Page 8 of In Love With the Wrong Highland Sister
Laria sighed, then led him over to a wall where a bracket protruded with a hook and chain attached to it. Laria passed the hook inside a similar one on the punch bag, straightened the bag, then put on her thick leather wrestling gloves.
“Do you have a spare pair?” James asked suddenly, nodding at them.
“There are some inside the storeroom,” she answered. Then she looked at his big hands and shook her head. “I doubt that you will find any to fit you, though.”
“Let me see,” he said, and walked away. He grinned. “There may be some misfits like me among your men.”
Laria’s gaze followed him, taking in his broad shoulders, narrow waist, and strong, muscled calves. His thick dark brown hair hung down his back in its usual queue in a style that irritated her. He had such beautiful hair that she wished he would let it fly free of its constraints. However, she told herself she had no right to complain. Eloisa was always saying the same thing about her hair.
Abruptly, she checked herself. This man was here to seek her sister’s hand, not hers, and she should not even be thinking of him in this way. She turned back to the punch bag and began to pummel it viciously.
While she was doing this, she usually thought of the physician who had told her about her barrenness. He had looked almost smug since he had always disliked her because she had dared to stand up against him and prove that he was wrong on one of his diagnoses.
“I am afraid the fever has left you barren, Mistress Laria.” The words were regretful, but his eyes were cold.
“I will never be able to have children?” she had asked, horrified.
“I am afraid not,” he told her. “Perhaps you can adopt one if you marry again.”
She growled while she was doing it, imagining that she had broken his nose, smashed his cheekbone, and knocked some of his teeth out. She swiped his head from side to side, then forwards and backward, even when he was unconscious. It was satisfying in the extreme.
* * *
James had no luck in his search for a pair of wrestling gloves, and he walked back toward the place where Laria seemed to be breaking someone’s bones while thoroughly enjoying it. He had never seen a woman behaving so aggressively before, and he was fascinated. She was growling as he had only heard wolves growling before, and her hands were hitting the punch bag so hard that he was sure her bones would break.
He enjoyed watching the movement of her body as she danced around it, so graceful yet so athletic all at once. Her arms were as muscular as it was possible for a woman’s to be without being considered mannish. As he gazed at her, he could feel his body responding to her, wondering how agile she would be in his bed. Then, abruptly, he gave himself a mental slap. He was here to court Eloisa, not her sister, yet the thought gave him no joy. The younger sister was only just emerging from childhood, whereas Laria was every inch a woman. His shaft hardened and twitched at the thought.
Presently she stopped and turned around. She was flushed, sweating, and breathless, but it took her only a moment to recover. She wiped her face with the back of her forearm and stared at him in a challenging fashion.
“I see that you did not find any gloves,” she remarked dryly.
“No.” James grinned at her mischievously. “I will just have to manage without them.”
Laria’s eyes widened as he cracked his knuckles, then pulled each finger out in turn before spreading them out into a fan shape. She noticed that his hands were so flexible that his thumb and little finger could make a straight line when stretched. They were enormous, and when he clenched them into fists, they looked like clubs.
Yet she was concerned for him. “Are you sure you will not break anything?” she asked anxiously, but once again, he gave her the same mischievous grin.
“There is always that possibility,” he replied nonchalantly. “But I have done this many times before, and it has not happened yet. However, I would stand a little farther away if I were you for your own safety.”
For a moment, Laria wondered what he meant, but she obeyed his instructions. She soon realized why as he began to batter the punch bag so viciously, and it swung to and fro so fast and hard that she would have been knocked over if she had been standing too close to it.
James was deliberately doing all he could to impress Laria, and by the look of her expression, he was succeeding. She was sitting on a low wall, looking at him in rapt fascination. The striking of his bare knuckles on the unyielding leather of the bag was incredibly painful and jarred his arm muscles all the way to his shoulder blades, but as he became used to the rhythm, he no longer felt it.
Eventually, he slowed down and came to a halt, then an enormous rush of well-being washed over him. This was something that always happened to him when he tested his body to its limits, and he looked forward to it. He did not know what caused it or if it ever happened to anyone else, but it made him feel so good that now he rushed over to Laria, swept her off her feet, and whirled her around and around until they were both dizzy and laughing.
When he set her down on her feet again, it took a moment for them both to recover, and they stood with their arms braced on each other’s shoulders for a while, still laughing. Eventually, they recovered, and each smiled into the other’s eyes for a moment.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, grinning.
“I have no idea,” James confessed. “Something always comes over me after I exercise. I feel so happy I cannot contain it. It always goes away after a while, don’t worry.”
Laria was almost hypnotized by him and the way his gaze moved from her eyes to her lips. She wanted to run her hands over his angular, square-jawed face and dig her hands into his thick dark hair. Then she would not have minded at all if he had taken her in his arms and kissed her senseless, but she came to her senses abruptly. She was being disloyal to Robbie by even thinking these things, and she had promised herself that she would never love another man.
“I have to go,” Laria said hastily, then turned on her heel and walked away quickly back to the castle. She knew that she should be feeling guilty—James was courting Eloisa, after all—but somehow, she could not. She had despised him at first because she did not feel that he was right for Eloisa, and she still felt that way.
Yet it came to her suddenly that James was not a bad man, and if she had been searching for a husband, she would definitely have considered him as a possibility.
But I am not,she told herself firmly.No one can replace Robbie.
