“Now you’re just trying to make me feel better.”

I laughed, as he’d expected me to.

He gulped the last of his beer. “Perhaps walking around with this book in my bag is making me paranoid.”

“Not to worry,” I said. “Because now it’s in my bag.” As soon as the words left my mouth I could feel the paranoia shifting from his shoulders to mine.

He smacked his forehead. “That was shortsighted of me. I don’t want to put you in any danger. Give it back.”

“No, no,” I said, shaking off my anxiety. “I’m not worried. No one knows I have it, right? It’s you I’m concerned about.”

“Thank you, darling,” he said, squeezing my hand before letting it go. “But it’s not necessary. I’ll be careful.”

“You’d better be.”

The bartender walked over and asked if he could refill our drinks. Kyle ordered a third pint. I passed.

“Suppose we go at this from another angle,” I said when the bartender left. “Who are these scholarly experts you discussed the book with?”

“I’ve shown it to only three people. Perry McDougall was the first.”

“Perry?” The guy who’d cut me off in the store. “Why’d you show it to Perry?”

He was taken aback by my antipathy. “Because he’s a scholarly expert,” he said defensively. “If anyone can verify such rumors, it would be Perry.”

“But he’s such a jerk.” I briefly explained my run-in with Perry at the hotel store.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and gave me a quick hug. “I suppose he is a bit of a boor, but he’s an expert in the field. And he and I get along well. Or we used to, before this happened.”

“Why? What did he say?”

He sighed. “He was outraged, insisted the book was blasphemous and a fake besides. He told me I’d better not show the book to anyone else or I’d find myself in more than a spot of trouble.”

“So he threatened you.” My eyes narrowed. “Now I wish I’d slugged him.”

“There’s my girl,” he said with a grin, then waved my concerns aside. “That’s just Perry. He tends to think the world revolves around him.”

The bartender returned with Kyle’s ale. Kyle thanked him and took a long sip.

“You honestly don’t think Perry was threatening you?” I persisted.

“He’s just Scottish,” he explained.

“Unfair,” I said with a laugh. “I’ve met plenty of happy Scotsmen. He’s not one of them.”

“True,” Kyle said. “I’ve seen him go off on other people, but it was never like this. He turned purple, right before my eyes. Warned me that if I dared discuss the erotic poems or the Princess Augusta Sophia connection, there would be dire consequences.”

“Dire consequences?”

“Yes. He didn’t explain what he meant. Just, well, he threw me out of his room.” Kyle looked more upset by this than by the attempt on his life. I understood his pain. He was considered the golden boy of the British book trade, slick and charming, accustomed to being adored by everyone.

“I’d like to know what he looks like when he’s truly angry,” I said. “Since he basically looks pissed off most of the time.”

“It’s not attractive,” he muttered.

“But you don’t think he was threatening you? Sounds like he was to me.”

“Perry’s volatile, but he’s not generally murderous.” He crossed his arms. “I knew the book would be controversial, but I imagined people would be excited, not furious. I just wanted to stir up some interest from a few key buyers. I certainly never expected to become a target.”

“I say Perry is the most likely suspect.”

He frowned thoughtfully, then threw his arm around me and rested his temple against mine. “Maybe I’m imagining the whole thing, Brooks.”

“It’s not your imagination that someone tried to run you down, Kyle,” I said. “You have a witness. The hotel valet.”

“True,” he allowed.

I patted his chest companionably. “Now, who are the other two you showed the book to?”

A quiet trilling sound erupted from Kyle’s jacket pocket. He looked disoriented for a second, then pulled away and quickly scrambled for his cell phone. “Yes, hello? No. Yes. Damn it. Fine. Right, five minutes.” He hung up the phone and slid it back into his pocket.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Um, yes. No. Yes.” He looked as confused as he sounded. He shook his head, glanced around the pub. “I’m being an ass. Sorry. I’ve got to run.”

Kyle stood up, then leaned over and kissed me on both cheeks and stroked my hair. “You’ll take care of yourself.”

“I will, but-”

“And the book. Look after it for me.”

“Of course. Maybe we can-”

“Yes,” he said with conviction. “Yes, we can. I’ll call your room later and we’ll set up a time to talk some more. Love you, darling. Ta.”

And with that, he rushed off, leaving me alone with the book and the tab.

On the way back to the hotel, I stopped at a bookstore and purchased a paperback copy of Robert Burns’s selected poems, specifically because it included some history of the time and a glossary to help translate Burns’s old Scottish dialect.

Next door was a convenience store, where I bought three bags of Cadbury Chocolate Buttons and two large bottles of water. As I walked back to the hotel, I thought about Kyle. The book fair women I knew had always called him the Bad Boy Bookseller, and yes, the moniker was completely deserved. He was charming and slick and he’d always managed to slip and slide through relationships and love affairs, leaving a trail of brokenhearted women in his wake. And yet, everyone loved him. It helped that he was gorgeous and wealthy.

But today I realized that while he still had that same charm about him, he was right to say that he’d mellowed a bit. I didn’t know if it was because of the attempt on his life or if he was just growing up. Whatever it was, I liked it. I liked him. Then again, I didn’t have to date him, did I?

Back at the hotel, I went straight to the front desk and asked for a safe-deposit box. Once Kyle’s book was safely tucked away and I had the key zipped securely inside my purse, it was time to head for my room. I was beyond tired and starting to see double as I crossed the lobby and turned down the wide hall to the bank of elevators.

“Oh, no, they’ll let any piece of trash in here these days.”

I recognized that shrill, grating voice. Heat flared up my neck like a bad rash, and my stomach twisted in a knot as I turned.

“Minka,” I said through clenched teeth.

Minka LaBoeuf, my archenemy and worst nightmare, approached me slowly, her hips gyrating alluringly-if you were a water buffalo. I grew concerned for the fragile antique furniture nearby. One wayward thrust of those hips could destroy any one of the elegant Georgian side tables that lined the wide hall.

Back in college she’d tried to incapacitate me by stabbing my hand with a skiving knife. She’d been a pain in my ass ever since.

Of all the hotels in all the world, she had to walk into mine.

“What are you doing here?” I asked before I could stop myself.

“Working,” she said proudly. Her leopard-skin spandex top emphasized her hefty breasts along with several rolls of stomach fat. “For one of the most brilliant men in Scotland.”

“A pimp?”

“Do you see me laughing?” she asked frostily. “You’re not funny.”

“You’ve never had a sense of humor,” I said, pounding the button to hurry the elevator along.

“Perry McDougall is the top expert in Regency and Georgian-”

“Wait, you’re working for Perry McDougall?”

“Yes,” she said smugly, apparently mistaking my horror for admiration. “He specifically requested me to be his assistant this week.”

I was speechless. Knowing Perry actually thought this Goth twit was capable of even a smidge of competence in the workplace lowered my estimation of Perry even further, if that was possible.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she said.

“Wowie?”

She smiled tightly. “You’re just jealous.”