Free Moonglow by Kristen Callihan Page A

someone.
    “Well,” she said, “at least I know my sister is no dangerfrom, shall we say, an untoward advance due to your virile nature.”
    Ian ground his teeth hard enough to feel his jaw creak. Aye, he’d known it was coming. It still didn’t cosh the desire to wipe the grin off her mouth, preferably with the use of his. Perhaps his tongue down her throat would clear up any questions of virility or lack thereof. Because with her, he was getting the sneaking suspicion that it would not be a problem. But he found himself looking away, not liking what he saw in her eyes, the judgment and the pity. “Your sister was safe from me long ago. I’ve no interest in chasing after what doesn’t want to be mine.”
    “Hmm.” Slowly, methodically, her nails rapped over the wooden table, playing a rhythm that made his eye twitch. “And yet you seem to favor redheaded women when trolling for whores.”
    Mary Mother of… Slowly, methodically, he counted to ten. God save man from curious women. “Been checking up on me?”
    Her look was the sort one gave to an ignorant child. “That would imply effort, when one need merely mention your name to learn of it. No wonder Archer wants your head.” A golden curl bounced at her temple as she shook her head.
    His fingers twitched. Damn what Archer thought. Damn her too. He wanted to growl, howl his irritation, bare his teeth, and set her in her place. He scowled at the barman watching them instead. The man flinched and quickly turned back to wiping the glass in his hand with a rag. “You assume that your sister is the only ginger-haired woman in the world.”
    He forced himself to meet Daisy’s eyes. “That a man cannot have lived as long as I have without the possibility that there might be another woman in his life possessingsimilar coloring?”
Don’t speak of it
. His heart was going too fast. The pain was rising.
    Daisy paled. “Who was she?”
    Ian studied his fingers, unsurprised to find the nails had grown long, lengthening into the beginnings of claws. He relaxed on a breath, and they retracted with a pinch of pain.
    “Doesn’t matter,” he said finally. “Whores are at the root of my current predicament.”
    Predicament. He almost laughed. A fine word for losing heart. He couldn’t look at Daisy and say the words, yet he’d started his mouth running so he had to finish.
    “I can’t… Christ. It ought to be more than a financial transaction.” And damn Archer for putting that thought into his head those many months ago. But there it was. He couldn’t pay a woman to swive him anymore. Not when he remembered what he used to have. Companionship as well as passion. The stink of it was, he didn’t want to finesse a woman into his bed either. When had sexual relations become so complicated?
    Laughter, the clink of a glass, and the murmur of conversation swelled around them. Daisy moved, a subtle gesture that brought her an inch closer to him. Her eyes, when he made himself look, did not hold pity but the dark pain of personal understanding. “I find it hard,” she said in a voice so low a normal man might have missed it, “to imagine any available woman you set your sights on not offering herself to you freely.”
    A smile tugged at his lips. “Is that an offer then, Daisy-Meg?”
    “I prefer to leave you with bated breath rather than answer,” she said tartly before her expression turned sorrowful. “You were at the funeral. Why?”
    He sat a bit straighter. “To pay my respects.”
    “You know something.” Her slim throat worked on a hard swallow. “About that night.”
    “Aye.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I went to the autopsy.”
    “Isn’t that the sort of business best left to the police?”
    “Police.” He snorted. “They couldn’t find their cocks to take a piss.”
    Ian felt a moment’s qualm when she colored, but her lips twitched. What was it about her that made him forget even basic manners?
    “Careful now,” she said as