Highlander for the Holidays by Janet Chapman Read Free Book Online Page B

on this side of the woods was a hell of a lot deeper than two inches!

Chapter Four

    “JESSIE!” IAN SHOUTED, RUNNING OVER AND DROPPING to his knees beside her. “Aw, lass, what are ye doing out here?” he asked, carefully rolling her over and lifting her onto his thighs. “Hell, you’re not even dressed .”
    Toby rushed up and immediately started lapping her face, and Ian pushed the dog away. When Jessie attempted to stand up, he tightened his hold on her even as he tried to imagine what she was doing out here in only her bathrobe and slippers. “What in hell are you doing out here?” he repeated.
    “I’m walking my dog,” she snapped, scrunching the lapels of her robe to her neck and then elbowing him in the ribs as she tucked her arms against her sides. She took a calming breath. “I didn’t know there was a trail back here, and I certainly never expected machinery to be running at this hour.”
    That said, she tried standing again, but Ian merely slid his hand under her knees and stood up with her in his arms.
    “Wait. No! What are you doing?” she cried, wiggling and squirming so frantically that he slipped and nearly fell when she threw him off balance.
    And then he nearly stumbled again when he finally realized why she kept trying to reposition her unconfined breasts: She was afraid he’d feel her mismatched boobs. He started walking toward the hotel, giving her a threatening squeeze when her head clipped his chin in her struggles. “You will cease .”
    She went perfectly still. “Did you just growl at me?”
    The poor woman appeared so indignant that it was all Ian could do not to laugh. “Aye, and I’m about to toss you over my shoulder like a sack of grain if you don’t quit squirming.” As he’d hoped, the hollow threat certainly got her mind off her missing anatomy. He arched a brow at her glare. “What? City men don’t growl at their women?”
    “Put me down. I can walk now that I’m in the woods,” she growled right back at him. “I’m not an invalid.”
    Lord, she was beautiful when she was too angry to be self-conscious. “No, you’re merely an idiot for coming outside in your bathrobe and slippers.”
    “Oh, I see what you are, Ian MacKeage; you’re one of those men who justifies using brute force whenever he thinks he’s doing it for a woman’s own good.”
    He stopped. “Have you had experience with some of those men , Jessie?”
    “As a matter of fact, I was married to one—for exactly three months .”
    One more piece of Jessie Pringle’s puzzle fell into place. She’d been married—only not very happily or for very long, apparently. When she went back to furtively trying to reposition her breasts, Ian turned and started walking toward the snowcat, which nicely redirected her worry from herself to him again.
    “Where are you going?” she squeaked, looking over his shoulder at the hotel, and then down at the ground—he assumed to get Toby to rescue her. “I told you I can make it from here.”
    “You’re shivering.” He sat her on the rubber track on the passenger side of the snowcat to open the door. “And you weigh more than I thought.”
    He clearly heard her gasp over the rumble of the idling engine. “I do not.”
    She swatted his hand away when he tried to pick her up and set her inside, then turned and awkwardly scrambled in on her own. He gallantly helped by cupping her lovely backside, remembering how his dad liked to call his mom gràineag whenever the old man wanted to get a rise out of her, and Ian decided he also found prickly little hedgehogs to be quite beautiful when they were riled.
    Jessie immediately sat down and gathered her robe closed at her neck, pulled the length of it over her pajama legs, and held her arms over her breasts—all while shooting him a beautifully riled glare hot enough to toast bread.
    Toby placed his front paws on the track, looked up at Ian, and whined.
    “What in hell are you wearing, big man?” he asked,