Free Highlander 04 - Some Like It Kilted (2010) by Allie Mackay Page A

Highlander’s sword, claiming she’d never seen one quite that long.
     
Then she’d gone all coy. She’d smiled secretly and lowered her voice, looking at Mindy from beneath her lashes as she’d declared that other parts of this Scottish paragon would be extralong, as well.
     
The remembered words hit Mindy like a fist to the gut.
     
Hunter had been one of the least endowed men she’d ever seen.
     
He was tall and dashing. His smile wicked enough to charm women out of trees. He knew his way around a mattress and was so skilled with his fingers and tongue that he should have carried a license. But big and burly wasn’t an apt description.
     
However, the plaid-draped, coppery-haired man standing in profile to her near the kitchen fire, eating what looked like a beef rib, was definitely big and burly.
     
In fact, he defined the words.
     
At least this time he wasn’t naked save for a medieval pillow.
     
Even so, Mindy felt her world begin to spin.
     
She blinked and knuckled her eyes, but he didn’t go away. Far from it, he simply munched on his beef rib, staring into the fire all the while. Mindy pressed a hand to her breast, unable to look away from him.
     
Huge, powerfully built, and rough-hewn, he had the somewhat crumpled appearance of a man who’d just crawled out of bed. Or, she was sure in his case, off some scratchy medieval sleeping pallet. Without doubt, the thick, ancient wool of such coarse bedding, or even the prickly bits of straw on the floor, wouldn’t have bothered him.
     
He looked that tough.
     
He was also a ghost.
     
Though there was nothing see-through, flimsy-whimsy about him. He had an air of brute strength, positively oozed power, and unless Mindy was mistaken, his nose was just a tad crooked. He looked real, solid, and—so far—wholly unaware of her presence.
     
His entire attention seemed focused on devouring his beef rib. An activity that disproved her assumption that ghosts didn’t have appetites. This ghost clearly did. And he wasn’t just any ghost, either. She didn’t need to see the wicked-looking, overly long sword at his hip to speculate as to his identity.
     
She knew exactly who he was. He was Bran of Barra.
     
“Oh, God—it’s you!” Mindy backed up against the refectory table, shock and recognition slamming into her like the punch from an iron fist.
     
The ghost whipped around to face her, his beef rib flying from his fingers. A torch— a torch! —flared on the smoke-blackened wall behind him and a shower of iridescent blue sparks burst from the crystal pommel stone of his sword. The bright glow of the sparkles, and the blazing torch flame, illuminated a kitchen that wasn’t the one Mindy knew.
     
Bran of Barra knew it well.
     
Possession—and fury—stood all over him as he fisted his hands on his hips and gaped at her. “By the rood!” he roared, his warrior’s body bunching with muscle. His stare flashed down the length of her, then snapped back to her face, his own wide-eyed and incredulous.
     
“You shred my last nerve, wench! Can a man no’ eat in peace?” He shot a glance at the half-gnawed beef rib.
     
Mindy glanced at it, too, feeling sick.
     
Her heart might be racing, but there was nothing wrong with her eyes. It was plain to see that the rib rested on icky, matted rushes and not the kitchen’s so-clean-you-could-eat-off-it highly polished stone floor.
     
She gulped.
     
Bran of Barra took a step forward. “I dinnae ken how you found your way in here, but you’d best be gone before someone else sees you.” He came closer and flung out an arm, indicting the door arch.
     
It was an arch Mindy recognized, but one that appeared so different in the blackness of deep shadow and dancing medieval torchlight.
     
Bran of Barra looked even more medieval.
     
At least six feet four of pure Highland testosterone, he was simply overwhelming. His portrait’s twinkling blue eyes and roguish grin didn’t do him justice.
     
The dream