Perfect Timing 2: Highland Fling

by Jennifer Labrecque

  “What have you got there? Did you leave wares for anyone else?”

  “Believe it or not, I managed to leave a couple of things for other people. Do you know who all of this is for?” She fair danced from one foot to the other, reminding him of a small child at Michaelmas. “You.”

  “Me?” Darach didn’t try to mask his surprise. “Why would you buy me gifts?”

  “Because you’ll go stir-crazy if you have to stay in my condo for two weeks.” She placed the packages on the floor, tugging on his plaid as she straightened up. “As handsome as you are in your kilt, you’ll draw too much attention that way and as great as that suit that Hamish bought looks on you, I thought you might want something more comfortable. I called Hamish, he met me, and we picked up a couple of things for you.”

  Something warm and wonderful bloomed inside him that she’d take her time to do that for him. He caught her up to him. “You’re a daft lass, Katie-love.”

  “Humph. So far I’m daft, lusty, and clever. You’re painting quite a picture, MacTavish.”

  He framed her face with his hands. “Aye, ’tis a lovely picture. ’Twas my lucky day when you wanted me so much you jumped into a portrait to get into my bed.”

  “Get it straight, you egomaniac. I didn’t jump. I was pushed. Shoved, no less.”

  Aye, he liked teasing her. “It matters not whether you were a tad clumsy or Hamish a tad overzealous, ’twas all to my good fortune.” He kissed the spot just below her ear and she quivered beneath his lips.

  “You know, for a barbarian, you have quite a sweet way with words.” She linked her arms about his waist, caressing the naked flesh of his back. An aching need blossomed inside him. Would he ever get his fill of this woman? Would he ever know a time when her touch, her scent didn’t awaken his hunger for her?

  “And for a lusty, clever, daft wench, I am thinking you are wearing too many clothes.” He tugged her shirt out of her waistband while he sampled the sweetness of her neck.

  “Exactly what did you have in mind, Highlander?”

  Without forethought, he knew exactly what he wanted.

  “I want to make love to you there, where the sun slants in through the window. I want to lay with you in the warmth of the sun.” He skimmed his hand over her flaxen curls. “I want to see the sunlight in your hair—” he shadowed her cheek with his fingertips and down to the length of her neck “—and across your bare skin.” Want and need imbued his voice with a hoarseness. “I want to see your face when you find your pleasure with me.”

  Katie brushed her lips across his chest and a thrill coursed through him. “I think that can be arranged.”

  KATE STRETCHED LIKE A lazy cat where she lay on the floor in the sun’s warmth. She propped on one arm and looked down at Darach on his back, one arm thrown over his face, his breath still uneven. The sun glinted off his hair, as blue-black as a raven’s wing. A smattering of dark hair and corded muscles covered his chest, belly and thighs. His erection, spent but still at half-mast, lay thick and heavy against his thigh.

  Dear God, she loved him. Not simply for the breadth of his shoulders or the handsome cragginess of his face or even the sex that was like nothing she’d experienced before. She also loved him for his arrogance, the tenderness he hid beneath his fierce exterior, his unswerving devotion to his people, his playfulness. He was as much an overachiever as she was, and while she might not appreciate the resulting actions, such as tying her to his bed, she understood his motivation.

  As if aware of her silent study, he lowered his arm and looked at her. His dark hooded eyes gleamed with satisfaction. Fine lines bracketed the corner of his eyes.

  Kate reached out and traced a lazy pattern through the swirls of black hair, down the muscled plane of his belly with one finger, compelled to touch him, to mark the moment as real and because she felt slightly empty with him no longer inside her.

  “I have to work tomorrow,” she said, lamenting aloud.

  She loved her job. She ate, slept, breathed her job. But for the first time ever she wasn’t looking forward to going in and dealing with the non-stop pace of one of Atlanta’s busiest ERs. She very selfishly wanted to spend every minute of the next two weeks with Darach before they made the trip from Atlanta to the exhibit’s new opening in New York City. She’d look at the schedule and see if she could manage to take off an extra day. Of course, Torri would know exactly why and gleefully tell all. And what difference would that make? Kate was in good standing. She needn’t worry if she manipulated an extra day or two off.

  “’Tis to be expected.” Still flat on his back, he pulled her over to rest against his chest, his arm about her shoulders. Once upon a time she might’ve been self-conscious about laying on the floor naked, warmed by a shaft of sunlight, the scent of their recent lovemaking clinging to them like a bewitching perfume. Now, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. “Tell me about your job,” he said.

  She didn’t get the impression he asked out of politeness. She didn’t think polite registered high on his list. If he asked, he really wanted to know.

  Crossing her arms on his broad chest, she rested her chin on top of her hands. He was good sprawling material. “It’s hectic and fast-paced. I work 12-hour shifts, rotating days and nights. We have to be prepared for anything and we get a little bit of everything—gunshot wounds, stabbings, abdominal pain, broken bones, burns, domestic abuse—”

  “What is that?”

  “When someone in a household, usually a husband or a boyfriend, beats up on someone else, usually a woman.” She watched him, gauging his reaction. He was, after all, a man who lived in a time when women were chattel and a man’s power absolute. Even with her limited background in history she knew that.

  A dark frown furrowed his brow. “Aye. There are men who would strike a woman. I have no tolerance for that and I do not allow it in my clan. ’Tis bad practice. ’Tis a man’s duty to protect what is his.”

  Kudos to him on the first point, that he didn’t tolerate wife beating among his people. His second point left her wincing. He was obsessive about his role of protector.

  “Luckily we don’t see very many domestic-abuse cases.”

  He brushed his big hand over her hip and her skin tingled at the contact. “Could I come with you one day and observe what you do?” he asked.

  Kate found his interest in her job immensely flattering. “No. I’m afraid the only way you could actually see me at work was to come in with an emergency problem and we’d rather not go there. But there’s a television program that comes fairly close to what it’s like. I’ll pick up a season of it and we can watch the DVD.”

  “I would like that.” His hand traveled up her back as if he too was driven to touch her. “I’d like to see what you do.”

  “We can pick it up today. I thought we’d visit the library and the bookstore this afternoon. We can pick up books on Scottish history and…the battle.”

  “That is a perfect plan.”

  “You read on-line?”

  “I did.” He closed his eyes briefly, as if to shut out what he’d read, his pain nearly palpable. “’Twas a dark day for my people.”

  “I know.” She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for him to read about the destruction of so many he knew and loved and had sworn to protect. To see his way of life reduced to a few sad sentences in a history book. She curved the back of her hand against his cheek, offering her understanding and support. “Did you find anything useful in coming up with an alternative?”

  His jaw tightened and beneath her his heart beat more rapidly. “The hardest part is I don’t exactly know what I am looking for. It could be anything or…it could be nothing. Mayhap there is no clue.” For a moment his eyes, mired in ineffable sorrow, looked old beyond his years. “Mayhap there is no changing the fate of the clan MacTavish.”

  She protested instinctively. “I can’t believe that. I won’t believe that. I refuse to believe I took that journey only to hand you a
death sentence.”

  “Mayhap not.” Resolution replaced sorrow. “That is why I will continue to search.”

  She knew him well enough to know he’d move heaven and earth to find a way to save his people, his instinct to protect was so strong. But it wasn’t a role he’d been born to, not as the third son. All her life she’d wanted to be a doctor. What had he dreamed of when he was young, before life had thrust him into the dual roles of avenger and protector? “Darach, when you were young, you had two older brothers who were both in line ahead of you to be laird. Before…that day, what did you want to do? What did you want to be when you grew up?”

  “’Twas a long time ago…” He stared at the ceiling but she doubted if he even saw the pipes running along the beams.

  “Yes?” she prompted.

  “When I was a lad I wanted to be a poet.”

  Although she smiled, inside Kate’s heart wept for the boy who wanted to write poetry but instead took up arms.

  13

  DARACH SET ASIDE the leather-bound journal Katie had surprised him with the day after he’d confessed his boyhood dream of being a poet.

  The last four days had taken on a most pleasant rhythm. He missed Katie when she was away, as if a part of him had gone missing.

  Yet it was as if he’d discovered new parts of himself in the meantime. He’d discovered a deep and abiding love of history and poetry. He filled his days reading numerous volumes of history, most enjoying the accounts of the Scottish Enlightenment, a period that had immediately followed his death. He read everything he could find by Hume and Smith and the poets Macpherson, the ill-fated Chatterton, Robert Burns, and Sir Walter Scott.

  ‘Twas as if drenching rains had begun to fill an empty well inside him. In the solitude of the days and nights when Katie was gone he began to fill empty pages with his own poems that seemed to pour forth from him.

  He levered himself out of the green chair. He wanted to surprise her. He checked the stainless steel clock mounted on the kitchen wall.

  Aye. He’d lost himself in his journal and fanciful thoughts. He’d hurry or he’d be out of time. He loaded a Diana Krall CD in the player—absolutely mind-boggling technology—and got busy in the kitchen.

  In a very short period of time he’d developed a weakness for CNN news, jazz vocals, the Fulton County Public library, and double lattes. Likewise, he’d discovered he couldn’t abide traffic, soap operas, or fast food.

  Hamish had spent a couple of afternoons with him while Katie was at work. The first day Hamish had Darach’s picture taken. Yesterday he’d presented Darach with a passport for their upcoming air travel to New York—he’d actually fly like Icarus. Katie had suggested they not question Hamish’s connections or methods.

  Darach shook his head as he thought of Hamish’s idiosyncrisies. Hamish definitely had a weakness for shopping which he, Darach couldn’t quite grasp. God’s tooth, the man spent an inordinate amount of time and money ordering stuff from the shopping network which Darach found vastly amusing considering that Hamish, of all people, should realize he couldn’t take it with him.

  Darach pulled out the pans and organized them according to the recipe instructions he’d printed off the Internet. He mixed and measured and thought of Kate.

  He had a passion for history and poetry and he’d enjoyed getting to know Hamish in a different time and place, but his favorite time was that he spent with Katie. It mattered not whether they were out and about in the city taking in a movie or another marvel, or whether they were lying about in her home talking.

  They talked for hours on end about everything, her about growing up without her father, him about growing up without his mother, books, music. She loved science, he loved history, but still they found an interest in the other’s opinion.

  And the lovemaking, the intimacy of being with her, was beyond what he’d ever imagined it would be. Holding her when she went to sleep at night. Waking up with her leg thrown across his, her hair standing on her head at odd angles, the sleepy way she smiled her pleasure at him with the dawn of each day. With each day, each hour, each passing glance, each caress, she became more precious to him.

  And like a spell cast by an enchantress, the days had flown by with no answer for his past making itself known to him. Instead each day seemed to issue louder the siren’s call to leave the past where it lay and make this his future.

  And what if Katie was pregnant? What if even now, their bairn grew inside her? If that were the case, would he have the strength to leave her, leave their child and return to his past? Even without a child, how was he to bear leaving this woman who’d come to be as essential to him as the very air he breathed?

  He put the thought from his mind and got on with preparing her special meal. The timer had just gone off when she walked through the door.

  “Honey, I’m home. What the—?”

  Darach glanced around. “I cooked dinner for you. The kitchen is a bit of a mess.” He looked at the pots and pans littering the stove and counter and sink. How exactly had things gotten to be such a mess? He’d used every pan in her kitchen. He winced. “Aye. ’Tis more than a mess. I’ve created a disaster.”

  “You cooked dinner for me?”

  Mayhap she wasn’t too upset about his messy kitchen? “Aye. You said last night that meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans and peach cobbler always reminded you of your mother and made you feel safe.”

  She looked from him to the disaster of a kitchen and back. “The laird of Glenagan, chieftain of the clan MacTavish cooked my favorite dinner for me because it makes me feel safe?” Tears swam in the green pools of her eyes and his heart clenched.

  He gathered her to him and held her close. “Nay, love. Don’t cry. ’Twas meant to make you feel good.”

  She laughed and dashed away the tears. “I’m crying because I do feel good you crazy Scot.”

  Time was fleeting and they had but few days together. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to tell her what was in his heart, the heart he’d thought long dead until her. He knew she had regard for him, but it mattered not if she felt the same, he still felt compelled to tell her how he felt. “Did you but know it, I would crawl to Hades and back for you. I never knew I could love anyone the way I love you Katie Wexford.” He’d not thought his heart could feel any fuller, but saying the words aloud made him feel…“I love you, you daft, crazy, lusty wench.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling with the residual of unshed tears and dawning joy. She cupped her hands about his jaw. “I traveled over two-hundred years to find you. You’re everything I never wanted in a man—arrogant, bossy, too sexy for your own good, and gone in less than a week. How could I not love you with every fiber of my being?”

  Her lips brushed his. The kiss deepened and it became a pledge of love that transcended time.

  “Make love to me, Darach MacTavish.”

  His body quickened in ready response. “I’m more than willing, but dinner…”

  She laughed softly against his mouth. “Didn’t you know meatloaf is best reheated?”

  A WEEK AND TWO DAYS after Darach’s arrival into the twenty-first century, Hamish sat at dinner with his friend and the man he’d called laird in another time and place, Kate, and Harriett, a recently divorced docent he’d met while at the museum. Darach had assimilated into modern Atlanta amazingly well. Perhaps not that amazing really, Hamish reflected, since life was much easier now, even with global warming and hip-hop.

  “Here’s to old friends and new beginnings,” Hamish said, offering a toast across the white-clothed table. Darach, Kate, and Harriet all raised their champagne glasses and joined in the toast over the flickering candlelight.

  Hamish looked pointedly at Darach—that was his cue.

  “Tell me again how ya’ll know one another,” Harriett said, precluding Darach and unwittingly throwing a spanner in the works.

  “We go way back,” Hamish said. Aye, Harriet had no idea. Kate’s eyes met his across th
e table, laughing at his inside joke.

  “We share a common interest in history,” Darach deadpanned, tugging at his tie. Aye, the man was nervous. As well he should be. Hamish had encouraged him to choose a private moment but Darach wouldn’t hear of it, saying Hamish was the reason he and Kate had met in the first place. Harriett, very attractive at fifty-five, evened out the numbers.

  While there was a certain je ne sais quoi to living in various time periods on different levels, it got lonely. Hamish dated casually, but there was no point in ever letting things get too far between him and a woman. He was destined to live alone and that but doubled his pleasure in Kate and Darach’s happiness.

  Hamish nudged Darach’s leg with his foot beneath the table.

  Darach cleared his throat and turned red. Hamish couldn’t bite back a smirk. Aye, the man could hold off half a dozen dragoons with a broadsword and a claymore, yet one woman had him tied up in knots.

  “Uh, Katie-love, am I understanding correctly that you have the next four days off work?” Darach asked.

  Kate smiled at him over the edge of her champagne flute. “Yes. Much to Torri’s annoyance—she has to cover for me.”

  “Aye.” He threw his napkin on the table and it barely missed knocking over his water glass. He slipped out of his chair and dropped to one knee, nearly upending the chair in the process. For a large man, he’d always moved with grace and precision. Now he was more like the proverbial bull in the china shop. He grasped Kate’s hand in his.

  “Katie, uh, I mean Kate. Oh, bluidy hell, forget it. Katie-love, ’tis only a bit more than a week since I first met you, yet has been a lifetime that I’ve waited for you and will be for all eternity that I know you. Will you do me the honor of marrying me? Will you take the name MacTavish for your own?”

  Kate glowed. “Darach MacTavish you’re arrogant and bossy and I had no idea what my life was missing until I met you.” She raised their clasped hands to her lips and pressed a kiss to Darach’s knuckles. Beneath the table, Harriet slipped her hand into Hamish’s. “I would be honored to marry you and take your name along with my own.”