My Heart Stood Still by Lynn Kurland (best book club books of all time .TXT) 📕

knees with its many layers of meaning. Change her clothes. Change her hair.

Change her life.

Megan took off her coat. "Look at how I'm dressed. Jeans. Sweater. Sneakers on your feet. We'll look like twins, but you'll be the one they'll be staring at." She smiled encouragingly. "Go ahead, Iolanthe. Give it a try."

Well, she couldn't deny that she'd had practice in creating clothing from a picture. How much harder could it be to create them from someone standing in front of her? She looked carefully at Megan's clothes, front and back, then imagined them up on herself.

Megan blinked, then grinned. "Wow, I wish I could do that. See, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

Iolanthe looked down at herself, surprised at how strange it was to see herself in something besides her usual garb. Stranger still to see herself in blue trews. She felt almost indecent in clothing that showed the shape of her legs so clearly.

"I don't know ..." Iolanthe said hesitantly.

"It's what everyone wears," Megan assured her. "You won't stand out."

"The garrison might have something to say about that," Iolanthe muttered. She looked at Megan and smiled weakly. "I suppose I'm ready."

"Then let's go. Today, the village. Tomorrow, Edinburgh. That's a really great place to shop."

"Well—"

Megan walked to the door. "Don't think about it, Iolanthe. We're worrying about today and today alone. Tomorrow will take care of itself."

Megan was already out the door before her last words were spoken, leaving Iolanthe no choice but to follow her. Iolanthe looked down at herself and wondered if she was making a horrible mistake.

Megan poked her head back in the door. "Coming?" she asked.

She looked so encouraging that Iolanthe found it impossible to beg off, which she would have done with any other person. So she put one foot in front of the other and followed Megan down the stairs to the dirt courtyard. She ignored the slack-mouthed stares of her garrison and Duncan's eyebrows, which were raised so far they disappeared under his hair.

"See?" Megan said with a wink as they walked through the gates. "Hardly a ripple in the water."

Even the MacDougal was speechless as they passed. Iolanthe supposed that perhaps new clothing now and then was a boon if that was the result.

She followed Megan from the castle, feeling as commandeered as she had the first time Thomas had pried her from her prison. Was this the way of things with all his family? Were they all so cunning? Or was she so weak she couldn't stand up to any of them?

"Isn't this fun?" Megan asked brightly as they walked down the path to the road. "You need to get out more, Iolanthe. It's good for you."

As was Megan de Piaget, apparently. Iolanthe smiled weakly and followed along, docile as a lamb.

The saints preserve her.

Chapter 21

A week later, Thomas sat in a glass-walled boardroom and stared out over the Manhattan skyline. He'd stopped listening an hour ago to the threats and counter-threats being swatted from one side of the table to the other like tennis balls. It wasn't that he didn't stand to make a great deal of money in the takeover. As chairman of the board, he would take home a very comfortable severance package. And it wasn't as if he was worried about his employees either. He'd already offered them the services of a professional headhunter to find them other comparable work if they so chose—at his expense. It wasn't even that someone had been sly enough to arrange things so selling was more attractive than being driven out of business by another larger firm.

It was that the firm doing the driving belonged to Arthur Davidson.

Tiffany's father.

Thomas pulled his gaze away from the afternoon sunlight glinting off buildings and looked at his erstwhile future father-in-law. The man was a shark and apparently had no compunction about backing Thomas into a corner because of his daughter's whim. Thomas had no doubt Tiffany was behind it. She'd already left a dozen messages at his hotel over the last week. He didn't suppose she was physically stalking him yet, but that couldn't be far behind.

Thomas began to look for an excuse to get out of there. What he needed was to call the inn and see how Iolanthe was doing. Maybe she was just hanging out in the sitting room and Mrs. Pruitt could hold the phone for her so they could talk. He'd known he would miss her, but he hadn't expected it to be this gut-wrenching.

The other surprising thing was how he now felt about the city. He'd always loved Manhattan. He'd loved the smell of the place, the sights, the sounds. But now it was just noise and dirt. He had a surprising longing for driving on the wrong side of the road, toast that was cold for breakfast, and drinks that didn't freeze your throat on the way down.

And he longed for Iolanthe. He wanted to tell her of the bloody siege going on in the boardroom, of the fools who fought on either side, of their stratagem that made his head ache. He wanted to sit in her room with her and listen to something on the stereo, sit in her garden and watch her flowers bloom, sit with her in the sitting room of the inn and enjoy the fire.

He looked at his attorney and wondered if making a break for the john would fly. It wasn't as if Jake couldn't handle the negotiations on his own. Thomas prized his attorney for his smooth-as-silk exterior, which hid a ruthlessness that had left Thomas awestruck the first time Jake had displayed it. Duncan MacLeod would have found the man very much to his liking.

Davidson's henchman excused himself, and Thomas saw his chance. He followed the man out, ready to tail him to the bathroom and then maybe down to the street for a snack.

Apparently, a trip to the can was a ruse. Thomas followed the man right into his office. Well, now he was