Fantastic.
Sighing, he looked down at Angeline, who now rested her head on his shoulder. How had this happened? “Don’t you want to find your … friend … before the clock strikes midnight?”
“I’m very happy where I am.” She lifted her head and squeezed his biceps. “You feel like a man. He feels like a boy. I like the difference.”
Her words struck so close to something Regan had said to him many months before that he flinched and looked away. “I’m not on the market.”
“I thought you said you weren’t married. Involved?”
“No.”
“Then I’m harming no one by keeping you company.” She squeezed his arm again. “Loosen up, darling. There’s nothing worse than standing alone at midnight on Hogmanay.”
“I’m not alone.” Thane looked over at Robyn, Arro, and Mac to see Lachlan had joined them. Where was Regan? He searched the crowd of guests and staff for her.
“Well, I am.”
Angeline’s forlorn tone brought his eyes back to her. She gave him a rueful, melancholy smirk. “I’m alone. I don’t want to be alone at midnight.”
As if on cue, the piper quietened the crowd with a blow of his mournful instrument. Then Lachlan’s voice boomed into the night. “Ten! Nine! Eight …”
Everyone’s voices joined him in the countdown, but Thane was too busy craning his neck in search of Regan. It was too shadowy to see much farther than a few feet, even with the lights along the side of the castle building offering reprieve from the darkness.
“Two! One! Happy New Year!”
Fireworks exploded into the sky above them right on time, illuminating everyone in pops and flashes of rainbow-hued light.
A hard yank on his waistcoat brought his head down, and Angeline slammed his mouth onto hers. Stunned into stillness, the damn woman took advantage and wriggled her tongue past his lips to lick at him. At his lack of response, she released him abruptly, scowling. “Well, kiss me back! It’s New Year’s!” She jerked him toward her again, but Thane’s gaze was drawn beyond her.
His heart stopped in his chest.
Illuminated beneath the raucous bangs of the fireworks, Regan stood in her uniform, staring at him and Angeline in absolute horror.
No!
Her eyes moved from the woman in his arms, the woman draped in his kilt jacket, to him.
And she looked at him with such hatred, Thane wanted to die.
“Regan.”
She whirled, her ponytail whipping a guest in the face, and pushed through the crowd.
“Thane?” Angeline pulled at him.
He disentangled from her grip, shoving her aside as gently but as firmly as he could, before hurrying after Regan.
“Where are you going?” Angeline called petulantly at his back.
Thane could kill the woman!
And himself for being too much of a fucking gentleman to tell her to piss off!
A flash of copper-red hair beneath the lights of the fireworks caught his eye, and he saw Regan dash into the castle.
“Excuse me, excuse me,” he muttered impatiently, his heart banging in his chest.
The deafening display in the night sky agitated his pulse even more.
There was no one in the reception hall when he finally made it inside. The sound of everyone breaking into “Auld Lang Syne,” as was Scottish tradition after midnight, irritated Thane. Didn’t they know not everyone was in a celebratory fucking mood now?
“Regan!” he shouted to be heard over them.
Desperation and fear shuddered through him.
Where would she go?
He knew the answer before he’d even finished the thought. Storming through the reception hall, Thane hurried to where he’d hidden for the past few hours before Angeline Potter found him and derailed his whole bloody evening.
Striding into the library, his pulse eased just a little as Regan spun from her spot near a bookshelf to face him. Her usually warm chestnut eyes were flat and dark.
“Why did you follow me?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Shouldn’t you be out there enjoying the tongue gymnastics of a BAFTA Award–winning actor?”
He winced at the way her voice cracked with emotion. “That wasn’t me.” He approached her slowly and paused as she retreated. “Regan, she kissed me.”
“Oh, really? I didn’t see you pushing her off. It must have been such a hardship for you.”
“It was, actually,” he growled. Her tongue was like a slug.
“I’m sure she thought her kiss was welcome, what with you giving her your jacket to wear and letting her snuggle all over you.” She spat snuggle like it was a dirty word, the flatness in her eyes replaced by angry fire.
Thane could deal with the fire. Fire was good. It was emotion. Flatness meant she no longer cared. And that, as fucked up as it was, he couldn’t deal with. Staring at her, her chest heaving with agitation, her lips trembling with emotion … God, he missed her. It had only been a week, and yet it felt like months since he’d held her.
“I gave her my jacket because she was cold. End of story.” He moved toward her again, and although Regan didn’t retreat, she eyed him warily.
“It’s none of my business, I guess. You’ve made that clear. I just thought you’d have more class than to move on to someone else less than a week after we broke up. She’s my age, you know.”
“I’m not moving on to bloody Angeline Potter!” he yelled, beyond frustrated now.
“Like I said, none of my business. Just like I’m none of yours.”
Yes, you bloody are. He stalked ever closer to her, eyeing the stupid cravat Lachlan made his staff wear, his fingers curling at the thought of ripping it off her throat so he could cover her skin in kisses and feel the throb of her pulse beneath his lips.
“You can kiss or sleep with whoever you want,” Regan continued with a shrug. “Just like I can.”
“You wouldn’t,” he bit out harshly.
Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, I would. Hell, Jared McCulloch has made it more than clear that he’d like me in his bed.”
Jealousy and rage flared through him as if she’d just dropped a match on a pool of petrol at his feet. “That pup?” He closed the distance between them, forcing her to tilt her head to hold his gaze. The image of Regan naked beneath McCulloch’s grandson nauseated him. “You’d only be doing it to fuck me out of your system, and you’d think of me the whole time.”
Devastation leaked through Regan’s defiance, cooling his anger. “True,” she whispered. “I’d wish it were you instead of him … but it wouldn’t change the fact that it would be him inside me. His cock, his lips, his hands, his—”
Thane hauled her against him, swallowing the words he couldn’t stand to hear. His kiss wasn’t gentle or gentlemanlike in the least. Holding her by the nape so she couldn’t move, Thane kissed her like he wanted to fuck her. Hard, ravaging, deep. Pushing her toward the bookshelves, trapping her against them, pulling at her thigh to spread her so he could fall between her legs. The roles were reversed, he thought, a tickle of amusement softening his furious lust. He had easy access beneath his kilt, but Regan was in trousers.
Never leaving her mouth, barely giving her time to breathe, wanting her to be overwhelmed by him, Thane fumbled for the zipper on her uniform trousers.