“Cormac said,” said Jake, and Lissa blinked suddenly, realizing she wanted to tell Cormac, wanted to tell him she wasn’t feeling so cranky anymore, wasn’t so annoyed with everything. She picked up her phone, but she had to shut one eye to read anything off it so decided against it.

“So,” she said as they reached the door of the little cottage, the roses starting to bud in the beds alongside it. “Thank you. That’s what I wanted to say. Thank you.”

She looked up at him, but Jake could see her mind was elsewhere. And she was definitely rather on the squiffy side. It absolutely wasn’t, he thought, the moment to try to kiss her, even though her eyes were sparkling, her smile wide. She’d regret it tomorrow, he thought. And he wanted to see her tomorrow, and after that if he could.

“Drink some water,” he told her, taking back the blanket. He could drop it off in the morning. “Lots of water. Take some aspirin.”

It was true; just in that moment there had been, Lissa had felt, a tiny bit of magic in the air, a definite sense that she might say, Screw it. Give me a little bit. Give me a little bit back of being young.

Give me back my fearless side that violence has stolen away. Give me some carelessness, where I am not worried, and scared, and trying to please people.

Give me tonight, with a handsome man in a kilt by my side, and a heavy warmth, and a short night, and a pair of fiddles, and a glass of sweet elderflower wine, and let me dance.

Jake saw it in her eyes. But he knew—or suspected at least—what anyone would: that her wild mood was dangerous.

And, he had to admit to himself, he liked her. He really liked her. He didn’t want her to wake up, head pounding, full of regret, too embarrassed to see him again after a night’s wild fancy.

“Go to bed,” he said. “Let’s have coffee in the week.”

She smiled flirtatiously at him, and he turned away quickly before he changed his mind and followed her into the house—Cormac’s house, he reminded himself.

Ah well, thought Lissa later, trying to brush her teeth and making a bit of a mess of it. If she’d lost her ability to seduce a guy, that was one thing. But still. She drank a pint of water; the freezing freshness of Scottish water never failed to make her gasp and splutter. Still. It had been good. It was a small country dance in a tiny village clinging to the edge of a loch. To Lissa it had been everything.