Highlander for the Holidays (22 page)

Jessie straightened with a gasp when she heard someone calling her name out at the road. “Oh, that’s Ian,” she said, looking back at Roger only to see him heading into the woods. “Wait, you have to help me. I can’t let him find me like this.”

Roger stopped and turned to her. “You need to tell him everything, Jess, because it’s damn difficult for a man to fight an enemy he doesn’t know or can’t see.”

“Jessie!” Ian shouted again, his voice moving closer.

“And Jess,” Roger said, drawing her attention again. “Don’t go ordering anything out of your catalogs for him for Christmas. I told ye in my letter that I have the perfect thing he be needing,” he said, the bartering hermit suddenly returning with a cackling laugh, even as he pointed a threatening finger at her again. “But you keep it hidden in your closet, missy, and don’t you be touching it until the time comes,” he added cryptically, “or you’ll be wishing you’d
burned
that brochure.”

“Jess, where are you?” Ian shouted again. “Answer me!”

Jessie looked back at Roger, but he had disappeared. She cupped her hands to her mouth in the direction of the road. “I’m here, Ian!” she shouted. She tried to stand up but fell back with a gasp when a sharp pain shot through her lower back, and she grabbed Toby’s snout to stop him from licking her cheek. “I’m okay. We’re okay now, Toby. Ian’s coming to save us. Again,” she added with a snort.

Toby suddenly pulled away, but instead of going to intercept Ian, the dog started pushing his nose through the snow just beyond her feet, then lifted his head with something in his mouth and came back to her. “Ohmigod,” Jessie said with a gasp as she snatched her prosthesis out of his mouth. “How did that escape? Ian’s almost here!” she cried softly when she heard branches breaking nearby. She shoved the blob in her coat pocket and looked down, taking a calming breath. He wouldn’t notice she was uneven because of her coat, and besides, she had a turtleneck and heavy fleece on underneath it. So how had the damn thing escaped? She’d never had this problem in warm, humid weather. Was she going to have to start
taping
it to her bra?

She wrapped her arm around Toby again just as Ian came striding into sight.

“Aw, Jess,” he murmured, dropping to his knees beside her. He tossed down her purse and walking stick, then reached out to give Toby a quick pat before moving the dog out of his way. He took hold of her coat by both shoulders, his eyes roaming over her face and body. “Are you hurt? What happened? Did you . . .” He darted a quick glance at Toby then focused back on her. “Did you have another episode?” he asked quietly, tightening his grip when she reared away in surprise.

“H-how do you know I have flashbacks?”

His gaze roaming over her again, apparently more concerned with her physical appearance than her emotional condition at the moment, Jessie saw Ian’s face darken. “I witnessed the one you had your first night here when I followed you out of Pete’s to see what had you so upset.” He nodded toward Toby, now standing at her feet. “Toby saw me, but he didn’t seem to mind my being there as long as I didn’t go near you.”

“You lied! You said you were just coming out of the bar to look for me.”

“Aye, I did.” He finally let her go and sat beside her in the snow. “I can be a real bastard like that sometimes.” He grinned over at her, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “But I prefer to see our mutual lying as something we have in common.”

Jessie looked down at her hands, feeling her own cheeks heat up at the thought that he’d witnessed one of her flashbacks. “Okay, I guess I’m nobody to be calling the kettle black. How did you know to come looking in the woods for me just now?”

He gestured toward her legs. “I saw your purse on the road, and the stick was standing in the snowbank in the middle of the snowcat tracks.”

Jessie glanced at the woods where Roger had disappeared, then back at Ian. “I . . . There’s something I need . . . I want to tell you that . . .” Her shoulders slumped in defeat and she hugged herself.

“Whatever it is can wait until I can get you someplace warm,” he said, pushing to his feet. “Do you know how long you’ve been lying here in the snow, Jess? Ten minutes? Half an hour? How long?”

“I really don’t know. But I’ve been told my flashbacks can run anywhere from three or four minutes to . . . to half an hour.” She shook her head when he reached a hand down to her. “I tried to get up when I heard you calling, but I must have twisted wrong during my . . . I can’t get up. I hurt my back again. Roger was here,” she said, causing Ian to rear up just as he was bending to her. “He was sitting on that stump when I woke up,” she said, pointing across the old groomer tracks. “And Toby was standing guard over me, not letting him come any closer.”

Ian glanced only briefly at where she was pointing, then bent over again and slid one arm under her knees and the other around her back. “You tell me if it hurts when I lift you,” he said, his muscles tensing in preparation.

“Wait. You can’t carry me out of here,” she said, trying to push him away. “The snow’s too deep and I’m too heavy.”

He carefully lifted her up and settled her against his chest with a chuckle. “When I’m pushing up posies,
then
you might be too heavy,” he said, heading down the track.

“Wait—my purse and stick.”

He stopped, and sighed, and turned around. “Toby, bring me the purse,” he said, nodding at it lying in the snow.

“Oh, I can’t believe he understood that,” she said when Toby grabbed the bag’s handle and dragged it over to them.

“Heft it up here, big man,” Ian said, bending slightly. He snagged the handle with his fingers and straightened, and Jessie immediately took it from him and set it on her lap before grabbing his neck again. “Now the stick, Toby,” Ian said, again nodding his head to point. “But you can carry it.”

Jessie looked over Ian’s shoulder when he started walking again and saw Toby following with the stick clamped in his teeth. “How did you get him to do that? One, he won’t take orders from anyone but me, and two, even when I try to get him to fetch something it can take forever to get my point across.”

He shrugged, shrugging her with him. “It seems I’ve a knack for getting animals to cooperate.”

“That’s right, that day in the solarium Duncan told Merissa you have a way with animals.” She eyed him suspiciously. “You were joking when you offered to send all the birds to my new feeder, right? Right?”

“Yes, I was kidding.”

She squinted at him. “Did the corner of your mouth just twitch?”

It twitched into a full-blown grin, and he hefted her higher on his chest to adjust his grip. “You know, I do believe you have gotten heavier.”

“Ian?”

“Yes, Jess?”

“Do you want to make love to me?”

He nearly dropped her when he staggered to a halt. “Excuse me?”

Oh God, had her flashback addled her brain? Or had the fact that she was starting to believe Roger wasn’t crazy finally turned
her
crazy?

“Jessie.”

She tucked her head against his shoulder with a sigh. “I’m sorry. My flashbacks leave me feeling a little drunk sometimes.”

He started walking again.

“But do you?”

He stopped. “Now?” he growled.

“No!” She rested against his shoulder with another sigh and tapped his back to get him moving again. “But maybe we could soon?”

Instead of stopping, he picked up his pace.

“Like maybe tonight. Or tomorrow. Or anytime before Thursday.”

That managed to stop him, and Jessie leaned away from his expression. “What happens Thursday?” he asked ever so softly.

She studied the missing button on his shirt peeking out of his ski bib. “Brad is coming Thursday afternoon or Friday. And I . . . um . . . I want to be able to tell him I have a boyfriend, and if we’ve made love, then it won’t be a lie.”

“Brad your brother-in-law?”

She nodded, still keeping her gaze aimed at that missing button.

“Is he married to your sister?”

She shook her head. “No, he’s my dead husband’s brother.”

“Is
Brad
married?”

She shook her head again. “His wife died in a boating accident down in Nassau a couple of months after Eric was killed. Um . . . Eric was my husband.”

“Your dead husband,” he said, hiking her higher in his arms and starting down the tracks again. “So why is it so important that Brad believes you have a boyfriend?” he asked, apparently more worried about the alive Dixon than the murdered one.

“So he’ll stop hoping I’ll see him in a romantic way.” She dropped her head to his shoulder again. “Brad’s a really nice guy who’s rich and handsome and civilized and everything, but I don’t . . . I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something not quite . . .” She lifted her head. “You know how sometimes a person can seem
too
perfect?”

“What does Toby think of Brad?” Ian asked, stopping on top of the snowbank when they reached the road.

Jessie laughed softly. “Brad’s always complaining that Toby doesn’t like him, but I think Tobes just scares the bejesus out of him.”

“And
does
Toby not like him?”

She shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t plastered up against his chest. “I think Toby only tolerates Brad because he knows I like him.”

“Aye, you like him so much that you don’t want to lie to him.” Ian carefully made his way down the snowbank and headed up the road instead of setting her in the—good Lord, he’d come to pick her up on a
snowmobile
?

“Don’t you own a normal vehicle?” she snapped, only to realize he was walking in the wrong direction. “Hey, my home’s that way,” she said, pointing behind him.

“I find I’m feeling a bit weak in the knees and my house is closer.”

“Maybe I can walk home now that we’re on the plowed road. I have my stick.”

“But my condoms are at my place.”

WHEN ROGER HAD REFERRED TO IAN’S HOME AS A RICKETY old camp, Jessie could see he hadn’t been being derisive, just merely stating a fact. There was a tired-looking old woodstove sitting in the middle of the one-room cabin that had only two pieces of furniture but enough camping and hunting equipment cluttering the floor and walls to put Dolan’s Outfitter Store out of business. The obviously expensive chair she was sitting in, an oversize recliner made of soft Italian leather that had molded itself perfectly to Ian’s body, was definitely out of place, although she certainly could picture Ian sitting in it while facing the huge flat-screen television hanging at eye level on the opposite wall. The second piece of furniture—the guy didn’t even own a table and chairs—was the bed, which sat in a nook created by the bathroom jutting out from the back wall. The wooden four-poster—which she’d need a ladder to reach—would definitely accommodate the man who owned it—as well as two or more . . . guests.

Feeling a little like Goldilocks in Papa Bear’s house, Jessie settled deeper into the chair with a sigh, remembering how the rest of their walk here—well, Ian’s walk and her ride—had been ominously silent, Ian’s last comment closing her throat so tightly that she couldn’t even ask if he’d been joking.

“Ye have a choice between chicken soup and beef stew,” he said from what Jessie supposed passed as a kitchen area.

She pulled the blanket he’d tossed over her up to her chin as she stared down at the size-twelve wool socks he’d slipped on her feet after pulling off her boots and socks—and a good deal of encrusted snow—which he’d set under the snapping and crackling woodstove Toby was all but hugging. She hadn’t really asked Ian if he wanted to make love to her, had she? By Thursday? Really, she’d given him a deadline?

“Chicken or beef?” he repeated, making Jessie flinch to find him standing beside her. He squatted down to eye level, his hand covering hers on the arm of the chair. “I was joking, Jess,” he said quietly, not a crinkled eye corner in sight. “My condoms are in my truck back at the resort.”

“I knew you were joking,” she said, pulling the blanket up over her head so he wouldn’t see her mouth twitch. “I’m just utterly embarrassed,” she muttered from under the blanket, which started lowering despite her efforts to stop it.

“You can be happy or angry or utterly frustrated with me, but you can’t ever be embarrassed.” His eyes finally crinkled with warmth. “And you can always be utterly truthful. There’s nothing you can do or say that will send me running.”

Jessie had to look away in order to work up the courage to test his claim. “What if I were to tell you that I killed a man?”

He took hold of her chin to make her look at him. “Then I would say you saved me the trouble of having to kill the bastard myself.” He went from squatting to kneeling beside the chair and clasped her hand in his. “Last night after I left your house, I went to my father’s office to get on the Internet. I searched online for
Jessica Pringle
, which led me to Jessica Dixon, which led to enough articles on what took place in Atlanta four years ago to wallpaper every house in Pine Creek.”