Ned leapt away in a flash. His kilt fell over his body, and Ree pulled her skirts down to her ankles again. The moment passed, and Ned’s passion died. This wasn’t the place to enjoy Ree the way he wanted to.
He took the oars and rowed the rest of the way to the ship’s side, positioning the dinghy under the Jacob’s ladder. He wasn’t sure what to do next, but at that moment, Ree raised her head and locked her eyes on him for one terrible moment. Then she stood up in the bilge, kissed him once, and turned away. She seized the ladder and hauled herself up until he lost sight of her in the blackness.
Chapter 30
A sailor wrenched Ree’s arm almost out of its socket as he snatched her up from the side of the ship and pulled her aboard. He dragged her to the cabin and thrust her inside, slamming the door shut behind her. She looked around to find herself in a well-appointed captain’s cabin. One man sat at the table with an elaborate meal spread out before him.
Ree drew herself up to her full height.
Malcolm Gunn showed no surprise at seeing her again. He sliced a piece of meat with his knife and fork and put it in his mouth, chewing it while he studied her.
Ree’s head still spun from her encounter with Ned in the dinghy just a few moments before. Her skin sizzled and her cheeks were flushed, but she had to get her head together to face this man.
Malcolm took a sip of wine out of a crystal goblet. “Would ye fancy a glass of wine, Miss Hamilton? Or should I instead call ye Mrs. Lewis?”
Ree’s head shot up. “What?”
“Ye’ve been posing as Ned Lewis’s wife all across Scotland. Perhaps the two of ye got married while I wasnae looking, and I didnae find out about it. If that’s the case, then I’ll toast yer good health and long life.”
“Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?” Ree fired back.
“I would never joke about something like that,” he replied in a cold tone. “Ye can never be with him. Ye ken that. He’s immortal, and ye are not. It’s a recipe for disaster.”
“What goes on between me and Ned is none of your business,” she snapped. “I came here to make a proposition to you.”
Malcolm snorted with laughter so hard he almost spat out his wine. “A proposition! Are you proposing we continue the business we started together in Aberdeen? I dinnae think yer new husband will approve of that.”
“He’s not my husband,” Ree replied, “and he knows I’m here. You wanted me to track the Lewises until they come close to producing the Cipher’s Kiss, and that’s what I’m proposing. Ned and I found out some information about it. Maybe you already know this, since he found it in a bookshop in Orkney.”
“What information is that?” he asked.
“The ingredients have to be fired in a rotary kiln at two thousand degrees. A kiln like that hasn’t been invented yet, but it’s commonplace in the world where I come from. Send me back there, and I’ll be able to get closer to the Lewises and their attempt to make the elixir.”
He froze in the act of lifting a piece of meat to his mouth, then set down his knife and fork. “Ye propose I send ye back to yer own time where ye can rejoin Ned Lewis and his immortal comrades, and then the lot of ye will work on the elixir together where I cannae reach ye. That’s what ye’re really proposing, am I right?”
“You won’t be there, but I’m sure the Falisa will still exist,” she countered. “Ned is there, which means other Angui survived to the twenty-first century. As long the Angui exist, I’m sure the Falisa will continue to exist to hunt them down. I can report to whoever is around about what the Angui are doing.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that you’ll report your beloved’s activities to the Falisa?” he growled. “Ye have yer own reasons to go back.”
“My reason is to help the Angui make the elixir,” she replied. “I have no reason to lie about it. You’ve known all along I was loyal to Ned and had no intention of reporting him. If you don’t send me back, I’ll die here and you’ll be no closer to tracking down the elixir. Sending me back is your only chance to get near it in time. You can leave a message for those coming after you that Ned is meeting me to create the elixir. That will give your people a leg up when it comes to following our trail.”
Malcolm eyed her across the cabin.
Ree’s heart pounded. She had to convince him at any cost. She would say or do whatever it took to get herself sent back. If she didn’t, all was lost.
“Ye didnae have to come to me to send ye back,” he said, leaning back in his chair and interlocking his fingers over his stomach. “Ye ken the magic words. Ye could have cast the spell yerself. Why come to me?”
“I thought of that,” she replied, “but I only worked the spell once in my life, and that was an accident. I had to be sure it worked the way it’s supposed to. Your people know that spell. Maybe you even invented it, but you can make sure I wind up back where I started. I’m certain of that.”
Malcolm nonchalantly picked up his glass of wine. “Ye’re right. I can,” he said and took a swig.
“Then will you send me?”
“That depends on the price ye’re willing to pay,” he replied.
Ree took a deep breath. She thought it might come to this. She didn’t say as much to Ned, but had prepared herself for this possibility. Maybe Ned had thought of it too, and didn’t say anything. “I’m willing to pay any price you ask.”
Malcolm rose out of his chair and stalked across the room toward her, his eyes drilling into her. His being prickled all over with magnetic power. He had her right where he wanted her. He could make her his slave in exchange for this simple favor.
He sauntered over to her, raised his hand, and dragged his fingers down her face. He stroked her hair behind her ear in languorous caresses. “Are ye sure about that, lassie? Are ye sure ye’re willing to pay any price I ask?”
She kept her eyes locked on his and never looked away. “I’m sure. I’ll pay any price if you only send me back. I’m yours to command.”
“Ye dinnae ken how long I’ve been waiting to hear ye say those words,” he murmured. “I had me eye on ye from the moment I first saw ye in the Lewises’ camp, and now ye belong to another.”
His voice changed from the rough growl of a tyrant to the soft husk of buried emotion. His features softened, and she saw him as a different person. She could almost love him like this, broken and lonely and abandoned. All of a sudden, he grabbed a handful of her hair and wrenched her head back. He forced her down on her knees in front of him until she stared up at his clenched face from below.
As soon as he got her on her knees, he let her go and went back to stroking her hair and her cheek. He passed his thumb across her lips. “Say it again, lass. Say it like ye did before.”
Her blood screamed in her veins. What was he going to do to her? If she had to give herself to him, she wanted to do it now and get it over with. She hated to think of him dragging this ordeal out over days or even months or years before he granted her request.
“I’ll pay any price you ask,” she whispered. “I’m yours to command.”
“That’s right, lassie,” he breathed. “That’s right. Ye’re mine to command. Just remember that. Dinnae forget it, no matter what.”
She gazed up into his smoldering eyes. In that moment, she belonged to him, heart and soul. She gave her word, and now she would pay the price he asked. She would give him her body, her submission—anything he asked—and she would do it of her own free will, as long as he sent her back to Ned.
He laid his hand on her head and traced his thumb back and forth in a line across her forehead. He murmured down to her in a singsong lullaby.
“Eshmun Hamilcar hanno ashtzaph byblos rae
Zephon anana akilokipok silatuyok anik toe
Takiyok keorvik suluk yo
Uyarak ek chua lo.”
Ree frowned. What was he trying to do? It took her an instant to realize he was casting the spell. He was sending her back, and he didn’t exact any excru
ciating price for it. He was going to send her back right now.
“What is it, lassie?” he asked. “What ails ye?”
“Don’t you have to… I thought you had to skip stones to cast the spell.”
“Different people do it different ways,” he replied. “This is my way.”
He started to say, “Eshmun Hamilcar hanno…” again.
Ree seized his hand off her head and pressed it to her heart. “Thank you, Malcolm. Thank you so much!”
He pried his hand out of her grasp. “Dinnae thank me, lass. I’m doing this for purely selfish reasons. I dinnae deserve yer thanks, in the same way I dinnae deserve yer love.”
Ree gasped. He loved her. Everything he’d done since that first day on the Isle of Lewis he did out of love for her and out of jealousy that she wound up with Ned instead of him. Some trick of fate had led her to Ned first. She could have just as easily wound up with Malcolm and none of this would have happened. Countless lives would have been spared, and she would be helping him hunt down the Lewises instead of the other way around.
The irony of fate confounded her mind, but Malcolm only laid his hand on her head again. He went back to tracing his thumb back and forth against her skin and whispered the words under his breath. All the while, his eyes communicated his deep and undying love to her.
From the far distance, a low rumbling sound approached. It thundered louder and louder until it crashed over her head. It pounded all around her. She reeled in confusion, then lost contact with the floor and rotated upward.
Malcolm whipped away from her at frightening speed. In a split second, the ship rocketed away underneath her, and she catapulted through the night sky. The next thing she knew, she plunged headfirst into stony blackness. The noise escalated to thunder until her eardrums almost burst.
She exploded through a hard surface and shot out into a bright sunny blue sky, soaring through the air in a smooth arch. She caught a brief glimpse of a sheen of water below her as she started to descend. She landed on her feet on the shore of the duck pond where Ned first sent her to Scotland in the first place.
She looked all around her. Except for her long dress, no evidence remained that she ever left San Francisco. People walked past on the paths, and no one paid the slightest attention to her unconventional clothes.
She might have stood there for hours. Was her whole experience in Scotland all a vivid hallucination, or did she actually do all those things? She touched her bodice. The book rested against her heart where she’d put it while in the dinghy. That part was definitely real.
One more detail would prove whether she really went through all that: Ned. She had to see him. One look in his eyes would show her whether they really fell in love back in Scotland three hundred years ago.
She set off down the paths, out of the Park, and followed the city streets in no particular hurry. She made her way back to her apartment. She’d left her keys at the office that fateful day she left the present to travel to the past, so had to ask the doorman to let her in, then she closed her apartment door behind her.
She wandered to her bedroom in a daze, took a shower, and put on one of her usual suits. She combed her hair in front of the mirror. She didn’t recognize the woman looking back at her. The tiny mirror on her bathroom wall looked too ridiculous to tolerate. She wanted a full length mirror so she could see herself as she really was.
She went into her home office and checked the calendar. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since she and Ned left the office building. Today was the day after she disappeared, at eleven o’clock in the morning. Maybe no one even noticed she was gone.
She got some money and her spare apartment key and went down to the street. She caught a cab to the office building and went inside. Sure enough, everyone smiled and greeted her as usual. No one commented about her coming to work late.
They probably thought she went out and did something for herself for a change. She shouldn’t slave for this company the way she always had. Her personal life suffered. She’d never let herself acknowledge that before now. She never would have acknowledged it if she hadn’t gone to Scotland.
Now looking at her old life through the lens of her experience in Scotland, she realized what a stunted existence she’d endured before she met Ned. She never let anyone get close to her. Never embraced life or all the possibilities her hard-earned wealth could have bought for her.
She rode the elevator to her office. To her surprise, she found Ellen and Vic standing at her desk with Ned Lewis. They all looked up at her from the papers they were going over.
Ree’s gaze locked with Ned’s, and she knew it was all true. He’d waited three hundred years to find her again, and now they looked at each other across the room. A charge of desire shot through her. She wanted to put her arms around him then and there, but she couldn’t do that in front of her friends.
He smiled, and his eyes said it all. He’d never stopped loving her in three hundred years apart. He’d waited all this time for the right moment when she would return from the past. Now nothing would keep them apart.
Chapter 31
Ned strode across the room with both arms extended. “Aha! Here’s the lady we’ve all been waiting for. Come on in, darling. We’ve got a situation, and we’ve all been on the edges of our seats waiting to talk to you about it.”
Ree blushed, but he read the truth in her eyes. She was back from the past and knew all there was to know—about him, about the Falisa, about the Cipher’s Kiss—about everything.
He guided her to the desk, where Ellen pointed down at the papers. “We got a proposal from Allied Chemical. It’s an offer to purchase our company.”
Ree slipped back into her old role in a heartbeat. “I hope you turned them down in the most brutal possible terms.”
“They want to meet to negotiate,” Ellen replied. “They want to meet, you and their CEO, to discuss terms.”
“There are no terms to discuss,” Ree snapped. “Primary Industries is not for sale. End of story.”
“I think you should meet with him,” Ned suggested. “Just hear what he has to say before you kick him in the teeth.”
“What possible reason could I have for doing that?” she asked.
“It would give you a clue where he’s coming from,” Ned replied. “It could give you an inside glimpse into his weaknesses and where he might be vulnerable. No one’s gonna force you to sell the company during the negotiation. If you can glean some insight into his character and his motivations, it could help us in the long run.”
Ree shuffled the papers in front of her, skimming over them. “All right. I’ll do it, but I’m not selling.”
“You better not,” Ellen muttered.
Ned laughed, unable to contain his happiness at seeing Ree again. He’d met her for the first time yesterday, but today was a whole different ball game. He was meeting her for the first time—the real Ree, the woman he loved—after three hundred years apart.
Her pupils dilated, and her lips pouted when she looked up at him. A delicate flush passed over her cheeks. Was she remembering their tryst in the dinghy? God, how long had he dreamed of that night! He couldn’t wait to get hold of her again.
He restrained himself with difficulty while Ree studied the proposal documents. “The meeting is in three hours,” he said, standing a little too close. “That’s why we were all in a twitter about where you were. Everybody thought something terrible had happened to you, like you got sucked into a time warp or something.”
Ree’s head shot up, and she stared at him. Then she burst out laughing. Her face lit up at the joke between them.
“Well, it’s true,” Ellen remarked. “You’ve never missed a day at the office in all the years we’ve known each other. You just vanished yesterday, and you didn’t come in this morning. We thought something terrible must have happened.”
“Never mind,” Ree replied. “I’m here now, and I’m ready to punt this negotiation down the field, but we’ve g
ot some work to do before that happens. Get in touch with Ben Harris at the City Council and tell him all about this takeover bid. Some of Allied’s most lucrative contracts are with the city. Twist Ben’s arm and get him to make a phone call to Allied threatening to withdraw their contracts if they don’t leave us alone.”
Ellen stared at her with her mouth open. “Can you do that?”
“I don’t care if you can or not,” Ree fired back. “Just do it and do it now so Allied knows the situation before they go into that negotiation.”
Ned nodded to Ree over Ellen’s shoulder. She was doing it. She was calling in favors from her network to gain the support she needed to defeat this takeover. She was stronger and more confident and more in control than ever.
Ellen scurried out of the room, leaving Ned alone with Ree.
When the door closed, Ree threw her arms around him. “Oh, thank God you’re all right.”
“I’m just fine, darling,” he murmured. “It’s so good to see you again.”
She pushed him away. “Where’s your accent?”
He couldn’t help laughing, he was so happy, then he said with his old Scottish accent, “Do ye really want me to use it? I thought ye’d want me to blend in like nothing ever happened.”
“Save it for when we’re alone together.” She kissed him once and tore herself away to stare at him, devouring him with her eyes. “God, I can’t believe we’re both here! I thought I’d never see you again.”
He laid his hand against her cheek. “You don’t know how good it is to see you after all this time. I thought I’d die without you.”
She hurled herself at him. “We’ll never be apart again. I have that book you gave me. After work, we’ll go through it and start building the formula, one ingredient at a time.”
Ellen came back, sending Ned and Ree rushing apart. They still had to behave like strangers in the business world.
Pirates of the Angui (Cipher's Kiss Book 1): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 22
