by L. L. Muir
Unfortunately, no matter how famous the restaurant became, there was no room to expand unless she started setting up tables in the barn and allowing cars to park in the creek. Many suggested she build a second story on the restaurant, but no amount of success would be worth someone getting killed—the additional cars would have to park along the road, and the switchback curves made that far too dangerous.
Like her father before her, she wasn’t about to risk lives to make a damned dollar. But if she didn’t come up with a brilliant plan, Haggard’s doors would be closed within the year. Of course, she wasn’t about to let that happen. No need to go down with a ship if the ship wasn’t going down, right? She’d run the whole place herself if she had to.
The prospect made her guts ache.
A heavy, cold raindrop landed on her ear and dripped down her neck, bringing her back to the moment. She looked at her watch again. Ten more minutes and she would worry about such things. But not just yet. And to keep business thoughts from pushing into her precious break time, she turned away from the parking lot and followed the deer trail into the trees, where the fog promised to hide her.
Trapped in the crook of the canyon, a low cloud stuck to the branches like wispy cotton. Clear outlines of trees were hidden from view until she was only a few feet away. The dark, thin limbs moved toward her, growing more substantial with each step forward. How she would love to be able to take the day for herself, call it a mental-health-day, and tell her employees, “Got lost in the fog, couldn’t find my way back. So sorry.”
But that wasn’t possible. She was down to a skeleton crew as it was. To take a day for herself would be incredibly unfair to the few loyal workers she had left.
Angel breathed the mist deep into her lungs, hoping it was more rain than pollution, and chided herself for wasting precious personal time worrying about the restaurant when she should have been zoning out.
May as well go back and make Sherry happy, she guessed, by cutting her time short.
The path back was starting to clear. So much for getting lost in the woods. But something moved between herself and the parking lot. Something large. Something dark. A moose?
She wasn’t dumb enough to make a moose share the path. But she wouldn’t encourage an animal to chase her—at least, not until she knew what it was—so she froze and waited.
It didn’t move like a moose, more like a man. Up on two legs. Was it a bear?
Of course, there were bears in the canyon. The Grand Tetons had just about anything you could imagine living in those lonely peaks. And anything you could find at Yellowstone, you could find all along the range. Even the wolves had returned.
But there was also more than just your regular animal. No one could grow up in the Rocky Mountains and not keep an eye out, just in case, for Big Foot.
If she wasn’t so nervous about the shadow in the mist, she might have laughed at herself for letting her mind go there. She didn’t really believe in Sasquatch any more than she believed in snipes, but the kid in her was always watching for those massive footprints.
The thing moved closer, then stopped, as if it sensed her watching. She moved backward with painstaking slowness to put more mist between them. If she couldn’t see it clearly, at least it couldn’t tell what she was, either. After she put a little more distance between them, she could hopefully side-step into the trees and blend in with other shadows.
She took a slow, quiet breath to keep calm.
Crap! She smelled like bacon. And coffee. There was no way an animal would walk on by. Her only hope was that it would move backward, up wind.
She took another step back. The creature moved that much closer, then stopped.
Are you kidding me? Please, oh please, don’t be Big Foot!
She closed her eyes for a second and willed the silliness out of her head. There was real danger just thirty feet away. This was no time to be thinking about monsters when a real man was there, watching her, waiting for her to make a move. No, it wasn’t a moose. It wasn’t a bear—she was pretty sure a bear would have come to taste her bacon already—so it had to be a man. The worst thing she could do was turn and run deeper into the woods, farther away from the restaurant, and people, and telephones.
No more morning walks without bear repellent. How many times had she decided that, but never followed through? She kept some in her pocket every night when she locked up and headed to her apartment in the barn. Why in the world didn’t she do the same in the mornings?
The threat started walking her way, no longer pretending, no longer hiding in the mist. The red of his clothing became clearer with each step. Maybe he’d realized, at the same time she had, that she was human too. And soon, he’d learn she had no weapons.
The only thing in her arsenal was a little bit of bravado. It would have to do.
“Hold it right there,” she said in the most serious tone she could manage.
He slowed, but only a little. “I beg yer pardon, lass. I doona mean to frighten ye. I thought it best to wait until ye’d noticed me before I came any closer.”
She opened her mouth to order him to stop, to lead him to believe she had a gun or something, but her brain stuttered when her shadow-man started taking on the shape of a Scottish Highlander, sporting a kilt and everything. The plaid was red and bright enough to keep him safe in hunting season. An aged leather pouch hung from his waist, but she couldn’t stare at it without seeming lewd. The costume was completed with a sash over one shoulder, an old-fashioned shirt that had a tie at the neck but no sleeves, and knee-high socks that looked like they’d actually been knitted by his grandmother.
Angel could only stand there gaping while layer after layer of mist disappeared between them. It was like watching a ghost from the distant past come back to life.
This has to be a joke. An hallucination. I’m imagining… Fantasizing… I must still be asleep!
But the man kept coming, silently insisting he was real until he was standing only three feet away, staring at her as if he doubted her for similar reasons.
“Dinna be afeard, lass. I’ll not harm ye. Finlay Robertson, at yer service.” He chuckled. “One would think ye’ve never seen a Highlander before, aye?” After a glance around at the mist-draped trees on all sides, he shrugged and put his hands on his hips. “Ye’ll think me daft, lass, but I seem to have lost my way. Are we anywhere near Inverness?”
CHAPTER THREE
“Um, what?” Angel couldn’t quite get her ears wrapped around the Scotsman’s accent. Apparently, he was the real deal. Maybe his clothes were too. And if it turned out she was imagining it all, she needed to take a vacation—in a hospital.
He took another step closer, frowned, then reached for her arms. His hands were incredibly warm. “Ye appear as though ye might faint, lass. But tell me first where I’ve come to be. This fog has me turned about.”
“Haggard,” she stuttered, with an extra g or two. But it couldn’t be helped. She was distracted by his gentle hold on her, along with the idea that she didn’t necessarily want him to let go. It stole her breath away to stand so close to something that majestic. Like stumbling upon a moose on a trail, however, it was dangerous to lose your common sense. “There isn’t much space to get lost in.”
“The town of Haggard,” he repeated, smiling. “In America, then?”
She rolled her eyes and ignored the question. “This is Haggard. Not a town. Just an exit and a restaurant. If you want to go exploring, you can follow that path up the hillside and you’ll find a spring with drinkable water. That’s about it.”
He nodded but didn’t give the path any attention. He was too busy sniffing the air. Then he looked at her again and grinned. “I must be honest with ye, miss. I have not had the pleasure of tasting bacon in a good long while. Longer than ye could possibly imagine. Ye doona happen to have any on yer person, do ye?”
“On my person? No.” She shrugged out of his hold and started walking a wide path around him, acting as nonchalant as
possible, ready to start screaming bloody murder if he reached for her again. “The only thing I have on my person is the smell of bacon, I guess. But if you’ll turn around and head in this direction, you will find the restaurant again. Plenty of bacon there.”
“What do ye mean, again?”
“I mean, you couldn’t have gotten here without passing the building. It’s the only thing off this exit. And I’m sure it wasn’t hidden by the fog.”
He lifted his hand like he thought he could touch the stuff and rubbed his fingers together like he was testing a piece of fabric. “Magical stuff, mist. Do ye ken?”
“Do I ken? You mean, do I know?”
“Auch, aye. ‘Tis just what I meant. I am certain I can learn this American dialect in no time a’tall.”
“Dialect?” She laughed. “You’re saying I’m the one with the dialect?” She shook her head and hurried ahead on the path.
Staring at him might get her into trouble. So would staring at his knees, wondering how high his red kilt might ride up as he walked. When she returned to the restaurant with him on her tail, everyone was going to give her a hard time as it was. A little drool on her chin and she would never hear the end of it.
Angel wished the guy would turn his back for a minute so she could slap herself without him seeing. She really had to get a grip. Oh, he might be drooling too, temporarily, but it was only her bacon perfume that was making him salivate.
Say something! Anything!
“Are you from around here?” She could have kicked herself as soon as she’d asked. Of course he wasn’t a local, not with that accent.
“Scotland.”
She covered the side of her hot face with her cooler hand, grateful he couldn’t see. It was crazy really, that she was blushing at all. She got hit on by truckers, cowboy-wanna-be’s and creeps alike, but never blinked an eye. But this guy asks her about bacon and suddenly she’s a thirteen-year-old again, at her first Scottish festival, trying to catch the eye of a cute bagpiper.
“Give me a break,” she mumbled.
“Sorry?”
“Nothing,” she said, nice and loud so she wouldn’t have to face him. Another flash of his dimple, barely hidden by the start of a beard, and she might get lightheaded. Hell, maybe he was used to chicks fainting at his feet. Especially with those stormy blue eyes…
She concentrated on the cold ceramic bowl in her other hand and glanced over her shoulder, careful not to focus. “Where are you headed?”
“Headed?”
“You know. Eastbound or Westbound? The road runs parallel to the train tracks. You’re either headed east or west.”
“For the moment, I follow ye.”
She stopped and turned to face him, her frustration winning out over her fear of humiliation. “I mean, when you get back in your car, will you be headed down into Idaho Falls or up to Jackson? You looking for Yellowstone, or what?”
He shrugged one large shoulder. His sleeveless shirt didn’t cover any of his muscles. In fact, he looked like he’d just walked out of a gym, wrapped in little more than a towel. A plaid towel, with another one thrown over his shoulder.
“I have no destination in mind, lass. And I have no car. I am afoot. Perhaps a better answer is to say that I will go where Fate wills me.” He smiled. “Yes, that is just it. I’m at the whim of Fate, for the now.”
“For the now?”
“Aye?”
“You mean, for now.”
“Aye. ‘Tis just as you say. “At the whim of Fate, for now.”
She chewed her lip, trying to keep a straight face for the cameras, because someone had to be punking her.
“Okay,” she finally said. “If you need money, I might have some jobs for you. If you’re working for some jokester, going around pulling pranks, then I don’t have time for you.”
He looked genuinely confused and those little darts of dimples that made it so hard to look away from him, faded into his whiskers. She could think clearer, breathe a little easier. But then the sober version of him made her think of cold Scottish nights, stuck in a cave, trying to keep each other warm.
He frowned. “Cave?”
Gah! Had she said that out loud? Oh, great!
“Cave? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She turned around and double-timed it through the parking lot. If someone had just caught that on film, she was going to die of embarrassment. But as the restaurant came into view, her business mind kicked in once again.
There is no such thing as bad publicity.
Angel stopped and pointed to the restaurant. “That’s Haggard’s. Plenty of bacon inside.”
“And coffee?”
“And coffee.” She stayed where she was and waited for the heat to leave her face. She didn’t need everyone in the building to get the wrong idea. Her employees didn’t need to know she’d been flirting in the parking lot with a customer. She didn’t want to give herself any more ideas either. The “cave” image was going to be hard enough to forget.
The guy opened the pouch that hung flat against his kilt. She couldn’t remember what it was called. When he started digging through it, she had to look away. Showing any interest at all in something near his crotch…well, it just couldn’t end well. And, if there was a camera crew around, that would probably be the money shot, anyway. Restaurant owner caught ogling Scotsman’s crotch. Video at nine.
He looked up sharply. “Did ye say something, lass?”
She cleared her throat and coughed. “I did not.”
He nodded, still frowning. “It seems…uh, my friend…has left me with not a coin to my name. I shall have to catch my breakfast. If ye’ll excuse me.” He headed back toward the deer path. “Thank ye for a pleasant stroll, aye?”
Okay. There was no question now. She was definitely being punked. There were cameras somewhere. Maybe they were hiding in the mist, but they were there.
The guy kept going as if he really did intend to go out into the woods, catch something, and eat it.
First of all, gross.
Second of all, a body could starve to death while waiting for something to cook over a campfire.
And third, there was no way he could start a fire in the middle of a freshly rained-on forest.
She sighed, rolled her eyes for the camera, and decided she’d have to play along. “Come back,” she called half-heartedly. No way did she want to act too anxious. “Come back and you can work off your breakfast.”
Ugh, but she was going to regret this.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Scotsman—no one could be that good with a fake accent—spun around and frowned at Angel. “I need not your charity, lass, but I thank ye just the same. Good day.” He bent, like he was bowing to her or something, and headed for the far end of the parking lot.
“I didn’t offer you charity, dude. I offered you some breakfast and a way to pay for it. If you’d rather eat a…” she gestured to the trees, “a squirrel than some bacon, I totally get it.” She rolled her eyes again. “Not.” Deciding to beat him at his own game, she turned and walked away. It was time to get back anyway.
The guy didn’t catch up with her until she reached the back entrance. He pressed the door closed when she tried to open it. “One moment, if ye please. Are ye saying ye might be the proprietress of this establishment?”
His bare arm started far behind her shoulder and stretched well past her own to hold the door shut. Biceps and triceps and ceps she’d never heard of were all strung together along one very long line of bones, tempting her to grab on and see if his whole body was as warm as his hands had been.
Maybe she just needed to wear a warmer coat when it was drizzling.
To prove she wasn’t intimidated in the least, she turned within the half circle of his arm, put her hands on her hips, and lifted her chin. “Yes, I’m Angel Mott. I own the restaurant. And I’m sure there will be a pile of breakfast dishes for you to wash, if you’re not too proud to do it.”
~
~ ~
Fin would have considered the offer of work and food an impressive bit of luck if he believed in such things, which he did not. There was only God’s will and naught could change that.
Just as so many other mortals believed they were in charge of their own lives, he suspected the lass wouldn’t take kindly to the idea she was simply a pawn in God’s plan, so he held his tongue. She reminded him a bit of Soncerae, and he was fair to certain the wee witch would hardly welcome the observation either. As powerful as she might be, poor Soni was no more in charge of her fate than anyone else.
For some reason, God wanted Finlay Robertson there, in America, hale and whole. So Fin was willing to play along with Soni’s plan to bring the 79 back to life for a day or two in order that His will would be done. Fin need only play his part. His final vision would certainly come to pass, now that he’d met the very woman whom he’d seen in that vision. And if there was one thing he knew in his bones, it was that resistance was futile.
No matter how fervently he wished it otherwise.
No. Fin’s own will had naught to do with the next two days, but he was mighty grateful he would be spending some of his mortal reprieve with a clever and comely lass…and a bit of bacon on the side.
The lovely proprietress stepped from the hallway into a long and narrow kitchen ahead of him. “Mott’s back,” a well-endowed woman bellowed. She was at least a decade older than the lass and half a head taller. When she noticed Fin, her eyes flew wide for a three count before she recovered herself. “Please tell me you hired reinforcements.”
Angel glanced over her shoulder, stepped to the side, and gestured for Fin to move forward. He did as he was bade, and from habit that was not as dead as he might have believed, he offered a slight bow to the three persons staring at him. They all wore green aprons, their expressions also identical. It was hunger, to be sure. But for what, he could not guess.
