All for You by Lynn Kurland Page A

arm. “Come, I’ll ferry you there.”
    Peaches ripped her arm away from his fingers so forcefully, she almost went sprawling. She regained her balance. “I think I’ve managed all twenty-eight years of my life without your help, thanks just the same.”
    He clasped his hands behind his back and just looked at her, silent and grave.
    Peaches knew she was making a colossal idiot of herself, but honestly, she just couldn’t help herself. She wasn’t going to be a notch on his chivalry belt just so he could tell his group of nobility pals he’d been nice to some poor Yank.
    She walked away, ignoring how slippery it was on the sidewalk and how cold her feet were getting in shoes that should have been limited to summer events.
    She had stalked almost to Holly’s before she realized someone was following her. A car, actually. A very expensive-looking,silver gray Mercedes that probably cost more than she would ever make in her lifetime.
    Typical.
    It waited until she was standing on the porch and had the door open before it drove off. Peaches decided that was probably for the best. She would go into Holly’s, have a lukewarm shower, then put herself to bed and forget about a man who had saved her during a tea that could have been an absolute disaster, then followed her home to make sure she got there safely.
    Obviously for his own perverse reasons, which she was sure included storing up amusing anecdotes to entertain his friends with.
    She put her shoulders back and headed for the shower.
    Her fairy tale awaited. The last thing she wanted was a titled, impossible, steak-eating jerk getting in the way.

Chapter 4
    S
tephen
let himself into his flat, shrugged out of his overcoat, then tossed it and his keys onto the table in the entryway. He glanced at it and for some reason the sight brought him up short. It was an eighteenth-century card table sporting extensive inlay that featured none other than Czar Peter himself. It wasn’t that which had startled him, it was that he had no idea where it had come from or when it had arrived. His grandmother had no doubt deposited it in his entryway. For all he knew, she had given him an extensive history of it at some point, but he imagined he had probably been too distracted by whatever paper he’d been working on at the time to pay attention. He would have to ask the details when next he was in London to have tea at her house.
    He bypassed the kitchen and made his way into his study and flicked on a lamp. He started a fire, then sat down in a ridiculously comfortable chair and heaved an enormous sigh of relief.
    And then he choked.
    But that was probably because he had just noticed the three men standing on the other side of the hearth in a neat little row.
    He didn’t bother reaching for any of Patrick MacLeod’s defensetraining. It was obvious to him by not only their somewhat vintage dress but their slight transparency that his visitors were not exactly of this world.
    He regained his composure and bought himself a bit of time by studying his companions. He wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t seen them before at Artane, but since he tended to avoid the paranormal, he couldn’t have said for certain. The only thing he was sure of was that none of the three had ever jumped out of an alcove and yelled “boo” at him.
    He realized with a start that he was starting to babble a bit, but really, who could blame him? He’d already been thoroughly knocked to his knees by an afternoon spent sitting next to Miss Peaches Alexander. Ghosts were the icing on the bun, as it were.
    The man—er, ghost, rather—closest to the fire was a Highlander with a very big sword. Stephen felt fairly confident in making that assessment given that he’d spent the previous weekend fighting off just such a lad up north. Tartans hadn’t had a set pattern or color until the eighteenth century—he congratulated himself on being able to produce that bit of trivia under such duress—so identifying that