Payton

by L. L. Muir

  He opened the door for her to climb in the car, but he didn’t follow. She leaned out to keep him from shutting the door. “Do you live far? I can drop you.”

  He laughed. “My home, lass, is in Scotland, as I’ve said. I dinna reckon I can make it back in time for the wedding if I go there.” He waved one hand toward the far side of the street. “There is a park nearby. I’ll find a soft bit of grass and I’ll meet ye right here in the morning, aye?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Get in.”

  “Nay, lass. Go on yer way.”

  “Get. In. I’d rather risk having you in my hotel room than leave you to be eaten alive by fire ants while you sleep.”

  “Fire ants?”

  “Yes. Angry ones.” She scooted back to make more room.

  His face twisted while he obviously pictured it. Then he nodded and climbed into the car. When the vehicle started moving, his arms flew out like he was afraid he might fall out.

  “First time in a car?” she teased.

  “The answer to that depends, lassie.”

  “On what?”

  “On how drunk ye are.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The grandness of the Omni Hotel was equaled only by its chill. However, it was not the refrigerated air blowing past Fitz’s knees that gave that impression. Everywhere he looked were flat, unwelcoming surfaces. Severe. Clean. Contemporary.

  The strangest effect of all came from the floors themselves. So well-polished they may as well have been walking on mirrors—something no self-respecting, kilt-wearing man would do.

  There were contradictions at every turn.

  Signs bid them welcome, but the staff behind the desk were careful to keep all expression from their faces while speaking to Grace. Only when a woman handed his lass a small packet, claiming keys were inside, did she deign to smile long enough to wish her a good night.

  In the elevator, it was his turn to hide his expression. He was determined to show no fear as his internal organs fell and lifted along with the blood in his veins. And, just as he’d expected, when the doors opened again, they were no longer in the lobby they’d left a moment before. He’d seen elevators on the tellie and heard them explained before, that the box was lifted by a series of pulleys, to different levels inside the building. But the sensations in his stomach hadn’t coincided with anything he’d expected.

  He’d simply had to trust Grace, and if she trusted the box, he would as well.

  In silence, they made their way to a set of apartments that put to shame the majestic rooms at Culloden Castle—now called Culloden House.

  “This is grand, aye?” The furnishings looked far more comfortable than the rest of the hotel. For a while there, he’d wondered if he might be more comfortable sleeping on the grass and fighting off an ant or two. But even the davenport appeared as comfortable as a bed, and it might even accommodate his length as well.

  The lass strode straight for the large bedroom and he followed. She checked the drawers, then seemed relieved to find luggage was waiting for her. “Un-opened. Thank goodness.” She noticed him leaning in the doorway. “You really aren’t from around here, are you?”

  He smiled to cover his uneasiness at the question. “To use your football language, you could say I might have been a last minute substitution.”

  “Luckily for me,” she murmured, and he wondered if she meant for him to hear it.

  Was she truly feeling blessed to have him there?

  They returned to the large common room. “I shall sleep on the davenport,” he said firmly. “Er, the couch as ye call it.” With modern women, he didn’t know what she might feel entitled to. There had been some disturbing things on the tellie—

  “Yes. You will. And you can use one of these other bathrooms. She pointed back to the bedroom. “If you even scratch on that door, I’ll call security first and then ask what you wanted. Got it? I mean, for all I know, I dragged you off the street just because I assumed you were the guy I hired. Just because you were wearing a kilt.”

  He laughed outright and hoped she believed he was truly amused and not terrified to have her sniffing so close to the truth. For it was a certainty, he’d met no one else that night who might be in need of a gallant hero other than Grace. So, no matter how it went against his nature, he simply had to watch and bide his time until the right opportunity presented itself. But what she needed at the moment was some assurance from him.

  He placed his fist on his heart and bowed his head. “I vow, I will not so much as scratch upon yer door, lass.”

  She nodded, satisfied. “I’ll text my sister and have her bring some of Shawn’s gym clothes to the church, so you can wear them to play football. Did your luggage get lost or something?”

  “I… I arrived with only the clothes on my back.”

  “If you call the airlines, they can have your things delivered here when they find them. It usually only takes a day.”

  “I’ll do that. Thank ye.”

  She nodded. “Well, goodnight then.” She strode slowly toward her large bedroom, dragging her painted toes a wee bit.

  “Lass?”

  “Yes?” She turned back with a smile.

  “I’ll not find my rest any time soon.” He wouldn’t waste a mortal minute if he could help it. “If ye wish to come out and visit for a piece, I’d welcome ye.”

  Her head bobbed quickly, then she hurried away. She may not wish him in her bed, but it would be a grand gift if she decided to share more time with him.

  He wandered about the place and noted the wonders he’d seen on the tellie. The refrigerator. A magical microwave oven that could cook things without getting hot itself. The water that ran hot and cold on demand. The loo.

  He stripped and took a shower simply to feel the sensations of hot and cold on the whole of his body. He wrapped a bath sheet around his waist and rinsed out his clothes before hanging them on the backs of dining chairs. In the Texas heat, he was sure they’d dry by morning.

  At the sound of a gasp, he spun ‘round.

  Grace stood near the davenport grasping together the edges of a large and fluffy white robe. A towel had been twisted around her hair and the tail of it rested on her head.

  Her eyes widened. “What are you doing?”

  “The wash?” He thought she referred to the shirt and plaid draped over the chairs, but her gaze was fixed to his bared chest.

  She shook her head, speechless, and gestured toward the towel that covered the bottom half of him.

  “Auch, forgive me, Grace, but I’ve nothing else, aye?”

  “A robe maybe?”

  “Too small. I would have expected, in the land of football giants, they would supply large enough gowns for them.”

  Finally, she nodded and stepped around a low table to sit on one end of the couch. She bit her lip when he joined her, but she made no complaint. He was careful to cover his knees. For a minute or two, they sat in silence while all he could manage to think of was white cotton, and how little of it separated the two of them. But he shook such unworthy thoughts away and tried to think of nothing at all.

  On the moor, clearing his mind would end the day and he’d return to his rest on the ground until some thing or thought roused him again. But he was pleased to see that he was still as he had been a moment before, resting his head on the back of a comfortable seat.

  The silence stretched like an empty field before them, but he left it to her to speak first.

  “You made a joke in the car,” she finally said, “and I was wondering if you could explain it to me.”

  He’d hoped she’d forgotten. “A joke? What was it?”

  “I asked you a question, but you said the answer depended on how drunk I was. So? I’m not drunk now.”

  Oh, but heaven help him, he wished she were…

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Damn my loose tongue!

  He grinned and wagged his brows in a teasing manner. “If ye’re sober, I’m afraid I cannot tell ye. I was only will
ing to give ye the God’s honest truth if ye wouldna remember it in the morning, aye?” He chuckled, still hoping to distract her. Since the moment he’d let the words slip out of his mouth, he’d been praying to be able to take them back.

  “You’re not going to tell me?”

  He hated to tease, but the lass had enough difficulties without being told she’d spent the evening in the company of a ghost.

  He could put her off no longer. Surely there was something of the truth he could give her, about why the ride in the car had rattled him, but he couldn’t manage it. In an attempt to gain more time to think, he said, “Tell me. Do ye remember the question? For I’m having a difficult time remembering myself.”

  She worried at her bottom lip for a bit, then huffed. “No.” And together, they laughed like children.

  In spite of his honorable intentions, he couldn’t resist wanting her closer, to feel the heat of her mortal form while he still had senses to feel it. So he waved her toward him and patted his knee. “Come. I shall help dry yer hair as I used to do for my sisters.”

  “Sisters?”

  “Aye. Three, and all were younger.”

  “Were?”

  He cleared the emotion from his throat. “They’ve all passed, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Aww.” Her sympathy brought her closer, but her gaze caught on his towel. “I am not going to sit on your lap.”

  He pulled a small pillow onto his thighs for modesty’s sake and dropped another on the floor between his feet and pointed at it. “Sit there.”

  She obeyed and as she turned her back to him, he caught sight of a smile.

  First, he untwisted the towel from her head and tossed it aside. He chuckled when she shivered. Then he began combing through her thick blond tresses with his fingers, spreading the locks, then spreading them again.

  “At home,” he said quietly, “my sisters would line up behind each other, sitting before the fire, spreading each other’s hair. And if I was about, the one at the end would whine until I agreed to help her. I would give in to her pleas, eventually, and sit behind her. And when I’d demand to know how they managed without me to help, they’d insist that one of them would have died from the cold.”

  He could see it clearly as if the sisters were lined up in front of Grace with the fireplace to the left.

  “They had such thick hair, ye see. It took hours for it all to dry.”

  “No blow dryers?”

  “Nay. And what of ye? Tell be about Eugene, Oregon. What do ye there that took ye away from home?”

  She shrugged lightly. “I couldn’t wait to get away, actually. I went to California to college, and my parents allowed it only because I promised to come back. Then…I didn’t. Part of the time, I work for an environmental agency—which means the pay isn’t good. But I don’t care. I have a charming little house I painted yellow, and two old ladies who live next door. I cook and clean for them, and they let me plant wildflowers in their empty fields and keep bees along the back of their property line.”

  She paused to groan in appreciation for his fingers massaging her head. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet.

  “They’re twin sisters, maybe eighty years old, but I they think they’ll live forever. They think that I’ll keep them healthy just so I can keep my bees. I make most of my living from selling honey. Which, of course, humiliates my parents.”

  His hated the way her shoulders slumped when she spoke of the Cunninghams. So he veered the conversation around again. “Twins, ye say?”

  “Yes. And they look just alike, still.”

  He forced his fingers to resume their work. “Are they Scottish, perhaps?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. They don’t sound anything like you. But they do drink a lot of tea.”

  “With milk?”

  She laughed. “Yes. With milk. I offer to get cream for them, but they’re too frugal for that, they say. Like they’re worried they’ll never be able to afford the lifestyle if they got a taste for it!” After a long moment, she asked, “How did you know they liked milk?”

  “Oh, just a guess. Scots drink milk in their tea. And there is a clan with more than a usual number of twins born to them. Some say they’re witches.”

  “They’re Anna and Aggie Muir. Is Muir a Scottish name?”

  He swallowed the news as silently as he could. “That would be the clan, lass.”

  “That’s funny. They’re always telling me they’re witches. But I think it’s just their excuse for being odd.”

  In truth, it was a relief to finally see some connection between Grace and the Muir witch who had placed him in her path. There was no doubt about it now. He’d been right to pretend that he was the actor she’d been expecting.

  “What about you? What about your sisters?”

  He had to change the subject or he’d accidentally reveal more than just the fact that he’d had no electricity in his cottage. But what to say? If Grace Cunningham wished to know him better, how could he share anything when it might lead to the truth?

  An idea struck like a gift from God, and he realized he might be able to tell her all, but in a round-about way. He was so pleased, in fact, it was difficult to keep his seat. For if he was able to tell his own tale, there would be a wee something of him left behind—a living memory. More than just a bump beneath Culloden’s surface. More than just the never-remembered brother because his sisters had already left this earth.

  And perhaps, when he was on the other side, he would have some notion of it whenever he crossed her mind…

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It began innocently enough, but he felt a bit devious manipulating her so.

  “I believe the only quiet time I spent with my sisters,” he said, “was helping them dry their hair. And to pass the time, I would tell them stories.”

  She turned and smiled over her shoulder at him. “What kind of stories? Like knights and dragons and damsels in distress?”

  He wrinkled his nose and worried she wouldn’t like his idea after all, but with no alternative to hand, he pressed on.

  “Nay, lass. I’d tell them of the brave lads who fought to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on his rightful throne and take Scotland back from the English.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said with mild interest and turned away again. “I think I saw that on the news. But that was just last year, wasn’t it?”

  He barked with laughter. “Nay, lass. These stories hail back to the Year of Our Lord, seventeen hundred and forty-five.”

  “Oh. So you’re a history buff?”

  “Yes. Ye could say as much. For what happened in ’45 was as real to me as…as if I’d been there.”

  “Then you probably tell a great story.”

  “Aye, lassie. Would ye care to hear one?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Unfortunately, Grace’s hair dried much faster than his sisters’ had, but he continued to work it about for the lass seemed to be enjoying the contact nearly as much as he was.

  “All right, then. First, I’ll tell ye of the battle. And then, if ye’re nay too weary, I can tell ye a ghost story that came after the battle.”

  She scrunched up her shoulders and all but squealed with delight. And he was swamped with a sudden sadness on her behalf. For, considering her siblings, it was likely the lass had rarely enjoyed a quiet night of stories around the fire. He could hardly imagine Patience being patient enough to spend any quiet time with her younger sister to help with her hair or anything else so personal.

  Perhaps Grace had never felt a gentle, caring hand on her head, let alone a kind word. And yet, Grace continued to be sweet Grace, unjaded by the unpleasant folks who had surrounded her.

  He sucked in a breath to chase away the morose thoughts and applied himself to his story.

  “Once upon a time, in 1715…” He started with a brief history of the first rising, when the Scots tried to put Charlie’s father, King James, back on his throne. Then skipped forward to the day whe
n Prince Charlie arrived in the Western Isles looking for support. It wasn’t for fear of losing her attention that he kept to the most interesting parts, but for his need to tell her his own story.

  Soon enough, he described the morning he stood outside his wee cottage, bidding his sisters goodbye. Of course he told it under the guise of his ancestor, the Fitzjames for whom he’d been named.

  “Three young sisters, like mine. The oldest was capable of caring for the others for a few weeks. And by then, the Prince would surely be where God had intended, on the British throne, and Fitz…Fitzjames would be home again. No matter how the politics played out, he vowed to return in two weeks’ time.”

  “And did he?”

  He swallowed past the obstruction in his throat. “Nay. He couldn’t return. He had died, ye see, on Drumossie Moor, which is now called Culloden. It was a horrible slaughter. A folly before the first shot was ever fired. And all because the young prince failed us.”

  “Failed all of Scotland, you mean?”

  “Aye. Failed us all.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She was sorry?

  Her sweet, innocent words eased through his chest and beyond like a patch of cool, wet mud applied to a burn. Her simple condolences soothed him more than he could have expected.

  With her hair still wrapped in his fingers, his hands had stilled, so he bent again to his ministrations, while at the same time, he touched lightly on all the mishaps that made that morning, back in 1745, so monstrous and so monumental. When he finished, he realized she was crying. Her quiet sobbing shook the bones of his calves.

  “Forgive me, lass. I should have invented a story of dragons and damsels and knights in armor well cared for. But instead, I’ve brought Culloden’s own sadness to yer doorstep! I’m a fool!”

  She shook her head, turned, and maneuvered around to kneel before him with tears still in her eyes. “No. I wanted to hear it. I never knew. I mean, my dad always talked about Scotland like it was the greatest place only because his ancestors are from there, or because of the money he’d made off the oil deals. It was never real to me, until now. I never thought about the people who actually lived and died there. And Scotland was just a subject I brought up when I wanted my dad to change the subject.”