A Highlander Christmas

by Janet Chapman

  She’d give him credit, he didn’t scream when he looked in the mirror, but he did gasp.

  “Aren’t we a pair?” she asked, smiling at him in the mirror. “At least we’ve got two good eyes between us, and you can walk and I can . . . I can . . .” She hung her head. “I can never go into another bar. Every time I get into trouble, it’s in a bar.”

  He lifted her chin with his finger. “You can go with me. I won’t let you get into trouble.”

  “Said the spider to the fly.”

  “Smile again.”

  “No. It hurts my face.”

  “Because of your shiner, or just when you’re around men in general?”

  “Hey, I am a happy person, dammit.”

  “Wow, that pill sure wore off fast. Should I ask Fiona to give you another one?”

  Camry reached up and grabbed his ears, pulled down his head, then kissed him full on the mouth. “There!” she snapped. “Is that happy enough for you?”

  He pulled her into his arms, cradled her head against his shoulder, and kissed her back—a bit more forcefully, quite a bit longer, and definitely . . .

  Okay, he didn’t keep losing girlfriends because he bombed in the bedroom. This guy could kiss.

  But then, so could she. As a matter of fact, she had perfected kissing.

  Camry went weak in the knees—especially the one holding her weight—and sagged against him when his tongue started doing delicious things to hers. She nearly burst into tears when he suddenly pulled away.

  “Christ, you’re scary,” he rasped, his blue eyes locked on hers.

  Her head spun in confusion. “Scary?” she repeated, running her fingertip over his jaw. “How’s that?”

  He tilted her head back again and started kissing her cheek, then trailed soft, shivering kisses down her neck.

  Camry trembled with blossoming passion. Yup, he definitely rang her bell.

  No, wait, there was a real bell ringing somewhere.

  She pulled away. “Oh my God, what time is it? That’s my mother!”

  “You have a mother?” Luke muttered, trying to kiss her again, the evidence of his own blossoming passion poking her belly. “She’ll call back.”

  Camry untangled herself from his embrace and hobbled toward her bed. “But if I don’t answer, she’ll call my lab.” She suddenly changed directions when she realized her cell phone wasn’t on her nightstand. “Come on, where in hell are you?” She looked around the room, honed in on the bureau, and snatched up her purse.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said as soon as she flipped open her cell phone. “Gee, is it Monday already? I’ve been so involved in my work, I don’t even know what day it is.”

  She jumped when Luke took hold of her arm, then let him help her to the bed so she could sit down. “Really?” she said into the phone as she waved him away. “Three feet? It’s early for that much snow, isn’t it? But it’s good for the ski business.”

  She frowned at Luke when, instead of leaving, he walked around and sat down on his side of the bed and started eating her orange.

  “Um, Mom? Could you hold on a minute? Someone just walked in. Stay on the line—this will only take a minute.”

  She found the Mute button and held it down with her thumb, then snatched her orange from him. “Can’t you see I’m having a personal conversation here? Go back to your own bed.”

  “But it’s small. And the damn thing’s too short for me.” He picked up the toast on her plate of scrambled eggs and dismissed her with a wave. “Don’t let me stop you. I’m just going to finish my breakfast and have a nap.”

  “You are not sleeping in my bed.”

  “It’ll be easier for Fiona if we’re both in the same room.”

  She arched a brow. “So you wouldn’t mind if your baby sister took care of two virtual strangers sharing the same bed?”

  He scowled at her, then stuffed his mouth full of toast.

  Camry released the Mute button and held the phone back to her ear. “Can I call you back later, Mom? There’s something going on here that needs my undivided attention. What?” She sighed. “Yeah, I’m afraid I still can’t make it home for the solstice. I know, but better than anyone, you should understand how this work goes. I really don’t dare lose my focus for that long. And I can’t work at home during the holidays because of all the chaos. Okay, I’ll talk to you later. Yes, I love you, too. Bye, Mom. Tell Daddy I love him,” she said in a rush, just before hitting the End button.

  “You’re not going home for Christmas?” Luke asked, taking another bite of toast.

  Camry stuffed what was left of her orange in her mouth.

  “Wait, you said if you didn’t answer, your mom would call your lab. You have a lab?” He made a production of looking at all the doors in the room, then pointed at the closet door. “Is it in there? What kind of lab is it?” He gasped dramatically. “Not a meth lab!” He shook his head. “And you’re worried about what impression our being in the same bed will have on Fiona.”

  “Will you get real? Better yet, get out of here.”

  “What kind of lab were you talking about, MacKeage?”

  She settled back against the headboard with a sigh, and pushed around her eggs with a fork. “I used to be a rocket propulsion physicist.”

  “You’re a rocket scientist? For real? Wait, you said used to be. As in you’re not a physicist anymore?” He grinned. “What happened, did you suddenly forget how to count past ten without undressing your feet?”

  She glared over at him. “No, I got stuck.”

  “Stuck?” He snorted. “Real scientists don’t get stuck, MacKeage. We hit brick walls sometimes, but we either find a way around them or start digging through them. Wait,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Did your brick wall have anything to do with that guy you were having the e-mail argument with?”

  “The arrogant bastard sent me an equation that completely contradicted three years of my work,” she growled, throwing the fork across the room, where it hit the wall and clattered to the floor. “And then he had the audacity to suggest we should work on the problem together.”

  “So, are you angry because a fellow scientist wants to work with you, or because the equation he sent you was correct?”

  “His name is Lucian Renoir. God, even his name sounds arrogant. But I’m the one who’s going to give the world a viable ion propulsion system,” she said, slapping her chest, “whereas he just wants to come here and steal my work.”

  “Um, there’s a bit of a flaw in your theory, MacKeage. He can’t steal what doesn’t exist. You walked away, remember?” He suddenly smiled at her. “But if you think this Renoir fellow is five feet three and weighs four hundred pounds, maybe you’re expecting him to croak any minute, and then you’ll start working again?”

  Since she’d thrown the fork, Camry used her fingers to eat some of the scrambled eggs. “I can’t start up again if I can’t figure out how to get unstuck.” She glanced at him, then looked back at the tray. “He . . . the equation he sent me was correct. I had to retrace nearly two years of work before I found where I’d shot off on a tangent.” She looked over at him. “But even though I found the problem, I still can’t figure out how to fix it.”

  “Maybe Renoir could help you.”

  “But if he can make it work, then I should be able to, too.” She actually smiled. “But I doubt he can do it on his own, because he’s really not all that bright.”

  “He’s not?”

  “He can’t even figure out that my mother is Dr. Grace Sutter.”

  “The Dr. Sutter, who used to work for StarShip Spaceline? Hell, I’ve read all her papers. She’s the one who turned me on to space science when I was twelve.”

  Cam snorted. “She turned me on to it in her womb.”

  “So why aren’t you collaborating with her?”

  She looked back down at the tray and frowned. “I’ve tried, but she refuses. She just suddenly walked away from ion propulsion when I was a kid, and started locking
herself in her lab to work on something else.” She snorted. “Probably cookie recipes. Having seven daughters seems to have taken the edge off her passion for science.” She looked over at him. “You men don’t have to worry about pregnancies messing you up with nurturing hormones, so you never lose your edge.”

  His navy blue eyes studied her for several heartbeats. “Is that what you think happened to your mother?”

  “What else could it be? She was really close to perfecting ion propulsion when she met my father and started having babies, and, thirty-five years later, we still don’t have a viable system.”

  “But the paper I read was written . . .” He looked away in thought. “I was around twelve then, and I’m thirty-three now.” He looked back at her. “Your mother was still publishing just twenty years ago. And I believe she’s published as recently as six years ago, though not on ion propulsion. She’s still in the game, Camry. At least she didn’t just suddenly walk away to start bartending and babysitting dogs.”

  Cam said nothing as she looked down at the tray again.

  “What really made you walk away, MacKeage?” His eyes suddenly widened. “Does it have something to do with what Fiona said just a minute ago? Maybe you’re not standing in front of a brick wall, but are smack in the middle of a midlife crisis.” He pointed at the bedroom door. “When you were Fiona’s age, didn’t you want it all, too: a career and a husband and children? But where you had one out of the three, now you have none.” He suddenly smiled. “Or are you really on sabbatical, working on goals two and three?”

  “I don’t ever intend to get married and have children.”

  “Not ever? That’s a hell of a long time.”

  “I don’t see you rushing out to get yourself a wife and children.”

  He let out a huge yawn and suddenly scooted down in the bed. “I would probably be married right now if I could keep a girlfriend long enough to propose to her. I just can’t seem to find one who gets turned on by what I do.”

  Camry glared at him, even though his eyes were closed. But then she also let out a yawn. She started to shove the tray toward him to make room for herself, only to suddenly remember his bruised ribs. She set the tray on the floor beside the bed, slid down under the blankets, and turned her back to him.

  Maybe instead of ion propulsion, she should work on the science of men having babies, so Mother Nature could screw with their hormones for a change.

  Chapter Seven

  Luke sat sprawled on the couch four days later, watching the infomercial explaining how mineralbased makeup would make his skin feel like he wasn’t wearing anything, so bored out of his skull he was damn close to tears.

  How in hell did Camry do this five days a week, week after week?

  Granted, the dogs were entertaining—for all of ten minutes—but how did she just hang around this house all day, doing virtually nothing? How does anyone with even half a brain not justify the air they breathe by at least trying to be productive?

  When she’d mentioned her e-mail argument that first morning, Luke had felt guilty that he might have been responsible for Camry’s walking away from her work. But as he’d gotten to know her over the last four days, he’d come to realize that her little midlife crisis had more to do with her mother—and her concept of family in general—than it had to do with him or her work.

  He now believed that Camry was afraid of being just like her mother instead of wanting to emulate her, afraid that falling in love with a man and having babies would addle her brain, and afraid of losing her passion for the sciences—which she readily admitted she’d acquired in the womb—just like she believed her mother had.

  And Luke was pretty sure that being afraid of anything was as mind-boggling to Camry MacKeage as doing nothing all day was to him.

  That’s why he’d spent the last four days trying to figure out how he might jump-start Camry—not only back into her work, but also back to her family. Admitting he was Lucian Renoir certainly might do the trick, but he wasn’t convinced it wouldn’t just as easily push her in the opposite direction.

  Unless he also confessed that he’d destroyed her mother’s satellite. Because if that didn’t make her want to kill him in his sleep, maybe she’d at least try to kill him in the scientific arena.

  Not that it mattered, considering he’d committed professional suicide the moment he’d started eavesdropping on Podly.

  Luke drove his hand into the cellophane bag Fiona had given him before she’d gone to help Camry take a shower, and pulled out a fistful of corn chips. Four heads lifted and eight ears perked up. Four drooling tongues appeared, and eight hopeful brown eyes locked on his hand moving toward his mouth.

  Luke suddenly lifted his hand over his head, then darted it to the side, then quickly shot it over to his other side—all the while watching the canine eating machines track his movements with the intensity of a guided missile locked on its target.

  “You are such uncomplicated beasts,” he muttered, tossing the chips to the floor.

  While they were occupied chomping down the junk food and inhaling stray crumbs up their noses, Luke quietly reached into the bag again and quickly filled his own mouth as he absently watched the magical transformation as a woman’s face went from blotchy red to visibly flawless.

  Camry MacKeage certainly didn’t need this product; she hadn’t been wearing any makeup that first morning he’d awakened beside her, and her skin had looked damned flawless to him—except for the bruise on her left cheek and around her eye, which was only now starting to fade.

  She’d felt pretty damn good in his arms, too, when she had recklessly kissed him right there in the bathroom, and he had just as recklessly kissed her back.

  When he’d decided to come to America, Luke had known Camry was somewhere around five feet three, but had hoped her weight had blossomed to four hundred pounds. And it wouldn’t have hurt, either, if she’d sprouted horns soon after the photo had been taken that he’d found of her on the Internet. Considering his track record with women, he’d have preferred that Dr. MacKeage be anything but gorgeous, because he hadn’t wanted even a hint of sexual tension to creep into their work.

  So much for that pipe dream. Hell, if they both hadn’t been so beaten up that first morning, he wouldn’t be bored to tears right now because he would have spent the last four days making love to her.

  Not that he hadn’t tried.

  It had become somewhat of a game between them—or maybe challenge was a better word—where they flirted right up to the edge of fullblown passion, then withdrew into what Luke could only describe as salacious hell. He was so sexually frustrated, and so damned in lust with Camry MacKeage, that the next time she kissed him he wasn’t going to care if the dogs watched, he intended to take her right here on the couch.

  Hell, he’d nearly nailed her this morning, when he’d awakened to find her in his bed. Looking him straight in the face with the same piercing green eyes as her father, she’d had the nerve to say she’d heard him whimpering in his sleep but had fallen asleep before she could return to her bed.

  Fiona, apparently not the least bit impressionable, had breezed in, popped a pill in each of their mouths, and told them she was running out to buy groceries. Beginning to suspect the romantically inclined teenager was keeping them drugged so they would keep playing musical beds, Luke had started hiding his pill in his cheek, then slipping it behind the headboard the moment the girl turned her back.

  If Camry had a mouse problem, they were certainly happy rodents now.

  In an attempt to distract himself from his raging lust, Luke had tried focusing on Fiona instead, specifically on finding out her last name so he could locate her parents. But apparently teens today were much sharper than he had been, because when he had run away from home, he hadn’t made it ten miles before his stepfather had found him. André had dragged Luke home, handed him a crosscut saw and ax, and made him cut, chop, and stack eight cords of firewood by hand while he contemplated the hell he
had put his mother through.

  Luke hadn’t run away from home again until age twenty-four.

  He heard the bedroom door open and knew that Camry—likely armored in lilac-scented soap for another one of their salacious battles—was heading over to sit down beside him while Fiona took the dogs out for their morning walk. The winter solstice was only a week away, and Luke figured he had only one or two days left to talk Camry into going home before she claimed he was fully recovered and kicked him out on his sexually frustrated ass.

  He sighed, scooting over to make room for her on the couch as he patted his pocket to make sure he’d remembered the condoms. It was time, he’d decided this morning while shaving, to launch a full frontal attack: first on Camry’s body—because he really, painfully wanted her—and then on her conscience.

  “I’m heading out to walk the mutts,” Fiona said as she put on her jacket. “Is there anything either of you need before I go?”

  “A beer would be nice,” Luke said, not caring if it was only ten in the morning, because he was so damned bored. Dave had brought him a six-pack, but Fiona had hidden it, claiming he couldn’t mix beer with the drugs she thought he was still taking.

  “If you don’t take your afternoon pill, you can have one tonight with supper,” she promised, snapping leashes on the four tail-wagging dogs and heading outside.

  “You seem to be getting around quite well,” Luke said when Camry swiped his bag of corn chips. “How’s the ankle feeling?”

  “Ready to run a marathon,” she said, stuffing her mouth with chips.

  “Are you going to waste time eating, or can we go straight to the necking part of this morning’s entertainment? They’ll only be gone an hour.”

  She looked over at him, blinking her pretty green eyes, and Luke realized there had been an edge in his voice. He grinned. “Or we can skip the necking and just kick things up a notch. But I suggest we use your bed, because the spare really isn’t large enough for the two of us—as you found out this morning, when I gallantly saved you from falling out on your sexy little . . . behind.”