Текст книги "Charming The Highlander"

Автор книги: Джанет Чапмен

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t an option. Neither was calling one of his men to come get him. They were too close to the scheduled opening of the resort, and they were nowhere near ready.

Grey stood up, slung his bag over his shoulder, and stooped to pick up Grace Sutter’s two bags by her feet. He was surprised by the weight of one of them. He was even more surprised when she grabbed the lightest one back from him.

He lifted his head to find himself staring over a baby’s head into the deep blue eyes of the woman he intended to marry.

Grey straightened as if he’d been punched. What in hell was this all about? He suddenly felt too big for his skin, his knees wanted to buckle, and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

“Ah…I’ll hold on to this one, thank you,” she said, her voice barely penetrating the haze in his head. He saw her turn to the pilot. “I have three more bags and a car seat waiting at the luggage counter.”

Grey turned and walked out the side door of the terminal without looking back. The cold, drizzling February rain hit him full on the face. He stood there, his head lifted to the sky, and let the rain wash all the fog from his brain.

Talk about reactions. The lady was beautiful enough to take any man’s breath away, but marriage?

Grey shook his head, disgusted with himself. Granted, he did have marriage on his mind lately, but he was expecting the courtship to last a bit longer than two seconds. Yes, that was what had struck him a moment ago—his body was already looking for a mate even if his brain had not caught up to it yet.

Yeah. That’s what happened. A beautiful woman had simply stepped in front of a man on the hunt.

Grey had called a clan meeting just a few weeks ago to discuss this very subject. It was time, he had told his men, that they all got married. They had their land, the resort was due to open next month, and it was time they looked to the future. They needed sons. Lots of sons, with whom they could start building the MacKeage clan back to the greatness it once was.

His men had not embraced the idea. They were still trying to cope with the fact that they were no longer warriors, which was an honorable profession in their minds, but merchants, which was not. They were selling pleasure and sport to hordes of vacationers who traveled from the overcrowded cities of the south.

And wives? Why would they want to go and add to their troubles? Wives would mean separate households, regular haircuts, and going to church.

Getting married would also mean having to mingle with the moderns to find those wives in the first place.

Courting meant dating now, going to restaurants, dances, and movie theaters where a bunch of people sat in the dark and were nearly bowled over by noisy stories acted out on a screen.

Courting also meant getting involved with the women’s families, and it was the consensus of the men that most families today were downright odd. Half the people in this world were divorced, and the rest were on their second, third, and sometimes fourth marriages. People swapped spouses today more often than they had swapped horses eight hundred years ago.

No. None of his men was in any hurry to get married.

But Grey was adamant. They had the financial power base now, and they needed sons to ensure its continuance. The next generation would be businessmen, utilizing the land, the timber, and the political power that came with both. The future of clan MacKeage lay in their children.

Several pellets of ice struck his face, mixed with the cold, heavily misting rain. Grey shrugged his collar closer to his neck and began walking toward the plane.

It was a six-seat DeHaviland Beaver. He had flown in one like it before. Nine cylinders, all of them exposed to the weather, and an oil filler pipe in the cockpit.

Not a reassuring picture.

Damn, he hated small planes. Flying was an unnatural act. It defied common sense that tons of steel could lift into the air by means of a little stick bolted to the nose, spinning around and around to stir up the wind.

But more than he hated small planes, Grey really hated overconfident pilots. While waiting for Grace Sutter to arrive, the pilot—who had introduced himself as Mark—had bragged about his many near misses as a bush pilot up in Alaska. That a little winter rain was nothing to worry about, compared with the blizzards he’d flown through in that great unending land of snow and ice.

Grey had not been impressed. He opened the door of the Beaver and stowed his bag and Grace Sutter’s heavy suitcase in the back. He looked around the cramped quarters, and his stomach churned. Mark had offered him a seat up front, but Grey had declined. He’d take the back, thank you, where he wouldn’t feel compelled to watch every gauge on the dash for signs of trouble.

“Ah, Mark?” Grace Sutter said from behind him. “The rain is starting to freeze. You’re not worried about icing?”

Well, the lady seemed to know a bit about flying. Grey’s spirits rose.

“Nope,” Mark said, giving her a look that made it clear he hadn’t liked the question. “It’s warmer aloft.

The cold air’s locked in under two thousand feet.”

“But the landing strip near Pine Creek is at eight hundred,” she said then. “And that two-thousand-foot ceiling is probably at three thousand feet in the mountains. We’re going to be descending through twenty-two hundred feet of freezing rain.”

“You a pilot?” Mark asked, sounding annoyed.

“No.”

“Well, lady, I am. And I’ve flown in every type of weather on this planet. I’m telling you, it’s safe to take off. I’ve checked the radar, and the rain stops twenty miles short of Pine Creek. It won’t be a problem.”

He cocked his head and shifted his stance, letting them know his patience was drawing to an end. “They’

re predicting this storm to settle in for several days. So it’s either fly out now or be stuck here. It’s your call, lady.”

Grey watched Grace Sutter look down at the sleeping child on her chest. She looked around the tarmac and held up her hand, letting the freezing rain fall into her palm. She lifted it, watching it melt, and then she looked at Grey.

“Which seat do you want?” she asked then. “Or are you sitting up front in the copilot seat?”

“I’ll take the middle,” he told her, thankful that whatever had struck him inside the terminal was over. He still wanted the woman to the very soles of his feet, but his mind was once again in control of his body.

“Why don’t you sit beside me, and we’ll make a bed in the backseat for your child?”

Her eyes widened, and Grey didn’t know if he’d just scared her spitless or made her own toes tingle. He hoped it was the latter. And he hoped she would be staying in Pine Creek long enough for him to find out what she was doing running around with a bairn and no husband.

“Unless you want to sit up front,” he said.

“Ah…no. The middle is fine.”

Mark looked relieved. He opened the baggage door in the rear and stowed her three other suitcases and a child-carrier seat. Grey reached to take the bag she was holding. She clutched it to her side for a moment, then reluctantly let it go.

“Please be careful with that. And could you set it on the floor by my seat?” she asked.

“Let’s load up, people,” Mark said, climbing into the front of the plane.

Grey helped Grace Sutter aboard, then took the seat beside her. He handed her the side of her seat belt closer to him. She snapped it closed over her lap and under her child. Then she carefully pulled off her baby’s cap.

A full head of dark, spike-straight hair appeared, with two little ears sticking through it. Grey watched as Grace leaned down and kissed the sleeping baby on the top of his head.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” he asked, only to flinch at the sound of the engine sputtering to life.

“A boy.”

“How old is he?”

“Four weeks.”

Grey’s gaze went from the child to her face. Four weeks? He was lusting after a woman barely out of childbed?

He studied her face. She might be tired and a bit frayed around the edges, but Grace Sutter didn’t look like a woman who had spent the last nine months being pregnant. There was a special…presence new mothers possessed, and he was not seeing it now as he studied her.

“Is he yours?” he asked without thinking.

She turned and gave him an icy glare.

“I’m sorry. That was rude of me,” he quickly amended. “It’s just that you look too good to have a four-week-old son.”

He watched a flush creep into her cheeks. Great. Maybe his brain really wasn’t in charge of his mouth at the moment.

“Look,” he said with a sigh. “Can we start over? I’m Greylen MacKeage,” he said, holding out his hand for her to take. “And I know your sister. We’re neighbors.”

“MacKeage,” she repeated, staring at his hand, looking as if she was afraid it would bite her.

After a moment she accepted his peace offering and put her small hand into his. He just as carefully closed his fingers around hers and shook it, instantly aware of a warm, unsettling tingle that traveled up his arm.

“I’m Grace Sutter,” she said, pulling back her hand. Grey noticed that she clenched that hand into a fist just before she tucked it under her thigh.

“Mary mentioned the MacKeages,” she said then. “Don’t you own TarStone Mountain?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re building a ski resort and summer spa,” she said, not as a question but as a statement of fact.

“Mary mentioned that it’s due to open soon.”

“In about a month,” he told her. Maybe they weren’t off to such a bad start.

Her face lit up with a smile. “That should help out the economy of Pine Creek.”

“Not everyone thinks we’re doing a good thing,” he admitted with a sheepish grin. “People are afraid the town will lose its identity.”

She thought about that. “Maybe,” she said, her hand absently petting down her son’s hair. “But it survived the boom and then the decline of the logging era. I think it can survive your resort. I bet you a penny the locals will be the first to open up shops and hang out shingles to sell maple syrup, hand-knit sweaters, and bed-and-breakfast rooms.”

“You’d probably double your money,” he agreed.

“You all buckled up back there?” Mark asked, moving the plane toward the runway.

Grey turned to Grace. “You want to keep your son in his cocoon? Or would you like me to set up his car seat in the back?”

She patted her baby’s bottom affectionately. “No, but thank you. He’s sleeping now. I think I’ll just let him be.”

Grey turned toward his window then, so Grace Sutter couldn’t see his face when the plane lifted off the tarmac. He gripped the seat with one hand and the door handle with the other, closed his eyes, and started his usual litany of prayers.

They were the same prayers he used late at night, when he was alone in his bed and felt he had lost his mind. Although he would wake up from the nightmares—where he relived the horror of the great storm, the lightning, and the terror—Grey still found himself in a strange new land where metal machines raced by at unbelievable speeds, where light appeared in a room like magic, and where hordes of people seemed to be everywhere.

At first, Grey and his men and the six bastard MacBains had honestly thought they had died and been condemned to hell. They had survived the storm only to be nearly killed by what they had thought were speeding demons but now knew were automobiles. The sheep and cattle in the pastures they recognized.

The people in those automobiles, dressed so strangely, they did not. They had seen the steeple of a large stone church in the distance and had hidden in an abandoned barn until dark before they made their way to it, hoping to find sanctuary there.

They’d found Father Daar instead.

The old priest had been at the altar praying when the ten of them had walked inside, leading their warhorses into the church with them, not caring anymore what God might think of such an act.

Daar had calmly turned around and welcomed them into God’s house and just as calmly listened to their story. He hadn’t keeled over dead or run away screaming—which was suspect in itself to Grey’s thinking. How balanced could a man’s mind be, no matter how brittle with age, to stand bravely before ten dangerously scared warriors, smiling and nodding as they all rushed to tell him their insane tale.

But Daar had not only understood their language, he spoke it himself, managing to calm their fears even though he couldn’t explain what had happened any more than they could.

Over the next nine months the old priest had patiently and steadfastly given them the tools they needed to survive in this twenty-first century. Daar had taught them the modern language, about money and commerce, as well as manners and the use of eating utensils. He had ruthlessly pushed them to drive vehicles and showed them the wondrous technologies available today. And the displaced warriors had reluctantly but quickly adapted to the new world they found themselves in now.

It had not been easy. In fact, it was still not easy for any of them. They were warriors. They still had a hard time comprehending a world full of so many different people, where courts of law settled disputes and where marriages simply ended and women were left to bring up families by themselves.

But not six months into their painstaking lessons, Daar began to insist that it would be wise for them to leave Scotland. That moving to a more remote, less populated land—such as the northeastern forests of the United States, maybe—might make their lives easier. But before he could convince them that America was where they should go, Grey made the priest take him to the site of their old keep. There was a schoolhouse there now, and the name MacKeage was scattered to all four corners of modern-day Scotland.

And so Grey had agreed to leave.

Michael MacBain and his five men had kept themselves separate as much as was possible, and when the time came for them to go out on their own, he took his men to Nova Scotia.

Daar had sold a couple of their saddles, now valuable antiques, and presented them with bundles of paper money to finance the trip. But it had been Callum’s and Ian’s swords and Grey’s jeweled dagger that had brought them their present fortune, which they had then used to finance the purchase of four hundred thousand acres of Maine timberland and build their home, which they had named Gu Bràth—

which, loosely translated from Gaelic, meant “Forever.”

Twelfth-century weapons, apparently, were rare. Grey often wondered if anyone had checked to see if the blood staining them was as old as they were.

The men had been adamant that Grey and Morgan not sell their own swords. The younger men, at least, they had said, needed to be armed if they ever found themselves suddenly hurled through time again.

And that was another worry that had plagued all of them for the last four years. It had happened once, could it happen again? As suddenly as they’d been picked up and tossed across time, could that same unholy power do it again?

The old priest didn’t think so. The energies that ruled nature were not that fickle, he assured them. If they were here, there was a reason.

It was discovering that reason that was proving difficult.

Grey slit open one eye and peeked at the woman sitting in the small plane beside him now. He did know one thing for certain. He was never, ever, telling anyone—not even the woman he married—about his journey through time.

All of them had agreed to keep their pasts a secret. People today did not believe in magic, the Scots had quickly discovered. And those who did were usually thought of as strange—or insane.

Grey and his men were considered strange enough as it was for keeping so much to themselves; they didn’t need to give the moderns another reason to walk silently past them, whispering behind their hands.

Now, though, Grey’s immediate worry was the aging DeHaviland plane he was riding in, as it rose into the air with a whine of protest, the tail sinking as the last wheel pulled free of the ground. Grey fought to keep his stomach out of his boots. Ninety miles as the crow flew. Forty-five minutes of terror, and then, so help him God, he was never sitting his ass in another airplane again.

So, this is where you had to come to find a perfect specimen of manhood—the deep woods. She’d been too young when she had left Maine to appreciate what had been right under her nose. Grace decided that if she were ever going to ignore the intellectual side of her brain and go with her ancient feminine instincts, the man sitting beside her was exactly the type of male she would want to regress with.

Greylen MacKeage was ruggedly handsome, darkly compelling, and uncommonly large. He had to stand nearly six and a half feet tall, his broad shoulders took up most of the cabin space, and his hands looked as if they could have crushed her own hand without the least bit of effort.

She had considered that possibility when she had hesitantly shaken his hand, only to be surprised by the gentleness of his grip. But not nearly as surprised as she’d been by the sudden whisper of electricity she’

d felt tingle all the way up her arm into the center of her chest. As a matter of fact, her whole body still tingled with feminine awareness.

Greylen MacKeage was much more than just a good-looking man. Something about him bothered her.

Something Grace couldn’t explain, for the simple reason that she had never felt anything like it before. It was as if her dormant hormones had suddenly awakened after a long sleep and were now swimming all through her body like heat-charged electrons looking for action. She was beginning to suspect—and beginning to dread—that she was experiencing the first awakenings of desire.

This was not good.

Because this was not the time. Or the place. She didn’t want to be this strongly attracted to a man like Greylen MacKeage. It didn’t make any sense. He looked like a throwback to a much less civilized era, like a man who would rely on primitive instinct to survive, who would use might, not words, to make his point, and who would bowl over anyone or anything that got in his way. Yet she liked the smell of him, the strength he radiated, the steadfast look in his evergreen eyes. He was a man she would want on her side in a crisis. She especially liked the way he comported himself.

Especially when he was scared to death.

Grace could see the white of his knuckles as he gripped the seat beside her. His eyes were tightly shut, and she would bet her same penny that he was praying.

Greylen MacKeage was afraid of flying.

Grace leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She willed her hormones to settle down and pushed her own worries about the air-worthiness of the plane to the back of her mind.

She was going home for the first time in nine years. It was becoming a bad habit, only returning for funerals. She was glad she was staying awhile this time. She needed the rest, the reconnection with the earth and the trees and the granite of the mountains. She’d been looking out at space too long, instead of earthward. She’d forgotten what snow felt like crunching under her feet, what pine pitch smelled like on her hands.

And she had forgotten that men like Greylen MacKeage still existed.

Was that what Mary had found when she’d fallen in love with Michael MacBain? This thrill of being near a perfectly male human being? Of feeling a strength that emanated from him in the form of sweet-smelling heat?

Was Mary’s Michael MacBain a large man like Greylen MacKeage? Had she wanted to feel his arms around her the moment she’d laid eyes on him?

Grace used her feet to pull her carry-on bag closer to her seat. Lord, but she missed her sister. There were so many more chapters in her life she wanted to share with Mary. She had questions she wanted answered—about love, relationships, the contentment her sister had found here in her woods in the shadow of TarStone Mountain.

Grace had left Pine Creek for college at the age of sixteen. She didn’t regret the decisions she’d made for the last fourteen years, but she had thought she would have more time to catch up with her sister.

Mary was supposed to teach her what college couldn’t, how to go out on dates, break men’s hearts, and fall in love.

How had so many years passed without her noticing? She should have come back sooner, taken a break between doctorates, and spent time with Mary.

The pull of exhaustion finally won its fight, and Grace fell asleep with her arms wrapped around Baby and her legs wrapped around the bag between her feet.

Chapter Four

Give me the child.”

Grace woke with a start at the feel of strong hands pulling at her jacket.

“Now, Grace. Give me your baby now.”

Greylen MacKeage was tugging at the pack strapped to her chest, trying to undo the zipper and pull Baby out. Grace grabbed at his wrists to stop him, until she was awake enough to realize that it was urgency she had heard in his voice, not anger. Without stopping to question why, she started helping him instead. As she worked to free Baby, she slowly became aware that the whine of the engine was growing precariously high-pitched, as if it were laboring beyond its ability.

Mark, the pilot, was cursing under his breath as he struggled to control the shuddering plane. Grace could see he had the yoke pulled nearly into his chest.

“Dammit, I can’t climb!” Mark shouted. “We’re going down. Buckle up back there!”

Grey all but ripped Baby away from her. Grace frantically tried to grab him back. “He needs to be strapped in his car seat,” she said, turning to grab it instead. “That’s the safest place for him in a crash.”

“No,” Grey said evenly, sounding unnaturally calm. He pulled her back into her seat. “Put your bag in your lap, and bury your face in it. I’ve got your son.”

Grace watched him unzip his heavy leather jacket and tuck Baby inside, before zipping it back up until it completely covered the infant’s head. He then reached down and picked up her bag. He felt the hardness of it and threw it back on the floor.

“You’ve got to climb,” Grace told Mark, straining to see the altimeter gauge on the dashboard. “We’ve got to reach warmer air and turn around.”

“What in hell do you think I’m trying to do?” he shouted back. “It’s no use. The wings and prop are icing up and losing their lift. The weight is taking us down!”

Grey suddenly pulled Grace against him, wrapping his arm around her back and holding her to him, his other arm covering her head. Baby was not happy with his new situation. She could feel him straining against the confines of Grey’s jacket, his feet and bottom pushing against her face. Muffled, angry cries sounded from beneath the thick leather of the jacket, sending a chill down every bone of Grace’s spine.

My God. She had killed her nephew. He had survived an automobile accident and being surgically pulled from his mother, but now she would kill him by foolishly choosing to fly in questionable weather.

She squeezed her eyes shut and wrapped her arm over Baby and around Greylen MacKeage. The man was a rock. His embrace was fierce as he held the two of them, and Grace was amazed to discover that he wasn’t even shaking. She could actually feel the determination in him to keep them safe.

“Brace yourselves!” Mark shouted. “I see the mountains.”

Grace pulled her head free to look out the window. She, too, could see the dark, rain-shrouded mountains not below them but beside them. The stall buzzer suddenly warned that the plane was no longer able to fly. The whine of the struggling engine, the incessant blare of the buzzer, and Baby’s muffled cries of terror combined to produce a deafening cacophony of impending disaster.

“Cut the fuel!” she shouted at Mark. “Let it stall into the treetops!”

“Aw, shit!” was the only answer she heard.

The tail wheel clipped the top of a tree, making the plane shudder violently. Grey pulled Grace’s head back against his chest, and this time his grip was unbreakable. The right wing hit another tree, jerking the Beaver around with enough force that her head hit the door beside Grey. She would have been knocked unconscious if not for the strong arms protecting her.

Baby’s cry of outrage pierced through the chaos, rising above the screech of metal connecting with bark.

The plane violently pitched, first in one direction and then another. Luggage fell forward from the cargo bay, smashing into her right hip. A window shattered, spewing glass everywhere. Several shards tore into Grace’s cheek, causing her to cry out.

Grey’s arms tightened around her.

The noise was deafening as the forest ripped at the plane with relentless, determined precision. Gasoline fumes filled the air, carried in on sheets of frozen mist. Sparks of blue light suddenly shot through the interior of the plane, casting an ethereal glow over the chaos.

They struck something substantial, and the belt at Grace’s waist nearly cut her in half. The plane slowly tumbled then, tail over nose, before finally slamming into a tree that would not break from the blow. The airplane hesitated the merest of seconds, as if balancing on a razor-thin fulcrum, before it slowly began its descent down the length of the tree.

Even though she was braced for the final assault, Grace was still surprised by the force of the impact. But not as surprised as she was by the fact that Greylen MacKeage still had more strength to offer. The arms holding her so securely up until now tightened to rib-crushing proportions.

And he didn’t let go, even when everything suddenly stopped.

Their flight from hell had finally ended in a semi-upright position. The engine of the DeHaviland now sat in the copilot’s seat, hissing angrily as snow and mist pelted it through the broken windows. The air surrounding them actually hummed, charged with the eerie tint of lingering blue light. Both wings had been torn from the body of the plane. Mark, and his seat, were nowhere to be seen.

It wasn’t until the silence penetrated her brain and the cold frozen mist touched her face that Grace realized she was still alive.

Baby was not. He wasn’t crying, and his struggles had ceased. Grace scrambled to unfasten her seat belt. It released, and she fell onto the wall of the plane. Grey freed himself more carefully and used his arms to stop his fall.

“Oh, God! He’s dead!” she wailed, staring at the motionless lump in his jacket.

“He is not,” Grey snapped. He unzipped his jacket, and her lifeless nephew fell into his hands. “He’s just had the breath knocked out of him,” he assured her in a much calmer voice.

She watched as Grey lifted Baby up and covered his mouth with his own. He blew tiny, shallow breaths into the child, pulled back, then gently turned him from side to side. He repeated the breaths, set Baby on his lap, and began massaging his chest.

Grace could only watch in horror.

The infant suddenly began to gasp. His arms and legs started to windmill, and he let out a bellow that echoed throughout the forest.

Grace scooped him up and hugged him to her chest, tears streaming down both of her cheeks. She kissed every inch of his head and face, ignoring his outraged struggles as he threw up all over her. She laughed and cradled him closer, looking at Grey over his head.

“Thank you,” she said. “You saved his life. You saved mine. Thank you.”

Grey didn’t look at all pleased with himself. Actually, he looked downright livid. She watched him push against the side of the fuselage with amazing force, breaking it open and falling out onto the snow-covered forest floor.

He stood up and looked in the front of the plane where the pilot should have been. Grace watched as he slowly looked around the crash site, then suddenly started walking away.

She scrambled out the hole he had made in the plane, Baby in her arms, and immediately sat down. Her legs would not cooperate with her brain. She couldn’t stand up, so she sat in the snow, leaned against the plane, and pulled on the string attached to Baby’s shirt. His pacifier appeared at the end of it. She stuck it in his mouth, and he immediately stopped his wails, instead putting his energies into ferociously sucking.

Satisfied that he was truly okay, Grace pulled his cap out of her jacket pocket and slipped it on his head, being careful to tuck his ears back against his head. Then she took off her jacket and tented it over them both to shield herself and Baby from the freezing drizzle. She looked up to see Grey plodding through the deep snow in ever increasing circles around the plane.

“What are you looking for?” she asked, her voice carrying in echoes through the old-growth forest.

“The pilot,” he said, not looking at her. He stopped, scanned the area, then started off to his right. He rounded a large pine tree and stopped again, about twenty feet away.

“Here he is,” he said, just standing and staring down at something on the ground.

“Is he okay?” Grace asked.

“He’s dead,” Grey said, his voice cold. “Too bad. I wanted to kill him myself.”

“What?”

He didn’t look at her but continued to stare at the ground. “The bastard’s not quite so cocky now, is he?” he growled.

“The poor man is dead, and you’re cursing him?” she asked, not able to believe that anyone could be so insensitive.

Grey turned his glare on her. “He had no business taking off in this weather.”

“He was doing his job. No one tied you up and threw you into this plane. I distinctly remember you climbed in on your own two feet.”

He turned to face her, his hands on his hips. “Yeah, well, so did you.”

“So this is my fault?”

He stared at her for a silent minute, then blew out a harsh breath and rubbed his face with both hands.

“Dammit. As God is my witness, I am never getting into one of your confounded airplanes again. If man was supposed to fly, he’d be born with feathers.”

Her confounded planes? So he was blaming her. “Even birds have accidents,” she ventured lightly, attempting to diffuse his anger.

It didn’t work. His glare was back and meaner than ever. He looked down at the pilot again, kicked the ground at the base of the tree, then plodded back to her, stepping in his same foot tracks, avoiding several large branches that had crashed to the ground with the plane.