Free In Bed with the Highlander by Ann Lethbridge Page A

her
book, the only men who looked good in kilts were the guys in the Willy Lawson
commercials.
    Although Alec had looked great in a kilt, the bastard. Another
reason not to trust anything flauntingly Scottish. Thank God she’d discovered
what a rat Alec was and dumped him before he completely cleaned out her bank
account.
    “Good evening, Miss McLellan,” the ancient doorman wheezed. “I
will lend you a hand, will I?”
    The soft burr of his voice stroked her ears. She hadn’t heard
an accent like that since... God, she could barely remember. A real Highlander.
Things were looking up. “Good evening. Don’t worry, I can manage.”
    “It is not a trouble.”
    “Thank you, but I prefer to carry my own stuff.” A
top-of-the-line laptop required personal attention and she couldn’t think of
asking such a doddery old chap to carry her suitcase. She never had learned how
to pack light. She heaved her cases out of the boot.
    “I’ll be getting the door for you, then.”
    “Thank you.” She followed him in. He went behind the desk.
Porter and receptionist, then. A one-man band. Perhaps because she had arrived
so late. While he signed her in, she glanced around a reception area designed
like a medieval hall right down to hammer beams arching overhead, the faded and
tattered banners hanging from the walls and a couple of rusted suits of armor.
Welcome to tacky touristy Scotland. It would be so nice if these places invested
in some real antiques and gave them some loving care. Though, on closer
inspection, the chain mail looked genuinely ancient.
    “Your room is on the second floor, Miss McLellan. Number two
hundred and ten.”
    She let her gaze following his pointing figure to a set of
spiral stairs winding around a column of smooth gray stone.
    Bloody hell. No lift.
    Those stairs weren’t new, either. They’d been smoothed into
grooves by centuries of feet. It really was a medieval castle. Had she somehow
got her booking mixed up? Booked a millionaire’s retreat instead of a cheap B
and B in the middle of nowhere? Places like this usually cost an arm and a leg.
Her heart gave a lurch as she thought of the wee bit of room left on her Visa.
Thank you, Alec, the rat. Men. She’d never trust another one as far as she could
toss one with a caber strapped to his back. Tomorrow morning might well be
embarrassing.
    What choice did she have? Going back out in the fog was not an
option.
    “Right,” she said, shouldering both bags and trudging up and
around and around in ever-decreasing circles until she hit a narrow landing and
a door. Please let this be the second floor—otherwise she’d be tempted to throw
herself off a turret.
    Out of breath, sweat trickling in all sorts of unmentionable
places, she opened the door labeled two-ten beneath a low Gothic arch and
stumbled down a step into her chamber. She dumped her bags and glanced around a
room with a ten-foot ceiling and windows at knee level set in walls two feet
thick. Then there was the four-poster bed. A four-poster bed with the drapes
pulled closed.
    Hiding what? She whipped back the green damask and sighed.
Thank God. A sprung mattress. Not your twelfth-century straw-padded horror for
that authentic experience. And the pillows looked blissfully soft. And sheets of
pale lemon percale with a count of at least eight-hundred. She gave them a
pat.
    Perfect, even if one night did leave her skint for a month or
two.
    The narrow room stretched for forty feet, with two windows
overlooking the courtyard. Between them hung a landscape. “The view from these
windows on a summer’s day circa 1715” the caption beneath proclaimed. Smoky
hills and a loch, beyond the turreted walls. Not a person or a black house in
sight. Romantic and sanitized Scotland. Nothing like Grannie’s stories. She
shrugged and continued her exploration.
    At one end, some kind soul had set an antique-looking sofa and
a table along with the makings for tea bedside an armoire. At the other,