Men of Midnight Complete Collection

by Emilie Richards

  “I’m interfering. Because I love you both.”

  “Love?” He took a step back and folded his arms in front of him. They were safer there. “What is this? Do you love us both enough to ruin April’s life and mine, too? Is that the kind of love you practice? Is that the kind you know? Has your life been so devoid of love that you don’t know what to do with it?”

  “My life may have been short on love, but it’s been long on watching people suffer. And your daughter is suffering, and I could no’ stand by and watch her suffer more.”

  “I think you’d better go.”

  “No’ before I show you something.”

  “What? What could you possibly show me that would change what you did today? You encouraged Lisa. And now she may take it in her head to find Druidheachd and her beloved baby girl. She’s just exactly unstable enough to become fixated on seeing April now that she’s talked to her. Finding April can become her newest obsession. Who knows where it will end!”

  “Obsession is exactly what this is about.” Mara moved past him and to the doorway leading into the hall. “Do you want to see, or no’?”

  He wanted her to leave. He had been crazy to let himself become involved with her. He had known, from the very beginning, that she was trouble, yet despite his own experiences, he had allowed her to take over a portion of his heart.

  She disappeared into April’s bedroom. He had no choice but to follow. He would see whatever she wanted to show him, then he would ask her to leave.

  She opened April’s toy chest and began to rummage. “I dinna even know if it’s still here. She may have taken it with her to Lolly’s. I dinna think she often lets it out of her sight.”

  “What are you talking about?” He stopped in the doorway.

  She continued to rummage, removing toys and piling them on the floor beside the chest. Finally she stood and gazed around the room. Regret colored her eyes a darker green. “She took it. And now I can no’…” She stared at the bed, then she shook her head. “No, there it is.” She walked to the bed and lifted April’s pillow. “She must have planned to take it with her and forgotten in the hurry at the end.” She held out a carved wooden box.

  He knew the box. It had once belonged to Lisa. She’d kept crystals in it or candles or incense. Something magical and absurd. He didn’t know how April had gotten hold of it, but it hardly seemed to matter. “So?”

  “Look inside, Duncan. Have a good look at obsession.”

  Reluctantly he took the box and lifted the top. He stared at the contents. Time passed. He didn’t know how much time. He heard Mara’s footsteps fading from the room, and moments later he heard the apartment door close softly behind her.

  He didn’t move. He stared at his daughter’s memories and the sad, discarded mementos of the mother she was not allowed to see.

  And when his eyes finally closed in defeat, he still held the remains of his marriage tightly in his hands.

  CHAPTER 12

  The day had been warm, but the storm had brought with it chilling winds, and Mara was glad for the peat fire burning on her hearth. She had made herself tea when she’d arrived home, and even as simple an act as that had left her feeling tired. She closed her eyes and rested, willing herself to concentrate on the familiar sounds of the croft instead of the voices in her head.

  But the voices were louder.

  She loved Duncan Sinclair, and she had told him so. But the revelation had made no difference to either of them. What did love matter when there was no trust with it? She hadn’t trusted him enough to go to him immediately and tell him what she’d done. He hadn’t trusted her enough to wait for her explanation.

  Guiser stretched out at her feet. He had been pathetically grateful for her return. Jessie and Roger had taken excellent care of him during her absence, but he was a one-woman dog. She inspired mindless devotion in animals and exuberant growth in plants. And in humans she inspired mistrust and anger.

  Guiser shifted, and his ears perked up. She didn’t know what time it was, only that hours had passed since her return. She knew she ought to go to bed because tomorrow her life would resume its usual course and she would rise at dawn to begin her chores. She was two weeks behind in her gardening and dyeing, and she didn’t know how she was going to manage to do everything in the few warm months still left to her.

  Guiser got to his feet and started toward the door. She followed, throwing it open to watch him dissolve into the darkness. The storm still thundered somewhere in the distance and rain fell hard enough to obscure whatever view she might have had. She wanted to follow him, to run through the darkness and keep on running. She did not want to face her life alone again. The croft that had once seemed like a prayer’s answer now seemed like a prison.

  “Mara?”

  She stepped back, startled. Duncan stood before her, and she hadn’t even sensed he was there.

  She didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t expected him to come. She had tried to glimpse her own future, and she had seen a void.

  “Mara.” He stepped forward. He reached out his hand.

  She backed away. “Why are you here?”

  “May I come in?”

  She realized he was standing in the rain. His mac had been no match for a summer thunderstorm. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead and raindrops traced his cheekbones. She stepped to one side and let him in, but she didn’t move away from the door.

  “May I stand by the fire?”

  She gestured toward it, giving permission. He took off his mac and hung it on a peg, then he crossed the room. “It was hell coming up the mountain in this. But at least I didn’t see any ghosts.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I forget sometimes that I’m not in California anymore. I forget it can be so damned cold in July.”

  “We’re in the most godforsaken corner of a godforsaken country. Dinna you tell me that earlier?”

  “Are you going to stand there, or are you going to come over here?”

  “Say what you’ve come to say, Duncan. Then please go.”

  “Do you think I’m going to hurt you?”

  “You’ve already hurt me. I’m no’ in the market for more.”

  “Mara…”

  She closed her eyes. His voice wrapped around her heart and squeezed mercilessly. “I was wrong to go against your wishes today,” she said. “But I never deserved such anger. Do you think I did it easily? Do you think I was no’ torn? I knew you’d be upset, but I thought you’d give me a chance to explain. I was only waiting until we were alone.”

  “You had all afternoon and evening. You could have found a time and a place.”

  “I did no’ want you to be hurt by what I had to show you, and I knew you would be. But I should no’ have waited. You’re right about that.”

  “And I should have known you had reason to put Lisa through to April. I’m sorry.”

  She opened her eyes and he was standing just in front of her again. “So you’ve said what you came for.”

  “Mara…” She tried to turn away, but he cupped her face in his hands. “I was wrong. I had no idea what April was going through. I shut my eyes to it, just like I shut my eyes…”

  “To what?”

  “To what you said to me when we were fighting.”

  “I said a lot of things.”

  “You said that you loved me.”

  “I love easily, Duncan.”

  He dropped his hands. “Is that right?”

  “Aye. I dinna know how to protect myself.”

  “Then I’m just one of a series. Is that what you’re saying?”

  She just stared at him.

  “I don’t think so,” he said softly. “I think you’ve built walls as thick and as solid as the walls of this cottage. And I think you’ve isolated your heart the way you’ve isolated yourself on this mountain. But you weren’t meant for any of this. You were meant to love and be loved.”

  “That’s what we were all meant for. But n
o’ all of us succeed, do we? And for some of us, it’s better if we stay in our stone cottages and isolate ourselves on mountains.”

  “Not for you.” He pulled her close and turned her face to his. “Not for you. You were meant for this.”

  She tried to pull away, but his lips took possession of hers and his arms circled her. He claimed to be cold, but his body was as warm as fire against hers. She was enveloped by his warmth. Some part of her that had long been frozen began to thaw, and she knew she couldn’t let it.

  She slid her hands to his chest and pushed. “I want you to go. Please go. I’ve nowt to offer you.”

  “Just yourself.” He dropped his arms, but he didn’t move away. “I’m asking for that, and nothing more.”

  “You dinna know what you’re asking!”

  “I do know.” He took her hands and held them to his heart. “I know who you are, and I know what you suffer sometimes. And I’m telling you it doesn’t matter. I want you the way you are, Mara. I’m not asking that you be someone you’re not.”

  “Please, Duncan.” But she didn’t know what she was begging him for.

  “I’ve made a million mistakes in my life.” His hands tightened around hers. “A billion. And I’ll go on making them. And I want you anyway because I can’t help myself. If I was any kind of man at all I’d walk through that door and leave you here because I’m not good enough for you.”

  “No’ good enough?”

  “I don’t know how to be the man you need. I couldn’t be enough for Lisa. God knows I tried, but I just couldn’t be everything she needed. And if I could have been, maybe she never would have gone off the deep end.”

  “It was never your fault.” She wasn’t sure when her fingers had woven with his. He was no longer holding her hands. They were joined by mutual consent. “How can you blame yourself?”

  His eyes were the color of peat smoke. “And how can you think you have nothing to offer? You’re the kindest woman I’ve ever met, and the most perceptive. There’s nothing small or mean about you. From the first moment I saw you standing in that meadow I knew there was going to be something between us. And that something is this.”

  He bent his head lower. She knew she should move away, that this time he would take nothing from her. He was giving her time, teasing her with her own need. He was asking for a commitment, a mutual expression of longing.

  And she wasn’t strong enough to deny him. She groaned as his lips found hers, because suddenly lips weren’t enough. She had been hollow too long, and she had yearned for Duncan all of her life. There were no walls thick enough, no mountain high enough to keep him from her any longer.

  “Oh, Mara.” He breathed her name against her hair. “For once let’s stop fighting what we both want.”

  She couldn’t fight. She stroked instead, stroked the damp dark silk of his hair, the warm skin of his neck, the rough-textured wool of his jumper, the cool, slippery cotton of his shirt. She stroked and she tasted the secret flavors of his skin and lips and the deeper recesses of his mouth.

  His hands were as eager for sensation as hers. They skimmed her hair to close tightly over her shoulders and propel her even closer. Restless again they edged to her breasts, to her waist, to the narrow flare of her hips. He was hard against her, aroused and ready to forsake the pleasures of foreplay and slide deep inside her.

  But he didn’t move toward the bed. “Tell me you want this, too.”

  “Aye.” There were better ways to say it. She grasped the hem of his jumper and tugged it toward his head. “Aye Duncan, I want this and I want you. And I’ll have what I want.”

  His eyelids drifted shut. His hands moved over his head and in a moment the jumper lay on the stone floor. She had been a nurse, used to dressing and undressing men of all ages, but her fingers were suddenly clumsy. He stood completely motionless, taut and brimming with tension, and let her fumble with the buttons. He made a soft sound, a moan of raw pleasure as her palms skimmed his bare chest at last. She savored the sensation of the wide expanse of skin, of broad shoulders and muscular arms. The shirt joined the jumper on the floor and firelight turned his torso to bronze.

  “This is a favor I can return.” He sounded like a man lost somewhere between pleasure and pain. His fingers trembled as he guided the zipper of her dress to its lowest point. Her skin seemed to smolder every place that he touched it. She felt as if she were expanding inside, winging to some uncharted place with only the boundaries of her skin to keep her grounded on the earth. The dress fell to the floor and pooled at her feet and her bra followed it. His hand closed over her breast, and she had never felt such pleasure. She melted against him, pressing herself closer. She heard a moan and didn’t know if it was hers or his.

  His lips found her ear; her hands found his zipper and the bulge beneath it. She freed him and felt the fire of his arousal against her abdomen. The bed seemed a light-year away, a journey through impossible terrain. He swung her off her feet, kicking his pants away, and strode there. The soft mattress gave willingly beneath her back and his weight was welcome and heavy on top of her.

  She wasn’t sure when the last of their clothes had disappeared. They were naked together now, but there was no time to explore or to note. She was driven by a purer need than curiosity. She had been created for this moment, for the merging of her being with Duncan’s, and he had been created for her. She knew, without knowing how, that they would both be changed by what was already an inevitable conclusion. They would be separate again, but never quite as separate. This moment would always be between them, no matter what the future held.

  They were two, then they were one. She took him inside her and felt the power of their merging shake the foundations of everything she had ever known. Time, which had so often moved in mysterious ways for her, stood absolutely still.

  And the pleasure, the raw, mindless pleasure, stretched into eternity.

  * * *

  Mara was sleeping. Her thighs skimmed his, her arm was draped lightly over his chest. The scent of herbs, of lemon balm, lavender and mint perfumed her hair and tickled his senses in ways he had never imagined they could.

  There was an owl hooting somewhere nearby, hooting blatantly, shamelessly, now that the worst of the storm had passed. There were other sounds. The distant bell of a wandering sheep. Mara’s soft breathing. The sizzle of peat on the hearth. Wind sighing through the waltzing branches of trees.

  He couldn’t remember feeling this way before. He couldn’t even find a word to describe the interplay of emotions that had assaulted him while making love with Mara. And afterward, afterward he had brimmed with feelings. He envisioned a dam as thick as the walls of Mara’s cottage and a slow, steady leak that could never be plugged again. He had believed himself to be a man with few emotions. Now he knew that he had built his entire life on a myth. He was emotional, wildly, furiously emotional and passionate beyond comprehension.

  And he had met his match in Mara. She had set him on fire, wringing passion from him and returning it in full measure. How could two people who had been so terribly careful for so long ignite on contact? How had they found each other when there was so much that should have separated them? That still could?

  She cuddled closer and he drew the blanket higher over her, although he hated to block his glorious view of her body. She was more beautiful than he had imagined—and he was a man who was long on imagination. Her legs were showgirl length and wickedly agile. Her waist was as slim as a reed, her breasts small but beautifully rounded and softer than anything had a right to be.

  She stirred again, and this time her eyes opened. She smiled and touched his cheek. “What time is it?”

  “I have no idea. You don’t seem to have a clock.”

  “Umm… That’s right. I dinna.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “What would I need one for?”

  “Moments like this. When you wake up and want to know what time it is.”

  She smiled. Something spa
rkled in her eyes. “Ask me what time it is, Duncan.”

  He shifted, so they were face-to-face. His heart began to beat faster. “What time is it, Mara?”

  She circled him with her arms. “Come a little closer, my love, and I’ll show you.”

  * * *

  Mara was up before Duncan. He was sleeping so soundly that he didn’t stir when she dressed to go outside. Roger had moved the cows to his own croft to make them easier to care for, so until she got them back—if she did—there was nothing to do for them. She was considering the possibility of selling them to Roger if he was interested. She realized now that she had bought them as much to tie herself to the land as for any other reason. But she had moved beyond needing excuses for anything that she did. And if Roger took the cows, she could buy her milk from him and turn the tables nicely.

  The sheep were another matter. She had become a fair shepherd since she had moved to the mountain. She could vaccinate and lamb and do a hundred other less appealing tasks now, but she would never get used to breeding lambs, then selling them off at the end of each summer. The mourning cries of their mothers rang in her ears for weeks after the ewes themselves had adjusted, and thoughts of the lamb’s fates weren’t to be tolerated. No, in the weeks since she had been away from the croft she’d had time to contemplate her life. And what she’d seen hadn’t necessarily pleased her.

  She walked to the barn, Guiser at her heels, and opened the door to let the sheep out for the day. With Guiser’s assistance she herded them to the section of pasture where they would graze for the next few weeks. She closed the gate behind the last one and trekked the circumference of the fence, to be sure that no stones were out of place. Then she leaned on the gate and watched the lambs at play.

  She kept two different herds, although she grazed them together. One was an ancient breed, the Shetlands, whose wool ranged from white to black and included a shade called Moorit, a deep, rich, reddish brown. The other she kept were the Highland Black Face, a sheep with a beautiful long fleece and a tendency to fatten quickly for meat. The Shetlands were her favorite because their wool was so unusual, suggesting endless combinations for a creative spinner, but the wool of the Highland sheep took color beautifully.