Highlander’s Curse (14 page)

“Why not?”

Insistent bastard! The lady had said no. Why she refused was none of his business. Enough of this.

Colin stepped from behind the shelter of the trees, silently making his way toward the oblivious couple.

“I can’t because . . .” She paused, brushing a hair away from her face as she dropped her gaze to the ground. “Because I. . .”

“Because she’s joining me this evening.”

Abby spun on her heel, her eyes wide with surprise.

“Colin!”

Once again, his expectations were off the mark. Rather than greeting him with a rebuke, she threw herself at him.

He opened his arms and she was in them, her soft fingers locking at the back of his neck, the expression on
her face all the thanks he needed for intervening in her interaction with Flynn.

Holding her close as he did, it seemed only natural to dip his head, to capture her mouth with his as he had so many times in his dreams. Her lips, so soft as they brushed against his, sent a reverberation of familiarity zinging through him, like a sip of his favorite whisky after a long, hard ride. The feeling persisted even as the kiss broke.

“What are you doing here?” She made no move to back away, her eyes staring up into his, a thousand questions brimming in them.

He’d come for her. To keep her from harm. To demand the truth of why she’d brought him here. To insist she return him to his own time. So many reasons had brought him to her side.

But this was neither the time nor the company in which to confront her with any of them. That was a conversation for after they’d rid themselves of this overzealous intruder who thought erroneously to spend his evening in her company.

From what he’d seen and overheard, providing her an excuse to get away from Flynn seemed the obvious course of action.

“Yer late, Abby. I grew tired of waiting for you at the pub.” She had said she was on her way to the pub. That should satisfy the pushy man.

She nodded her head up and down, her eyes reflecting her understanding before she turned away.

“Colin, this is my employer, Jonathan Flynn. Jonathan, this is Colin, my. . . my boyfriend.”

Boyfriend
. An odd word, not one he’d heard before,
but the meaning seemed clear enough from Flynn’s look of shock. He could be that for now if it was what she needed of him. Her
boyfriend
.

“I was unaware you had any social attachments, Abigail.” The chide in Flynn’s voice was unmistakable as he extended a hand to Colin. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. . . .” Flynn left the word hanging, waiting, the question clear.

“MacAlister. Though there’s no a need for formalities between us, sir. No with my Abby being in yer employ.” Colin smiled broadly, possessively snaking one arm around Abby’s waist as he accepted Flynn’s hand.

Nuadian!

The knowledge spread over him in a jolt of recognition. Only the years of discipline spent as a warrior allowed Colin to maintain his outward show of calm and friendliness. The man whose hand he held was Fae. Full-blood. Without a doubt Nuadian.

And without a doubt, the source of danger to Abby.

“The pleasure is all mine. Shall we go, Abby?” With a nod of farewell, he steered her away from Flynn and down the cobbled street toward the center of the village. Behind him, he could swear he felt the Fae’s anger seething.

Abby was silent until they were well away from Flynn’s hearing. “How did you know where to find me? And why? Why did you find me? What are you doing here?”

“Finding you was easy enough. You’d told me you were coming to Scotland this summer.” That would hopefully satisfy her for the moment. Somehow he didn’t think she’d react well to learning she’d had
people watching her every move for months. “And as to what I’m doing here, I’m taking you to eat, am I no?”

The sounds of music and laughter spilled from a doorway just ahead of them, along with an enticing smell that set Colin’s stomach rumbling.

He held open the door, allowing her to enter first, and followed her to a small table in one corner of the crowded room.

She was quiet again until after the serving woman handed them a sheet of paper printed with the pub’s fare. “No, I mean, why did you come looking for me at all?”

He absolutely intended to tell her everything. This very night. Just not yet. For now he simply wanted to enjoy the feel of being in her company again.

“Is being yer
boyfriend
no reason enough to come to call on you?”

Her cheeks colored a delightful pink and her eyes danced away from his for a moment.

“Okay. I totally deserved that. I do appreciate your not giving me away when I introduced you to Jonathan. I suppose you’re going to want an explanation for that now.”

“Only as much as yer willing to tell.”

“Have you decided then, dearies?” The serving woman had returned, a pencil and pad in her hand, an expectant smile on her face. “We’ve a special on the haggis tonight. Comes with tatties and neeps, fresh from my own garden.”

“I think I’ll give that a try.” Abby returned the woman’s smile before turning her attention to him. “Classic Scottish fare, probably sounds like regular home cooking to you.”

“So you might think.” In truth, he’d found the food in this time both challenging and absolutely fascinating. There was so much variety to it, in so many combinations, and all of it with special names and ingredients he’d never tasted before. In those first two weeks, he’d paid little attention to the foods his cousin had served him, and certainly the foods he’d eaten in Wyddecol were nothing like here in the Mortal world. “I’ll have the same, thank you.”

“As to the whole boyfriend excuse, there’s not really much to tell.” Abby picked up the thread of their conversation as soon as they were alone, launching into a litany of praise that sounded more memorized than from the heart. “Jonathan is a great guy and a dedicated researcher. He’s given me the chance of a lifetime by allowing me to participate in his archaeological dig. This experience, and the paper he’s chosen me to write summarizing the findings from the expedition, will help me considerably in working toward my graduate degrees and, depending on what we find here, maybe even in my career beyond school.”

“But?” Obviously, in spite of the halfhearted positives she mouthed, there had been some reason she had so desperately wanted to leave Flynn behind.

“But,” she repeated with finality. She smiled and paused to take a sip from the mug of beer the serving woman had delivered to their table as if trying to decide how much to say. “I’m a little uncomfortable that Jonathan sort of seems to think our relationship might have the potential to be more personal than professional.”

“And does it?” Based on her earlier actions, he
thought he knew the answer but he wanted to hear her say the words.

“Absolutely not.” She shook her head emphatically, setting the long tail of curls swaying back and forth in a tantalizing dance at her shoulders. “I mean, don’t get me wrong; like I said, he’s a great guy. I’m just not, you know, into him.” She shrugged one shoulder and looked down at her beer.

Her admission was a relief to hear, though he told himself it was only because he didn’t want to see her involved with a Nuadian. After all, his priority was returning to his own time and he needed her safe and healthy in order to send him home.

“Okay, so I came clean. Now it’s your turn. Why are you really here? I assume your showing up tonight isn’t some random accident, so why did you come looking for me?”

The serving woman’s return with their food bought him a few minutes to gather himself, but not nearly long enough now that he actually faced telling her what he needed to.

“I need yer help.”

Of course he did.

Abby continued to chew the bite she’d forked into her mouth, though what had started out as truly delicious had quickly taken on the feel of just so much mush. Disappointment roiled in her stomach. What had she expected? That his one night with her had sent him scurrying across the Atlantic hunting for her? That maybe he dreamed of her every single,
wretched night, just as she dreamed of him? That sort of thinking obviously would be the epitome of stupid, now, wouldn’t it?

She flickered her gaze in his direction, darting her eyes away just as quickly when she found him staring at her.

Stupid of her, yes, but you’d think a great-looking guy like Colin MacAlister would have more than enough experience with women to at least lead her on for a bit. Appeal to her vanity, maybe. Lull her into thinking he had a thing for her. To, at the very least, try to make her feel like he actually had some tiny bit of interest in seeing her for, well, for her. But no, he was here because he needed something from her, and he wasn’t making the slightest effort to hide the fact.

Was it she who’d always claimed she valued honesty in a man? She might have to reconsider that particular “virtue.” A little white lie to soothe her wounded ego wouldn’t have been so awful.

“Perfect,” she muttered before she reached for her mug and downed a deep swallow, waiting for the dark liquid to wash over her throat. If they liked her, she didn’t like them. If she liked them, they wanted something from her. “All right, fine, I’ll bite. What exactly do you want from me?” Must be a doozy of a request considering he’d gone to all the trouble to hunt her down.

“I want to go home.”

“Pardon me?”
Home
? She looked up in surprise, meeting his gaze this time. “What do you mean, you want to go home? Go. I’m not stopping you. I didn’t make you come here in the first place.”

“But that’s exactly what you did. You and yer wishing.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she denied, even as the warmth of guilt heated her neck and face. How could he possibly know she suffered from some massively stupid infatuation over him? That he’d haunted her dreams since the day they’d met?

“It’s no ridiculous at all. It’s the Magic.”

Magic
? Her heart pounded so hard she thought everyone in the noisy bar must be hearing it by now. Was this his way of telling her he’d come to find her because he felt the same bizarre attraction she did?

“So what does that mean? Magic. That you like me? Is that why you hunted me down? Because you like me?”

He sat back in his seat, his expression what she might expect from someone who’d just discovered his dining partner had an extra foot growing out the side of her head, toes wiggling.

“I like you well enough, lass, but that’s neither here nor there. We’ve a need to discuss why you summoned me and, more important, how yer to send me home.”

Again with sending him home. Abby carefully placed her fork across her plate and slowly steepled her hands in front of her, struggling to find some appropriately clever and witty retort. She had nothing.

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

When Colin leaned forward, his eyes glinted with something that looked remarkably like anger. Abby fought down the urge to back away from him.

“No? So what yer telling me is that you’ve no idea that you used the Faerie Magic to wish me here, to yer time. Seven hundred years into the future you drag me. And though I’ve no way back to my own time but to fulfill some purpose of yers that brought me here, you
willna even disclose to me what that purpose is so that I might complete yer blighted task and get back to my own life. It’s no even of any consequence to you that the lives of my kinsmen depend on my returning. That’s what yer saying, is it?”

“Seven hundred . . .” Abby paused, staring at the man sitting across from her. He was kidding, right? He had to be kidding.

But no, there was nothing in his expression, nothing in his serious blue eyes, that said anything even close to
kidding
. This man believed the giant, steaming pile of BS he was spewing.

“Okay. That’s it. Done.” She stood, catching up her handbag and slinging its strap across her chest. “Don’t bother to ask me to dinner again, okay? And you know what else? Since you ruined my meal, thank you very much, you can just pay for it. And make sure you leave Mrs. Duncan a good tip while you’re at it, too. I am out of here.”

She didn’t bother to wait for his response, pushing her way past the men lined up at the bar. The air in here had grown too thin, the walls somehow moving in closer to one another, making her feel trapped and just a bit woozy.

Outside, breathing in the clear evening air, she stopped, looking first toward the bed-and-breakfast and then to her right, off toward the empty tree-lined road that led outside the village and beyond.

She needed some time to think. Some time to regroup. Some time to decide whether she wanted to scream in anger or cry with disappointment.

At the B and B she could escape to the relative privacy
of her room to deal with all this, but more than likely Jonathan waited there, and of all the things she was in no mood for, he was at the top of the list.

No, he’d just dropped to number two on the list.

Besides, number one on the list might very well come hunting her with more of his send-me-home drivel, and if he did, the B and B would be the most logical place for him to look.