The Highlander's English Bride (The Lairds Most Likely 6)

He

sucked in a breath and forced the curtness from his tone. "I’m still confirming my observations. It’s an odd bugger – a strange shape and the orbit is unlike anything I’ve ever seen."

Interest sharpened her expression. "Show me."

"Emily…"

"What?"

"You’re not…dressed."

She couldn’t be that ingenuous. Surely she knew that it was cruel to flaunt herself like this. Girls were always wrapped up in layers of undergarments. Even unworldly creatures like Emily Baylor learned in the nursery that the sight of too much feminine flesh turned men into beasts.

He couldn’t read her expression. Blame it on the lamplight. Blame it on the fact that he was going insane.

"I’m not cold."

Nor, God damn it, was he. He ground his teeth until they hurt and pulled out a stool. "Then help yourself."

He struggled to ignore how the jacket parted down the front and the hem of his shirt rode up as she settled in the place where he’d devoted so many lonely nights to staring at the skies. He also failed to ignore the jiggle of her breasts as she wriggled around to find a comfortable angle for the telescope. To facilitate his observations, he had the lamp turned down low, but it still revealed far too much of his beautiful wife.

She was going to kill him stone dead. And just as he was on the verge of a major scientific breakthrough, too. He was surprised steam didn’t come out of his ears, he was so hot for her.

"I can’t…" she murmured.

For pity’s sake, she really would kill him. He set his jaw until it threatened to crack and leaned in to help with the focusing. He caught a drift of her jasmine scent, always alluring, doubly alluring since he’d kissed her and tasted her skin and glimpsed the passion locked inside her luscious body.

"Ah," she said in satisfaction.

"Can you see Virgo?"

Most girls – most people – would have no idea where to look, but Emily was Sir John Baylor’s daughter. She’d known how to find the constellations before she could read. "Yes."

"Look west. It’s small. Tiny really. Just a pinprick of light. It could be a distant star, but it acts like a moon."

While she scanned the sky, he kept silent.

"I don’t…" Then she gave a glad cry. "I see it."

"I need to do a lot more work before I’m ready to present my findings."

"But how marvelous." She turned her head. "Congratulations."

He was so close, her breath was warm on his cheek when she spoke. If he shifted an inch, he could kiss her again. Every muscle went taut as he imagined taking her in his arms again.

Blast it, he didn’t dare kiss her. After their kisses, it had nearly broken him to relinquish her to a chaste bed. He jerked away and only came to a panting standstill halfway across the roof.

Even that wasn’t enough. His shoulders slumped, and his hands fisted so tight that his nails dug into his palms. He was bloody grateful when Emily went back to observing the sky.

Don’t balls this up, Hamish. You’re close to getting what you want. But you can still lose it all.

It had been bad enough thinking he’d lost it all, when he’d been convinced he never had a chance of gaining it. The prospect of losing it all when he teetered on the brink of winning was too agonizing to contemplate.

He stared up. From the moment he was old enough to understand that there were worlds upon worlds above him, he’d found peace pondering the skies. Tonight his earthly troubles were too overwhelming for those twinkling lights in the heavens to offer any solace.

"This is a wonderful telescope."

He told himself to act like a civilized man. "It’s based on Herschel’s forty-foot reflecting telescope."