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knew it for the truth. This time she was not going to take the road of least resistance.
    His mouth twisted. “I didn’t want to tell you this, Bella. God knows I’ve tried to be supportive, to steer you in the right direction, but it’s too late for subtleties now. You’re turning into a selfish bore. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about your silly little books, and neither does anyone else. That’s why no one reads ’em. Look at you! You used to take care of yourself, but lately you just don’t care. Couldn’t you find something to make you look less fat? I mean, in God’s name, what is that you’re wearing?”
    “Is my robe not Gucci enough for you, Brian?” she asked bitterly, and now the flames were in her eyes, because he took a step back. “And as for fat, well, this is the body I was born with. Marilyn Monroe would be calledfat these days, too. And for your information, if I don’t take care of myself—and I’m not saying that’s true—it’s because I’m unhappy. You make me unhappy.”
    “ I make you unhappy!”
    “Yes. Yes! You’re a mean-spirited, egotistical bully. Go to Edinburgh. I hope you and Hamish and Georgiana will be very happy together.”
    He stared at her as if he had never seen her before.
    “Good,” he said in a flat, cold voice. “I didn’t want you to come with me anyway. I’m tired of playing second fiddle to a dead man. I’ll just leave you to your pathetic delusions.”
    He walked over to the wall and ripped down the copy of Maclean’s portrait and crumpled it into a ball.
    She gave a cry of distress. “For God’s sake, are you really jealous of a painting?”
    He didn’t bother to answer her, his face filled with vicious satisfaction. “When you decide to rejoin the human race you know where to find me,” he said, and flung the paper into the corner as he turned to the stairs, making certain he got the last word.
    Bella listened to him opening and closing doors, and throwing his cases around up in the bedroom, and then the ominous clatter of his shoes on the stairs. Brian was leaving again and this time it was for good.
    She was glad. She was, she really…
    The front door slammed.
    …was.
    Bella felt her shoulders sag a little as the flames died. It was over. Brian was gone and she was all alone in an isolated cottage in the Highlands of Scotland.
    Bella and her muse.
     
     
    Maclean stood listening to the receding monster. He hadn’t liked the man. He hadn’t liked the way he had spoken to the woman. Maclean felt strangely indignant on her behalf, almost…protective. As for the wee cottage…Maclean looked at it with distain. He was Chief of the Macleans of Fasail, the Black Maclean, and this was no place for him.
    He had drawn himself up in his pride, but now his shoulders slumped. What was the point of such arrogance if no one knew he was here? If no one could see him to obey his every word? If his people were all gone and his lands empty apart from the rain and the wind?
    The Highlander stood outside in the night, gazing in through the window, his emotions twisting and turning inside him like serpents’ tails. A night bird called out, the eerie sound echoing across the loch. He felt more alone than ever.
    There was nowhere else for him to go. He knew it. The knowledge was a bitter bubble in his throat. But if the Fiosaiche had meant such a realization to humble him, then she was mistaken. Maclean did not bow to man or woman.
    He almost, in his pride, turned away again, but at the last moment his gaze was drawn back to the woman. She was cutting vegetables on a board, behaving as if the argument with the man had never happened. As if she had never driven her man away , he corrected himself, pushing aside his earlier indignation. Betrayal, deception, mistrust. The words hammered his brain, and he knew that something very similar had happened to him, if only he could remember what it was….
    He breathed hard, and then stilled. She tugged at him. Was