by Carmen Caine
“Their fates were cut of a different cloth!” Hardwick glared at him. “I do not even want to see a fetching piece of womanhood. No’ now!
“So she is an Ameri-cain.” He glared at his friend. “I dinnae care if she comes from the moon.”
His temper rising, he strode to another section of the wall, deliberately choosing a place at least four square-toothed notches away from the Islesman.
“My wenching days are behind me.” He cleared his throat. “I cannae return to them – even if I wished to do so.”
“I wasnae speaking of wenching.” Bran slapped his thigh. “Come you, dinnae be so thrawn. Stubbornness is for soured old men!”
Hardwick slid him an annoyed look. “And you say we are no’ old?”
Bran gave a great belly-shaking laugh. “Centuries old isnae what I meant and well you know it! We are as hardy as the rutting stags on the hill.”
“Speak for yourself. I am done with that kind of hardiness.”
“Even so….” Bran stopped laughing. “There are just times I get these feelings, and this is one o’ them. Think you I would leave my cozy hearth fire and a plump bed-warmer for naught? I say you, that lassie-”
“Is none of my concern.” Hardwick blocked his ears to whatever else his friend had to say about her.
Scowling, he braced his hands on the cold stone of the merlon and stared down at the shimmering expanse of the Kyle of Tongue far below. Even on such a chill, mist-plagued afternoon, the strait’s tossing surface glimmered and shone with silvery-blue light, and its wide sandy banks glistened in every shade of gold.
Soft, gleaming tones that made him think of the Ameri-cain’s hair.
He flinched.
The neck opening of his tunic had gone unpleasantly tight, but he refused to slip a finger beneath it. He did press his hands even harder against the damp grit of the merlon, his gaze on the swirl of the Kyle’s fast-moving current.
Such a day of strong-running seas and wind should have invigorated him.
Instead, he found his heart freezing in his chest and his gut twisting. Of his usual sharp wit and high spirits, nary a jot remained. His mood had gone more foul than he could ever remember.
Even as a ghost – and cursed as he was - he’d never passed a day without laughing.
Now…
He skulked about, trying to ignore the presence of the one lass who might have really appealed to him. Equally galling, he’d been reduced to an over-the-shoulder-glancing fool, hearing cackles in every ripple of the wind.
He frowned.
His jaw set so tight he wondered he didn’t crack a tooth.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking about Ameri-cains.” Bran appeared at his elbow. “The women, I mean. There’s something about them.” He paused, drawing a deep breath, as if readying himself to pronounce some great gem of wisdom. “Ach, see you, after much consideration, I’m after thinking that when they come here-”
“They should turn around and take themselves right back where they came from.” Hardwick flashed a dark look at his friend. “Leastways those so brazen they’d jiggle their bared breasts under a man’s nose.”
“So-o-o!” Bran hopped onto a merlon with surprising ease for a man of his size. “That is the way of it. She’s for seducing you.”
He pulled on his beard, an expression of feigned puzzlement on his face. “How odd that when I saw her heading this way, she looked more upset than out to flaunt her charms.”
Hardwick’s entire body tensed. “What do you mean she’s coming this way?”
“Just that.” Bran sounded convinced. “I’d gone looking for you and nearly collided with her in one of the corridors. Poor lassie would’ve dashed right through me if I hadn’t leapt aside fast enough. She was making for the parapet stair.”
“Then you must be mistaken.” Hardwick’s relief knew no bounds. “She left the armory in her aunt’s company. They were on their way to the library. She wouldn’t be careening through the passageways.”
Bran shrugged. “Be that as it may, that’s where I saw her.”
“You saw someone else.” Hardwick willed it so. “Honoria perhaps. She’s the housekeeper and by far the youngest female here excepting-”
“Ach, but you insult me!” Bran clapped a hand to his chest. “Think you a man of my wenching experience cannae tell a housekeeper from an Ameri-cain?”
Hardwick frowned at the truth of his friend’s words.
He scowled even more when the lout vanished, leaving his merlon perch empty and Hardwick alone on the wall-walk, just when the parapet door flew open and she burst out onto the battlements.
Not Honoria at all, but his nemesis.
And looking so delectable he was tempted to close the short space between them with two swift strides and seize her to him, clamping her face between his hands and then kissing her long, hard, and deep. He’d ravish her until nothing mattered but the feel of her soft, red lips yielding to his own.
He wanted, needed, the bliss of her silken tongue twirling and sliding against his in hot, ancient rhythm.
The Dark One and his bargain be damned.
Instead, he simply stared at her, his frown so black he could feel it to his toes.
She stood perfectly still, poised just outside the door. Her cheeks were flushed pink and her hair tousled. Looking at her, Hardwick felt a fierce need to make her melt for him. Instead, he frowned and jerked his shield into place. Not to hide a rise in his plaid, but to disguise his attempt to prevent one.
Furious at the need, he slid a hand behind the targe and squeezed.
Hard.
Hard, long, and tight enough to bring tears to a lesser man, but he only gritted his teeth and winced. Once, in another life, he’d have thrown back his head and laughed at his word choices.
Now they only fueled his frustration.
Long and hard was definitely what he’d love to give her. And, mercy on him, he knew she’d be wonderfully tight.
Hot, sleek, and slippery wet.
Need speared him again, a sharp and painful hunger pulsing somewhere deep inside him.
She hadn’t yet noticed him, so he continued to stare at her, her appearance shattering his last hope that Bran might have erred. Worse, driving home how urgently he needed to rid himself of her.
Her scent alone damned him. Light, clean, and fresh as a spring breeze, it swirled around him, firing his blood and threatening to set him like granite if he didn’t have such firm grip on himself.
As it was, every other inch of him went rigid with desire. His senses snapped to dangerous alert and he squeezed himself even harder, struggling against her effect on him yet unable to look away.
Something had clearly upset her and – the gods help him – that air of flushed, wild-eyed vulnerability drew him as strongly as her lush curves and creamy smooth skin. Her breasts, covered now in a silky-looking top of softest blue, rose and fell in agitation, and her bright golden hair whipped crazily in the gusting wind.
She would be the end of him.
He knew it in his bones.
***
Cilla started forward, swiping at the tossing strands as she made straight for the battlement wall. Notched medieval-looking stonework that surely was medieval.
Just as she was certain that the great bearded Highlander who’d suddenly appeared in front of her in one of the portrait-hung passages had been, well, medieval.
If not that, he definitely wasn’t of this time.
Nor of this world.
In fact, he’d looked downright savage. In a magnificent, old-time Highland-y sort of way.
Splendiferous or not, she wanted nothing to do with him. Shivering, she pulled her sweater tighter against the cold air and forced her legs to carry her across the narrow stone-flagged walkway.
No easy task when they felt like rubber and her knees wouldn’t stop knocking. But she kept on, placing one foot in front of the other until she reached the wall.
She needed air.
&nbs
p; Lots and lots of cold, fresh air.
“I did not just see another ghost. I did not almost run through him.” She gripped the edge of a merlon, needing the stone’s solidity. “He did not leap out of the way when-”
“Ahhh, but he did now, didn’t he?” A deep voice, well-burred and buttery-rich, purred out of nowhere. “Perhaps you should leave before you run into someone who won’t.”
“Won’t what?” She spoke before remembering no one was there.
“Won’t leap out of your way, of course,” the blowing mist returned.
Cilla’s eyes flew wide.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
Pea soup didn’t talk!
Not in Yardley, Pennsylvania, and, she was sure, not in Scotland, either.
Not even in the remote vastness of Sutherland.
Unwilling to consider the alternative, she straightened her shoulders and – very slowly – pushed away from the wall. Three, four long-legged strides would take her safely back to the doorway and she could just pop through it, leaving Dunroamin’s all-too-eerie battlements behind her.
She wasn’t in the mood to deal with talking mist.
But before she could turn around, she backed into something cold, hard, and unyielding.
Something round, leather-covered, and riddled with bumps. She could feel them pressing into the small of her back. She knew what they were.
The brass studs of a targe.
A medieval shield.
“Oh, no!” She spun on her heels, certain the poster ghost had come for her at last, but the man staring so fiercely at her was anything but a phantom.
Tall, dark, and kilted, he was clutching a shield.
He was also gorgeous, defined sensuality in a wicked, smoldering kind of way, and he had a decidedly roguish air about him. But he looked just as real and solid as anyone else. She swallowed as she blinked up at him. He did resemble Mr. Wasn’t-Really-There, but she doubted a ghost could make her mouth go dry.
Or set her pulse to racing with his delicious masculinity. She could only stare at him, his proximity and the look in his peaty brown eyes sending awareness all through her. She even felt a charge in the air between them.
No way was he a phantom.
“O-o-oh, aye,” he spoke again, his honeyed voice melting her. “Did I no’ warn you there’d be some who wouldn’t jump aside?”
Cilla stopped melting at once.
“Who are you?” She regarded him warily. “Where did you come from?”
“From a place more distant than you’d believe.” He ignored her first question. “And I’ve good advice for you,” he added, taking a step closer, slowly raising his shield until it brushed the tips of her breasts. “If you’re after a true taste o’ Scotland, hie yourself-”
“Hie myself?” She blinked.
“Take yourself,” he clarified, scowling at her. “Quit this place and journey south. Inverness, the Isle of Skye, Stirling and Perth, perhaps even down to Edinburgh. Or Glasgow. Aye” – he appeared to warm to the idea - “Glasgow is where you should be! Loch Lomond is there and-”
“I saw Loch Lomond on the drive up here.” Cilla frowned right back at him. “We stopped for lunch at Luss and I’ve never seen so many coach tour buses crowded into such a tiny car park. Or so many people jammed into souvenir shops no bigger than a postage stamp. If that is Scotland” - she scooted around him and made a wide sweeping gesture with her arm, taking in the rain-dampened parapet and the broad, silvery Kyle – “I’d rather be here.”
He snorted. “This is the end of the world.”
Cilla smiled. “Exactly.”
Suddenly in her face again, he leaned close. “Be warned,” he breathed, his dark gaze piercing her. “Sutherland is filled with lonely moors and dark bogs. Mountains so vast and bleak they’d eat a lass like you bones and all and no one would ever be the wiser.”
“I like wild places.” Cilla tossed back her hair, defiant.
“Yet you plan to spend the summer here” - he made a broad gesture of his own – “where every soul present is at least thrice your own age? The only kind of wild they’ll give you is complaining that their haggis is too well spiced or that your uncle tells the same fireside tales too often.”
Cilla stared at him.
His burr was getting to her again. What red-blooded female could resist a Scottish accent? She certainly couldn’t. Much as she hated to admit it, he really was 6’4” of pure Highland male.
She’d always had a thing for Highlanders.
Especially kilted ones.
But the absurdity of his objection and, perhaps, the exhaustion of jetlag, bubbled up inside her until she near convulsed with sidesplitting, eye-tearing laughter.
“You made one mistake.” She dashed at her cheeks when she finally caught herself. “There does seem to be a soul here who isn’t ‘thrice my age.’”
He cocked a brow. “Who might that be?”
She smiled, triumph hers. “You.”
“I am more than thrice your age.” He looked at her as earnestly as if he’d commented on the blowing mist. “Truth be told, I’m seven hundred, give or take a few years.”
“Indeed?” Her mouth twitched. “I suppose you’ll also tell me your name is Robert Bruce?”
“Nae, but I knew the man well.”
“You did?” Her smile faded.
He nodded. “My father’s people were Norman Scots as were the de Brus. Our families were friendly.”
“We are speaking of King Robert the Bruce, right?” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Medieval Scotland’s greatest hero king?”
Kiltie drew himself up, seeming to grow even taller and more fierce-looking. “To my knowledge, Scotland has ne’er seen a greater ruler in any epoch,” he said, almost bristling. “But, aye, he is the one I meant.”
“I was afraid of that.” She drew a tight breath, the effect of his burr evaporating completely.
An uncomfortable thought rushed her. The corridors she’d sped through after taking a wrong turn had been dark and musty with an air of disuse.
That, and a sense that the endless passageways with their ancient portraits and faded tartan carpet runners might hold secrets. Like barred windows and meals served through a narrow slit in the door.
Bad things best left behind thick, rubber-covered walls and good, heavy locks.
“So you’ve figured it out?” He sounded pleased.
“Oh, yes.” She spoke as calmly as she could. “I believe I have.”
Not trusting herself to make eye contact and risk riling him, she stole a glance at the still-open parapet door.
It seemed miles away.
She swallowed and began inching in that direction as surreptitiously as possible. “I thought Uncle Mac and Aunt Birdie only catered to the aged. I didn’t realize-”
“The MacGhees aren’t aware I’m here.” An iron grip to her elbow halted her escape. “‘Tis a ghost, I am, sweetness, no’ a-”
“Ghosts can’t touch people!” Cilla shot a glance to where his long, strong fingers held her arm. She could feel his vigor and warmth pulsing clear up to her shoulder and down to her fingertips. “You-”
“I am what I say, and I can do much more than grab your arm.” He leaned in, his gaze locking with hers. “If I were so inclined, that is.”
“Oh!” She jerked free of his grasp.
He stepped back and folded his arms. “Oh, indeed,” he said, his eyes heating. “Be glad I am no’ interested-”
“Where did your shield go?” She stared at his crossed arms. “It’s gone.”
“Say you?” His mouth curved with a hint of amusement. “I but set it aside so I could fold my arms. See” – he uncrossed them and held up a hand, the shield appearing at once – “here it is again.”
Cilla’s eyes widened. “That’s impossible.”
He said nothing. He simply stood holding the targe in front of him at hip level, that faint smile still playing across his lips.
Th
e smile didn’t reach his eyes, but it did give a vague idea of what could happen if ever he turned the power of a true, full-blooded smile on her.
He was jaw-dropping handsome as is.
He wore a kilt and had the cutest knees she’d ever seen.
With a hot, melt-her-panties smile, he’d be beyond dangerous.
Indeed, for all she knew, he could be a madman, even a serial killer. His intense, unblinking stare certainly wasn’t friendly. Far from it, the look he was giving her sent chills tinkling down her spine and tied her stomach in knots.
As if he knew, he flashed a grin that revealed two deep dimples.
Sexy dimples, entirely too charming.
She tried not to notice. “If you’re really a ghost, why can I see you? Can everyone?”
“Everyone who is meant to, aye.”
“That doesn’t tell me much.” She peered at him, still skeptical.
He laughed. “Sweet lass, just because I’m a ghost, doesn’t mean I have all the answers. Truth is, some souls just see us. Most can’t.” He angled his head, looking thoughtful. “If you didn’t know, a ghost could run naked through a crowd of people and chances are only one, if any, would notice.
“And” – he glanced aside – “there are times we can will it that everyone does see us. Though even then there will be some who do not. I cannae tell you why that is so.”
He looked at her, his gaze penetrating. “It just is.”
“Then why hasn’t Aunt Birdie seen you?” She had him now. “She can see ghosts.”
“No’ when they wish to remain unseen.”
“So you’ve been hiding from her?”
“Nae, I simply chose no’ to disrupt her days.” He made it sound so simple. ‘One of the advantages to being a ghost is the privilege of staying out of sight when desired.”
“I see.” Cilla frowned, glanced at his targe. “How did you make your shield disappear and reappear?”
He shrugged. “It was just one of the many things ghosts can do.”
That did it.
He was talking as if he really believed such nonsense.
Cilla tossed back her hair. “Look here, Scottie. If you’re trying to scare me, it won’t work.” Her gaze flicked to his there-one-minute, gone-the-next shield. “I’ve seen crazies on the streets of Philly with better tricks than disappearing shields.”
