Taming the Scotsman by Kinley MacGregor

father was right. It did indeed sound like someone wringing a cat’s neck.
    “Let me have that,” Ewan said, pulling it from her hands before she tortured them further.
    Nora started to protest until he took the lute in his own hands and quickly tuned it.
    Stunned, she cocked her head and watched the expert way Ewan held and strummed the instrument.
    Why, he didn’t even need a pitch pipe to tune it like the minstrels she had seen in her father’s home.
    “You play?” she asked rhetorically.
    He answered by playing “Bad Roy’s Anthem.”
    Nora gaped at his expertise. Who knew the big, giant bear would be so talented?
    She’d never heard anyone play better. His largehands made the chords with an ease that bespoke years of tender practice. Fierce and strong hands that had also chopped and piled up wood the night before.
    Hands that belonged to a man wholly unrefined.
    Wholly unrefined and yet strangely delectable. Even more delectable now that she’d heard his skill.
    He handed it back to her.
    She smiled up at him as she tested the strings with her hands.
    “How much for it?” he asked the peddler.
    Nora paused at his words.
    “Five pounds, my lord.”
    Ewan didn’t even quibble. He pulled the money out and handed it over to the peddler. “Have you extra strings?”
    “Aye, my lord.”
    “I’ll a take two sets of those.”
    Her heart hammered at his kindness. Why would he gift her with such a thing? He barely knew her, and she had forced herself rather rudely into his life.
    He should hate her for what she’d done to him.
    Instead he gave her a present. One she had pined for every day since her father had destroyed her original lute.
    Once Ewan had paid the peddler for the strings, the man took his leave of them.
    Nora stood in the center of the road, looking upat Ewan in awe. At that moment, he was the sweetest man she’d ever known.
    She wanted to weep from her happiness and gratitude that he had bought this for her.
    It was all she could do not to kiss him for it.
    “Why did you purchase this for me?” she asked, her voice filled with her joyful tears.
    Ewan swallowed at her question. He still wasn’t sure why he had done it. Other than that the look on her face when she had seen it had struck him in the gut like a fist. It was obvious that the cheap lute would bring her untold hours of happiness, and for some reason that didn’t bear pondering, the thought of her being happy made his day brighter.
    Unable to speak a word of that, he shrugged and headed back toward his horse.
    “Wait!”
    He turned at her call.
    “Can we not stop for a bit and you show me how to play it? Just a little?”
    “Nora, we’ve still got—”
    Her face fell.
    So did his stomach.
    “Very well,” he relented. What was a few more minutes when added on to the others they had already wasted?
    Besides, he rather liked traveling with her. She was a fetching maid and did distract him from the past.
    At least for a bit.
    She bestowed a smile at him that dazzled his senses.
    She rushed toward a fallen log and took a seat on it while he grabbed the horses’ reins and led them to an area where they could rest and graze.
    Nora sat with the lute in her lap, held at an awkward angle. Seeking to correct her, Ewan put his arms around her to show her how to hold it and was immediately assailed with the fresh, sweet scent of her blond hair. With the softness of her hands on his. With the way she felt like heaven in his arms.
    Deep-seated need tore through him, making him so hard for her that he ached with it. He breathed in her scent, letting it wash over him as her hands touched his.
    Och, but the woman felt too good in his embrace.
    And she had tasted even better…
    Nora was all too aware of Ewan’s arms around her. Of his breath falling against her neck.
    Of the way his strong hands led hers to the frets and strings to show her how to play.
    She savored the warmth of him as dreams of her fictitious courtier evaporated. Gone was