sheep farm or something?”

His brows lifted. “That’s what ye reckon I yearn for? Herbs and sheep?”

“I thought you’d want to take me somewhere Scottish, but I couldn’t think of anywhere nearby you might choose.” At least she’d tried to come up with something. “Nothing nearby enough for a three-hour visit, anyway.”

“Fair enough,” he conceded. “If ye’ve nae objection, though, I want my brothers—my family—to know ye.”

She hid a shudder as she recalled the largest member of his family. “I’m well acquainted with Eloise and Lady Aldriss, you know. And I have … met both your brothers.”

“Aye. This time ye be yerself, and they’ll behave.” He cupped her cheek, his green eyes shadowed and serious in the gloom of the coach, and only lowered his hand when Jane slapped at him. “Ye’re safe with me. I swear on my own blood. But if ye dunnae wish to go, ye tell me. I’ll find a sheep farm we can tour straightaway. Because ye know a Highlander can spot a sheep from five miles away.”

There he went, putting her at ease again. Was he even conscious of how … not comfortable, but safe, he made her feel? And how that made her realize it had been a very long time since she’d felt precious to anyone? Being in his company was heady, and could easily be addictive. Was already addictive. “Oswell House is fine,” she said aloud, ignoring Jane’s sniff. “I have been wanting a chance to have a word with Lady Aldriss.”

“That doesnae sound promising, but do as ye will,” he said in a dubious voice. “Keep in mind that she barely knows me. Ye cannae take what she says too seriously.”

That hadn’t been her goal, but seeing his discomfiture did make her grin. “Do you think she’ll warn me to flee?”

“I did start a bit of a brawl in her breakfast room just the other day. For a good reason, of course.”

That must have been when he fought Coll. “I’m going to assume you were defending my honor in some way, and I can hardly fault you for that.”

“That’s what it was, then. Aye.”

If Jane had been elsewhere, Amelia-Rose would have been willing to call this short coach ride very nearly perfect. She would have been content to chat with Niall and just look at him, trying to figure out what he was thinking and feeling. She’d liked him almost immediately. When had that, though, deepened into this warm, comforting, arousing desire to be with him? As she considered it, she had to wonder if it had begun with that first morning of coffee. If she’d begun to fall for him days and days ago, had that been part of why she’d spoken so harshly to Coll? Not just because she didn’t want that life, but because she had a slightly different one in mind?

It would never happen, of course, and she wanted it anyway. She’d wanted it so much that she’d allowed him into her bed. And if the opportunity arose she meant to do it again. Repeatedly. “You’re a good man, Niall MacTaggert.”

“I dunnae know about that.” His pale gaze took her in from head to foot in a way that heated her up from the inside. “Some of the things I’m thinking