She shuddered in a single breath as Gideon finally stepped back, then hung her head as she realized exactly what she’d been doing. She’d been acting like a lovesick teenager who’s just discovered the boy she likes doesn’t like her. God, what was wrong with her? No matter what Regan had been trying to talk her into, it certainly wasn’t Gideon’s job to lust after her just because she’d been kind. She really needed to get it together, Carly decided. It wasn’t Gideon’s fault that the very sight of him made her feel so… so…

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “It’s been kind of a weird day. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.” She turned to find Gideon not two feet away, studying her with those intense amber eyes that made her feel like melting at his feet every time she looked into them. Keep breathing, she reminded herself, even as her heart stumbled along in her chest.

“No,” he murmured in his dark, silken voice. “You’ve been wonderful. You barely know a thing about me, except that I wasn’t exactly human when you found me … and you’re right, that would have put most people off, to say the least … and yet you’ve opened your home, gone out of your way to keep me comfortable, when I’ve done nothing to earn it. And I am, I have heard on occasion, a bit of a grouch when I’m feeling under the weather, though it’s unintentional. Usually. So I’m sorry.”

Whatever wind had been left in her sails disappeared. There he stood, her wildest fantasy made flesh, taking up most of her kitchen and looking for all the world like he wanted to be anywhere but there at that moment. Gideon hadn’t asked for this any more than she had, she realized, nor had he asked for her to babysit him during his stay there. Despite her best intentions, she had to admit, Gideon MacInnes didn’t look like the kind of man who would ever want or need coddling. This was one-hundred percent pure alpha male. It wouldn’t kill her to try to remember that, and respect it. After all, she wouldn’t be in half as much unrequited lust with him if he were any other way.

“Tell you what.” Carly stood her ground and held Gideon’s golden gaze no matter how much she wanted to look away, determined to find some sort of workable middle ground for them to meet on. All those years refereeing fights between Mario and Luigi couldn’t have been for nothing, right? “I’ll agree not to hover, flutter, or be intolerably concerned if you agree to be respectful of the fact that you are here by the grace of a habitually worrying, concerned female. Truce?”

She stuck out her hand, watched Gideon consider it before he smiled that slow, lopsided grin of his that Carly found so ridiculously sexy. She watched as he reached out and closed his big, calloused hand around hers, swallowing it almost into invisibility.

“As I don’t fancy being stabbed in my sleep with the cutlery,” he said as he shook her hand once, twice, “a truce, then.”

When he let go, her hand still tingled. Still, she managed to force a casual smile, determined, desperate, in fact, to keep it light. “Then let’s start over. I think conversation over way too much chicken Parmesan is a decent beginning, don’t you?”

“My appetite is always a decent beginning.”

But her smile faded just a little as he turned from her to grab a plate. It didn’t matter how hard she ignored it, it seemed, as her eyes caressed his broad shoulders, the way the thin cotton tee-shirt showcased every taut muscle. But Gideon wasn’t the only one who was hungry.

And no amount of chicken Parm was going to fix that.

t t t

She’d fed him. She’d plied him with a decent bottle of red wine. And after a while, Carly had had to concede something.

On this one subject, Maria Silver’s advice had been right on the money. Apparently, a man’s stomach was indeed the magical portal into his good graces. And although it didn’t look like it on the outside, she thought as she watched him start on his fourth helping, in Gideon’s case, that was one hell of a big opening.

She sipped at the cabernet, her lips curved as she watched him over the rim of her glass. Despite her earlier impression, it turned out that under the right circumstances, Gideon MacInnes was pretty engaging company. Granted, the fact that the bottle of wine was now empty might have had something to do with that. Well, at least, it had something to do with her current state of relaxation. Carly thought back, tried to remember how much she’d had, versus how much Gideon had imbibed, and winced.

She actually didn’t want to think about how much of that bottle of relaxation she was currently owning.

“So tell me again,” Gideon asked after he’d swallowed another mouthful, “why your parents named your brothers after a Nintendo game?”

She shook her head, laughed. “Well, Mario and Weege actually predate the game, so you can’t really pin that on them. But no matter how much they protest, they get a big huge kick out of the coincidence, believe me.”

“Mario, Luigi, and Carlotta. I have to say, your ethnicity is awfully ambiguous.”

“It’s only Carlotta if you want your butt kicked. And actually, I’m only half Italian, despite my mother’s best efforts to eradicate the other side of our ancestry.”

He raised his eyebrows, sipped his wine. “Which is?”

“British, mostly. A little Dutch thrown in for flavor. Jonathan Silver, however, is one whipped puppy, no matter how much I love him. I keep expecting to show up there one day and find him in a velour tracksuit and some gold chains.”

“Ah. I wondered, you know. About the blond, and whether it was some sort of genetic fluke.”

“You’d think. No, lucky combo of some way-back blond Northern Italians and my dad’s family. My brothers, though … you’d never know we were related. Luigi thinks he’s DeNiro.” Carly paused, considered. “Actually, he’s not that far off. In, you know, the least flattering way you could possibly imagine that.”

She enjoyed it, Gideon’s easy smile, his throaty laughter. How nice it was to see him finally relaxed. An odd thought occurred to her, that maybe he wasn’t so different from her, just cautious with people until he got comfortable. It was strange to think of a big, strapping werewolf having anything in common with an introvert like herself, but stranger things had happened.

At least he liked her cooking, Carly thought as she watched him finish up the rest of what was on his plate. She wasn’t sure she could swing it right now, but maybe, eventually, once she stopped having palpitations every time he was anywhere near her, Gideon MacInnes would make a fascinating friend. And as a lover …

But no, damn it. She wasn’t going to torture herself with that right now. She leaned back in the chair, toying with her glass. She’d been talking a blue streak, but her guest had been remarkably quiet on the subject of himself. It was time, to her way of thinking, to turn that around.

“So what about you? Your family? Apart from the obvious, I mean.”

Gideon pushed his plate away from him and propped his elbows on the table. “Hmm. I was hoping you’d let me slide on that and eat more of your truly excellent dinner while you talk about … let’s see … what you do for a living. We haven’t made it that far yet.”

She was having none of it. “I own a business. So do they all have extra heads or something? Embarrassing jobs? Poor hygiene? They can’t be any worse than mine. Spill it, Gideon, I’m all aflutter.”

He sighed, looked intently at the ceiling. “Well. Let’s see. My father’s actually Pack leader, or Alpha, as we call it. He’s sixty, looks forty, and is a holy terror when you cross him. He takes care of the family estate, which would be about sixty acres of Highland wilderness, plus a massive, drafty old house and a bunch of cottages, one of which is mine. The main house he runs as a sort of bed and breakfast, and the cottages are rented out to people on holiday. Does quite well at it, actually. And my brother lives across the Sound, little more than a ferry ride away, not that he crosses it any more often than he has to. Runs a pub, chases women. Not necessarily in that order. And as for me …”

Carly leaned in, interested. “You hang out and be heir apparent to the werewolf dynasty? Do you have official duties or anything? Sit on a throne? What?”

When he smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkled up. “Actually, I help my dad run the place most of the time, along with a passel of cousins. Most of the land is just let be. It hardly needed any improvement from people. But the bit we use still requires quite a lot of work. So I fix things, play tour guide, keep the books, do odd jobs. It’s all mine one day, if I want it. And no, no throne.” His shaggy hair fell across his eyes as he shook his head, laughing. “My Pack has gatherings, but a lot of them don’t live on the Hunting Grounds anymore. We’re a little remote, you know, near Lochaline in the Western Highlands. It’s a ferry ride to get there no matter what you do.”

“And yet you all manage to make a living by being visited?” Carly asked politely, trying to figure out exactly how Gideon’s family was not all dirt poor and living in shacks. The place sounded like a monstrosity in the middle of nowhere, probably the genius purchase of an ancestor who liked his ale a little too much.

Gideon simply raised a superior brow. “Although some people prefer their vacations to be full of hermetically sealed hotels and overexposed giant rodents, it just so happens that the world is full of enlightened individuals who would rather explore the untouched corners of the earth on their own two feet. We get bikers, hikers, hunters, photographers, naturalists …”

Carly held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, point taken. Although there’s a lot to be said for oversized singing mice, I have to tell you.” When Gideon merely wrinkled his nose in distaste, she shrugged and smiled at him.

“Just saying.” But she was intrigued, despite never having been the outdoorsy type. She’d certainly read enough about the Highlands, though she’d always assumed the breathless descriptions had been exaggerations. Now, however, listening to Gideon, she began to wonder.