Tall, Dark, and Kilted

by MACKAY, ALLIE

  “The de Studleys, right?” He drew to a panting halt, sleeved his damp brow. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Eggertson sent me—”

  “Aye?” Hardwick slid a glance at his wife. “We just saw him go past.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “Ach, but you couldn’t have.” He pulled a handkerchief from a jacket pocket and dabbed at his forehead. “That’s why I’m here. To let you know he’s abed and couldn’t make the festivities. Food poisoning, he thinks. A shame it is, too, coming now, of all nights.”

  Cilla frowned. “But—”

  Hardwick squeezed her elbow, silencing her. “Did someone else wear his costume, then?”

  The man laughed and shook his head. “Eggertson’s? Not a chance. He’s so proud of that devil face he wouldn’t even let his sons wear the thing.”

  Hardwick and Cilla exchanged glances.

  The Shetlander smiled. “He swears he’ll be fit as a fiddle by tomorrow’s eve. He’d like you to join him—join us—at one of the private fest halls for a party he’s arranged in your honor. Our thanks for helping to get our costumes back to us.”

  “We’ll look forward to it.” Hardwick nodded.

  The man touched his brow and turned, disappearing the way he’d come.

  “I knew there was something funny about the way the mask bobbed over to us.” Cilla grabbed Hardwick’s arm. “It was him! The Dark One. He came to say good-bye and wish us well.”

  Hardwick snorted. “That one ne’er does anything so mundane. He’ll have had a reason.”

  Cilla considered. “Well, he did—”

  She broke off at the look on her husband’s face.

  Half-turned away from her, he was staring in the direction the Dark One had pointed, a look of amazement on his handsome face.

  She saw why at once.

  Two Vikings stood in the darkness of a narrow alleyway. Tall, proud, and festively dressed, the woman’s long blond braid identified her at once, as did Sea-Strider’s colorfully painted shield and nine-foot spear.

  If there’d been any doubt, the strange, otherworldly glow that shimmered about them was more than telling.

  Their smiles, however, were a surprise.

  Almost beneficent, there was something about them that pricked the backs of Cilla’s eyes. She swallowed hard, willing the hot lump in her throat to recede.

  She really was too emotional lately.

  “What’s she carrying?”

  Cilla blinked, Hardwick’s words making her start.

  “H’mmm?” She squinted, trying to see better through the crowd.

  Not that she needed to.

  The woman had left the alley opening and was coming toward them. The blazing light of the Up-Helly-Aa flames clearly showed the tiny wooden sword and the little Viking-painted shield in her hands.

  “Oh, my God!” Cilla stared as Gudrid approached, her smile saying everything. “She knows.”

  “Knows what?” Hardwick looked at her.

  But then the Norsewoman was there in front of them. Silent, she handed Cilla the miniature sword and shield, nodding solemnly when she took them.

  “Our thanks.” The woman’s voice was soft, melodic. “And our blessings.”

  On the words, she vanished.

  And at the edge of the crowd, Sea-Strider no longer stood in the entrance to the alley.

  What remained was a strange but jubilant welling in Hardwick’s chest. It was a feeling that increased the longer he observed how tightly his wife clutched the tiny wooden sword and shield.

  When she started blinking rapidly and a tear rolled down her cheek, he grabbed her and slanted his mouth over hers, kissing her fiercely.

  “Odin’s balls, woman!” He released her to swipe a tear off his own cheek. “Whye’er didn’t you tell me?”

  She looked up at him, the uncertainty in her eyes splitting him. “I . . . I was afraid you wouldn’t be pleased. That you’d rather things would have stayed as—”

  He reached for her again, squeezing her as hard as he dared. “No’ pleased?” he roared the words, causing heads to swivel. “Our first child, and you think I’m no’ pleased?”

  The swivel-heads slapped shoulders and cheered.

  Hardwick ignored them.

  Ne’er a man of words, he thrust his hands in her hair and kissed her again. Rough, fast, and furiously, showing her beyond doubt how very happy she’d made him.

  Around them the night burned brightly. And beneath his lady’s heart a flame of a very different nature flickered and grew, the thought filling him with more joy than he would’ve believed possible.

  As if she knew, Cilla tightened her arms around him, sighing.

  He pulled back only long enough to flash her a grin. “By the saints, but I love you.”

  Then he resumed kissing her, this time slow and sweet.

  After inheriting a medieval Scottish castle, all Mindy wants to do is sell it and escape to Hawaii’s sunny beaches. Bran of Barra, the irresistible Highland ghost, has other plans for the bonnie lass he’s seen walking the halls of his home. Soon the former flight attendant is once again crisscrossing oceans—and dimensions—to be with her sexy kilted ghost.

  Turn the page for a sneak preview of

  Allie Mackay’s next fun and fresh

  paranormal romance.

  In stores February 2010.

  MacNeil’s Folly

  New Hope, Pennsylvania

  Mindy Menlove lived in a mausoleum.

  A thick-walled medieval castle full of gloom and shadows with just the right dash of Tudor and Gothic to curdle the blood of anyone bold enough to pass through its massive iron-studded door.

  Within, the adventure continued with a maze of dark passageways and rooms crammed to bursting with rich tapestries and heavy, age-blackened furniture. Dust motes thrived, often spinning eerily in the light that spilled through tall stone-mullioned windows. Some doors squeaked delightfully, and certain floorboards were known for giving the most delicious creaks. Huge stone-carved fireplaces still held lingering traces of the atmosphere-charged scent of peat-and-heather-tinged smoke. Or so it was claimed by visitors with noses sensitive to such things.

  Few were the modern disfigurements.

  Yet the castle did boast hot water, heating, and electricity. Not to mention cable TV and high-speed Internet. MacNeil’s Folly was also within easy driving range of the nearest pizza delivery service. And the daily paper arrived without fail on the steps each morning.

  Luxuries made possible because the ancient pile no longer stood in its original location somewhere on a bleak and windswept Hebridean isle, but on the crest of a thickly wooded hill not far from the quaint and pleasant antiquing mecca of New Hope, Pennsylvania.

  Even so, the castle was a haven for hermits.

  A recluse’s dream.

  The only trouble was that Mindy had an entirely different idea of paradise.

  White sand, palm trees, and sunshine came to mind. Soft, fragrant breezes and—joy of joys—no need to ever dress warmly again. A trace of cocoa-butter tanning lotion and mai tais sipped at sunset.

  A tropical sunset.

  Almost there—in her head, anyway—Mindy imagined the castle’s drafty drawing room falling away from her. Bit by bit, everything receded. The plaid carpet and each piece of clunky, carved oak furniture, and even the heavy dark blue curtains.

  She took a step closer to the window and drew a deep breath. Closing her eyes, she inhaled not the damp scent of cold Bucks County rain and wet, dripping pine woods but the heady perfume of frangipani and orchids.

  And, because it was her dream, a whiff of freshly ground Kona coffee.

  “You should never have dated a passenger.”

  “Agggh!” Mindy jumped, almost dropping the mint chocolate wafer she’d been about to pop into her mouth.

  All thoughts of Hawaii vanished like a pricked balloon.

  Whirling around, she returned the wafer to a delicate bone-china plate on a tea tray and sent a pointed
look across the room at her sister, Margo, her elder by all of one year.

  “What of your water-cooler romance with Mr. Computer Geek last year?” Mindy wiped her fingers on a napkin and then frowned when she only smeared the melted chocolate, making an even greater mess. “If I recall, he left you after less than six weeks.”

  “We parted amicably.” Margo peered at her from a high wing-backed chair near the hearth. “Nor was it a ‘water-cooler affair.’ He only came by when the computers at Ye Olde Pagan Times went on the blink. And”—she leaned forward, her eyes narrowing in a way Mindy knew to dread—“neither did I move in with him. I didn’t even love him.”

  Mindy bit the inside of her cheek to keep from snorting.

  It wouldn’t do to remind her sister that she’d sung a different tune last summer. As she did with every new Romeo that crossed her path, whether they chanced into the New Age shop where Margo worked or she just stumbled into them on the street.

  Margo Menlove was walking flypaper, and men were the flies.

  They just couldn’t resist her.

  Not that Mindy minded.

  Especially not when she was supposed to be mourning an unfaithful fiancé who’d choked to death on a fishbone during an intimate dinner with a Las Vegas showgirl.

  A fiancé she now knew had had no intention of marrying her, had used her, and—much to her amazement—had left her his family’s displaced Scottish castle and a tidy sum of money to go along with it.

  Generosity born of guilt, she was sure.

  The naked pole dancer from Vegas hadn’t been Hunter’s only mistress. She’d spotted at least three other possibles at the funeral.

  They rose before her mind’s eye, each one sleazier than the other. Frowning, Mindy tried to banish them by scrubbing harder at the chocolate smears on her fingers. But even though their faces faded, her every indrawn breath suddenly felt like jagged ice shards cutting into tender places she should never have exposed.

  She shuddered.

  Margo noticed. “Don’t tell me you still care about the bastard?” She leaned forward, bristling. “He used you as a farce! His lawyers all but told us he only needed you to meet the terms of his late parents’ will. That they’d worried about his excesses and made arrangements for him to lose everything unless he became a bulwark of the community, supporting their charities and marrying a good, decent girl!”

  “Margo—”

  “Don’t ‘Margo’ me. I was there and heard it all.” Margo gripped the armrests of her chair until her knuckles whitened. “What I can’t believe is that you didn’t see through him in the first place.”

  Mindy gave up trying to get rid of the chocolate. “You’d have fallen for him, too,” she snapped, scrunching the napkin in her hand. “If he’d—”

  “What?” Margo shot to her feet. “If I were a flight attendant working first class and he’d sat in the last row—wearing a wink and a smile—and with his kilt oh-so-conveniently snagged in his seatbelt?”

  “It wasn’t like that. . . .” Mindy let the words tail off.

  It had been like that, and she was the greatest fool in the world for not seeing through his ploy.

  But his dimpled smile had charmed her, and he’d blushed, actually blushed, when she’d bent down to help him with the seatbelt buckle and her fingers accidentally brushed a very naked part of him.

  When the buckle sprang free and his kilt flipped up, revealing that nakedness, he’d appeared so embarrassed that accepting his dinner invitation seemed the least she could do to make him feel better.

  He’d also been incredibly good-looking and had a way with words, even if he hadn’t had a Scottish burr. He could look at a woman and make her feel as if no other female in the world existed, and, topping it all, he’d had a great sense of humor. And, besides, what girl with red blood in her veins could resist a man in a kilt?

  What wasn’t to love?

  Everything, she knew now.

  Furious at herself, Mindy slid a glance at the hearth fire. A portrait of one of his ancestors hung there, claiming pride of place above the black marble mantel. An early MacNeil chieftain, or so Hunter had claimed, calling the man Bran of Barra. His was the only ancestral portrait in the castle that didn’t give Mindy the willies.

  A big, brawny man in full Highland regalia and with a shock of wild auburn hair and a gorgeous red beard, he didn’t have the fierce-eyed glower worn by the other clan chieftains whose portraits lined the castle’s long gallery. His portrait—the very same one—hung there, too. It was his mirth-filled face that she always sought when she was convinced that the gazes of the other chieftains followed her every move.

  Bran of Barra’s twinkling blue gaze looked elsewhere, somewhere inside his portrait that she couldn’t see.

  Only by keeping her eyes on him could she flit through the endless, dark-paneled gallery without breaking out in goose bumps.

  Sadly, his roguish smile now reminded her of Hunter’s.

  Scowling again, she turned away from the portrait and curled her hands into tight fists. How fitting that Hunter had also dashed her only means of reaching the upper floors of the castle without having a heebie-jeebies attack.

  “You can get back at him, you know.” Margo stepped in front of her, a conspiratorial glint in her eye. “Have you thought about turning the castle into an esoteric center? I know the customers at Ye Olde Pagan Times would love to hold sessions here. Fussy as Hunter always was about image, he’d turn in his grave.”

  Mindy stared at her. “Didn’t you hear what I said earlier? I’m selling the castle. I want nothing more than to get as far away from here as—”

  “But you can’t!” Margo grabbed her arm, squeezing tight. “The castle’s haunted. I told you, I got an orb on a photo I took in the long gallery yesterday. Three orbs if we count the two faint ones.”

  “Orbs are specks of dust.” Mindy tried not to roll her eyes. “Everyone knows that.”

  Margo sniffed. “There are orbs and orbs. What I got on film was spirit energy. I’m telling you”—she let go of Mindy’s arm and tossed back her chin-length blond hair, a style and color both sisters shared—“you can put this place on the paranormal map. People will come from all around the country to ghost-hunt and—”

  “Oh, no, they won’t.” Mindy flopped down on a chair, her head beginning to pound. “There aren’t any ghosts here. Hunter was sure of that, and so am I. And”—she aimed her best my-decision-is-final look at her sister—“the only place I’m putting this miserable old pile is on the market.”

  “But that’s crazy.” Margo sounded scandalized. “Owning a haunted castle is the chance of a lifetime.”

  “Yes, it is.” Mindy sat back and folded her arms. “It’s my chance to go back to the airlines and move to Hawaii. I can invest the money from the sale of the castle and what Hunter left me, and live off my flight-attendant salary. It’d be no trouble at all to commute from Oahu or even Maui. And best of all”—she felt wonderfully free at the thought—“I doubt there are many Scotsmen in Hawaii. They can’t take the heat.”

  “You’re not thinking clearly.” Margo picked up her purse and moved to the door. “I’ll come back in the morning after you’ve had a good night’s sleep. We’ll talk then.”

  “Only if you’re ready to help me find the right real estate agent,” Mindy called after her sister’s retreating back. “I’ve already spoken with a few.”

  And each one had sounded more than eager to list MacNeil’s Folly.

  Mindy smiled and reached for the mint chocolate wafer she’d almost eaten earlier. Then she helped herself to another and another until the little bone-china plate was empty. Chocolate was good for the soul.

  And there weren’t any ghostly souls spooking about the castle.

  Not disguised as orbs or otherwise.

  Her sister was crazy.

  And she was going to Hawaii.

  But first she needed some sleep. Margo was right about that. Regrettably, when she left the d
rawing room, she found the rest of the castle filled with a thin, drifting haze. Cold and silvery, thready wisps of it gathered in the corridors and snaked past the tall Gothic window arches. An illusion that surely had everything to do with the night’s full moon just breaking through the fast-moving rain clouds and nothing at all to do with the orbs that her sister claimed were darting around the long gallery.

  Or so she thought until she neared that dreaded room and caught the unmistakable strains of a bag-pipe. A haunting old Gaelic air that stopped the instant she neared the gallery’s open door.

  A door she always took care to keep closed.

  Mindy’s stomach dropped and her knees started to tremble. But when she heard footsteps on the long gallery’s polished wood floorboards and the low murmur of many men’s voices, she got mad and strode forward.

  It wouldn’t surprise her if Margo and her crazy New Age friends were playing a trick on her.

  A notion she had to discard the minute she reached the threshold and looked into the angry faces of Hunter’s Highland chieftain ancestors. There could be no doubt that it was them, because with the exception of Bran of Barra’s portrait at the far end of the long, narrow room, the ferocious-looking clansmen’s large gold-gilt portrait frames were empty.

  She also recognized them.

  And this time they weren’t just following her with their oil-on-canvas eyes.

  They were in the room. And they were glaring at her.

  Glaring and floating her way.

  Some even brandished swords.

  “Oh my God!” Mindy’s eyes rounded and she clapped a hand to her cheek.

  Heart thundering, she tried to slam the door and run, but a handful of the scowling clansmen were quicker. Before she could blink, they surrounded her, their huge kilted bodies blocking her escape.

  Kilted, plaid-draped bodies she could see through!

  Mindy felt the floor dip beneath her feet as they swept closer, their frowns black as night and their eyes glinting furiously in the moonlight. Soon, she feared, she might be sick. She wished she could faint.