Mystical Warrior

by Janet Chapman

  Fiona plopped back down on the stairs, trying to decide if she believed him or not. “And you … you will let me keep Misneach?” she whispered, looking at his broad chest because she wasn’t quite able to meet his gaze.

  She saw him shrug. “I’ve wanted to get a dog myself but didn’t think it was fair, considering the long hours I’m gone from the house. Truth is, I like the idea of having a dog around to keep the raccoons and skunks out of the barn.” Although it didn’t quite reach his eyes, he smiled up at her. “Just teach him to do his business in the woods, and keep him out of the trash.”

  Fiona jumped to her feet again, unable to contain her excitement. “I promise, you won’t even know he’s here!”

  Misneach came awake with a startled yelp and tumbled down several steps before he slammed into Fiona’s legs, knocking her off balance. She tried to grab the railing with one hand and Misneach’s leash with the other, only she missed both when the leash tangled in her legs. But just as she felt herself falling, she was suddenly swept off her feet and gently set on the stairs.

  “Th-thank you,” she whispered in horror.

  But she was talking to Trace Huntsman’s back. And if she hadn’t still been shivering from the feel of his warm, powerful arms around her, she might have thought nothing had happened as she watched her landlord disappear around the corner of the house—with Misneach, leash flapping behind him, yapping excitedly at his heels.

  Fiona shivered again. She couldn’t believe a man could move that fast or so silently; yet he must have, or she would have been lying in a heap on the ground right now.

  Hearing a sudden yelp followed by strangled cries of distress, Fiona rushed down the remaining steps to find Misneach hanging off the side of the porch, frantically pawing the air. But before she could even reach him, Mr. Huntsman was there, unsnapping the leash from his collar before lowering him to the ground.

  Fiona swept the whimpering puppy into her arms and whispered soothing words into his trembling fur. But when she lifted her gaze to thank her landlord, the man had once again disappeared as silently as a ghost.

  She frowned down at the leash. The handle had wedged in a crack between two rotten boards, apparently bringing Misneach to an abrupt halt before flinging him off the porch. She kissed the top of his head and set him down, then pulled the leash free. But before she could snap it onto his collar, the pup was off again, racing after his savior.

  “Misneach, no!” Fiona cried, chasing after him. “Come he—”

  The rest of her command got muffled in Trace Huntsman’s chest. She bounced off him and would have fallen back if he hadn’t caught her by the shoulders.

  “Just out of curiosity,” he muttered, setting her on her feet and turning away, “how many trees did you crash into when you were a hawk?”

  Fiona gaped at his retreating back. Was he implying that she was clumsy?

  “None!” she snapped, marching after him. “I’ll have you know I could pluck a dove right out of the air, even in a strong gale. Misneach, come here!” she demanded when the pup started nipping at his heels again.

  He reached into the bed of his pickup and pulled out a large roll of plastic and a bundle of thin wooden sticks. Then he stepped over her pet and walked past her without breaking stride as he headed toward the front of the house.

  “Misneach, come!” she shouted, rushing after them again.

  Her landlord dropped everything at the foot of her stairs, then walked past her again back in the direction of his truck. This time, Fiona managed to capture the pup, who immediately started struggling when she tried to snap the leash onto his collar. “You will behave yourself,” she quietly hissed, “before Mr. Huntsman changes his mind about letting you live here.”

  But the moment she got the leash on him, the little contortionist slipped out of his collar and ran off again. “Misneach!” Fiona cried, growing truly frantic when he disappeared into the barn.

  She barged in after him, but her eyes didn’t adjust to the darkness quickly enough, and she would have smacked into a post if a large hand hadn’t caught hold of her sleeve and pulled her around it at the last minute.

  “Leave the pup be,” he said, striding out of the barn carrying a leather pouch with a hammer hanging on it and a small pail filled with nails. “He’s following me because he’s used to being around men,” he continued, stopping to fasten the belt around his waist. “And there’s really no reason for you to restrain him here in the yard.”

  “But he might run out to the road and get hit by a vehicle.”

  He took the leash and collar out of her hand before she even realized what he was doing, and replaced it with a pair of leather gloves that he pulled from his hind pocket. “He’ll stick close to us,” he said, picking up the pail and heading back around the front of the house.

  Fiona looked at the gloves in her hand, wondering what she was supposed to do with them. She ran to catch up with him and Misneach, but when she reached the foot of her stairs, neither of them was there. The roll of plastic and bundle of wood were gone, and the pail was sitting in their place.

  “Bring the nails,” he called from somewhere behind the house.

  The stiff breeze blowing in off the bay caught the hem of her long coat just as she rounded the corner, and Misneach lunged toward the material with a playful yelp. Only the pup bumped into the pail instead, knocking it out of her hand. She let out a cry of dismay, and despite her attempts to catch it, all of the nails flew out of the pail and disappeared into the tall grass.

  It took every ounce of courage Fiona possessed not to turn tail and run, even though she knew Mr. Huntsman would catch her before she reached her stairs. And it definitely was beyond her ability to look at him, knowing the anger she’d see in his eyes.

  But several pounding heartbeats later, when he still hadn’t said anything, she finally worked up the nerve to look up.

  Only he was gone.

  And so was Misneach.

  Fiona bent at the waist, the memory piercing her like a sword of that long-ago day when her pet goose had caused her to spill an entire pot of stew. She had been forced to make a new one with the young goose—and then she’d been forced to eat it.

  She dropped to her knees, grabbed the pail, and started picking up whatever nails she could find, praying to God that Trace Huntsman wouldn’t take out his anger at her on a poor, innocent puppy.

  “I’m picking them up!” she screamed as she frantically searched the ground. “I’ll find every last one, I promise! Please, just give me time to find them!”

  “Here, this will help,” he said quietly, setting a rectangular piece of metal the size of a shoe on the ground and then walking away.

  Misneach bounded up and started licking her face, and Fiona blindly pulled the puppy under her as she leaned over him. She swiped at her eyes with the back of one hand as she held her pet protectively beneath her, and picked up the heavy piece of metal—only to discover several nails stuck to the underside of it.

  “It’s a magnet,” her landlord said from several feet away as he started unrolling the plastic. “Just run it over the ground, and it will attract the nails. Then brush them off into the pail and run it over the ground again.”

  With a whispered plea for Misneach to behave himself, Fiona began working as quickly as her shaking allowed, her silent tears of relief dripping onto her hands. She could actually hear the nails clinking against the mysterious metal as she pushed the tall grass aside to slide it over the ground.

  The magnet held such power that she had a difficult time prying off the nails. But every time she lifted it up, several dozen more nails were clinging to it, and in less than five minutes, she had the pail nearly full.

  But even more magical than the magnet was that Trace Huntsman hadn’t flown into a rage. In fact, she saw him giving Misneach playful little shoves as he unrolled the plastic along the back side of the house. But as fewer and fewer nails clung to the magnet each time she lifted it, and her shaking subs
ided and her tears dried up, Fiona’s terror slowly turned to shame.

  She had utterly humiliated herself in front of this man, and probably lost any chance she might have had of getting him to respect her as a modern woman.

  Maybe she should go live in the woods.

  “You’ve found most of them,” he said, pulling a knife out of a large pocket on his work belt and cutting the plastic. Then he cut the cord binding the bundle of wood. “Here, take these laths down to the other end of the house,” he said, holding out several of the flat sticks when she stood up. Only he didn’t immediately hand them over. “But first, you might want to put on the gloves I gave you.”

  Fiona patted the pockets of her coat, then spun around so he wouldn’t see her further humiliation as she tried to remember what she’d done with the gloves.

  Her cheeks burned like hot coals when she heard him sigh. “You’re not getting those gloves back,” he said, giving a chuckle, “unless you have a spare set of hawk wings under your coat.”

  Fiona turned to see him looking toward the ocean, and she spotted Misneach racing along the bottom of the bluff the house sat on, her leather gloves in his mouth. The pup splashed into one of the shallow tidal pools without even slowing down, tossed the gloves into the air, and then pounced on each one as it started to sink.

  “Misneach!” she shouted, looking for a place to descend the steep bank.

  But she came to an abrupt halt when Huntsman thrust the sticks toward her again. “Forget the gloves,” he said, walking away as soon as she took them. “We have only about an hour of daylight left to get this side of the house banked.”

  “Banked?” she repeated, although she was once again talking to his back and had to chase after him.

  “What did you do in the eleventh century to keep the snow from blowing through the cracks in your house?” he asked, lifting one edge of the plastic. He held it against the clapboards, about a foot above the granite foundation. “Here, hold one of those laths over the plastic while I nail it in place.”

  Fiona dropped the flat sticks onto the ground, picked one up, and then held it in place. He pulled his hammer and a couple of nails out of his belt and started nailing through the wood and plastic directly into the siding on the house.

  Holding her end of the lath by the very tip the moment he got one side of it nailed, Fiona leaned away when he nailed her end.

  Not because she was afraid of him but because he smelled strongly of fish!

  And for some reason, the thought of this big, powerful man doing what might be considered woman’s work, stuffing little bags with bait fish he had to cut up himself, made her feel somewhat giddy.

  Then again, it could be the fish fumes causing her lightheadedness.

  Either way, that knot in her belly slowly started unraveling.

  “We cut fir and pine boughs and tucked them around the bottom of our house,” she told him, grabbing another lath and placing it over the plastic he held up.

  “We’ll do that tomorrow afternoon,” he said around a nail he’d stuck in his mouth as he pounded in another one. “The boughs will keep the plastic from billowing up and hold the snow against it for added insulation.”

  We? He expected her to help him again tomorrow?

  “I assume Misneach is Gaelic. What does it mean?” he asked, waiting for her to set another lath in place.

  Fiona didn’t answer him right away. If she said it meant “noble one” as she’d told Johnnie Dempster, Mr. Huntsman might discover she had lied to him if Kenzie or William told him otherwise. But neither did she want to further humiliate herself by revealing her weakness.

  “I named him ‘Courage,’” she finally admitted. “Because of how brave he was today when he lost the only home he’s ever known,” she added in a rush.

  He glanced over at her, and then with a snort drove a nail through the lath in one powerful stroke. “That pup’s not courageous; it’s clueless.” He walked to the pail and filled his work belt with another fistful of nails. “Mother Nature designed all babies that way, so they’ll attach themselves to anyone who pays attention to them. Hell, they’ll even remain loyal to someone who kicks them around for sport.”

  Hearing the slight edge in his voice, she didn’t respond.

  They continued working their way down the house in companionable silence, and the unraveling sensation inside her made Fiona realize how wonderful it felt to be working. She held another lath in place and stared at her hands, trying to remember the last time she’d done anything truly constructive. She’d helped Kenzie with his displaced souls when she’d been a hawk, but when was the last time she’d helped another human being without being forced to?

  It really was quite empowering.

  And she didn’t even mind that it was a man she was helping.

  Nor was she bothered when he inevitably brushed up against her, not even when his large, callused hand suddenly shot out to cup her face protectively when her feet got tangled up in the blowing plastic and she nearly fell against the house.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, tucking several strands of hair back into her braid.

  “The wind’s picking up, and the temperature’s dropping with the sun,” he said, turning to the ocean. He gave a sharp whistle, causing Misneach to stop right in the middle of a tidal pool and look up. When he gave another whistle, the pup started running toward them. “Why don’t you and Misneach head inside? I can finish this.”

  “But it will go faster if I continue to help.”

  He took the lath out of her hand and used it to gesture at Misneach, struggling up over the bluff. “A full-grown Chesapeake can splash around in cold water all day, but he hasn’t got much meat on his bones yet. You’d better get him warmed up before he catches a chill. There’s dry firewood in the shed, and the stove in your front room works if you want to build a fire. In fact, I prefer you burn wood once it gets really cold, to save on heating oil. I assume you know how to run a woodstove?”

  She picked up Misneach and started around the house. “I know how it works.”

  “Fiona.”

  She stopped at the corner and turned toward him.

  “Thank you.” He gestured toward the plastic. “I appreciate your help.”

  Before she even realized what she was doing, Fiona shot him a beaming smile. “You’re welcome, Mr. Huntsman.”

  “It’s Trace,” he said when she turned away. “My old man was Mr. Huntsman.”

  Wondering at the edge in his voice again, she shot him another smile, although this one was a bit forced. “You’re welcome, Trace.”

  Chapter Six

  “Goddamn it, Gregor, I am serious. You have one week to find Fiona a new place to live,” Trace growled into his cell phone as he stood in the middle of his neatly organized, cobweb-free barn. “Because if you don’t, I swear the next time she goes into town, I will torch my own damn house to get her out of here.”

  “What’s the matter, Huntsman, do ye not like having fresh eggs for breakfast?”

  “Eggs? You think this is about the chickens? Or the goat? Or the goddamned horse the size of an elephant? It’s about your sister cleaning and rearranging every square inch of my barn. She organized my tools, Gregor. And she found an old scythe and leveled every damned last weed all the way to the street!”

  “Aye,” Kenzie said on a sigh. “Women do have a tendency to nest.”

  “Nest?” Trace repeated through gritted teeth. He walked over to look out the side window, only to scowl again when he saw Fiona—wearing his tool belt around the waist of her long coat—nailing a board she’d obviously found during her cleaning spree to one of the rotten paddock posts. “Dammit, Gregor, if she keeps fixing up this place, they’re going to raise my taxes.”

  The horse and goat were in the paddock, the horse nuzzling Fiona’s shoulder and the goat, its neck stretched through the fence, trying to reach the leather pouch on her tool belt. Misneach was standing in a small water trough that Trace had never seen before,
and the pup kept driving his head under the water, only to surface with a rock in his mouth, which he would then drop into the water again.

  Trace’s mood darkened even more when he caught himself noticing how the low-hanging November sun made Fiona’s hair look like spun gold—especially the tendrils framing her flawless face—and how gracefully and efficiently she moved. And he sure as hell didn’t like that he liked coming home to a house that wasn’t empty, with the smell of wood smoke and the aroma of fresh-baked bread assaulting him the moment he stepped out of his truck.

  Thank God he kept his door locked; if she ever saw his living quarters, she’d probably have a field day, or more likely a month of field days, cleaning the kitchen and organizing his sock drawer.

  “Don’t ye see,” Kenzie said, turning serious. “Fiona’s nesting must mean she’s grown comfortable with you. That’s amazing progress in only two weeks, considering Killkenny got nothing but grief from her.”

  “When he was a dragon and she was a hawk,” Trace growled. “But whenever William or any other man stops by, she still vanishes and doesn’t reappear until they’re gone. And,” he continued when Kenzie tried to say something, “she can’t be comfortable with me, as we haven’t spoken two entire sentences to each other since I agreed to let her keep that puppy. Which,” he continued hotly, glaring at the chickens scattered through the yard, “has turned into twelve hens, a goat, and a horse. And when I stopped in just now to pick up some tools, I found two skunks curled up in some rags in a box on my workbench.”

  “They’re orphans,” Kenzie said, the amusement back in his voice. “Fiona called this morning and asked me to go over there and check them out, and they told me they hadn’t seen their mama for many, many days.”