"Royal secrets and state intrigue?" Her voice shook. "I don't believe it."

"Believe as you like. But you will sit beside me until you are warm."

"I won't be warm. I won't be able to rest. Not here." She stared at the narrow stone walls, then across at the locked door. "Oh, God, it's locked. I'm trapped in here...." Her breath came fast and harsh.

"Hope." He turned her face toward him. "Breathe slowly."

After a moment, she did as he ordered. Then he pulled her down beside him on the rough bench.

She was still too tense, too cold.

"I can't bear being in a tiny room." She closed her eyes, shuddering. "I...I go to pieces."

"To pieces?"

"Fall apart," she said shakily. "Lose my head."

He traced her forehead. "And it is such a nice head."

"I'm being serious here, M-MacLeod."

Too serious for his understanding. It was only a locked door. The danger lay outside it. But he waited, patient, giving her time to explain. Maybe then he could understand.

She sniffed, brushed at her cheek as another tear slid from her eye. "I don't want anyone else to know."

He bent his head. "I will tell no one."

She relaxed slightly, leaning against his shoulder. "It's not the locked door or even the room that bothers me. Some part of me knows that. The doctors...the experts say it's transferred trauma from something that happened to me when I was thirteen..."

Silently MacLeod slid one arm around her rigid shoulders. What secret could hold such pain? Had she been harmed, violated? If so, he would find the jackal and cut out his black heart.

He steeled himself to hear the worst, hating how her hands shook and her breath came fast and sharp. "First breathe deeply. Then tell me all of it."

She drew a slow breath. "I was visiting my uncle when the news came. It was early afternoon and I still remember it was raining, big, heavy drops that hammered at the glass. I was looking for an old book in his upstairs closet." Her eyes closed and she pressed closer, as if seeking his heat, one animal to another. "It was so quiet that day, so still. At first..." Her hands twisted, twisted.

She was seeing a dark place, MacLeod realized. A place with images too painful to bear.

He didn't touch her, didn't soothe her, though he yearned to do both. It was better for her to finish the tale first. "Breathe," he ordered.

She swallowed, then drew a jerky breath.

"Now tell the rest."

"It was my parents...they were gone. There was a boating accident in the Mediterranean." She swallowed hard. "It was the day before my birthday."

There was more, he sensed. Something that hurt even more cruelly. He wanted to hold her, to warm her and make her forget the darkness of her past.

But it was not his right.

"I wasn't supposed to hear, of course. The lawyer came to notify my uncle, but I was just up the stairs. I heard everything...." Tears slicked her cheeks. She stared at the walls, making no move to push the tears away.

MacLeod said nothing, feeling helpless at her pain. "What did you hear?"

"How they died." Her eyes shimmered, haunted. "They had been drinking. Fighting..." She made a flat, angry sound, brushing at her cheeks. "The door was open, and I heard everything. All I could think of was that I was alone. Really alone this time. It wasn't just another long vacation to Greece or shopping cruise to Hong Kong." She stared blindly at her locked hands. "Sometimes I even forget what they looked like. My own parents." Again her breath went ragged.

"Breathe, mo cridhe," he whispered.

She shook her head. "I have to tell it all, now that I've started. For hours I sat against the wall, certain if I moved, something even more terrible would happen. I waited for someone to come. I waited and waited and I couldn't speak, not one sound. It seemed like hours-a lifetime. Now I'm locked in again. I'm waiting, just like then. Waiting..."

"Not like then," MacLeod said fiercely, cradling her cold, wet face. "There is no terrible news to come. You are warm here. Safe." He pulled her into the curve of his chest and stroked her shining hair, sickened that he had not understood sooner.

No wonder the locked door had fed her fears.

"Your friends will come. Think of that instead of the past. And also breathe."

She drew in air with shaky gulps. "I have to be told to breathe. How p-pathetic."

His hands tightened on her face. He fought the image of how her mouth would feel against him now and was dishonored by the thought.

She pulled the canvas cloth tighter around her shoulders. "What do we do now?"

"Talk, since you have begun." He was finding it amazingly pleasant to hold a woman this way.

There had never been time for talking before. Or for listening. No time for anything except surviving.

His fingers toyed with a curl at her ear. "Tell me what happened when they found you."

"You truly want to know?"

"If not, I would not ask."

Hope sighed and rested her cheek on his shoulder. "My uncle came. He didn't try to make me move. He just...talked. And talked, while the rain hammered on."

MacLeod had to smile at the image of the two of them. Her uncle must have been a wise man.

"What did he say?"

"He told me about carrots. About books and ducks in the rain. About boats and cars and...dying."

She swallowed. "Then he told me they were never coming back, but that I would stay with him now. All the time. Just the two of us." She gave a soft whimper. "Oh, God, how I miss him."

A very wise man. A very lucky man, too, MacLeod thought. He let his fingers slide through her hair.

Her breath was steadier now and he was warm with the touch of her, warm with the press of her body.

And as her hair stirred against his cheek, the Scotsman discovered a new kind of pain that had nothing to do with old sword wounds.

Suddenly her scent tested his sanity. Heat snapped, racing wherever their bodies met. Each contact tightened muscles he had always prided himself on being able to control.

But with this woman Ronan MacLeod found that control was a thing of memory.

He did not move. She needed the comfort of another body, and he could not refuse her-even when his own needs grew overpowering.

"What's wrong?"

He tried to appear calm and brotherly. "Why do you ask?"

"You look pale, the same way you did outside. Is it your knee again?" She bent forward, running her hand over the rigid muscles.

Other muscles answered, hard with rising demand. "No," he grated. "I am not in pain." Not the pain she spoke of.

"You don't look fine. You look like a truck just ran over you."

MacLeod had no idea what the word truck meant. He felt only as if something big and noisy had struck him down. The brush of her fingers, so close to his groin, was consuming the last shreds of his control.

"Hope."

"You can tell me what's wrong," she whispered, her eyes huge in the half-light. "Did I say something, do something?"

MacLeod sighed. There could be no secrets from her. She was recklessly honest, and perhaps that was part of why she fascinated him. Honesty was not a quality he had often met, and she had enough for ten men. "The pain is not at my knee," he muttered.

Her hands moved, each stroke killing him with pleasure. An inch higher and he would die.

"Not at your knee? But you said before that-" A wave of color raced across her cheeks. "Oh." She swallowed, her eyes flickering midway down his kilt. "That."

"That," he said gravely.

She sat back, staring intently at her hands. "I...I'm sorry. I didn't think."

"There is no reason for apology."

"I'll stop. I don't want to make things any...harder for you." She started to stand up, her face bleak.

"When will someone open that door? Why don't they come now, before I make a bigger fool of myself?"

He caught her hand, surprising himself as much as her. "Do not stop."

"But you just said-I mean, you look as if-"

"I am no callow youth, Hope. I will not be driven witless by a man's need."

Hope stared at him.

A man's need. Did she truly stir this man so deeply, she who had never shown any great aptitude with body parts and uncomplicated attachments?

She searched for the answer in his face, in his tense jaw, in the heat that shimmered in those extraordinary, changeable eyes of his.

Maybe it was the knowledge of his need that sent heat uncurling through her. Beneath her hand, his skin felt hot and tight, and she wondered what the rest of him would feel like. She coughed sharply, shocked by the hot image of his body spread beneath hers in the grip of passion.

Need burned, sent blood racing through her face. It was his turn to touch her face questioningly.

"Something frets you?"

Fret wasn't the word for it, Hope thought bleakly. She was locked in a shed, struggling with cruel memories she had never been able to put behind her. And to top it off, she...

Wanted.

That was the only word for this hot, helpless yearning. She had never...wanted like this before.

She closed her eyes, trying to think straight. The gentle rhythm of his palm at her neck was making her dizzy. There was no excuse for making a thing out of this. It wasn't as if there hadn't been other men in her life.

But she'd never let any of them get half so close, Hope admitted. She'd never wanted to. And not a single one had ever sent her common sense flying out the window like this man did.

"You are afraid?"

She shook her head.

"Cold?" His hand slid up and down her arm, reviving circulation that needed no such assistance.

Now she was burning up, getting hotter each time his hand moved.

"Come closer," he ordered.

If she moved closer, she would die, Hope thought. She tried not to look at his mouth, tried not to think how his body would feel against hers. "I-I have something to tell you," she blurted.

"Then tell me. I will keep your secrets."

He was grave. Too grave, she thought. Too gentle.

"I'm not good at this, not good with men." She looked away, anywhere but his eyes. Awkward or not, she had to tell him. He had to understand that getting involved with her would be a colossal mistake.

"Not good with what men?"

"Any men," she said breathlessly. She watched her hands open and close. "What I told you before was a lie. I can't seem to keep things light. I talk too much, ask too many questions, and I never know where to put my hands." She gnawed at her lip. "And afterward, when it's over, I never can pretend that..."

He brought her palm slowly to his mouth. "Pretend what?"

She blinked, trying to remember. "That it meant nothing. That it was just heat, just two bodies, four hands, and...heat." Her eyes shimmered. "I mean, it's supposed to mean something, isn't it? It's supposed to make you feel different, changed. Linked. Flesh of my flesh."

He planted a gentle row of kisses down her neck, melting acres of nerve ends beneath her hair.

"What...are you doing?"

He nipped her skin, then slid his teeth across the sensitive mound at the base of her palm. "Pleasing you."

"Don't," she whispered. "I can't think when you do that, and I'm being serious here."

"I can see that."