All The Time You Need

by Melissa Mayhue

  This was it, her moment of truth. More accurately, only one of her moments of truth, but an important one, nevertheless. Her journey would end here if she couldn’t find an opening to the outside.

  The exit proved much easier to locate than the entrance had been, the outline of the arch she remembered from her time clearly visible in her lantern’s light.

  Opening the door was another matter entirely.

  Now that she’d seen the spider webs, the idea of slipping her fingers under the door to try to pull it open was out of the question.

  She set the lantern at her feet and ran her fingers over the line that marked the opening before stepping back to stare at the doorway to consider a different approach. Though she’d had to pull the door open from the other end, if she were inside, she’d have to push, not pull. Maybe, if she were really lucky, this end would work in the same way.

  Putting her shoulder against the door, she silently counted to three and pushed. While it didn’t open freely, she definitely felt a small movement in the right direction.

  The experiment left her giddy with the knowledge that she’d discovered the way to open it.

  “Time and muscle,” she murmured, bracing her shoulder against the door and pushing for all she was worth.

  Three more tries and the door gave way, sliding open a couple of inches to reveal a thick layer of foliage outside. No wonder it had been so difficult! Three more shoves and the opening was wide enough for her to push her way through.

  The path to the arbor was there, just as it had been before, and she hurried to follow it to her destination, going as quickly as she could while still keeping her lantern lit. When she reached the arbor, she sent up a quick prayer of thanks for Lissa’s having remembered the key, and soon she was inside, pleased with herself that she’d been clever enough to avoid detection.

  Everything had to be as it had been when she’d been tossed through time. She’d gone over those moments repeatedly, and the one thing that was clear was that nothing had happened until she’d put the stone heart in the hole in the bench. Somehow, that had triggered everything, meaning that putting the heart in the hole was her first step in getting home. But before she could do that, she had to find the stone heart.

  Annie set about her task immediately, running her fingers inside the opening in the bench where the stone heart belonged. Empty. Next, she climbed up on the bench to more thoroughly search the pocket in the tree formed in the spot where the branches converged. She’d thought this step through in her mind, convinced that she’d somehow missed something when she’d been here with Alex.

  She hadn’t.

  If the heart wasn’t in its spot in the bench and it wasn’t in the tree where she’d found it the first time, maybe it had fallen free when the earth had moved all around her. Dropping to her hands and knees, she began a slow, careful search around the bench and in the nearby bushes, carrying her lantern along with her.

  Again, she found nothing, but she wasn’t going to allow that to defeat her. She was determined to scour every inch of the arbor, even if it took her until the sun came back up. The stone heart had to be somewhere.

  How long she’d been searching when she finally decided to give up, Annie couldn’t be sure. What she was sure of after all this time was that wherever the stone she needed was, that hiding place wasn’t in this arbor.

  Though she didn’t understand how it worked, Annie knew that the heart was the key to her having come here in the first place. It was also the key to her finding her way home. Her grandmother’s journal had told her as much. Clearly, without the stone heart, she was stuck in this time.

  What was that old saying about karma being a bitch? It certainly was turning out that way in her case. She’d run away from home to avoid marrying the Peter in her time, and now she would be forced to wed a much worse person, the Peter in this time.

  What would she do now? What could she do? She needed a plan, but considering how badly all her plans up to this point had fared, she was fresh out of ideas.

  Fresh out of long-term ideas, that is. As far as the short term, she knew exactly what she was going to do. She made her way to the bench and sat down heavily, tears already rolling down her cheeks one by one, their frequency increasing until she was in the middle of a good, heartfelt, ugly-faced cry, complete with air-sucking sobs.

  It was as good a plan as any. And considering all she’d been through in the last few weeks, she was way overdue for a total meltdown.

  * * *

  If Annie was meant to be a spy, she was the worst one Alex had ever seen, bobbing along with the light of her lantern making her a perfect target for anyone who might be out here tonight.

  With that light, she’d made it easy enough for him to follow her, and that was exactly what he’d done. From the moment he’d slipped into the storeroom behind her and had hidden behind those barrels, she hadn’t once been out of his sight.

  Whatever she hoped to find in the arbor—and it was obvious to him now that it was a something not a someone she searched for—it had eluded her. He had watched as she had scoured the arbor on hands and knees, searching in vain.

  Good. He could only hope that this time, at long last, she had satisfied herself that whatever she’d hoped to find simply wasn’t there. Whatever it was.

  A way back to her own time, as Lissa had claimed?

  The thought crept into his mind unbidden, and he rejected it as quickly as it had arrived.

  Her story was completely without merit. Especially now that Peter Gordon had arrived and confirmed her identity.

  A familiar trickle of doubt began to nag at him, curling around in his mind, seeping down into his chest. In truth, he could not bring himself to accept that the man waiting back at Dunellen had spoken in total honesty. There was something about him. Something about his manner of speaking and the way he avoided meeting anyone’s eyes. He wore an air of deception like any other man might wear a cloak.

  But that was a detail for another time.

  Alex shook away the worry and focused his concentration on the woman in the arbor. He was here now, and this was where his mind needed to be, too. Soon, she would give up this fruitless search and return to the castle. All he had to do was to wait and follow her back, seeing to it that she encountered no obstacles or dangers.

  Hidden as he was, deep in the shrubbery outside the arbor gate, he’d have little issue with remaining unseen as she passed by. It would be easy enough to follow in secret as he had coming here. Certainly there was nothing to be gained in confronting her, especially since her visit to the arbor had apparently accomplished nothing.

  His plan would have worked, too, had Annie not begun to weep.

  With growing discomfort, he watched from his hiding spot, determined to remain where he was. He had a plan and he needed to stick with it.

  But determination wasn’t always the strongest of emotions. His lasted only until her quiet weeping turned into great air-gasping sobs, shaking her whole body as she bent forward in her seat.

  His conscience prodded him to action.

  “Damnation,” he muttered, slipping from the shrubbery and into the arbor, to hurry to her side.

  He stood over her only a moment or two before he was drawn to sit down next to her on the stone bench to offer comfort. Tentatively, he laid a hand on her shoulder, and she looked up at him, as if she’d only then realized she was no longer alone. A glow from the lantern shone on her dirt-streaked, tear-drenched face, revealing frustration more than fear in her expression.

  “Perfect,” she said between sobs. “Just freakin’ perfect. Perfect end to a per—perfectly shitty day.”

  Hiccups had overtaken her, stealing air from her between sobs, seeming to add to her misery.

  Alex was torn between the desire to comfort her and a need to lecture her for the risk she had taken in coming out here alone, in the dark of the night, foolishly giving away her position with the lantern she carried.

  In the end, it
was the hiccups that determined his response. The hiccups that made her appear even more pathetic and helpless with each breath she took.

  She didn’t resist when he folded her into his embrace. Before he knew it, he was holding her tightly to his chest, murmuring nonsense aimed at calming her, picking leaves and sticks from her hair and stroking her head like he might a skittish colt.

  A skittish colt or someone in distress. Someone he cared for deeply.

  A warm, wet feeling grew at the spot where her head cuddled against his shoulder, and he found himself gently rocking her, his chin protectively pressed to her cheek.

  He had no idea how long they clung to one another, but, somewhere along the way, the hiccups ceased and the sobs slowed. At long last, she lifted her head from his chest to look up at him with swollen, waterlogged eyes.

  “I really am stuck here. I can’t go home. I can’t find the heart anywhere so I can’t go back. I’m so scared, Alex. I feel trapped and so very, very lost.”

  His heart thrummed in his chest, an unfamiliar emotion choking in his throat.

  “Yer no’ lost, sweetling,” he said, absently brushing an errant strand of hair from her face. “And you’ve no call to be afraid. Yer safe here. I’d no’ allow anything to happen to you. No’ ever.”

  Their eyes met, locked in a gaze that held him as surely as any stock or chain ever could. As if it were beyond his control to do anything else, he dipped his head toward hers until their lips met.

  She was warm and soft to his touch. Salty to his tongue that traced the perfect outline of her mouth.

  He’d meant only to comfort her. But the touch that had been intended to comfort had set his body on fire. His blood boiled with desire and tightened his embrace, deepening the kiss. He might have had some chance of stopping himself there, but her lips had parted as if to invite him to dip inside for a new taste. Her fingers tangled beneath his hair at the nape of his neck, gently pressing as if to invite him deeper. Thus encouraged, he was lost.

  Her soft moan beneath him brought him back to himself, allowing him the strength to break the kiss and lift his head. Somehow he’d bent her over backward on the bench, and he lay on top of her. Her hair had come loose, and fanned around her like a pillow of silk. And her eyes! When they opened to meet his, they shone with a faraway, dreamy expression that very nearly had him kissing her again.

  But no. He couldn’t take advantage of her. Not like this.

  “Why do I feel like this every time you touch me?” she whispered, her expression reflecting the same desperation he felt.

  Why? He couldn’t begin to answer. No more than he could say why he felt the way he did every time they touched. He only knew that he did and that this feeling that enshrouded him had to mean something.

  He wanted to hold her. To comfort her. To be held and comforted by her. This woman in his arms was a woman he could imagine himself taking as his wife.

  A woman pledged to be another man’s wife.

  Two men, if he were to allow himself to believe her outrageous story. And, strangely enough, with her in his arms like this, he found himself believing. And with that belief, a new fear clawed at his chest. If the Fae had sent her here, they could just as easily take her away. Just as they had done to his Grandda Aiden.

  The moments that passed as they stared at one another must have been enough for her to remember where she was. And why she had come here.

  Tears began to trickle from the corners of her eyes, slowly this time, as if the hot, white heat of her sorrow had passed her by and she was left with only the dregs of heart-twisting desperation.

  “This place, this arbor, and the stone heart that should be here, they are the key to my finding my way back home. Please don’t let them take me away from Dunellen. If that happens, I’ll be lost in this time forever.”

  “Would that really be so horrible?”

  He had to ask. After the moments that had just passed, to his way of thinking, nothing could be worse than having her leave his world.

  “Staying here and marrying that lying impostor who showed up here today?” Annie nodded and sighed deeply, wiping her hands over her eyes and down her cheeks. “Yeah, I think that would really be about as horrible as it could get.”

  There was one other question, one other thing, nagging at the back of his mind that he had to know.

  “Do you love the Peter you left behind in your time?”

  Asking it was tantamount to admitting he accepted her story. He didn’t care. He needed her answer.

  Another sigh was her first response as she closed her eyes, seeming to search for the words she wanted to use.

  “No. He’s a nice guy, but no, I don’t love him. I had to come all the way to Scotland to admit that, even to myself. I agreed to marry him, but I don’t love him. I came on this trip to find a way to escape marrying him.” She blew out a puff of air, shaking her head. “I escaped, all right. Classic case of out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

  Alex forced himself off her, sitting up straight and assisting her up as well. “What do you mean?”

  Annie withdrew the hand that had remained on his shoulder and laced her fingers tightly together, her hands in her lap. “After all that’s happened, I realized that there is something worse than agreeing to marry someone you don’t really love. It’s being forced into a marriage to someone you not only don’t love, but who you don’t even know.”

  “Like the Peter Gordon waiting back at Dunellen?”

  “Exactly.” She took another slow, deep breath, and her shoulders straightened as if she’d made some important decision. “I won’t marry him, Alex. Even if I can’t find my way home. I don’t know what I will do, but I do know I won’t marry him. I agreed to a marriage back home to a man I didn’t love. I won’t do that here. Never again.”

  The shaky intake of breath after her statement belied her attempt at bravery.

  “Doona fash yerself over the matter, Annie.” Alex tightened the arm around her shoulders, winding a strand of her hair around one finger. “I’ll no’ allow it to come to pass. I willna give him leave to take you away from Dunellen. You have my word upon this.”

  She nodded slowly, holding her silence for a long moment before looking up at him again. “I guess my reaction to all this must be hard for someone like you to understand.”

  He studied her face, not understanding her comment. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you’re always so sure of yourself. So sure of everything you do.”

  Him? Sure of himself? More than anything, those words demonstrated her naiveté.

  “As much as I hate to disillusion you, yer wrong in that assessment. I spend my fair share of time questioning everything I do.”

  He could hardly believe he was confessing his weaknesses to her. And yet it felt natural to do so. Easy.

  “I find that hard to believe, Alex. I’ve watched you in the great hall, meeting with your people. You were born to be the laird of your clan. Your father certainly has confidence in you.”

  “My father?” He struggled to quell the laughter bubbling up in his throat. “My father was the one born to be laird. I’m no’ even half the man my father is. I always claimed I dinna want the responsibility, but the truth is I always doubted my ability to do the job. I told myself that I shunned the responsibilities of becoming laird because they were too small for me, too confining. Now that I’m here, faced with the tasks my father shouldered for so many years, I realize that it’s me what’s too small.”

  There. He’d said it aloud, and it felt as if he’d removed the weight of a hundred men from his chest, even though the confession meant that Annie would know he wasn’t what she’d thought him to be.

  She shook her head and lifted a hand to his cheek. “You just can’t see yourself the way others do, can you? You were born to be laird every bit as much as your father. I have confidence in your abilities to lead your people. So do they. They trust you as I trust you.”

 
; He may not be the laird his father was, but after hearing her say that, he would move heaven and earth to ensure that he didn’t let her down.

  “Yer safe to place yer trust in me,” he said, folding her once again in his arms, holding her close.

  He hadn’t intended more than to reassure her, but the moment escaped him and their lips met once again. As the kiss deepened, his body burned for her like a fire in an August field. He wanted her. Not just physically, though he’d be as great a liar as Peter Gordon if he dared deny that desire.

  What he felt for her in this moment was more than that. He wanted her by his side—in the great hall as well as in his bedchamber. Body and soul. He’d never truly understood those words before now.

  Once more he forced his lips from hers and stood to extend a hand to help her to her feet. “The hour is late and we should return to the safety of Dunellen’s walls.”

  Their trip back passed in silence, her hand tightly clasped inside his.

  For his part, he was grateful for the silence. He couldn’t have carried on a conversation for all the noise inside his head.

  He could bare his darkest secrets to this woman, save one. His feelings for her were still too tender, too new, too foreign for even him to understand. Those he could not yet share with anyone.

  In spite of the shortcomings he’d confessed, Annie still trusted him. Trusted him to keep her safe. Trusted him to protect her from the man she’d called a lying impostor. Trusted him to keep her here at Dunellen.

  He’d meant everything he said to her. He’d given his word and he’d never gone back on his word. He would do as he’d promised. He would stop her from marrying Peter Gordon. Somehow.

  Though how he would prevent such a thing without starting an all-out war between the clans, he had no idea.

  Chapter 17

  A knock on the heavy wooden door to the chamber he’d been assigned had Peter on his feet. Perhaps this was the news he’d been waiting for over the past two days.

  He flung open the door to find the one called Finn standing there.