Her eyes darkened. "I'm not laughing."

"Do you believe me then? Do you accept that Glenbrae is mine?"

She shook her head slowly. "How can I?"

But he wanted her to believe him. It hurt to feel how much he wanted that. MacLeod hit the water hard and sent silver beads flying. "Is it the truth you want? I am fit of mind and body, this is my truth. I have finally come home to the glens-only to find I've come centuries too late. The year, my year, is 1298." He glared at Hope. "Hold your sides and laugh. I would did I hear such a wild tale."

But she did not laugh. "You know it can't be true. People don't leap through time. Einstein said it was possible, of course. Theoretically."

MacLeod stiffened. "Then take me to this Einstein. Maybe he can send me back."

Hope made a soft, exasperated sound. "Einstein is dead."

Another blow. "He was a great magician, this Einstein?"

"No, he was a nuclear physicist."

Again she spoke in riddles. "I understand none of this," he said harshly. "Why do you raise possibilities, only to destroy them?"

Her head tilted. "Maybe you're confused from the storm. After all, that plank did crash down on your head after you caught me...."

"'Tis no dream I am having, woman! I know the year and I have all my wits sound in my head. The loch, the glen, even that house on the hill-all were present and real when I left in the night. Only their age has changed."

He dared her to throw back her head and roar at his misbegotten story.

But she did not. Her expression only grew graver. "I'm worried about you."

"I do not need your pity."

Her head tilted. "I said 'worry,' not 'pity.' There's a major difference."

Not to him. He had never known a woman's worry, nor her concern. Feeling them now left him in greater confusion.

The Scotsman muttered a rough phrase in Gaelic. "What I say appears impossible. Yet I also know I am here beside you, locked in a time that is not my own."

She made no answer. MacLeod knew that there was no answer to give. He could not fault her for the disbelief in her eyes.

Arguing, too, was pointless.

He turned away, his knee throbbing from the cold. To distract himself, he bent low, scooped up sand from the loch's bottom, and scrubbed his back.

"What are you doing now?"

"Washing."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You're turning blue in there."

"It is my choice. Besides, the water is bonny." He tried to ignore how his jaw clenched against the chill seeping into his bones. "'Tis the company which does naught for my temper."

"Don't be an idiot, MacLeod. Come back to the house."

He slung another handful of sand onto his shoulder. What answers were there for him in the bright, strange rooms? "I will stay here."

"And freeze to death, no doubt."

"I can freeze as I choose," MacLeod thundered. "This is my land. At least it was my land," he added grimly.

"You'll be lost by dark. Or maybe you'll break your neck when you fall off the cliff."

"Sorry I am to bother you, lady. When next I ride through time, I shall try to choose a more convenient hour and place to do it."

"That's not what I meant."

"No? You do not hear a word I say. You do not listen because it makes you uncomfortable. You look at me and feel pure terror. I can see it clearly in your eyes."

She blinked. Again the fear was there, just as he had said.

MacLeod finished scrubbing his back, then turned to wash his chest. The air between them shimmered with tension.

He dropped the last of a handful of sand. "I'm coming out now."

Hope glared back at him, her body rigid.

"Very well." MacLeod waded toward the bank. "If you wish to fill your eyes with all of me, then remain."

Two bright spots of color raced into her cheeks. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? You enjoy being a bastard."

"I am wedlock born, woman. Were you a man, you would regret those words."

"I can hardly contain my terror, Your Worthiness." His patterned wool sailed through the air and struck him full in the face.

MacLeod barely managed to catch one end before the whole length tumbled into the water. Cocky wench.

His throbbing leg, empty stomach and growing frustration made him more reckless than usual.

Since she thought his behavior crude, let him convince her of the fact now.

Grinning, he tossed the bright fabric over his shoulder, where it fell to one hip. His gaze never left her face as he strode from the loch, up the bank and directly toward her, naked as the day God made him.

Now let us see who would stay and who will bolt, the Crusader thought.

CHAPTER NINE.

HOPE TOOK A STRANGLED breath and fought to keep her gaze on MacLeod's face.

It was a magnificent face, she admitted. Angular and sharp, his cheekbones were washed with color.

Pride shimmered in his eyes, and his long hair lay slick and dark down his neck.

He could have been the twin of the man in the painting above the stairs, she realized. Was it possible his fantastic story was true? How else could she explain his confusion, his strange garb and his uncanny knowledge of the house?

Even now he stood with rigid arrogance, lord of his lands. Only they weren't his lands, they were hers, and he was going to have to accept that-along with the true date.

Her head began to pound. There was no sense trying to understand the inexplicable. Meanwhile he seemed just as confused as she was.

The water slapped gently at her feet. In spite of her irritation, Hope was drawn to the man, touched by his uncertainty and pain.

Unconsciously her gaze strayed lower, past the taut stomach ridged with muscle, past the snug hips, down where water hung in tiny beads that glittered below his navel.

Bad idea.

The man was gorgeous. Drop-dead gorgeous. And there was something heartbreakingly lost about him, even in his anger.

Hope didn't like the wave of heat uncurling through her chest. So what if he was good-looking? She considered herself a liberated twentieth-century woman. She knew how the human body worked and she understood the mechanics of sexual arousal in precise detail. But seeing a man of such stunning endowment up close was a shock. He was so alive, so complex.

So confused.

Something blocked her throat. The only one confused here is you, a voice warned. Ronan MacLeod was about as helpless as a gorilla on steroids. Almost as ill-tempered, too.

You can't afford to be protective, she thought. Not when you know next to nothing about the man.

Yet she continued to stand, continued to stare. Hope had to admit she was enjoying the view, every muscled inch of it, even if he was freezing to death in that icy water.

"Do you find the sight of me pleasurable, woman?"

Hope swallowed. One second the man was confused, the next he was all rottweiler.

"Not particularly." As a lie, it was spectacular, but he didn't have to know that. She spun about and started for the house. "Go on and freeze, if you insist. Drown in the loch. Get lost in the peat bog."

With every word her heart hammered harder. "Break your neck up there on the cliffs. It makes no difference to me," she said unsteadily. "I don't c-care a bit, understand?"

In one pace he caught up with her and pulled her around to face him. "Pie Jesu, you are crying."

Emotion left her trembling. "So what if I am?" She fought vainly to pull away.

"You are crying for me?" MacLeod asked.

"Don't let it go to your head. I'd cry for anyone who looked as lost as you did when I came out here. And it doesn't mean a thing, understand?" Hope ignored the feel of his hands on her shoulders. She ignored the damp wool crushed against her chest and the rigid wall of muscles beneath. "I m-might as well be crying for a lost puppy or a bird with a broken wing. And as for that ridiculous story you told me about being lost in time-"

The madness seized MacLeod before he could control it. All he knew was that she was trembling against him and that the tears on her cheeks were for him.

For him.

He pulled her against him in midsentence. A hardened soldier, he knew when to argue and when to storm enemy terrain.

He stormed now.

He breached every defense. Hands rigid, he caught her shoulders and lifted her face to his. She was still arguing when he slid his fingers into that piquant cap of shining chestnut hair and kissed her.

Her scent filled his senses, spring meadows after soft rain. Closing his eyes, he sealed his mouth to hers, hunger driving away all subtlety and restraint. He had to have the taste of her, deep and long.

He had to have her against his mouth now.

She shivered-and then her lips opened. In that second Ronan MacLeod became the besieged.

By all the saints, she was sweet and achingly soft. Her mouth moved against his, driving his pulse to madness, and he groaned when he felt her breasts harden, small and firm, thrusting against his chest. He ached to explore the taut red tips, to pull them against his teeth and make her whimper with the same damnable need he was feeling.

MacLeod felt his blood stir. He swore to let her go in a few more seconds. Maybe then he wouldn't smell her, wouldn't want her so much that he couldn't draw a normal breath.

He stared down. She was all flushed cheeks and gleaming eyes. She looked...

Dazed. Overwhelmed.

He heard her small moan, but the sheen of desire in her eyes told MacLeod the whimper came from pleasure, not fear.

It was her hands that caught his face and drew him back to her. And it was she who made a broken sound of need when his lips opened over hers again.

She tasted like the cider his mother had prepared when he was a boy, a blend of fruit, heather and a dozen subtle herbs. The result was just as smooth, just as flawless.

MacLeod didn't move, lost in the sliding textures of the kiss. She moved beneath him, their breaths mingling as his fingers sifted through her smooth hair. Desire left him dizzy as her mouth trembled, opening to his tongue.

He nearly took her then, there beside the icy loch with her odd clothes in shreds beneath them. God knew he wanted to.

Except for the first time in his adult life, Ronan MacLeod had tasted tenderness from a woman, and it shocked him. This woman did not fear him or goad him to violence. She baited him, confused him, intrigued him-but as a complete equal.

The realization stunned him.

Time staggered. All the world seemed to halt while the air thickened, heavy with the need that rose between them.

MacLeod had never needed a woman before. A warrior needed a battle horse, a sword and armor, but not a woman. Conquests had been simple, uncomplicated bouts of heat and skin, meant only to dim the fire of physical urges. No woman had ever asked for more from him. No woman had ever dared.

But this one would. Already she leaned into his touch and smoothed the old marks on his back with her soft fingers. Yes, this woman would want answers and honor and a lifetime of touching. She would ask for nothing less than his very soul.

And MacLeod sensed he would blindly give it to her.

He lowered his head and took her mouth again, this time with exquisite skill. He used all the knowledge learned with the wrong women, praying that he pleased her well. Somehow, pleasing Hope O'Hara had become infinitely more important than satisfying his own desires.

With a sigh, she moved against him, pliant and strong. Her response left MacLeod dizzy and utterly disarmed. Blindly he traced the arch of her lower lip and the velvet of her mouth, storing away every detail.

Caught in the intensity of the kiss, he forgot the need to balance his weight on his good knee.