The Great Scot. Donna Kauffman
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new wife and, if they have their way, probably a half dozen wee Chisholms to boot. Let his brothers take on the task of creating heirs, I told them, be happy he’s back home. Do they listen to me?” He motioned Marta to top off his ale, then hefted the glass and squeezed past Erin. “Knowing Kat, we’ll be lucky if he’s no’ packed up and heading back to Edinburgh by morning.” He patted her shoulder. “Back in a blink.”
Erin was still trying to absorb that latest tidbit of information. New wife? Meaning there had been an old one. She’d sort of suspected as much, given the meaningful looks shared between the locals when referring to Dylan, as if he’d come home under less than fortunate circumstances. She was still trying to figure out how to use that to her advantage when Brodie suddenly burst through the wall of people and bodily lifted her off the stool with a big hand on her arm.
“There ye are!” he boomed, his jovial smile in place as always. “Come, lass, we need help settlin’ a sporting question and you’re the only one who’s qualified to judge.”
Erin wasted a precious second or two juggling her glass of ale, trying not to dump it on herself or anyone else, and lost her window of opportunity to stop him. By the time she got her wits about her, she’d been tugged into the small, cleared area in the back of the pub where the dartboard was located. Think fast, think fast . She wasn’t prepared to see Dylan quite yet.
And then there he was, large as life. Larger, really. Great Scot indeed. In a room filled with people, he dominated the space easily. Big and broad at the shoulder, with all that hair and hard jawline. But it was more than his physical presence that commanded attention, it was that ever present enigmatic demeanor of his, still every bit as tightly held, she noted, even though he was supposedly surrounded by family and friends.
Or maybe he’d been smiling and relaxed until she’d been dragged into the picture. Hard to tell. But he didn’t seem thrilled to see her, that much was clear.
Then Brodie was tugging her forward again and their locked gaze was abruptly disconnected as he turned her to face the dartboard. “Okay, here’s the thing. My wife’s dart.” He motioned to a gorgeous, antique, hand-carved wooden dart flocked with what appeared to be real feathers. “My brother’s dart.” He motioned to the other dart, also handsomely made, if not as spectacularly as the first, wedged into the very same hole. “What say you?”
“I’m not sure I’m the one who should—”
“Nay, you’re the only one in the room who can be impartial.”
Erin noticed the room had fallen completely silent as everyone waited for her to make her pronouncement. She dared to scan the sea of faces crowding the dartboard area, but couldn’t read the lay of the land. She only had Alastair’s comment on the village wanting to court the goodwill of their apparently recalcitrant chief…and the knowledge that the other contestant was the wife of the man who owned the establishment. Lovely. The trick was going to be how not to piss off anyone and still have a chance in hell of getting what she wanted. What she had to have. And from the looks of things, she had about five seconds to figure it out.
She chanced a quick glance at Alastair, hoping maybe he could signal her somehow, but he had his head bent toward a fresh-faced, younger woman dressed in dungarees and a pub T-shirt—Kat Chisholm, she could only presume—and didn’t see Erin’s silent plea for a rescue. She’d have to suck it up and go for it.
Turning away from the crowd and very purposefully not looking at Dylan, she turned the brightest smile she could conjure at Brodie. “I don’t know the rules, but it looks like a tie to me. Can’t you have a do-over?”
The crowd erupted in raucous cheering and debate and Erin wasn’t sure, but it appeared that by trying to be as fair and impartial as possible, she’d pissed everyone off. How had she so thoroughly lost control of her only mission? Then Brodie was stalking to the dartboard and plucking out the darts, proclaiming, “You heard the lass, we’ll have a ‘do-over’.”
Then Kat was stepping forward and motioning to Erin. “Come here, then.”
Erin had been thinking she’d slink back into the crowd and make a mad dash for the exit, but Kat was motioning her to come over to where she and Dylan stood, and before she could decide for herself, the crowd nudged her forward. “Yes?” she said, spying Dylan in her peripheral vision and deciding now was really not a good time for her nipples to go painfully hard, but there they were, right at attention. What was it about that man anyway?
What wasn’t it about him? her little voice offered. He stood there scowling in his T-shirt and jeans, but he might as well have been wearing the plaid with a clay-more strapped to his hip for all he exuded the whole rogue highlander thing. She really had to get a grip. She turned her head and focused exclusively on Kat, who, she belatedly noticed, hadn’t missed a thing in Erin’s momentary little distraction. Even scarier, she smiled. Broadly.
“Okay, do-over it is,” she announced, quite jovially. She turned her laser beam smile on Erin. “But you’ll stay.” She nudged her a step or two closer to Dylan. “Right there.” She smiled very prettily up at Dylan, but only a fool would take that as a sign of friendship and goodwill. “You don’t mind, do ye now?”
It was as if the entire room took a breath and held it. Only when Dylan nodded, once, did the tension ebb, if only for a moment. “Ladies first,” he announced.
And just the sound of that voice sent a little tingle of awareness through Erin that only served to keep her body on point. Two of them, to be exact. She folded her arms across her chest, then realized she was still holding her ale. She impulsively chugged the rest of it and set the empty glass down on one of the tall tables lining the wall behind them. She tried to shrink back slightly, out of the center-of-attention spot, but Kat was having none of it.
“It was all quite amusing when you thought to distract me with my charming husband here. Well, two can play at that. Erin, be a darling and stay directly in Dylan’s line of vision for me.”
From the instant reaction of the crowd, it was easy to understand what kind of distraction they wanted her to provide. Completely nonplussed, Erin automatically pointed at herself. “Me?” Had they not actually looked at her? She was hardly eye candy material. Her gaze tracked to Dylan, completely without her authority, but he looked neither nonplussed nor repulsed. In fact, it was hard to tell what he was thinking. So what else was new?
The crowd was chanting her name now and she saw her entire career taking a fast nosedive in the middle of Nowhere, Scotland. Why hadn’t she stayed in London? Why?
Seemingly satisfied with the situation, Kat took her darts, very lovingly handed to her by her husband, who then proceeded to hold her around the waist, dip her back over his arm and kiss her deeply, much to the delight of the villagers. Kat swatted him when he set her upright again, but the pink in her cheeks and the twinkle in her eye belied her annoyance. Erin sighed a little inside. They were wonderful together.
Then, very swiftly, and with deadly precision, Kat buried both of her darts dead center on the board. She curtsied to Dylan, then snagged her husband, pushed him back against the nearest pool table and returned his earlier favor. Of course, it ended with her smacking his hands away as he tried to pull her up onto the table. Everyone was laughing, tankards were raised and more rounds of ale poured.
And then it was Dylan’s turn.
She was jostled closer to him, brushing up against his arm before moving back. She looked up at him and mouthed, “I’m sorry,” hoping he understood it was for all of it, not just the inadvertent contact. He held her gaze for what seemed like an eternity. Erin spent the next couple seconds being partly terrified and mostly ridiculously turned on, wondering if they were supposed to somehow match Brodie and Kat’s antics. But just when another hush was starting to descend over the crowd, Dylan merely stepped past her and planted himself on the hash mark branded into the wooden pub flooring. Part of the crowd began chanting her name, the other half tried to shush them. Apparently they weren’t sure how far to push their fearless leader, either.
All she knew was that she should have stayed