This book was written because so many very kind people sent me notes asking for another vampire book. The hero is Scottish because the ladies on my message forum got together and presented me with a tear-jerking plea for a Scottish vampire (and threw in the demand that he make an appearance in a kilt). It is to all those wonderful readers that this book is dedicated.

Many, many thanks also go to Vicki L. Ankrapp, Michelle L. Graham, and Linda Morrison for all (separately) coming up with the title of this book. I can't thank you ladies enough for all the support and warm fuzzies you send my way!

"Hi." A woman stood in the doorway, American if her breathy voice was anything to go by. "Are you Payann, by any chance?"

Paen looked up from a tattered manuscript, wincing slightly at the mispronunciation of his name. The woman had to be from the southern US. No one else drawled his name into two syllables. "I'm Paen, yes. Can I help?"

"Hi," the woman said again, slipping in through the barely opened door, a big Cheshire cat smile on her face. "I'm Clarice Miller."

Paen was on his guard the second the smile hit her lips. Whose was she? he idly wondered as she smoothed down her sexy, nearly see-through gauzy dress before starting across the room in what he assumed was meant to be a seductive slink. Daniel's? No, Danny preferred redheads, and this woman had a mane of golden brown curls that spilled over her shoulders. Finn's? Clarice turned her smile up a notch as she stopped before the chair opposite him. She might possibly be Finn's, but his middle brother tended to prefer earthier women, Pagans and Wiccans. Clarice looked fresh out of an expensive salon or day spa. Which meant she had to belong to—

"Avery said you're the laird of Castle Death?" She tilted her head slightly, so she was peering up at him through her lashes in a pose he mentally dubbed the Princess Di look. It was charming on the late princess… less so on the American in front of him.