And if memory served him, the fifth volume was in the Keltar library.

Chloe mumbled softly in her sleep, drawing his gaze again. Reminding him that someone had tried to kill her—because of him.

He glanced at her bandaged hand and fierce protectiveness flooded him. He would let nothing harm her ever again.

He needed answers, and he needed them fast.

11

For the second time in as many days, Chloe had the strange and immensely irritating experience of walking down a crowded street with Dageus MacKeltar. The first time had been in Manhattan yesterday, and the same thing had happened there.

Men got out of his way.

Not because he was impolite or barged rudely down the sidewalk. On the contrary, he moved with the sleek grace of a tiger. Sure-footed, perhaps a bit predatory. And men instinctively circumvented him, going out of their way to give him wide berth.

The women, now they were a different matter. They were the irritating part. They’d reacted the same way in New York, but yesterday it hadn’t bothered her as much. They moved aside, but barely, as if unable to resist brushing up against him, their heads turning twice, three times. One woman had shamelessly pressed her breasts against his arm in passing. On several occasions, Chloe cast an indignant glance over her shoulder, only to catch several of them ogling his behind. She might be small but—blast it all—she wasn’t invisible, walking along at his side, with his arm around her, his hand resting on her shoulder!

Not that he noticed the rubbernecking going on. He seemed oblivious to his effect on women. Probably so used to it that he no longer paid it any heed.

She longed for such oblivion, because watching so many women eye him hungrily was putting her in a bad mood. She cast more than a few pissed-off looks behind them.

The intense intimacy on the plane had stirred dangerously mushy feelings in her.

Face it, Zanders, you aren’t the kind of girl who can be physically intimate with a man without getting emotionally involved. You’re just not wired that way.

No kidding, she thought grumpily. She was having territorial feelings. Feelings she couldn’t afford, for he’d certainly not evidenced any territorial feelings about her. Fortunately, as she watched women stare at him, irritation was making short work of softer emotions. She savored the anger, preferring it to waffling in uncertain emotions. Anger was refreshingly tangible.

The moment they’d stepped off the plane in Inverness he’d grown cool again. Preoccupied. Businesslike. Collecting their luggage, striding briskly to the rental car agency. She’d had to repeat three times her request that he stop in Inverness for a coffee she desperately needed after traveling for fifteen hours. She wasn’t about to meet his family in the throes of caffeine withdrawal.

After so thoroughly losing control of herself on the plane, his detachment hurt. He’d kissed her into a stupor, given her her first-ever climax, then withdrawn in every possible way. She should have known, she brooded. What did you expect, Zanders? A declaration of intimacy just because you let him touch you intimately?