by Rye Hart
“Excuse me ma’am is this seat taken?”
I smiled at up at him, “well I was saving it for a handsome gentleman, but I suppose you’ll do just fine,” I said, teasing.
“Do you travel much?” he said, settling down beside me.
“Not really,” I said. “I am just returning from visiting my sister in Colorado.”
“Colorado is a beautiful state. I was there for a bit myself,” he said.
“Oh? And how was your stay?” I asked.
“It was perfect really. I went to visit my aunt and ended up falling hopelessly in love with a beautiful girl. I think I want to marry her,” he said.
It took everything in me not to jump out of my seat. “Oh?” I said coyly. “And do you think she wants to marry you?”
Clayton reached into his pocket and pulled out a yellow diamond ring with rubies on each side. “Well what do you think? Do you think she’ll say yes to this?” he asked.
“Oh Clayton it’s beautiful!” I exclaimed.
“So you’ll marry me then? Please say yes, Eden. You’ll make me the happiest man in the world,” Clayton said.
Tears sprung to my eyes and I threw my arms around his neck. “Yes, Clayton, yes I will marry you,” I said as he slipped the ring onto my finger.
Mama and papa were at the station when we arrived and we were married two months later. Rose, Jason, and Bannon were there for the wedding and even Clara made the trip. Papa was excited, both his girls were married and happy. He made a toast at our reception and said he would like to have a few more grandchildren like Bannon.
Rose spoke first. “Well Eden, you heard the man!”
With that, everyone clinked their glasses and toasted our future.
THE END
Highlander’s Curse
Chapter One
Eva looked at herself in the full length mirror. She liked how her jeans hugged her full hips.
"Eva, can you pretty please play a game with us!" pleaded six-year-old Jamie, her youngest cousin. He always enjoyed play time with his cousin and he rarely took no for an answer.
"Not tonight, I have a big project for work that my boss needs tomorrow," Eva tried to explain. She was already stressed to the max with all the recent demands being placed on her. It wasn't easy trying to get noticed at a big publishing firm when she spent most of her time running menial errands, and Eva was starting to feel like a small fish in a very big sea. Eva didn't like the idea of admitting that maybe her job just wasn't working out, but at the moment, her financial prospects were the biggest incentive for getting her butt out of bed every morning.
"Pleeeeeeease," chimed in Maggie, Jamie's older sister by two years. The little girl furrowed her brow and wrinkled her nose as if she was about to cry.
Jamie took a look at Maggie's devastated expression and quickly followed suit with his own take on the puppy-dog look.
Eva chuckled before throwing her hands up in the air in an expression of surrender. "You guys are good, you know that?" she teased.
"Hurray!" Both Maggie and Jamie jumped up in excitement.
Eva quickly closed the book she had been working on and brushed a thick tendril of black hair behind her ear before turning her full attention back toward her little cousins. "So what game did you have in mind?" she asked them.
"I want to play hide-n-seek," demanded the impulsive Maggie.
"No!" cried Jamie. "Manhunt, I want to play manhunt," he said with a decisiveness that was uncanny for a six-year-old.
Eva couldn't help but laugh at their exchange. She had been more like a big sister to her little cousins ever since her Aunt Marie and Uncle Mark had graciously taken her in when she was struggling to make ends meet. She adored little Jamie and Maggie, but she had already begun to suspect that they were more than a little spoiled.
"How about we play both?" she offered in an attempt to placate the two. "Which one do you want to —" she began.
"Manhunt!" Jamie interrupted enthusiastically. He turned to look at his sister; a disapproving scowl was already forming on Maggie's face. "Please," he added to both his sister and his cousin.
"Oh okay," Maggie gave in. It didn't take much for her to indulge her baby brother.
"Yippy!" cried Jamie. "You are it!" he tagged Eva abruptly with his hand before he turned on his heel and darted down the hall and out of the room.
Maggie gave an impatient sigh and a rather precocious eye-roll, before she too took off after her little brother.
Eva was left alone in the room before she had time to fully process what she had just gotten herself into.
She waited a few moments, allowing the children time to disperse off in the large house before she made her way down the dark hallway. She didn't have a lot of energy after a grueling day at work to run after them, but she didn't think she would have much trouble catching a six and eight-year-old. However, they were a lot more familiar with the old Tudor-style house than she was, as she had only been living there for a few months, which gave the children a decisive advantage in their attempts to evade being tagged "It."
As Eva began moving throughout the rooms in search of her cousins, she couldn't help but feel a little unsettled by the eerie quietness that descended upon the house; it was almost too quiet. She thought for sure she would hear the sound of the children running down the hallways, or giggling and giving themselves away. Instead, the only sound came from her own beating heart as it echoed loudly in her ears.
"Jamie? Maggie?" she called out, hoping that they might throw her a bone and respond. "Can I get a hint?" she asked. Whenever she was alone, she sometimes had the feeling that she was being watched. Although she knew that her young cousins and aunt and uncle were somewhere on the property, she couldn't shake the feeling of unease. Eva wasn't necessarily a superstitious person, but this house had the ability to creep her out and make her doubt that she was seeing the world with crystal clarity.
Eva's thoughts were interrupted when she heard a loud crash coming from a room upstairs. "Gotcha," she muttered under her breath. The distraction was welcomed, as it momentarily diverted her attention from the strange direction her thoughts had shifted.
She headed toward the stairs and made her way up as quickly as she could. When she reached the top, she found herself facing several different doors. She wasn't sure which one the crashing sound came out of. She moved toward the first, but before she turned the handle, she heard what sounded like a guttural moan emit from behind the door.
Eva paused, unsure if she should proceed. The sound was definitely not something that the children would be capable of making. Likewise her aunt and uncle were in the study on the main floor, which was quite far from where she was.
Eva wracked her mind for the obvious explanation for the noise, but came up empty. Eva knew that she should march downstairs, find her aunt and uncle and have them aid her in the investigation, but she didn't want to make a big fuss over nothing.
Eva shook her head in an attempt to clear her racing thoughts. "Get a hold of yourself," she muttered quietly. She hated that she was a timid person who often balked when faced with difficult prospects. It was why she was stuck in a job that she was too frightened to leave, why she was too scared to leave Brighton and finally make the move to London, and why she was still tragically single at twenty five.
Confident wasn't often a word used to describe Eva, but that didn't mean she didn't mean she didn't try to be. Eva, don't you dare run downstairs to get help! You are a grown woman and whatever you heard was just your imagination, she silently gave herself the feeblest pep talk. You have nothing to fear, she added for good measure.
Nothing to fear, she repeated in an attempt to drill the sentence into her head and hopefully infuse a bit of steel into her backbone.
With a determination that she hadn't thought she was capable of, Eva shakily opened the door and stepped inside, ready to face what lay within.
Chapter Two
A desperate cry pierced the air around Eva and
reverberated in her own head. It only took her a sickening second to realize that the scream was coming from her own lips.
She screamed as the sensation of falling overwhelmed her. Darkness consumed what little light had remained around her body as she felt herself torn away from the door handle. She reached out to grab onto something to stop her fall, but she desperately found herself clawing at the air.
Eva stopped screaming the moment her body hit a pool of frigid water. The shock of the impact forced the air out of her lungs, and when she instinctively tried to draw a breath, her lungs filled with the cold liquid.
Eva flailed, moving her limbs in a final desperate struggle for survival.
At the last moment, when she just about resigned herself to her watery end, she felt large hands rip her from her place and draw her up.
The moment Eva's body broke through the surface, she felt an impact against her chest, which caused her to expel the water from her lungs. She coughed reflexively, sputtering and gasping as her airways cleared and she was finally able to take a few shaky breaths. She collapsed into a heap upon the muddy embankment and continued to gulp greedily on the air around her.
"Quite the entrance," interrupted a deep male voice with a thick Scottish burr.
Eva was suddenly acutely aware of the man standing over her. Her eyes widened as she took in the impressive sight of him.
The man was well over six and a half feet tall, muscular, heavily tattooed, and sinfully handsome. He had dark, thick hair tied back from his face, the hint of a beard lining his chiseled jaw, and intense black-brown eyes that were currently focused on Eva with heated curiosity.
Eva could feel the heat rise in her cheeks. She had never been under this level of scrutiny by such an impressive male before. She felt a little intimidated by the intensity with which his gaze roamed her body. But as she watched his eyes, Eva tried to replay the horrific events in her head. How the hell did she get here? This is some crazy shit – pinch yourself and get back to reality, Eva.
The man's features softened. "I thought ye would never come," he said gently.
Eva gaped. "What?" she sputtered. Suddenly everything felt so real and it was in that moment she realized that she was no longer in her aunt and uncle’s home. I better not be dead, she thought grimly. Her mind struggled to wrap itself around what exactly had happened that had brought her to this point. Did I hit my damn head? Am I hallucinating? Did I die and go to some weird purgatory with a handsome highlander as the gatekeeper? She looked around her, it appeared that she was in some kind of forest. It doesn't look like purgatory, she thought.
The man cocked his head as he studied her with a curious intensity. "I'm here to claim my promised witch," he said with a glow in his eyes.
Eva, for the second time that evening, gaped with bewilderment at the handsome stranger. "Shit! It is purgatory!," she rambled nervously. She had no idea what happening, but hoped that there was some logical answer hidden among the craziness of the past ten minutes.
The man chuckled softly. The melodious echo of his voice sent shivers down Eva's spine and pooled deep in her belly. Her mind quieted as the man's calming presence began to affect her.
"My luck the gods would send me a strange one," he said in a hypnotic voice. "But since I've been waiting for ye long enough, I think we should proceed," he stated as he took a step toward Eva.
Instinctively, Eva backed away as her anxiety returned. She still wasn't sure what was going on — if she was dead and stuck in some weird purgatory, or perhaps if she had hit her head and begun to hallucinate strange highlanders in the woods.
The man sent her another one of his curious looks, but he stopped just within an arm’s length. With careful movement, he knelt before Eva and met her gaze at eye-level, his brown eyes locked with Eva's blue ones.
"Stunning," he breathed sensually. Slowly, he brought his hand up to brush a stray lock of dark hair out of Eva's eyes and away from her face.
Eva didn't shy away this time, so entranced was she by the dark swirling depths of his gaze. She shivered under his heated touch.
"This will nae be difficult" he whispered as he brought his lips to meet Eva's.
Eva wanted to ask him what he meant by “nae be difficult”, but at the precise moment that his mouth brushed against her own, all rational thought escaped her. She was consumed by the delectable taste of his lips, the intoxicating aroma of his masculinity, and the arousing urgency by which he claimed her mouth. It was both a little overwhelming, and yet not quite enough.
"Wait," she said breathlessly as she brought her hands flush against the mysterious man's strong chest. "I don't even know you." She looked wildly around her at the darkened woods, "Or where the hell I am." Kissing strange men in the woods wasn't exactly how she thought her night would end up.
The heat in the man's eyes was replaced by confusion. "Are you nae the promised one?" he questioned suddenly, his brogue deepening.
"The… wait, what?" Eva sputtered. What was this man talking about?
The man leaned back and studied her, his eyes taking in every inch of her from her bare feet to the sopping mass of black hair clinging to her face. "Aye, you are my promised mistress, I ken it," he stated.
"Excuse me?" Eva interrupted. "I'm sorry mister, I ken you have the wrong girl," she said in a poorly attempted Scottish accent. Eva had no idea what was going on, but she was already fed up with it. She had a work deadline to meet and whatever strange hallucination she was having, she needed to snap out of it. "I need to go," she said abruptly. She attempted to stand, but she still was a little shaky from almost drowning and she wavered a bit.
The man steadied her by bringing his strong hands protectively to her hips. He rose up with her, his impressive height towering over Eva's curvy frame. "I do not ken what you mean by ‘wrong girl’, but I have waited too long for ye to let ye go," he said firmly. In one swoop, he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder.
His actions took Eva by surprised, and she was already over his shoulder before she had time to think of a comeback. Her hair fell into her eyes and her large breasts pressed up against her. She could feel him hold her tightly in place with his large forearm, while he used his free hand to steady her by keeping it pressed against her ample bottom in a possessive gesture. She had no idea how she was going to get out of this situation, or his stronghold.
"Put me down!" she demanded as she squirmed in his arms.
Eva's words did nothing; her captor appeared not the least bit bothered by her movements. He continued to stride through the dark forest at a leisurely pace, as if he were taking a late night stroll. It infuriated Eva that he acted pleased with himself.
"Put me down!" she repeated, but with more force this time. She pounded her small fists on his back and tried to kick her legs.
"Hush lass, do not fret. We will be at the castle in time," he calmly replied.
"Castle?" Eva asked, utterly bewildered. Over the course of the past thirty minutes or so, she had almost drowned, was saved by an unusually hot highlander, kissed by said highlander, and then thrown over his muscular shoulder to be carted off to his castle. I must have hit my head pretty hard or something, because there is no way this is actually happening, she thought. Although, as Eva tried to rationalize what was happening as some weird dream, a part of her had already begun to accept the truth — she was far from home.
"Aye," the highlander replied cheerful. "And soon —" his words broke off suddenly as his body stilled and he came to an abrupt stop.
"What is it?" Eva asked, her heart pounding with the fear of the unknown.
"Hush," he whispered.
And then Eva heard it. In the distance, the low howl of wolves echoed through the night. Eva sucked in her breath at the thought of the terrifying creatures.
Before Eva could ask the highlander what they were going to do, he took off running, knocking the air out of her.
"W-w-w-what," she tried to say through the rough jostling, "is going on?"
The highlander didn't reply, but instead increased his strides.
Eva wasn't so much afraid, as she was confused. She kept waiting for the moment when she would wake up in bed, completely rested, and not the worse for wear. But she wasn't able to rationalize away how real everything seemed and, as a result, she started to wonder if something more supernatural had happened to her the moment that she walked through the door back at the house.
The wolves' howls again pierced the night, but this time they sounded a lot closer. Eva was filled with the dreaded realization that they were being chased.
The moonlight lit their path as the man carried Eva out of the woods and up a steep embankment. When he finally set her down, Eva was so dizzy from the jostling that she was barely able to focus her eyes or her thoughts. She blinked a few times in an attempt to bring her gaze back into focus, but the moment that the fog lifted, what she saw seized her with terror.
