she widened her eyes.
“Typical English,” he snorted. “You have been taken, lass.
This is not real silver.” He wiped the coin on his shirt and handed it to her.
She sighed in exasperation. “Silver isn’t commonly used for
coins where I’m from. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is the date.”
His eyes shifted back and forth from the coin in her hand to
the bank note in his. “Two, zero, zero, eight is the date?”
“Yes, that’s the date this coin was made. And here is the
date this was printed.” She pointed to the center of the bank note.
“Two, zero, one, zero,” he read with a shake of his head.
“And what does this say?” He pointed to the large words at the top of the note.
“Bank of Scotland,” she slowly replied. “You can’t read
that?”
“I don’t read English, woman,” he grumbled, shoving the bank
note at her. “Perhaps you can tell me what a ‘bank’ is and why the hell this is
in English if it clearly says Scotland.”
His surly attitude and what little she did know of
Scotland’s history with England made her uneasy about supplying him with too
much information. Considering there was no one around who would be able to
contradict her, she didn’t think lying to soften the truth was such a bad idea.
“English is widely spoken because of England’s efforts to colonize other parts
of the world, which is why I am from a place across the ocean.”
“Good Lord, woman, don’t tell me England will take over the
whole world!”
She laughed and patted his arm reassuringly. “No, there was
a revolt and England lost control over its colonies. Many people immigrated
there through the years, not just the English.”
“And what are you? Are you English? You speak strangely.”
As he turned those piercing gray orbs to her face, her
breath caught in her throat. This guy was simply too hot for her own good. “Um,
no, my parents were Scottish.”
His continued stare and silence unnerved her and she leaned
back to put some distance between them. She laughed apprehensively. “But none
of that is possible, right? People don’t simply travel back in time eight
hundred years, do they?”
He sighed and shook his head. “I do not know, lass. It is
the truth I would not have entertained such fantastic notions had you not
appeared to me in my dreams.”
Anna’s blood turned to ice. “I what?”
He reached for her pendant, capturing it between his thumb
and forefinger, his knuckles brushing against the tops of her breasts. “Ever
since I was thrown down there, I have had dreams of you aiding my escape. Your
red hair glowed almost like a halo, just like it did when you finally appeared
in the flesh.”
She shivered, partially in disbelief and partly in arousal.
“Are you sure it was me?”
“It is hard to forget the face of such a pretty lass,” he
whispered.
The heat from his touch burned across her chest, causing her
stomach to tingle. She couldn’t help but imagine his roughened hand flattened
against her skin as she traced his bottom lip with her tongue. A jolt of
electricity shot through the junction between her thighs, drawing her abruptly
out of her musings.
Galen’s brow knitted in concentration as he stared at the
pendant and then lifted his gaze to hers. His knuckles grazed her breasts again
as he released his hold on her necklace. His eyes darkened as they dropped to
her cleavage and he shifted his weight, pressing his hard, muscular thigh into
hers.
Anna swallowed hard, her head swimming with erotic visions
she had no business entertaining. What the hell was wrong with her? The man had
threatened to kill her and yet she thought of him as nothing more than walking
sex. It really had been too long.
Anxious to avoid his intense stare and the growing heat
between her legs, she softly asked, “Why were you thrown down there? I mean,
what does this Graham guy have against you?”
He pulled his hand away, lightly skipping the backs of his
fingers down her