Edge Of Danger Page 10

  She let her gaze drift over him. Lord, he was potent. His navy T-shirt showed off his chest to perfection, and bared his tanned arms lightly furred with dark hair. Would his chest be hairy or smooth? Eden ached to find out. His long legs were encased in faded jeans and bluntly showed he was male.

  Allaroused male, she thought, finding it hard to swallow. She looked down at her short, unpolished nails and pale hands, and wondered if Gabriel liked his women to have long, red fingernails to score his skin when they made love. He probably liked them skinny and lean.Bastard. She gave him a hot look.

  An almost wary expression hardened his features for a moment as their eyes met across the room. Then even that glimpse was gone as he continued to watch her with remote, unreadable eyes.

  She rubbed her upper arms. “Can you explain what I just saw?”

  He lifted a brow. “What did you see, Dr. Cahill?” he asked in a lazy and somehow remote tone. The calmness of his voice, when she was feeling rising agitation, annoyed the hell out of her.

  “The fact that one second there was a road out there,” she said tightly, pointing through the window, “And now—look,there isn’t—”

  A stripe of black again cut a swath through the trees.

  “You were saying?”

  She spun away from the window to shoot him a puzzled glance. “Either you’re causing me to hallucinate or I’m losing my mind.”

  “Come with me. I want you to see the lab so you can let me know if there’s anything else you’ll need before you get started.”

  Eden frowned at the non sequitur. “Are you going to give me some answers?”

  “Apparently not. Come on. The bad guys already have a head start.”

  “That’s right. Six years’ worth.” Jason must have considered this possibility as well. Of course he must have. And while he himself didn’t knowall of Rex’s skills, he had to have considered the ramifications if the robot fell into the wrong hands. Eden felt a little easing in her stomach. Not much. Just a tiny spurt of hope. She wasn’t alone.

  If she and Jason went to the FBI and Homeland Security together…

  “Let’s go. We’re wasting time.”

  She didn’t want to have anything to do with this guy. She didn’t like the swirling emotions she felt whenever he was around. He made her feel like a rabbit faced with a rattler; terrified, but fascinated at the same time.

  Even though his expression was impassive when he spoke to her, she could read the hunger in his dark eyes. He wanted her, and for some reason it pissed him off that he did.

  Eden knew exactly how he felt.

  She was bewildered by the strength of her attraction to a man who had taken her against her will. Her safest bet was to ignore the sensation for the duration. She wouldn’t be here long enough to have to figure it out.

  Pleased that she’d regained her composure and shored up her defenses, and since she knew she wouldn’t be making her escape down the sheer side of the stone walls, Eden followed him out of the room.

  Any escape opportunity presenting itself, she would take. If she ended up walking out of here barefoot, so be it.

  The walls on either side of the wide upper corridor were paneled in mahogany with intricate carved moldings. Arched windows ran down the entire length of the right-hand wall, the wide expanse of glass interspersed with enormous family portraits in ornate gilded wood frames that must have weighed a hundred pounds apiece.

  Curious about the “lab he’d prepared for her,” Eden glanced about to get her bearings for her escape later. Everything about Edridge Castle was made on a massive scale.

  Including her host.

  His long legs and big feet ate up yardage in the black, gold, and red swirls of the carpet as he forged ahead of her.Way ahead. That whole contamination thing again.

  What was the bastard using on her? Hypnosis? Drugs? She’d drunk at least half a glass of whiskey and a cup of tea. She felt physically fine, better than fine actually. She was filled with energy and clarity of thought. And was acutely aware of him no matter how far apart they were.

  She’d never noticed a man’s butt before, but his was prime, and did excellent things for those jeans.

  He had an interesting loose-limbed walk, light on his bare feet. Her heels sank into the thick carpet as they walked, and she had to do a little two-step to catch up. As soon as she got closer, he seemed to speed up.

  Eden spotted what could very well be a Fabergé egg, or an excellent replica, on a table beneath a gruesome painting of a guy in a kilt killing a boar. The artist had used an excessive amount of red paint. She paused to look more closely at the jeweled egg caught in the sunlight streaming through the window.

  Would anyone display the real thing this casually? Probably not. Still, it was very pretty.

  “You have some beautiful things in your home.” And if they weren’t walking at warp speed she might have liked to look at some of the artifacts and paintings on their safari.

  She had dozens of questions that had nothing to do with the freaking decor, but he’d have dozens of slippery replies, so why bother? The authorities could interrogate him—torture him for all she cared. After she was gone.

  “It’s home.” There was pride in the simple words.

  “When was it built?” she asked curiously, before reminding herself that she wasn’t a guest. “More to the point, how long did it take to build?”

  Sunlight, in dusty motes, streamed through the arched, leaded-glass windows on their right in a striped pattern down the entire length of the corridor. She walked through a shadow, then back through sunlight.

  “It was built in the Highlands of Scotland in 1321. Edridge Castle was the original seat of my family. Edridges have lived in it for eight hundred years.”

  She frowned. “I thought your name was Edge?” Boy, wasthat a name that personified the man. Hard. Sharp. Cutting.

  “Changed from Edridge to Edge by a distant relative in the mid sixteen hundreds.”

  “One step ahead of the law, was he?”

  “Magnus was cursed.”

  She knew the feeling. Her own marriage had been cursed too. Cursed by her own naïveté and stupidity. She’d actually convinced herself that she’d learned and grown from the experience. That she’d left those insecurities behind with the divorce. Apparently not.

  She walked faster to catch up, intrigued in spite of herself. The man must have eyes in the back of his head, because he sped up just enough to keep the distance between them exactly the same at all times. “Why was he cursed?”

  “Because he fell in love with the wrong woman.”

  “Was she married?”

  “No.”

  Eden sped up. Not that it made a jot of difference. The man must have a built-in radar. “Too young? Too old?”

  “No and no.”

  “Too pretty, too ugly? What? If she was single, then she would have been appropriate marriage material, right?”

  “He was betrothed.”

  “Betrothed?” Eden cut in with a smile she couldn’t help. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use that word.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Engaged. Happy now?”

  “Sure,” Eden replied somberly. “Who was he engaged to?”

  “The chieftain’s oldest daughter.”

  “I would’ve cursed him too,” Eden told his back. He sounded just somber enough to give the story verisimilitude, which surprised her. She would never have pegged him as a storyteller. He seemed too prosaic. Too intense and serious.

  Live and learn.

  “So he was fooling around onboth women.” She would’ve preferred a husband who had a girlfriend rather than the one who stole her inventions and patented them under his own name. But that was water under the bridge.

  Like her ex, this guy’s ancestor would have wanted to make the most advantageous alliance. In her case, she’d been the chieftain’s daughter and her credentials had been the village girl he’d loved. He hadn’t married her for h
erself. Adam had married her just to advance his career.

  Dr. Adam Burnett was a competent scientist who wanted to be brilliant. Once he’d realized that he’d reached his full, mediocre potential, he’d married her and set about taking credit for her early ideas and work.

  “Did he marry the chieftain’s daughter and dump the girlfriend?”

  “Nairne—the village girl—was pregnant. She was also a witch. She showed up at the kirk on his wedding day.”

  “Ouch. Both women probably cursed him.”

  “One curse was enough for a lifetime. Several lifetimes, in fact.”

  “True. Must’ve been a pretty powerful curse to last—what? four hundred years?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Really?” Eden said to his broad back, fascinated by that kind of unbroken history, and intrigued that this man, who appeared to be capable of kidnapping and all manner of other unsavory deeds, sounded as though he actually believed in witches and that said witch had put a curse on the entire family. She wondered how she could play into that to make her escape.

  “So, what kind of curse was it? Damned for all time or run-of-the-mill turned into a frog?”

  “The sons have to choose duty over love for all time.”

  “Payback for all eternity for being jilted? That’s pretty intense. Do you believe it?”

  “I don’t have to believe. It just is.”

  Uh huh.“Is that so? Who el—”

  “Subject closed.”

  In effect, door slammed in her face. Intriguing. Eden backed off, but saved the knowledge that he was superstitious for later when she could figure out how to use it against him.

  The irony was, for all her scientific background, she was a little superstitious as well. She never walked under ladders, and crossed the street if she saw a black cat.

  And even though she knew it didn’t have any basis in actual fact, she truly believed that wearing her Grandma Rose’s ring on her toe had brought her luck for most of her life.

  “Tell me about this place,” she said easily, glancing at the portraits as she passed them. All of the women were surrounded by varying size groups of boy and girl children. They all looked uncomfortable, no matter what period clothing they wore. Each woman wore the same three pieces of heart-shaped jewelry. A silver necklace, bracelet, and ring. Not particularly attractive or valuable. Must be something handed down to each new wife, Eden guessed. “What did you do? Have the original castle dismantled in Scotland, and brought here? Did you know Robert McCulloch bought London Bridge in 1962, dismantled it, and had it rebuilt in Lake Havasu City, Arizona? That engineering project took three years. But this…this must’ve taken three times that at least.” She imagined every stone with a number on it. One giant Erector set. She’d love to get her hands on the blueprint…

  “It didn’t take that long,” Gabriel told her dismissively.

  “Why Montana? Seems an odd place to stick a medieval castle.”

  “My mother’s folks had a ranch on this land, it was hers to do with as she pleased. She wanted to have the castle here. Enough personal questions.”

  Conversation closed, apparently.

  “Do you have a large family? People who’ll chip in to pay your bail when they arrest you for my kidnapping?”

  “No.”

  She stopped dead, and shot a glare, which of course he couldn’t see, at his back. “Give me a break here. I’m the prisoner, remember? I’m sure the Geneva Convention allows for polite conversation.”

  “It doesn’t, actually.”

  Behind his back Eden rolled her eyes before speeding up, trying to catch up with him.

  No go.

  As she walked she glanced at the portraits of men and women, all dressed in stiff, formal clothing, that lined the walls.

  “Are all these portraits your ancestors, or are they actors hired by your decorator?” Eden asked mildly, pretty damn sure that Gabriel Edge hadn’t hired a decorator for his castle, but she was not opposed to needling him. Just because she could.

  If he didn’t like it he could always take her back to Tempe.

  Gabriel nodded toward a portrait as he passed. “The first is Magnus’s mother, Finola. He’s the kid on the right. And the portrait to the left is Magnus’s bride, Janet.”

  Curious, Eden stopped while he, of course, moved a little farther down the hall before he stopped too.

  She went to stand under the portrait of a dour-faced woman holding a little white dog with bulging black eyes. Both woman and dog wore matching powder-blue satin dresses. Nestled in the many folds of the woman’s skirts sat three stair-stepped little boys with black hair, midnight dark blue eyes, and Stepford expressions.

  “Triplets?”

  “Nine months apart.”

  Eden rubbed a sudden chill from her upper arms. “No wonder she doesn’t look like a happy camper.” She glanced at the other portrait. A horse-faced girl clutching a pearl-studded fan in a death grip, also with three young boys clustered around her. This new bride wore no jewelry. Her neck, wrist, and fingers looked conspicuously bare without the twists of silver. “Doesn’t look as though Magnus made either his motheror his wife happy.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Well, hopefully Janet’s children fulfilled her. Didn’t they have dozens of kids in those days?” Eden couldn’t imagine how hard life had been in medieval times. Particularly for the women.

  “Only the three sons shown in the portrait. All Edge couples have three sons.”

  She had no idea why the closer he got, the harder her heart thumped. Eden turned to look at him. He was standing at least fifteen feet away. It was as though her body had a Gabriel antenna to let her know when he was approaching.

  “Really?” Improbable, but she’d let it pass for the moment.

  When she got back home she’d pull the research on pheromones to see if the antenna thing was documented, or if, instead, she was already suffering some form of Stockholm syndrome. She didn’t need to place two fingers on a pulse point to know it was going wild.

  Fascinating.

  “Three sons? That’s a genetic anomaly if ever I’ve heard one,” she murmured, distracted by the speed of her heart rate and the flush of her skin. Because he was watching her mouth she had to swallow before she managed to speak. “H-how far back?”

  Sunlight tangled in his dark hair and made his eyes molten and intense. Her stomach felt all jittery and her pulse fluttered wildly. God, the attraction was powerful. The sooner she got the hell out of here, the better.

  “Five hundred years.”

  Her lips tilted, because he sounded not only serious, but—beleaguered.By what, she had no idea. But anything that could annoy Gabriel Edge, even a far-fetched family fable, was fine by her.

  “I think someone is pulling your leg,” she told him dryly. “Five hundred years of only boys? No daughters?”

  “Not just boys.Three boys.”

  She glanced back at Janet’s mother-in-law. “Is that why—what was Magnus’s mother’s name again?”

  “Finola.”

  Eden stepped closer to the portrait of the older woman, eyes narrowed. “Is that why she’s wearing three pieces of jewelry? I noticed the same three pieces in other portraits as we were walking. One to give each son to pass down?”

  “The jewelry was given to the oldest son. Magnus. The story goes that he first gave the ring, the bracelet, and the necklace to Nairne. The village girl. When he told her he was to marry the chieftain’s daughter instead, she threw them back at him.”

  “And he took the same pieces and gave them to his new fiancée? Boy, talk about some tacky regifting. That was callous and unfeeling. No wonder the wife isn’t wearing them.”

  “It was customary in those times to give your betrothed jewelry. According to the stories passed down, he’d given the pieces to Nairne and when she—returnedthem, in keeping with tradition he gave them to Janet. There was no sentiment attached. The jewelry was valuable.”


  Eden stepped closer to better see the detail on Finola’s portrait. “Weird, my lucky ring looks a bit similar.” She glanced down the hall to where Gabriel had moved back into the shadows.

  “Mine’s just costume, and probably of no worth in dollars and cents, but for me, the sentimental value is priceless.” She glanced down fondly at the little black ring on the pinkie toe of her left foot.

  “My Grandma Rose gave it to me years ago.” She smiled. God, she’d adored her Grandma Rose. Her maternal grandmother had always been…happy.And bless her heart, Eden thought fondly, she hadn’t given a damn that her only grandchild was a little butterball of a misfit. A square peg in a round hole.