Finn nodded. “Aye.”
“But ye noticed her now, aye?” Ian teased some more. “I can see that she’s made quite an impression. Why don’t ye go after her?”
Finn’s head snapped up, and for a moment, all he could do was stare at his friend.
Shaking his head, Ian laughed, then clasped a hand on Finn’s shoulder. “Go and ask her name before she kisses another.”
With a bit of a shove in the right direction, Finn turned toward the tree line where she had disappeared. At first his steps were measured, but before long, large strides carried him onward. His heart once more began to dance the way it had when he had felt her lips upon his own, and he wondered how he could have failed to notice her before.
Certainly, she was young, having only recently grown into a woman, but those eyes…dark and deep like a loch full of hidden treasures, and yet, warm and delicate as though a wrong word could break her heart.
Striding past the large boulder on the edge of the glen, Finn scanned the tree line, his eyes narrowing as he tried to spot any sign of her. He glimpsed her footprints in the lush, frost-covered grass a moment before soft voices drifted to his ears.
Inhaling a deep breath as his heart once again leapt into his throat, Finn stepped forward, finding his way through the dense forest, his ears guiding him, picking out more than one voice. Silently, he slipped closer until he spotted a fair-haired head bobbing up from behind a thorny thicket growing around a group of conifers.
The young woman laughed, “I thought I would faint when I saw ye kiss him,” she gasped, a hand pressed to her chest. “Was it wonderful?”
Finn frowned as he edged forward, his eyes at last falling on the dark-eyed enigma who had stolen his breath. She stood with two other, equally young women−both of whom looked familiar, but whose names Finn could not recall, either. Her face looked tense as she glanced over her shoulder toward the glen. “Let us return to the tower,” she whispered, a hint of apprehension in her voice as she tried to pull the fair-haired girl onward. “I’m…chilled.”
“Come now, tell us of yer conquest,” the other dark-haired girl urged, an eager smile on her face. “After all, ye won the dare and proved us wrong. I never would’ve thought that ye’d have the courage to walk up to Finnegan MacDrummond and steal a kiss.”
Finn’s stomach clenched as the girl’s words sank in. A dare? She had kissed him because of a dare? Nothing more?
“Tell us, did it feel wonderful?” the fair-haired girl pressed, a sigh escaping her lips. “I think I would’ve gone weak in the knees if it had been me.”
Turning her head away, Finn’s brown-eyed enigma brushed a curl behind her ear. “‘Twas a kiss,” she all but bit out, and the harshness cut right through Finn’s tentative hopes. “Nothing more, nothing less. I won. That’s all that matters.” Rubbing her hands together, she beckoned the other two girls onward. “Now, let’s go or I swear my toes shall freeze off.”
Long after they had gone, Finn still stood leaning against the conifer at his back, his eyes closed as he replayed their words in his head. It had been nothing but a dare, and he had been a fool to think more of it. To think that there had been something between them, a silent bond that had brought them to this place the way his father had often spoken of the day he had first laid eyes on Finn’s mother.
As a child, Finn had often listened to his father tell this story, his words ringing with promise that one day Finn would find the same, a woman who was his other half, a woman he would recognise instantly, who would steal his breath and claim his heart.
And for a short moment, Finn had thought to have found her…and it had stunned him into speechlessness.
If only he had known from the beginning that their encounter had meant nothing to her. Nothing more but a claimed prize. A victory. A dare won.
Cursing under his breath, Finn spun on his heel and before he knew it his fists collided with the trunk of the conifer. Pain shot up his arm and into his shoulder, and blood welled up from the scrapes on his knuckles where the hard bark had cut through his skin.
Still, the pain in his heart far exceeded any physical discomfort he felt. How dare she kiss him? Before today, he had been happily oblivious to her. He had barely even noticed her. He had been content and at peace.
And now?
Now, he was achingly aware of her. He could still feel her soft touch as though she was right in front of him, and whenever he closed his eyes, he found her dark-brown ones looking into his. What had she done to him?
Would he ever be free of her? Or would he be doomed to carry her with him for the rest of his life?
Anger filled his heart, and Finn knew that he was no longer the same man he had been upon waking that morning.
Everything had changed.
He had changed.
And there was no going back.
How dare she?
Chapter One
Another Yuletide Season
Seann Dachaigh Tower, Scottish Highlands, December 1808Seven Years Later
“Run wee fishies!” Emma called as she chased after five-year-old Niall and his three-year-old sister Blair. “Run or the auld crab will catch ye! Snap! Snap!” Opening her arms wide, she brought her palms together with a loud clap right beside the little girl’s ear.
Blair shrieked in delight and doubled her efforts to evade Emma’s grasp, her little legs carrying her faster and faster until she reached the other side of the great hall of Seann Dachaigh Tower. Hiding under a large table set up for the yuletide festivities, Niall waved to his sister, beckoning her forward. The moment she fell to her
