No, Gideon decided, best to try and get her to believe the unbelievable. It was probably a long shot, but considerably better than being tossed on his bare ass out into the snow. As she was quiet now, he took a chance and slowly removed his hand from her mouth, expecting and dreading that she would begin by whimpering and pleading for her life. She was obviously horrified. Gideon opened his mouth to reassure her, but was shocked by how she cut him off.

“What did you do to my dog, you asshole?” she spat, rendering Gideon momentarily speechless. Of all the things he’d been anticipating, this wasn’t even on the list. His brows shot upwards, even as he quickly moved his leg to block a nasty little assault she tried to execute on a rather sensitive place. Fear, had he thought? There was some of that, yes, but Gideon was now pretty sure that the far greater part of her emotions right now was bloodthirsty rage. He fought back an amused smirk, which he could instantly see had not helped his cause.

“Oh, you think this is funny? To murder people’s pets, and then … then …” Gideon saw that she didn’t seem to want to say what she was thinking, lest she give him any ideas. Fortunately for him, she was unaware that she didn’t need to provide him with any more food for thought than she already had. For he was looking at her now, really looking at her, and he would have had to be a dead man not to appreciate what he saw.

Her hair was a long mass of pale blond waves that reached well past her shoulders in a cloud of morning tangles, framing a small, heart-shaped face. The mouth that was pulled taut with anger was a pale pink rosebud, and her fair cheeks were flushed attractively, though Gideon doubted she’d appreciate his observation right then. Her nose was adorable, small and straight but with an interesting, pointy little uptilt at the end. A stubborn nose, his father would have called it. Large, long-lashed eyes glared up at him from stormy depths of endless blue, and though she only came up to the middle of his chest, Gideon had gotten a good look at her figure as she’d bounded away from him, and … well, he’d just label her “well proportioned” and leave it at that, as more in-depth visualization of her supple, bouncy little curves would make them both very uncomfortable before long.

Lovely, Gideon thought, surprised anew at the strength of his reaction to her. He tended to be too busy to let himself be taken by the beauty of women. He enjoyed their company occasionally, to be sure, but he hadn’t the wit or the will of his lothario brother to keep himself surrounded by them. Women were an endlessly changing puzzle, it seemed to him, and Gideon considered himself a basic, simple man. He liked his life equally basic and simple—or at least he’d thought he did, until recently. Still, even knowing what was nagging at him, accepting it as natural, he hadn’t looked to fall. His kind did that only once, and actively looking for such a thing had made him nervous. Besides, when it happened, it would happen, or it wouldn’t, but if it was for someone like … someone like …

Gideon stared hard at his captive before deliberately looking away.

Christ Almighty, what a bloody mess.

t t t

She’d started off terrified.

Now, damn it, she was mostly insulted.

Carly couldn’t believe herself, but she’d moved from terror to fury to some sort of stupid annoyance all in the last two minutes, and at this point in the insanity, she figured she might as well just give up wondering why and go with it. When he’d come out of nowhere (like a damned cat, she’d thought in the instant before he’d so nicely smashed her into the wall), Carly had figured that this was it, that this was the part where he hurt her. She was prepared to fight, even though her chances against someone so much bigger than she was were pretty poor. She’d even braced herself as much as she could for the pain of that first blow, even though she knew she was shaking like a leaf. She’d waited, and waited. But then he’d just stood there, looking at her like he was trying to figure out some really complex puzzle, and the silence in the rest of her house had both given her time to think and confirmed her worst fears.

He’d done away with her dog.

That’s when the famous Delfiore temper her mother had gifted her with had kicked in (as usual, at the most inopportune time available) and she’d stopped keeping her mouth shut. Well, and also tried to knee him.

Intelligence, Carly ruefully acknowledged, was not now and to her knowledge never had been acquainted with the Delfiore temper.

And now, just when she’d decided to bite a finger off the next time his hand got too close to her mouth, her attacker had to go and start looking like one of the most miserable people on the planet. Misery, she noted with an unpleasant jolt, looked entirely too beautiful on him to be tolerated.

He was truly mesmerizing, she realized. Which made it doubly unfortunate that she was going to have to maim him and then make sure he was locked away forever. Weren’t scumbags like this supposed to look like what they were? Wasn’t she supposed to be utterly repulsed? Though she was trying like hell not to notice, that shoulder-length hair, slightly wavy and the color of chocolate, was no longer covering his features.

And this man, whoever he was, was a sculptor’s dream come true.

He wasn’t soft enough to be pretty, Carly decided as she stared at him, but rather angular and rough. Thick stubble covered his square jaw, and the lips of a mouth that looked as though it could be generous when he was in a better mood were firm and perfectly sculpted, set in a line that was just as hard as the rest of him. His nose was strong but not overpowering, regal in a way. It was his eyes, though, that caught Carly and held her when he finally came back from wherever his mind had been and focused solely on her. They were deep-set, framed by dark, downward-slashing brows, and an improbable burning amber in color, a shade Carly didn’t think she’d ever seen before. When those eyes locked on hers, she immediately felt as though all of the wind had been punched out of her at once. How was she supposed to concentrate on this guy’s demise when all she wanted to do when he looked at her was melt into a puddle at his feet? And why, after giving her a thorough once-over— even, she could almost swear, sniffing at her—did he look even more miserable than before? Yes, it was morning, but seriously, she doubted it was that bad. And what was he expecting? Marilyn Monroe? Jessica Alba? What?

He was probably some nutcase druggie, Carly thought, increasingly irritated at being pinned while not being told what was going to happen to her. It was a shame, she thought, and a bigger waste than she’d ever seen. But maybe, if that was the case, she could try to talk him down. After, of course, she found out what he’d done with poor, unfortunate Barkley. The bastard.

“Did you kill him?” she tried again, and those amazing eyes returned to her. He had a long, interesting scar that slashed across his right eye, she noted. It was bizarrely, distractingly, annoyingly hot. He was probably lucky he still had the eye. Of course, that was what she’d thought about the dog’s scar.

Carly frowned. Well, that was weird. Her rescue project and her new bed buddy had matching scars. Weird, but then, maybe not too surprising. Big, beastly guys like this were usually brawlers, from what she’d seen. A strange coincidence, maybe, she decided firmly, but that was all.

She had enough problems at the moment without trying to make connections that weren’t even there. Beastly, though, she thought as she eyed him. That was one word that suited him to a T. But then, she supposed whatever substance he’d recently been messing with hadn’t much helped that.

“Did I kill who?” He sounded dazed. Yeah, Carly decided, definitely a druggie. She was obviously going to have to speak slowly and use small words. That should be easy, since he also sounded Scottish, of all the worst possible things he could be when she needed her wits about her. Was there a woman alive who didn’t have a thing for delicious men in kilts? But this guy was not wearing a kilt, Carly reminded herself. Nor was he remotely delicious.

Mostly.

Even though he wasn’t just not wearing a kilt. He wasn’t wearing anything.

“My big, huge dog,” she said with determined focus, trying to enunciate each syllable. “You couldn’t have missed him.”

“Ah, that.” He paused, briefly, as though unsure how to proceed, and then plunged on ahead. “Yes, well, I think we need to talk about that.” He furrowed his brow, looking away for a moment, and Carly knew, she could just tell, that he was about to break the bad news. Despite her best efforts, her eyes were filling up all over again when she thought of what that poor baby must have gone through at the hands of this … this … well, sometimes, there just weren’t enough curse words. Stop being such a big baby, she chided herself, even as she felt her lip quiver. For God’s sake, why did she always have to ruin everything by being such a girl?

“Never mind.” She cringed inwardly as she heard her voice tremble, but she’d be damned if she was going to look away. “I guess you’ve already answered my question.”

The man’s eyes widened slightly, and for some reason he looked surprised, as well as a bit mortified. “Oh … killed, you mean … oh, good Lord, no, you’ve got it all wrong. I haven’t done a thing …”

In a futile attempt not to hear him, Carly kept right on talking over him. She would have plugged her ears with her fingers and started humming, but she was so not stooping to his level. Also, her hands were still pinned at her sides. “I hope you know that I’ve got a big Italian family, and I have a lot of cousins in the mafia …”

“No, you see, I haven’t done anything to your dog. I mean, well, yes, I suppose technically …”

“… and you can do whatever you want to me, I can’t stop you, but I just think you should know that they will hunt you down …”

“… but then it couldn’t really be helped. You see, I was attacked, and then …”

“… and honestly, I think my cousin Vinnie has pulled out more than his share of fingernails to get people to talk …”