Текст книги "Secrets of the Highlander"
Автор книги: Джанет Чапмен
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 16 страниц)
“Come on,” Megan said, dragging Jack down the makeshift aisle behind the procession of wedding attendants as they headed toward the dining room. “We’ve got to keep William away from the buffet table. He’s going to make himself sick again.”
“If he can’t learn that sweets will kill him, how does Kenzie expect William to survive long enough to learn how to treat defenseless women?” Jack asked, grinning like the happy man he was.
“Oh God. He’s headed for the cake. Quick,” Megan said, shoving Jack toward the huge wedding cake in the far corner of the room. “You go distract him while I fix him a plate of vegetables.”
William will love that, Jack thought with a snicker. The dragon certainly looked a lot better than he had a month ago, though. He’d lost a good deal of weight and he smelled pleasantly earthy instead of rank. His large, batlike wings were folded neatly against his body, and his scales were dry and appeared almost polished, glittering iridescent when the light hit them just right. Someone—Camry, Jack suspected—had even gotten William to wear a red silk bow tie.
Camry hadn’t flown to France after all, but had locked herself in her mother’s lab, where she had proceeded to wear out a fax machine and email server as she hotly debated with the scientist in France who claimed to have solved the ion propulsion thing. Whenever she surfaced, she was usually muttering something about some arrogant French idiot who couldn’t have calculated his way out of a wet paper bag if the equation had been written on his hand in indelible ink.
When she wasn’t faxing and emailing and cursing her French counterpart, Camry was teaching Kenzie and William to read, as well as the rules of their modern new world. William was actually more man than beast, and he could even talk, though he usually refused to, except to Kenzie and Camry.
Camry now stepped in front of William and the poor beast stopped dead in his tracks, nearly tripping on his tail when he came nose to snout with his tutor—whom Jack suspected was more tyrant than teacher.
Then Megan’s mother walked into the dining room on her husband’s arm. Jack had managed to avoid Grace for two weeks after the skivies incident, before she had finally cornered him in his office, obviously having conspired with Ethel, who had transformed from a proficient clerk to a meddling mother hen to both Jack and Simon. Jack had been forced to spend a rather uncomfortable hour with Grace; he suspected she knew exactly how uncomfortable he was as she’d chatted with him about the weather, and babies, and Native American folklore.
Speaking of babies, Megan was waddling worse than William now. Little Walker was growing large, and Megan complained to anyone who would listen that the boy always did calisthenics when she was ready for bed. Jack’s hand cupping her belly was the only thing that settled Walker down, so he continued to let her believe he had the magic touch.
“Could I please have everyone’s attention!” Megan suddenly called from beside the cake table. “Thank you all for coming out in this blizzard for our wedding.” She held out her hand to Jack, her simple gold wedding band glittering in the chandelier light. “I have a few announcements I wish to make.”
Having absolutely no idea what his bride was about to announce, Jack stepped up beside her nervously.
“First, because I can’t wait another two months for you to find out, Jack and I are having a baby boy,” she said, patting her belly. “And his name will be Walker MacKeage Stone.”
Jack breathed a sigh of relief. As announcements went, that hadn’t been so bad. They’d had a few arguments over Walker’s full name, and Jack had been adamant Coyote wouldn’t be one of them. He had promised he’d consider it for their next son, but what he hadn’t told her was they’d be having only girls from here on out.
“And second, some of you may not know it yet, but this is Father Daar’s last night with us. He, Kenzie, and William,” she said, nodding toward the dragon in the corner of the room, “are leaving tomorrow for the coast. They don’t know where they’re going to end up exactly, but likely someplace Down East.”
There were a few murmurs, and Father Daar harrumphed and got all red in the face when several people walked over and hugged him.
“Stop acting like this is my damn funeral,” he protested, waving his cane in the air to shoo them away. “I am not too old to begin a new adventure. And somebody has to go with those pagan fools, to keep them out of trouble,” he added, pointing his cane at Kenzie and William.
“And lastly,” Megan continued, drawing everyone’s attention again, “I want to give my wedding present to my husband.” She reached behind the cake and picked up a large brown envelope, which she handed to Jack.
Jack’s heart sank. They were supposed to exchange wedding presents? They were giving themselves to each other until death did them part; they didn’t need to exchange stuff. He took the envelope with a smile, though he felt like a moron. He hadn’t gotten her anything!
“Go ahead, open it,” she encouraged, nudging his arm.
Jack slid his finger under the flap, opened the envelope, and peered inside. Apparently unable to wait for him to pull out the piece of paper, Megan pulled it out for him, then all but shoved it under his nose.
Jack had no idea what he was looking at.
“It’s a deed,” Megan said, shaking the paper, as if that would help him read it. “I bought Springy Mountain. But the deed’s in both of our names, and we can build a little cabin up there.”
Jack knit his brows, still not getting it.
Megan shoved the deed back in the envelope. “It’s the mountain where we spent the night,” she explained in soft exasperation. “Including the land where you saw the cougar markings. So now we never have to worry about that area being developed.”
That said, she folded her hands over her belly under her lovely full breasts, and looked up at him expectantly.
Jack glanced at their equally expectant audience. “Um…my wedding gift for Megan…” He shot her a warm smile. “I couldn’t exactly bring it here tonight, because it’s…You see…”
The lightbulb finally came on, and his smile widened. “I bought you a really fast boat, so we can shoot up the lake to the cabin we’re going to build. Isn’t that great, sweetheart!”
Letter from LakeWatch
Dear Reader,
Every day I am privileged to witness an abundance of animals going about their daily business in my little corner of this mysteriously interconnected world. And whether their creatural antics move me to laughter or tears, I am forever in awe of their powerful sense of survival, innate curiosity, and playfulness.
At any given moment, I can look out a window here at LakeWatch and see something happening. My short list of visitors consists of common birds, squirrels, loons, osprey, eagles, fox, raccoon, deer, moose, and the occasional coyote. My husband, Robbie, and I have watched rutting bucks battle it out in our woods, os-preys plunge into the lake for their dinner, and chickadees land on unsuspecting visitors in search of a treat. We have stifled giggles as we watched baby raccoons swat at the wind chimes outside our bedroom window at one in the morning, and we’ve sucked in horrified breaths as a really brave or really dumb squirrel challenged a skunk under our bird feeder.
All of which makes me wonder if some animals might possess a sense of humor, or if I’m merely projecting an endearingly human trait upon them. For that matter, do creatures mourn? Can they feel pride? Regret? Hate? Compassion? Love?
I do know it never fails to surprise me how they interact not only with people but with each other. Crows are the town criers of the animal kingdom; toss out some food, and the black-feathered busybodies broadcast the news to every scavenger within earshot. In minutes, our front lawn can look like the local landfill as seagulls come swooping in from every direction. (This doesn’t exactly endear me to the neighbors, but since my sons have returned and are now my nearest neighbors, there’s not much they can do about their mother’s penchant for feeding the crows, is there?)
We used to have chickens here at LakeWatch, and one afternoon I remember looking out my front window to see a crow and one of my hens engaged in a tug-of-war. Each had an end of some poor worm in its beak, and each refused to give up its prize. It was a comical sight, as my fluffy blond hen went eyeball-to-eyeball with that equally determined crow. Needless to say, the worm was the ultimate loser when it finally snapped in half. Both birds quickly swallowed their treats, then immediately began hunting for their next victims—acting as if the wild-domestic interaction was a common occurrence.
Another time, I was sitting on my back porch when it suddenly dawned on me that my crows were being unusually raucous. I scanned the field to discover a fox standing on its hind legs, stretched full length up against our small shed near the woods. I then noticed a cat (not one of mine) lying on the roof of the shed, calmly staring down at the outfoxed vixen. The crows were perched in the surrounding trees, cawing their little heads off as if shouting, “Fight! Fight!”
So what does any of this have to do with my writing? Well…if you’ve learned anything about me these past few years, it’s that I have a powerful appreciation for animals. I can’t help but draw parallels between my feathered and four-legged friends and people—especially the characters in my stories. From observing Mother Nature, I have come to expect the unexpected. It no longer confounds me to be writing happily along, blithely headed down my intended literary path, and have one of my characters suddenly do or say something I hadn’t anticipated. Sometimes I don’t even realize what’s happened until after it’s happened!
Jack Stone caught me completely off guard when he first stepped onto the page. The guy was pointing a high-powered rifle at Megan and Kenzie, for crying out loud. I don’t care that it wasn’t loaded; that was not a nice thing for my hero to be doing.
At this point—which was quite early in the story—I wondered if I was even going to like Jack. Would he be one of those characters who caused me all sorts of trouble, or would I fall head over heels in love with him myself? Honestly, I am very open-minded when it comes to my stories; I’m just as curious to see what’s going to happen next, when I’m writing, as you are when you’re reading. After all, if I already know how things are going to turn out, why spend months locked in my studio merely toying with the details?
I don’t meticulously plot out my books, or use a storyboard or scene cards. Heck, I don’t even know my full cast of characters when I type “Chapter One” on that first page. (Please don’t mention this to my editor, as she’ll likely have a heart attack!) For me, telling a story is as unpredictable as life itself; I have no way of knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow or next week or next year, much less in the next chapter.
We can certainly try to plan our future, but how often does it unfold exactly as we envisioned? And if we could know the future, would we really want to? If a caterpillar knew it was going to be some bird’s dinner within hours of becoming a butterfly, would it even bother to emerge from its cocoon? Could you fall madly in love with someone if you knew you were going to fall out of love with him in a few years?
When we open our eyes each morning, we understand that the decisions we make today will shape our tomorrows. And so it is with my characters. They are just as hopeful as we are that the choices they make will be the right ones. Should they go next door and ask that cute guy if they can borrow a cup of sugar? Should they finally hand in their resignation at work? Should they sign up for that business class they’ve always wanted to take?
My characters might think they’ve got their lives all planned out when we first meet them, and they might even think they know exactly how they’ll react in any given situation. But guess what? They are often as surprised as I am by how they do react. Just as when my hen grabbed that worm and looked up to find a crow on the other end, my characters must ultimately decide for themselves if the prize they’re after is worth fighting for.
I so fell in love with Jack Stone.
Did you?
Until later, from LakeWatch,
