Maidensong Excerpt

From Celtic Love Knots, Volume 4, an excerpt from Maidensong:

“Interested in Pictish symbols, are you?”

The voice startled her. It came from directly behind her
and she whirled around so quickly that she became offbalance.
Her body tipped and she banged her shoulder into
the ten-foot-high pink granite stone she had been examining.

“Shit!” Dianne cried as she grabbed her shoulder. Stars
danced behind her eyelids as the pain raced through her body.
When it subsided she opened her eyes.

The owner of the voice was tall and handsome in a rugged
sort of way. His hair fell in full ebony curls across his
brow and his eyes were a deeper, richer green than the lush
grass that they were standing on. He was tall, with broad
shoulders and a muscular body and wore the outfit of every
hiker in the Scottish highlands: jeans, a woolen sweater and
hiking boots. His sweater was a deep loden green that
matched his eyes.

“Didn’t mean to scare you. Are you all right?” He leaned
closer to where she stood, rubbing her shoulder, and looked
into her eyes with such intensity that she wondered what he
was doing.

“Do I look all right?” she asked, scowling. “And what are
you looking for, anyway?”

He pulled away from her and smiled. When he smiled it
was as if the sun dimmed, she was so overwhelmed with the
way his features moved on his face.

Handsome when you’re serious, Lord-have-mercy gorgeous when
you’re smiling.

“I was looking to see whether or not you had a concussion,”
he answered. “Apparently you do not.”

“I smacked my shoulder, not my head. And what were
you doing, sneaking up on me like that? Did you try to scare
me half to death?”

He tilted his head and a lock of black silk fell across his
eye. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you at all. And I
wasn’t sneaking up on you, either. I didn’t try to conceal myself
in any way.”

“So what, then? What were you doing if you weren’t trying
to scare the pants off me?” She stopped rubbing her shoulder
and stood with her hands on her hips, waiting for an answer.

“I was merely trying to meet you, that’s all. It’s not every
day I find a beautiful woman at the Maiden Stone,” he said. He
surveyed her the same way she had examined him. When his
eyes met hers again he grinned. “And I did not say I wasn’t
open to getting your pants off of you, mind.” He waggled his
eyebrows rakishly and, coupled with his thick Scottish accent,
the effect was hilarious. She threw her head back and laughed
out loud, a sound that reverberated through the trees at theedge of the clearing