GUNNER: A Forsaken Riders MC Romance: Alpha Male Biker Club Bad Boy Romance (Motorcycle Club New Adult Contemporary Short Stories) (115 page)
Authors: Samantha Leal
Andrea eventually slept, for when she finally awoke the rain was lashing down at the window. She was also not alone; Helena was standing at the foot of her bed looking like death herself, dressed in a long black habit.
“I am glad to see that you have had a good night. I am surprised; the doctor thought that you might lose the child again. I have brought you some breakfast to keep up your strength. Some beef tea and bread will do you good, now let me help you.”
Her hand reached under the pillow. The little vial had gone. Her heart started to beat fast as Helena sat by her side and started to pick up the spoon.
“What is wrong, my dear? You look like you have lost something. Now drink some of this, it will do you good.”
Andrea had no choice; if she struggled, then Helena would force her. They were both playing a dangerous game, and Helena currently held the upper hand. Her only hope lay in the hands of Geraldina.
Soon the beef tea was all gone and Helena smiled as she proffered the last spoonful.
“There, all done. Now I will leave you to rest. I have told the other nuns not to disturb you today. I will lock the door and take away the key, just to make sure you rest in peace.”
The key turned in the lock and the sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor until all was still. Was this to be her final fate?
After half an hour, the fever and the pains started anew and within an hour she was almost unconscious with the pain. Her mind kept blanking out, but she concentrated on the pain to keep her awake. The little song kept playing round and round in her head:
Long ago and far away
I dreamed a dream one day
And now that dream is here beside me.
The words came and went as she tried to sing them out loud, tried to remember the tune that the little nun had sung.
Her heart was beating fast, and her breath was rasping in her throat. So this was the end. She thought of Steve and New York, of her Grandma Betty, and of Alex.
Her eyes began to mist. Death was pulling her towards eternal sleep, and there was nothing she could do. As her senses began to shut down, she was aware of a commotion around her. The door had opened and a shadowy figure was in the room. Maybe it was Death paying her a personal visit? But the face was real. It was Alex; he had returned. He was shouting something out loud to another figure behind him.
“What have you done? What have you done?” His voice was desperate.
Soon she could feel a strong arm around her, sitting her up, shaking her, trying to restore life, but it was too late—she was slowly breaking down. The last thing she remembered was a small stone being thrust into her hand before all went black.
At 30,000 feet in the air, it all came flooding back to her. Geraldine MacDonald had found her that morning slumped over a grave in the little Chapel of St. Oran. She had been overdoing it lately, and the stress had taken its toll. Once she was feeling quite well again, the old woman had given her a book on the genealogy of the McDonald clan and not wanting to be rude, she had taken it along with her name and address and telephone number, just in case she happened to be in the area again.
At first she had tried to sleep. She had an aisle seat and was at least able to stretch out her legs. Yet every time she almost dozed off, vivid dreams and imaginings would wake her up. She looked in her carry-on bag. She had nothing to read except the book Geraldine had given her so she casually flicked through the pages to pass the time. On the third page she paused as she read the name of Alexhander McDonald. Her heart stopped as the memories came flooding back in every detail. Surely it had been just a terrible dream, brought on by her grieving state? Maybe she had been influenced by her grandma’s diary. She had always had an active imagination.
She looked at the family tree spread out in the middle pages of the book. There was Alexhander McDonald, married to Andra in 1642. They had a child, Alexhander (dead) in 1644, and another, a girl in 1645. There were no dates of death, only question marks against the entries. The history books couldn’t tell her everything.
Andrea put a hand against her stomach, remembering the pregnancy. Could it be that she was expecting? She had been sick that morning when she returned to the hotel, and she still felt a little queasy. Deep inside her, it all started to make sense. If it had been just a dream, then she wouldn’t be feeling so strongly. Alex had come through for her in the end, just at the right moment. She fished out the small rune from her jeans pocket and held it in her hand. This tiny object connected her past and present; it was her link to the one man she loved and would return to.
In the dark room of the nunnery, Alex McDonald held onto the still, warm body of his beloved Andra. The dawn had just started to break, and a weak sun was rising above the mist. He knew that she was safe and that she would come back to him. As long as he kept holding her, she would not die. Their love was eternal.
THE END
The story continues in
The Highland Dream
.
Abigail Buckley
Copyright ©2015 by Abigail Buckley. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Chapter One: Planning a Long Overdue Break
Chapter Two: Meanwhile, in Scotland
Chapter Three: What are the Chances?
Chapter Four: Old Flames Reunited
Chapter Five: Life Gets in the Way
Chapter Six: Letting Love In
Chapter Seven: Home Is Where the Heart Is
Epilogue
Chapter One: Planning a Long Overdue Break
“I can’t think about doing this job for another forty years or I’ll throw myself through my office window.” Calleigh sat across the greasy, laminate fast-food table from Beverly.
“Your office is on the first floor.” Beverly normally sat one office over from Calleigh, and was the closest thing to a best friend Calleigh had managed since her move to Houston two years ago.
“Yeah, but it would still hurt.” Calleigh gathered the last of her lunch debris onto the plastic tray. After she slid the trash into the garbage and abandoned the tray on top of the can, she and Beverly started the short walk back to the US headquarters of Commonwealth Energy (UK) (USA) Company, Inc. Calculating royalty interests for Commonwealth’s many revenue partners was in many ways the perfect job. Unchallenging work with amazing pay, great vacation, and really great benefits. It would have been nice if there was a little more interaction among employees, but you can’t have everything, she had figured.
Still, the lack of communication was making her a little insane.
“What are you? Thirty-one, thirty-two? There’s plenty of time to figure out what you want to be when you grow up. Until then, why not let Commonwealth pay you for your boredom?”
“This is not what I wanted to do with my life.” Calleigh took a deep breath of fresh air knowing it would be her last for another five hours.
“Do you think it’s what any of us intended? There are a few engineers and technicians who did, but no one else grew up dreaming of being a lease or division order analyst.” Beverly dug her magnetic badge out of her purse and held it against the security scanner. “This is a career full of people who ‘ended up’ here, but come on, it’s a hell of a place to end up.”
It was a difficult point for Calleigh to argue. For a job that was boring, invisible, and impossible to explain at parties, Commonwealth
paid
. Job satisfaction was easy to supplant with the material satisfaction when the parking lot was full of Mercedes, almost all of which were driven across Houston each night to 3600 square foot homes. Pick an office. No one in their division had a field related degree, which included her. She was certified to teach K-8
th
Mathematics. None of them were going to easily replace their incomes in another field.
“This is because of Brad, isn’t it?” Beverly whispered as they tiptoed down the carpeted hallway to Calleigh’s office.
Calleigh shook her head, “no,” and slid her glass office door shut as Beverly followed her inside. She whispered back, “No, it’s not because of Brad. It’s because…” her voice trailed off. There was not a set reason to hit this late-quarter-life malaise. “It just is. I want more from my life.”
Beverly rolled her eyes, “You have a new Mercedes, new house, and a killer wardrobe.” She took a seat at the worktable in front of a laptop and dropped her purse on the floor at her feet. “What more could you want? Do you remember where we were on this spreadsheet?”
***
Nine hours a day, five days a week, she sat at her desk, the rapid fire click of 100 words per minute the only sound on the division’s floor. Calleigh was an organizer. The workload many of her co-workers struggled with, she managed with plenty of time left in the day to plan vacations she never took.
A fourth peek at the company website confirmed the number was not a dream: “297.5 hours of vacation accumulated.” A quick tab over to the company policy screen to see the words again in black and white: “All employees are entitled to take any number of hours, up to, but not to surpass, three consecutive weeks without the written consent of your supervisor. All absences longer than three consecutive weeks require written consent using Vacation Form B.”
TravelersWorld.com opened with a sunset view of the pedestrian suspension bridge over the River Ness, Inverness, Scotland. Her junior year of University had been spent studying in Inverness. She had been more at home there than in her tiny Indiana hometown, or in any of the oil boom towns from Denver to Amarillo to Houston she had lived in since. A click on the photograph brought a slide show of Highland delights, from the walk through the windswept rain across the deadly field of Culloden to the craggy ruin of Urquhart Castle.
Dixon Mackenzie played a part in every memory she had of that year. They were inseparable from the day they met at student orientation, until the day she boarded the plane back to the States. They had tried to continue their relationship, but clashing schedules and the increased physical and emotional distance doomed the relationship. The final phone call had come within weeks of a planned visit back to see him. At the time, that phone call was the most painful event of her life, but in the end they each had agreed that they would each be happier with a partner who lived in the same country. That had not stopped her from thinking about him often.
A photograph of Dunrobin Castle drifted by on her computer screen and brought up another memory along with it. She closed the slideshow. Another mouse click brought up photographs and a price list for all-inclusive, resort vacations to Cabo San Lucas. That was more like it, she thought.
***
Calleigh sat on the right hand side of her bed, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. After she had read the same sentence four times, she dropped the novel on the nightstand.
Why not take a vacation? It’s not as though there is anyone here to miss me
, she thought.
She hopped out of bed and headed toward the living room. When she returned, she had her laptop in her right hand and her cell phone in her left.
Let’s see what I can make happen.
***
“You can’t be gone for three weeks. The deadline on the interest recovery project is next week.” Beverly hissed in a stage whisper as her right foot soundlessly tapped on the industrial grey carpet squares.
“I’ve finished my part. Add your data to the spreadsheet and send it on. Done.” Calleigh replied, as she broke with one of Commonwealth’s unwritten social contracts:
You shall not speak above a whisper, when you speak at all.
“People are going to hear you.” Beverly hissed.
“Let them,” Calleigh said with a shrug.
Commonwealth’s primary social contract with its employees was simple:
You are provided with a huge number of vacation days with the express understanding your co-workers will exert enough social pressure to prevent any of them from actually being used.
Calleigh’s complete break with the contract was the fuel for her own little social revolution. Later in the day, she would continue her rebellion by making a personal phone call without either hiding in the stairwell or walking a half mile down the street. Then, there would be a scouting mission to the supply closet to see if there were any name brand Post-Its or decent pens.
She had not stopped beaming since she had entered her credit card number and clicked the pay button on TravelersWorld.com the night before. “It’s going to be beautiful, Bev. Three weeks in Scotland.”
“Not London?”
“No.”
“Or Paris?”
“Nope.”
“Scotland?”
“Scotland,” said Calleigh. She was booked all the way through, from Houston InterContinental to Heathrow, and then from Euston Station aboard the Caledonian Express for the overnight to Inverness.
“Can you postpone until after the…”
“No, I’m booked and paid. By this time Friday, I’ll be stepping off the train in Inverness.” Beverly’s flared nostrils and pursed lips let Calleigh know her non-stop delight pissed Beverly off to no end.
What the hell
, she thought.
You only live once.
