her as the beam il uminated his chest. “I would never force
myself on you.”
“Yeah,” she muttered. “You’ve even stopped stealing
kisses.”
“Did ye ever consider I might be waiting for you to steal
one from me?” He pul ed the light off her head when its
beam hit him smack in the eyes and tossed it on the ground
as he took a calming breath. “Sometimes a man needs a
little encouragement.”
“We can’t be together … that way, Duncan. It’s not that I
real y don’t want to, but that we … just can’t.”
“Because our making love might kil me?” He snorted.
“Trust me, Peg; what I’m about to show you wil make your
family curse look like a parlor trick.”
“Olivia toldyou about my curse?”
“No, Mac told me after Olivia told him.”
“She told Mac?”
Duncan smiled at the horror in her voice. “What, do ye
honestly believe that husbands and wives don’t share their
concerns for a friend with each other? Tel me, did you
keep secrets from your husband?”
“Um … I guess not.”
Duncan prepared himself for a real y big gasp this time.
“So ye never told him about the kiss from the ski patrol er
who got you safely down off TarStone eleven years ago?
Were ye not dating your future husband at the time?”
Only instead of gasping, she went as stil as a stone.
“How do you know about that?” she whispered, the horror
back in her voice. “Ohmigod. Ohmigod,” she repeated
louder, suddenly struggling to get free.
Duncan crushed her against him with a laugh. “I guess
we know what sort of impression I made on you that day,
don’t we?” He threaded his fingers through her hair and
tilted her head back, turning serious. “Do you have any idea
how many nights I lay awake thinking about the bonnie lass
I let get away? Ye haunted my dreams for years.” He
lowered his mouth to hers. “Ye stil do,” he murmured,
capturing another “Ohmigod” when he kissed her.
Not that she participated—as usual. In fact, this time she
gave him a punch in the bel y and started talking the
moment he lifted his head.
“It was you,” she cried. “Even after I told you I’d gotten
separated from my boyfriend, you kissed me again.”
“Ye had such a kissable mouth, lass. Ye stil do,” he said,
pul ing her more firmly against him when she tried to punch
him again.
“You gave me a card with your phone number.” She
snorted. “You actual y had cards made up to … What? To
hand out to every female you rescued?”
“I saw ye slip it inside your bra when you thought I wasn’t
looking,” he said, struggling to hold back his laughter.
“Only so I could show my friends what an arrogant, no-
good, rotten—”
He kissed her again, partly to shut her up but mostly to
taste her fire. She might not remember their kiss al that
fondly, but he sure as hel did. Because even being the
skirt-chasing idiot he had been at the time, he’d recognized
that the young girl was different; her taste and smel and
contrariness at not kissing him back, her not agreeing to
meet him that evening because she had a boyfriend, and
refusing even to give him her name.
Christ, talk about Providence having two people’s paths
cross; he’d searched every damn square inch of the resort
for a week after finding her lost and hurt and crying in the
woods several hundred yards from the trail, even chasing
down every female he saw wearing a bright pink knit hat.
But a damn lot of women wore pink hats, he’d quickly
discovered to his frustration.
Duncan’s attention suddenly snapped back to the woman
he was kissing right now when he realized she’d wrapped
her arms around his waist and was kissing him back. Lord,
she tasted as good as he remembered when her lips
parted and her tongue tentatively touched his. And that’s
when he knew why her apple crisps were so sweet,
because he caught himself wanting to lick every square
inch of her.
“Ohmigod,” she said in a winded whisper, breaking it off
and burying her face in—did she just lick his neck? “We
can’t do this, Duncan.”
“Okay, we won’t,” he said, grinning over the top of her
head.
He was surprised she even knew the cuss word she
muttered under her breath, and decided he better not kiss
her again, afraid he wouldn’t stop until they were both
naked and sweaty and too exhausted to move. Speaking of
which, he noticed she didn’t seem in any hurry to move right
now, and in fact actual y snuggled into him.
“Is this cave very far from here?”
“Nay, it’s only about five miles to the entrance.”
Her head reared back. “Five miles? Al uphil ? It’s going
to take al night to get there. Wait, how far from the entrance
to whatever the thing is I’m supposed to get?”
He shrugged. “A little over a mile down.”
She scrambled away with a smal shriek. “Down? Inside
the mountain?” She started backing away, and Duncan
could see in the beam of the headlamp lying on the moss
that she was shaking her head. “I’m not going a mile
underground. Ohmigod, if I wasn’t claustrophobic before, I
certainly am now just thinking about it.”
“It’s a real y big cave most of the way; only the last twenty
or so feet are tight. There is one area we had to build a
bridge across, but other than that the going is easy and not
al that steep.”
“Can’t you just get a long, flexible stick to reach whatever
you’re trying to get?”
“Sorry. I thought about sending the pup in, but Robbie
believes it’s going to require someone with opposable
thumbs,” he said, smiling when she stepped into a beam of
moonlight and he saw her scowl. “I told ye that Mac made it
impossible for me to reach all by myself.”
“Again, what does Mac have to do with any of this?”
Duncan walked over and picked up the jeans and
sweatshirt and handed them to her. “Change your clothes
and boots, and on our hike up the mountain I’l tel ye
everything I know about Mac.”
Apparently not believing him, he saw her chin take on a
stubborn tilt. “Tel me one thing about him now.”
“Okay. Maximilian Oceanus is a theurgist. Or in laymen
terms, a wizard, with the power to move mountains and turn
freshwater lakes into inland seas.”
Chapter Twenty
Peg was finding it difficult to dress in complete darkness—
she wasn’t about to use the light with Duncan sitting twenty
feet away—what with her hands not wanting to cooperate.
The only problem was, she didn’t know if she was shaking
from being kidnapped, or from realizing the reason the
name MacKeage had been familiar is that it had been on
the card the kidnapping kiss-thief had given her eleven
years ago. Because she real y couldn’t be this rattled from
Duncan’s tel ing her that Mac was a wizard, because that
was absolutely impossible.
What had Olivia cal ed it? Earth-shaking, mountain-
moving, anything is possible magic—which meant her best
friend had knowingly married a friggin’ wizard.
And Duncan needed her help to find something buried
inside a mountain so he could get hold of some of that
magic for himself. Magic that Mac had hidden in a place
that would force Duncan to kidnap her because she had
less broad shoulders and smal er hands—and opposable