Not a hint of an emotion. Not a whisper of a thought.

Astonishing.

To test himself, he fired a questing arrow at the man arranging for the room. He flinched back hastily. The desk clerk was a miserable man. His wife had recently left him for one of his best friends. Cian swallowed, trying to scrape the foul taste of the man’s despair from his tongue. Despair served no one well. He wanted to shake him and say, Fight, you fool. Fight for her. Never cede the battle. Never yield the day.

“Doona give up, man,” Cian hissed.

The desk clerk glanced up, looking startled.

“You can’t just let her walk away,” he growled. “She’s your wife.”

The clerk’s eyes narrowed, flickered uneasily. “Who are you? Do I know you?” he said defensively.

“What?” Jessica said beside him. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Forget it.” To the desk clerk he said, “Be at ease.” It wasn’t his place to save the world. Well, mayhap it was, but he knew what must be done, and it wasn’t this.

With a soft snort of exasperation beside him, Jessica accepted a packet from the once-again submissive desk clerk, twitched that sweet bottom of hers, and stalked off toward two huge burnished-gold doors in the wall. She cast a glance back over her shoulder at him, and her expression could not have more clearly said: Well, come on, you great, big, overbearing brute. I don’t like you one bit, but we’re stuck together.

Cian admired the view for a moment, before picking up the mirror and loping off to join her.

Twenty days with this woman.

Mayhap, somewhere, some divinity in which he’d not believed, believed in him. Believed he would redeem himself and was rewarding him in advance.

She stopped at the doors. Yawning, she stretched her arms over her head, arched her back, and twisted from side to side as if stretching out her spine.

Bloody hell, the woman was a woman in all the right places!

Who cared the why of things?

She was his for the next twenty days.

9

Jessi sat at the cherry writing desk in room 2112, hooking up her laptop, scowling into the small wall mirror that hung above it, wondering why hotels always put mirrors above writing desks. Who wanted to look at themselves while writing? Apparently a lot of people must, because every hotel she’d been in had pretty much the same setup: closet inside the door on the left; bathroom inside the door on the right (or vice versa); first bed facing a writing desk with requisite mirror hung above it; a small table between the beds sporting clock radio and phone; second bed facing a TV armoire/dresser; and, at the far wall, a small table and two chairs sat before a wall of windows.

This room was no different, though a cut above some she’d been in, with merlot-and-champagne carpet, patterned with a gold diamond design, walls papered in textured ivory with gold embellishments at the moldings, beds topped with crisp ivory linens and champagne comforters, the windows hung with billowy wine drapes.

Behind her, Cian MacKeltar was taking a shower, beyond the closed bathroom door.

She’d closed the door.

She’d also closed her eyes when he’d dropped his kilt right in front of her. Which wasn’t to say that she was a prude and hadn’t stared at him through the glass of the shower enclosure when she’d firmly shut the door a few moments later. She had.

The moment they’d entered the hotel room, his gaze had gone instantly to the double king beds. So had hers, and there’d been one of those intensely tense moments where people either jumped on each other or got as far away from each other as they could.

She’d done a little crab-scuttle sideways, nearly sidling right back out into the hall. He’d smiled faintly, mockingly, at her, then stepped past her and thoroughly scanned the entire room before positioning the mirror against the far wall, facing the entry door. She’d not missed that it also faced the beds, but was refusing to ponder it overlong.

For a moment she’d thought he was going to kiss her again, but, as he’d walked back toward her, his gaze had swept past her to the bathroom.

Christ, he’d exclaimed, ’tis a modern garderobe! I couldn’t see beyond the door to the one in Lucan’s study, though I’ve seen pictures. . . . He’d trailed off wonderingly.

Is that where he kept you . . . er, the mirror hung? In his study? How strange his existence must have been inside a mirror! She couldn’t begin to fathom it.

Aye. Though I’ve seen most modern inventions in books and the like in his study, I’ve not had the opportunity to examine the real things.

She’d been about to give him a quick demonstration—anything to get away from those beds—but he’d plunged right into things, just as he had in the car, taking command, twisting handles and turning knobs, squirting little bottles of shampoo and conditioner until the room had been a steam sauna, scented of perfumed toiletries.