[Highlander 04] - Kiss of the Highlander

by Karen Marie Moning

  Following in her mother’s footsteps, Gwen had majored in physics, then worked briefly as a research assistant at Triton Corp. while completing her Ph.D. (before her Great Fit of Rebellion had landed her at Allstate). Sometimes, when her head had been swimming with equations, she’d wondered if her mother wasn’t right, if all there was to life could be explained by genetic programming and science.

  Popping a piece of gum in her mouth, Gwen stared out the window. She certainly wasn’t going to find her cherry picker on this bus. Nor had she entertained even a modicum of success in the prior villages. She had to do something soon, because if she didn’t, she would end up going back home no different than she’d arrived, and frankly that thought was more terrifying than the idea of seducing a man she hardly knew.

  The bus lurched to a halt, pitching Gwen forward. She struck her mouth on the metal frame of the seat in front of her. She cast an irate glance at the rotund, bald bus driver, wondering how the old folks always seemed to anticipate the sudden stop, when she never could. Were they simply more cautious with their brittle bones? Strapped into the seats better? In cahoots with the ancient, portly driver? She dug in her backpack for her compact and, sure enough, her lower lip was swelling.

  Well, maybe that will entice a man, she thought, poking it out a little more, as she dutifully followed Bert and Beatrice off the bus and into the sunny morning. Sucker lips: Didn’t men fixate on plump lips?

  “I can’t, Bert,” she said, when the kindly man tucked her arm in his. “I need to be alone for a little while,” she added apologetically.

  “Is your lip swollen again, dear?” Bert frowned. “Don’t you wear your seat belt? Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Gwen ignored the first two questions. “I’m fine. I just want to go for a walk and gather my thoughts,” she said, trying not to notice that Beatrice was regarding her from beneath the wide brim of her hat with the unnerving intensity of a woman who had survived multiple daughters.

  Sure enough, Beatrice pushed Bert toward the front steps of the inn. “You go on, Bertie,” she told her new husband. “We girls need to chat a moment.”

  While her husband disappeared into the quaint, thatch-roofed inn, Beatrice guided Gwen to a stone bench and pulled her down beside her.

  “There is a man for you, Gwen Cassidy,” Beatrice said.

  Gwen’s eyes widened. “How do you know that’s what I’m looking for?”

  Beatrice smiled, cornflower-blue eyes crinkling in her plump face. “You listen to Beatrice, dearie: Fling caution to the wind. If I were your age and looked like you, I’d be shaking my bom-bom everywhere I went.”

  “Bom-bom?” Gwen’s eyebrows rose.

  “Petunia, dear. Booty, behind,” Beatrice said with a wink. “Get out there and find a man of your own. Don’t let us spoil your trip, dragging you about. You don’t need old folks like us around. You need a strapping young man to sweep you off your feet. And keep you off them for a good long while,” she said meaningfully.

  “But I can’t find a man, Beatrice.” Gwen blew out a frustrated breath. “I’ve been searching for my cherry picker for months now—”

  “Cherry…Oh!” Beatrice’s round shoulders, swathed in pink wool and pearls, shook with laughter.

  Gwen winced. “Oh, God, how embarrassing! I can’t believe I just said that. That’s just what I started calling him in my mind because I’m the oldest living…er—”

  “Virgin,” Beatrice supplied helpfully, with another laugh.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Doesn’t a pretty young woman like you have a man back home?”

  Gwen sighed. “In the past six months I’ve dated oodles of men….” She trailed off. After her prominent parents had been killed in a plane crash in March, returning from a conference in Hong Kong, she’d turned into a veritable dating machine. Her only relative, her grandfather on her father’s side, had Alzheimer’s and hadn’t recognized her in forever. Lately, Gwen felt like the last Mohican, wandering around, desperate for someplace to call home.

  “And?” Beatrice prodded.

  “And I’m not a virgin because I’m trying to be,” Gwen said grumpily. “I can’t find a man I want, and I’m beginning to think the problem is me. Maybe I expect too much. Maybe I’m holding out for something that doesn’t even exist.” She’d voiced her secret fear. Maybe grand passion was just a dream. With all the kissing she’d done in the past few months, she’d not once been overcome with desire. Her parents certainly hadn’t had any great passion between them. Come to think of it, she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen grand passion outside of a movie theater or a book.

  “Oh, dearie, don’t think that!” Beatrice exclaimed. “You’re too young and lovely to give up hope. You never know when Mr. Right may walk in. Just look at me,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Over-the-hill, overweight, in a dwindling market of men, I’d resigned myself to being a widow. I’d been alone for years, then one sunny morning my Bertie waltzed into the little diner on Elm Street where the girls and I breakfast every Thursday, and I fell for him harder than the fat lady at the circus takes a tumble. Dreamy as a young girl again, fussing with my hair and”—she blushed—“I even bought a few things at Victoria’s Secret.” She lowered her voice and winked. “You know you’ve got hanky-panky on your mind when perfectly respectable white bras and panties suddenly won’t do anymore, and you find yourself buying pink ones, lilac ones, lime green and the like.”

  Gwen cleared her throat and shifted uncomfortably, wondering if her lilac bra showed through her white tank top. But Beatrice was oblivious, chatting away.

  “And I’ll tell you, Bertie certainly wasn’t what I thought I wanted in a man. I’d always thought I liked simple, honest, hardworking men. I never thought I’d get involved with a dangerous man like my Bertie,” she confided. Her smile turned tender, dreamy. “He was with the CIA for thirty years before he retired. You should hear some of his stories. Thrilling, positively thrilling.”

  Gwen gaped. “Bertie was CIA?” Rainbow Bertie?

  “You can’t judge the contents of the package by the wrapper, dearie,” Beatrice said, patting her cheek. “And one more piece of advice: Don’t be in too much of a rush to give it away, Gwen. Find a man who is worthy. Find a man you want to talk with into the wee hours, a man you can argue with when necessary, and a man who makes you sizzle when he touches you.”

  “Sizzle?” Gwen repeated doubtfully.

  “Trust me. When it’s right, you’ll know,” Beatrice said, beaming. “You’ll feel it. You won’t be able to walk away from it.” Satisfied that she’d said her piece, Beatrice planted a pink-lipsticked kiss on Gwen’s cheek, then rose, smoothing her sweater over her hips, before disappearing into the gaily painted inn. Gwen watched her retreat in thoughtful silence.

  Beatrice Hardy, age sixty-nine and a good fifty pounds overweight, walked with confidence. Glided with the grace of a woman half her size, swayed her ample bottom and serenely displayed her cleavage.

  In fact, she walked like she was beautiful.

  Worthy. Hmph!

  At this point, Gwen Cassidy would settle for a man who didn’t require a stiff dose of Viagra.

  Gwen paused to rest atop the small mountain of rocks she’d climbed. After discovering she couldn’t check into her room at the inn until after four o’clock, and firm in her resolve to not march into the nearest shop and buy a pack of that-word-she-wasn’t-saying-anymore, she’d grabbed her backpack and an apple and trotted off into the hills for an introspective hike. The hills above Loch Ness were dotted with outcroppings of stone, and the group of rocks upon which she stood extended for nearly half a mile, rising in breakneck hills and falling in jagged ravines. It had been a tough climb, but she’d relished the exercise after being cooped up in the stale air of the bus for so long.

  There was no denying that Scotland was lovely. She’d tromped gingerly through patches of hawthorn, skirted prickly thistles, paused to admire a rowan tree’s bright red berries, an
d kicked about a few spiky green horse chestnuts that heralded autumn with their tumble to the ground. She’d stood long moments admiring a field of cross-leaved heath that ascended and blended with a hillside of purple-pink heather. She and a dainty red deer had spooked each other as she’d passed through the woodland clearing in which it grazed.

  Peace had settled over her, the higher she’d hiked into the lush meadows and rocky hills. Far beneath her, Loch Ness stretched twenty-four miles long, over a mile wide, and, in places, a thousand feet deep, or so said the brochure that she’d read on the bus, highlighting the fact that the loch never froze in the winter because of its peaty, slightly acid content. The loch was a huge silvery mirror shimmering beneath the cloudless sky. The sun, nearly at its zenith, marked the approaching noon hour and felt delicious on her skin. The weather had been unusually warm for the past few days and she planned to take advantage of it.

  She flopped down on a flat rock and stretched out, soaking up the sunshine. Her group was scheduled to remain in the village until seven-thirty the following morning, so she had ample time to relax and enjoy nature before reboarding the tour bus from hell. Although she’d never meet an eligible prospect up here in the foothills, at least there were no phones ringing, with irate insureds on the other end, and no senior citizens casting nosy glances her way.

  She knew they gossiped about her; the old folks talked about everything. She suspected they were making up for all the times they’d held their tongues when they were young, invoking the impunity of advanced age. She found herself rather looking forward to senior immunity. What a relief it would be to say exactly what she thought for a change.

  And what would you say, Gwen?

  “I’m lonely,” she muttered softly. “I would say that I’m lonely and I’m damn tired of pretending that everything’s fine.”

  How she wished something exciting would happen!

  It just figured that the one time she’d tried to make something happen, she’d ended up on a senior citizens’ bus tour. She may as well face it, she was doomed to live a dry, uneventful, and lonely life.

  Eyes shut against the bright rays, she groped for her backpack to get her sunglasses but misjudged the distance and knocked the bag off the rock. She heard it bounce amid the clatter of loose stones for several moments, then a protracted silence, and finally a solid thump. Tucking her fringed bangs behind one ear, she sat up to see where it had fallen. She was dismayed to discover that it had tumbled off the rock, down a gully, and to the bottom of a narrow, forbidding precipice.

  She moved to the lip of the aperture, eyeing it warily. Her patches were in her pack, and she certainly couldn’t be expected to remain a non-that-word-she-wasn’t-thinking without something to take the edge off. Gauging the depth of the rocky cleft to be no more than twenty-five to thirty feet, she decided she was capable of retrieving it.

  She had no alternative; she had to go down after it.

  Lowering herself over the edge, she felt for toeholds. The hiking boots she’d laced on that morning had rugged, gripping soles that made the descent a little easier; however, as rough stone grazed her bare legs, she found herself wishing she’d worn jeans instead of her favorite pair of khaki Abercrombie & Fitch short-shorts that were so in vogue. Her lacy white tank top was comfortable for hiking, but the faded denim button-down she’d tied around her waist just kept getting tangled about her legs, so she paused a moment to untie it and let it waft down onto her backpack. Once she reached the bottom, she’d tuck it in her pack before climbing back up.

  It was slow, strenuous going, but half her life was in that pack—and it was arguably the better half. Cosmetics, hairbrush, toothpaste, floss, panties, and many other items that she’d wanted on her person in case her luggage got lost. Oh, admit it, Gwen, she thought, you could live out of that pack for weeks.

  The sun beat down on her shoulders as she descended, and she started to sweat. It figured that the sun had to shine directly into that crack at that moment, she thought irritably. Half an hour earlier or later, and it wouldn’t have penetrated there.

  Near the bottom, she slipped and inadvertently kicked her bag, wedging it firmly at the bottom of the narrow crevice. Squinting up into the sun, she muttered, “Come on, I’m trying to quit smoking down here, you could help me anytime now.”

  Easing herself down the last few feet, she placed one foot on the ground. There. She’d made it. Hardly enough room to turn around in the tight space, but she was there.

  Lowering her other foot, Gwen grabbed her button-down and stretched her fingers toward the strap of her pack.

  When the ground gave way beneath her feet, it was so sudden and unexpected that she scarcely had time to gasp before she plunged through the rocky bottom of the crevice. She fell for a terrifying few seconds, then landed with such force that the impact knocked the air from her lungs.

  As she struggled to draw a breath, crushed rock and dirt showered her where she lay. Adding insult to injury, the backpack fell through the hole after her and thumped her in the shoulder before rolling off into the darkness. She finally managed a ragged breath, spit hair and dirt out of her mouth, and mentally assessed her condition before attempting to move.

  She’d fallen hard and felt bruised from head to toe. Her hands were bleeding from her panicked attempt to catch herself as she’d plunged through the jagged opening, but, blessedly, it didn’t appear she’d broken any bones.

  Gingerly, she turned her head and gazed up at the hole through which she’d fallen. A stubborn ray of sunshine filtered down on her.

  I will not panic. But the hole was an impossible distance above her head. Worse still, she’d not passed any other hikers during her climb. She might yell herself hoarse, yet never be found. Shaking off a nervous shiver, she peered into the gloom. The shadowy blackness of a wall loomed a few yards away, and she could hear the faint trickle of water off in the distance. Obviously, she’d fallen into an underground cavern of sorts.

  But the pamphlet said nothing of any caves near Loch Ness—

  All thought ceased abruptly as she realized that whatever she was lying upon was not rock or soil. Stunned by the abrupt fall, she’d naturally assumed she’d landed on the hard floor of a cavern. But while it was hard, it was certainly not cold. Warm, rather. And given that until a few moments ago no sunlight had penetrated this place, what were the odds that something could be warm in this cool, damp cave?

  Swallowing, she remained utterly still, trying to decide what she was lying on without actually looking at it.

  She nudged it with a hipbone. It gave slightly, and it did not feel like soil. I’m going to be sick, she thought. It feels like a person.

  Had she fallen into an old burial chamber? But, then, wouldn’t it be nothing but bones? As she debated further movement, the sun reached its zenith, and a brilliant shaft of sunlight bathed the spot where she’d fallen.

  Summoning all her courage, she forced herself to look down.

  Gwen screamed.

  2

  She’d fallen on a body. One that, considering she hadn’t disturbed it, must be dead. Or, she worried, perhaps I killed it when I fell.

  When she managed to stop screaming, she found that she’d pushed herself up and was straddling it, her palms braced on its chest. Not its chest, she realized, but his chest. The motionless figure beneath her was undeniably male.

  Sinfully male.

  She snatched her hands away and sucked in a shocked breath.

  However he’d managed to get here, if he was dead, his demise had been quite recent. He was in perfect condition and—her hands crept back to his chest—warm. He had the sculpted physique of a professional football player, with wide shoulders, pumped biceps and pecs, and washboard abs. His hips beneath her were lean and powerful. Strange symbols were tattooed across his bare chest.

  She took slow, deep breaths to ease the sudden tightness in her chest. Leaning cautiously forward, she peered at a face that was savagely beautiful. His was the typ
e of dominant male virility women dreamed about in dark, erotic fantasies but knew didn’t really exist. Black lashes swept his golden skin, beneath arched brows and a silky fall of long black hair. His jaw was dusted with a blue-black shadow beard; his lips were pink and firm and sensually full. She brushed her finger against them, then felt mildly perverse, so she pretended she was just checking to see if he was alive and shook him, but he didn’t respond. Cupping his nose with her hand, she was relieved to feel a soft puff of breath. He isn’t dead, thank God. It made her feel better about finding him so attractive. Palm flush to his chest, she was further reassured by his strong heartbeat. Although it wasn’t beating very often, at least it was. He must be deeply unconscious, perhaps in a coma, she decided. Whichever it was, he couldn’t help her.

  Her gaze darted back up to the hole. Even if she managed to wake him and then stood on his shoulders, she still wouldn’t be near the lip of the hole. Sunshine streamed over her face, mocking her with a freedom that was so near, yet so impossibly far, and she shivered again. “Just what am I supposed to do now?” she muttered.

  Despite the fact that he was unconscious and of no use, her gaze swept back down. He exuded such vitality that his condition baffled her. She couldn’t decide if she was upset that he was unconscious, or relieved. With his looks he was surely a womanizer, just the kind of man she steered away from by instinct. Having grown up surrounded by scientists, she had no experience with men of his ilk. On the rare occasions she’d glimpsed a man like him sauntering out of Gold’s Gym she’d gawked surreptitiously, grateful that she was safely in her car. So much testosterone made her nervous. It couldn’t possibly be healthy.

  Cherry picker extraordinaire. The thought caught her off guard. Mortified, she berated herself, because he was injured and there she was, sitting on him, thinking lascivious thoughts. She pondered the possibility that she’d developed some kind of hormone imbalance, perhaps a surfeit of perky little eggs.