by Allie Mackay
Calum glanced over his shoulder then, as if he didn’t wish anyone else to hear him. “Orosius—”
“What did he see?” Magnus’s pulse raced. If Orosius saw him fall, he would.
The seer never erred.
And even if Magnus didn’t fear death, he wasn’t ready. He couldn’t leave this earth until Sigurd Sword Breaker breathed his last.
“Well?” Magnus flashed a glance out over the hall.
“Is Orosius saying someone will lop off my head? Slit my belly and wade in my blood?”
“He saw nothing the like.” Calum took a bite of cheese. “And you needn’t keep bending your neck looking for him. He’s in his cottage, sleeping off the strain of his vision. I can tell you what he saw.” Calum peered at him. “It was you lying with a dead woman.”
Magnus’s eyes rounded. “Lying with—”
“He saw you naked, the both of you, and you taking the woman in passion.” Calum was blunt. “Orosius believes she was Liana.”
“I ne’er touched Liana.” Magnus felt his blood
“I ne’er touched Liana.” Magnus felt his blood chilling.
“Not in life.” Calum made light of his protest. “That’s why Orosius is certain you’re about to leave us. Liana dwells in the realm of the dead.”
“How does he know the woman was Liana?” Magnus’s heart began knocking, a terrible suspicion squeezing his innards. “Did he see her clearly?”
“Nae.” Calum confirmed his dread. “He only saw her back and the fairness of her hair. The woman’s face was turned away from him.”
“She could have been anyone.”
“You haven’t touched a woman in o’er five years.” Calum voiced what they both knew. “Who save Liana could tempt you into her bed?”
“No one.” Magnus’s denial came harsh.
And it wasn’t the truth.
The naked Valkyrie could have seduced him.
If she’d been real, he wouldn’t have been able to resist her. Just imagining lying with her fired the blood in his veins. Such a woman in the flesh could have scorched him with flames that burned from his loins clear to his heart.
Not that he need worry.
She didn’t exist.
Chapter 3
Magnus MacBride, Viking Slayer.
The name stole Margo’s breath and made her pulse quicken. Even now, hours after returning home from Ye Olde Pagan Times. Real or imagined, he’d awakened her passion like no flesh and blood twenty-first-century man had ever done. She suspected Patience’s broken magic lingered on the book, opening a channel her employer hadn’t realized existed, allowing the long-ago Scottish hottie to seem so real. Whatever the cause, she could easily imagine him. Clearly, in bold, vibrant color as if she were right there with him in his time and on that distant shore.
Discovering him only reminded her of the great tragedy of her life.
She’d been born in the wrong century.
She’d definitely been plunked down on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
Men like Magnus MacBride didn’t walk around modern-day America. They didn’t even frequent New Hope, cozy and quaint as it was. Her most recent dating disaster had been a computer programmer who’d been a lousy kisser. He’d attracted her because he was a history buff. But he was a Civil War reenactor and not a medieval-Scotland enthusiast.
Since ditching him, she’d lost interest in romance.
Unless ...
There really was such a thing as Highland magic.
True, ancient power, steeped in the old ways, and so much stronger than Patience’s dabbling. The kind of magic that would let Magnus manifest in front of her.
Her sensible side knew it would never happen. That part of her urged her to save her swoons for certain Scottish movie stars, so popular in recent years. Real flesh and blood men who actually existed, even if their Hollywood status made winning their hearts equally impossible.
If she could get to Scotland, she’d surely meet a real live Highlander who’d knock her socks off.
But he won’t be the one you want.
The whisper swirled through Margo’s mind, making her start. It was a woman’s voice, lilting, intimate, and entirely unreal. A shiver ran through her and she rubbed her arms, edgy. Surely Patience’s spelling wasn’t adept enough to make her hear voices that weren’t there?
Magnus hungers for you.
The voice came again, laced with a trace of malice this time. Margo tensed, the fine hairs on her nape lifting as the lights in her apartment flickered and—for a moment—darkness pulsed around her. She knew she was alone, yet she couldn’t shake the odd sensation that someone else was with her, watching her.
Someone who didn’t like her.
But she gave herself a shake and pushed the ridiculous notion from her mind. A quick glance around her apartment, ensuring that she was alone, helped restore a sense of normalcy. What she couldn’t do was wrest her thoughts away from Magnus MacBride.
Not that fantasizing about him bothered her.
A girl was entitled to dream. Doing just that, she rolled her shoulders, pressed a hand to the small of her back. She stretched, fighting off the strain of a long day as her mind conjured a whirl of delicious scenarios featuring herself and Magnus MacBride.
He was dream worthy.
Big, strapping, and hot-eyed, his long, dark hair tossing in the wind, and his powerful biceps thick with silver and gold arm rings. He was more perfect than any man she’d ever seen. Her total fantasy brought to life by a few vivid brushstrokes. She’d give anything to have seen him when he was rock hard and solid. Even as paper and ink, every magnificent inch of him made her hot and tingly.
If she could have her very own Highlander, she’d choose him.
She had splurged on his book, Myths and Legends of the Viking Age. She’d dipped into her emergency gas and grocery money to buy it. The tome now held pride of place on her glass-topped coffee table.
Scenic Highland postcards and pictures she’d cut from glossy Scottish travel magazines winked from beneath the table glass, providing a fitting background for such a braw Highland warrior.
It didn’t matter that his two-page color illustration had mysteriously disappeared from the book.
He’d been there.
And that was enough.
Now the book was hers.
Too bad Magnus MacBride wasn’t.
Like it or not, he belonged to a long-vanished time.
These days, there wasn’t much need of Viking slayers. Not even in Scotland. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t indulge in a bit of wistful imagining. After all, her apartment—a small one-bedroom arrangement on the second floor of an 1840 stone house—was filled with everything a dedicated Scotophile needed to pretend herself into the Highlands.
Margo excelled at such romanticizing.
Now, three years after moving into the old house, she was glad that Dina Greed—damn her eyeballs—had finagled her way into the modern, more spacious apartment Margo had thought she’d wanted so badly.
That all-the-bells-and-whistles complex might boast a club-house, a swimming pool, and tennis courts, but it didn’t have atmosphere.
Nor would the buildings creak and groan when wind whistled round the eaves.
Margo liked creaking and groaning.
Windy weather reminded her of the cold air and gray skies of Scotland. As did her treasures like the mock-medieval strongbox she’d once found sitting alone and forlorn beside a Dumpster. A bit battered, but with a fine humped lid and banded with only lightly rusted iron straps, the chest held her collection of Scottish guidebooks and maps. Another prize was her plaid-covered wing chair, a marvel she’d picked up for next to nothing at Aging Gracefully, a vintage-clothing shop not far from Ye Olde Pagan Times.
The chair had been part of the shop fittings, not merchandise for sale. But Margo was such a good customer at Aging Gracefully that the owner, Ardelle Goodnight, allowed her to make the coveted purchase.
Mar
go reciprocated by interesting her Luna Harmony clients in Ardelle’s heirloom wares.
Just now she glanced at her watch, pushed up from her beloved tartan chair. She’d had a strange, tiring day and the evening dark was closing in. The afternoon’s rain had returned with a vengeance and thick, gray mist blew past the windows. Wind rattled the panes—the Fieldstone House was old, the windows made of ancient, wobbly glass—and the sound was making her sleepy.
What she needed was a hot shower, a cup of Earl Grey Cream tea, and then bed.
If she was lucky, she’d dream of Magnus MacBride, Viking Slayer.
As long as she wasn’t plagued by images of Dina Greed winging her way across the Atlantic, heading for the Highlands, she’d be satisfied.
That would be a nightmare.
But the gods who loved Scotophiles were good to her.
The instant she went through to her bathroom, a heather-scented haven filled with fluffy, lace-edged towels and Lunarian Organic soaps and bath foams—
Patience gave her a generous discount—all thoughts of her rival vanished. She pulled back the curtain of her ancient claw-foot bathtub and turned on the shower.
Steam quickly filled the room, looking almost like Highland mist against the backdrop of Margo’s heather-vista wallpaper. Thick, silent, and enveloping, the make-believe mist gave her a cozy feeling of connection to the wild northernmost part of Britain she loved so much.
Her beloved Scotland.
That faraway land of hills and moorland, foaming waterfalls and deep blue lochs, where she should have been born. Kilties, bagpipes, and castles set her heart to pounding, not hot dogs, baseball, and apple pie.
But all wasn’t lost.
Someday she’d walk the waterfront of some remote Highland village, stand on a spectacular cliff edge, and watch the sea crash against jagged, black rocks.
She’d lose herself in the hills and breathe the scent of pine and wild thyme. Or, better yet, stroll past a thick-walled croft house in a quiet glen and catch a whiff of peat smoke on chill autumn air.
As soon as her ship came in, she’d be on her way.
It was so nice to dream. ...
Somewhere a dog barked.
Margo frowned as she stripped out of her clothes.
There weren’t any dogs at the Fieldstone House, regrettably. She really loved them and hoped to have one of her own someday. But she didn’t yet, though if she learned that someone had locked a dog out in the rain, she’d try and persuade the owners to let her adopt the poor thing.
Dogs were meant to be loved.
Not left to shiver in the cold, wet dark.
Fortunately, the dog stopped barking—Margo hoped that meant he was now safe and warm, curled before a fire or on someone’s comfy couch—and that was good because the night was turning fierce. Rain drummed on the roof and dense, gray fog pressed against the bathroom’s tiny window, turning the light of a nearby old-styled lamppost into a smear of glowing yellow haze.
Margo blinked.
For a moment, she would’ve sworn the edges of the luminous blur flared red. But when she looked again, the eerie light was gone.
Even so, she turned to the broad windowsill and lit three white pillar candles. Set in trays of small, river-polished pebbles, the arrangement was a gift from Patience, who always murmured warding spells over every candle to leave Ye Olde Pagan Times.
Patience believed in doing her part for the community by sending each customer home with a blessing. She claimed the spell would protect the patrons whether or not they realized they’d left with a charmed candle. Or scented oil and reed diffusers guaranteed to not only spend fragrance but keep negativity at bay. Himalayan salt-crystal lamps did more than lend cheer and ambience to a room with their soft, orange glow. They also soothed hectic lives, bringing balance and healing to body, mind, and spirit.
All thanks to Patience’s gentle murmurings.
No one ever guessed.
Margo knew.
And she hoped the white candles would chase the odd shivers racing down her nerves again. Watching Magnus MacBride quicken to life on a book page might’ve been beyond amazing, but something else had lurked in the shop’s dimly lit rows of bookshelves.
Something evil, she was sure.
And she wanted none of its residue tainting her.
Imagining a strange woman’s voice taunting her had been bad enough.
So she climbed into her heather-purple-painted claw-foot tub, reached for her favorite Ocean of Storms shower gel, and stepped beneath the hot, pounding water. A good vigorous scrubbing would revive her and—she hoped—cleanse and shield her aura.
Ocean of Storms did foam better than any other shower gel. Almost iridescent, the creamy bubbles reminded her of sea spume. The fragrance was a dream, filling the air with the mysteries of wild, windswept seas and just a touch of rich, musky amber. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, letting the scent soothe her, carrying her away. ...
“Precious lass . . .”
Margo’s heart thumped as she imagined how Magnus would greet her. His voice would be deep and richly burred. Every word would be buttery smooth, pure Highland seduction.
They’d be on the strand from the book illustration and he’d stride up to her, taking her face in his hands and kissing her deeply.
She could picture the scene so well, even the sheer black cliffs rising behind him. Her breath caught at the vividness of her imagination, fantasy letting the tile and wallpaper vanish until she saw only jagged, basalt crags. Mist wreathed the cliff tops and the air filled with the cries of seabirds and the roar of the surf.
Magnus would break the kiss then and look deep into her eyes. “I’m waiting for you, lass. Come to me, soon.”
Margo was sure that was what he’d say. And the thought sent a rush of feminine need racing through her.
“Kissing you is no’ enough. ...” Margo bit her lip and stopped soaping herself as she imagined his voice. It’d be darker and sexier now, full of the soft, musical undertones that made a Scottish accent so curl-a-girl’s-toes irresistible.
Margo’s heart beat faster and she took a shallow breath. Desire stirred, her body heating as she let her imagination lead her onward.
She went willingly.
It was too tempting to pretend he was kissing her.
Too delicious, imagining his love words spilling through her like smooth, sun-warmed honey.
Seductive, molten, and so deliciously Highland that if only they were real, her heart would split wide, and she knew she’d ache with the pleasure of hearing him.
God help her if he spoke Gaelic.
Sadly, her imagination had its limits.
Much as she loved Scotland, she’d never learned Gaelic.
She could paint his world vividly. With her mind’s eye, she could even see screeching seabirds speeding past, swooping low over her head on their way to the rocky, many-ledged crags.
She could almost believe she was in a rock-lined, cliff-hemmed cove.
Everything seemed so real.
Nearby, a dog barked again—it sounded like the same one as earlier—and from the corner of her eye, she imagined that she caught a glimpse of a large, scruffy-coated beast running along a black line of scruffy-coated beast running along a black line of seaweed near the water’s edge.
Big waves crashed there, the endless whoosh and booms echoing along the headland.
Margo’s heart began to thump, heavily. She inhaled deep, exhaled slowly.
It didn’t help.
She blinked, and the dog disappeared into the mist.
But glistening tidal rocks and steep cliffs met her eye no matter where she looked. Her bathroom had disappeared. And she still heard the sea.
The rhythmic pounding could be only her own blood rushing in her ears. It wasn’t every day she imagined herself up close and personal with a dream-spun hunk of pure Scottish sexuality. But real as it all seemed, it wasn’t. She hadn’t been transported anywhere, much as she wished
she had been. She was still in her heather-clad bathroom.
Rain hammered on the roof and splattered the window, same as a moment ago. And the shower still splashed around her and spilled down her naked body. But the water chilled her now, as did the cold bite of racing wind.
Wind like none she’d ever felt and that smelled of deep, clean waters, full of ice and strong, northern currents.
A peek past her shower curtain showed that Patience’s candles still burned, though their flames now looked more like distant torchlight or even beacons. And the red-rimmed light of the garden lamppost was now a fire-edged moon, casting its lurid path across a sea that shone like beaten silver.
But her sexy-voiced Highlander was nowhere to be seen.
He’d left her dream.
Or so she thought until she pushed her dripping bangs back from her face. The air seemed to shift then, and he reappeared in all his kilt-clad glory. She blinked, her jaw slipping.
Her heart went wild, thundering madly. Exhaustion and soap in her eyes were surely playing tricks on her, for he looked even more magnificent now. Afraid the dream would shatter if she even breathed, she stood still. But a bit of shampoo slipped into her eyes and she reached to dash at the suds. At once, two large hands clamped around her wrists, lowering her arms to her sides.
“Stay with me. I’ll show you bliss as you’ve ne’er known.” His voice was darker now, richer than ever, and his eyes smoldered with passion.
He gripped her possessively, crowding her with his wide shoulders and big, hard chest. He looked like a mythical Celtic god, full of power and passion.
Glittering silver and gold rings banded the hard muscles of his upper arms. And his full, sensual mouth promised ecstasies beyond her wildest imaginings.
Wind whipped his silky black hair, drawing her attention to his bold, chiseled features. He had a proud, handsome face, strengthened by fierce slashing brows. His eyes were dark as midnight and, just now, staring straight into her soul, bridging forever as if time and distance didn’t exist.
Anything was possible in dreams.
Margo just wished this were reality.
She tried to say something, but the pure sexual magnetism of him fuzzed her mind. He stepped closer, the heat from his big muscle-packed body warming her, making her tremble. “You want this, aye?”
