Must Love Kilts (38 page)

Her fingers came away black with dust.

“This is just not right.” A big woman, she put back her shoulders and drew an indignant breath, her large shelflike bosom rising on the inhale. “We owe it to Margo to keep her place tidy. If she comes back and—”

“She won’t be and we all know it.” Marta tucked her dark hair behind an ear and slid a worried glance to where Patience was seeing a customer out the door.

“Something happened in Scotland, like with her sister.”

Marta leaned close to the older woman, her voice low. “The authorities over there would’ve found low. “The authorities over there would’ve found something if there’d been foul play. But there was nothing, not a trace. Just like with Mindy.”

“Humph.” Ardelle brushed at her jacket, a tweedy suit recently arrived at her own shop, Aging Gracefully, where she delighted in giving new life to discarded—Ardelle preferred the term
deserving
—items of heirloom clothing and other odd-bit assortments.

“Look. ...” Marta glanced toward the shop’s back room where she did her tarot readings, a cozy corner that also served as Ye Olde Pagan Times’ kitchenette and housed Marta’s ever-growing collection of polished river pebbles and driftwood she collected from the shore. “I have a reading soon. Please don’t say anything to Patience about dust today. It’s the anniversary of Margo’s drawing win, remember?

“She’d want us to celebrate and be happy tonight.” Marta touched the older woman’s arm, squeezing lightly. “Please, don’t make a fuss here, or later at the Cabbage Rose.”

Ardelle pursed her lips. “There’s even dust on Margo’s stool.”

She swiped a finger over the stool’s blue and silver seat, proving victory with an upraised smudged finger.

“It’s disgraceful.”

“It’s Patience’s way of coping.” Marta threw another look at the shop owner, pinching Ardelle’s arm when she saw that Patience was heading their way. “She doesn’t want anyone touching anything that was Margo’s.”

Ardelle sniffed. “I think her new
Heather Mist
potpourri blend was her tribute to Margo?”

“It is.” Marta glanced to where the prettily packaged potpourri dominated a low, round table near the bookshelves. “She’s even talking about mixing the scent into Heather Mist soaps and essential oils, all in honor of our Margo.”

“Well...” Ardelle flicked a speck of lint off her sleeve. “I’m glad to hear she’s doing something positive.”

“I’d do a lot more if we could just be sure Margo is okay.” Patience sailed up to them, defensively maneuvering herself between her two friends and Margo’s dust-covered Luna Harmony station.

“I would have thought she’d send us some kind of sign.” Patience looked down at her fingernails, fidgeting to hide the brightness in her eyes. “We were all so close, always. Sometimes I still feel her near, you know? As if she’s still here, or we’re there, wherever she is.”

“I know, dear.” Ardelle slipped a tweedy arm around her friend’s shoulders, patted her arm. “And I didn’t mean to fuss about the dust a moment ago. I understand.”

Ardelle sniffed again, nodding thanks when Marta handed her a tissue. “It’s just that she was so intuitive.

She must know we’re worried about her and—”

“Pardon me.” A small, white-haired woman stood before them, looking between Marta, Patience, and Ardelle as she balanced a large cardboard box of books against her hip.

All three women jumped.

The door chime hadn’t announced the little old lady’s arrival.

Patience stepped forward, all brisk business. “How can I help you?”

The old woman hesitated, her eyes twinkling as if she found Patience’s words amusing.

But then she set down her box and straightened, brushing at her long black skirt. A pair of tiny black boots peeked from beneath her hem, revealing that she used jaunty red plaid shoelaces.

Marta, Patience, and Ardelle exchanged glances.

The little old woman was still beaming at them, her gaze settling on Patience. “I do believe you deal in used research books?” Her voice was accented, lilting and musical. “Fine tomes on topics of mystical origin and the like?”

“We do.” Patience nodded, peering down at the box. “Those look valuable, though. I might not be able to pay you what they’re worth.”

“Och!” The woman waved a hand. “I’m not after money. I’m just doing a bit o’ tidying up, is all. I’ve no more space for these.”

“They do look old.” Ardelle bent over the box, already examining a few volumes. “Here’s one for you, Patience.” She held up a slim book on charms and spells for the “covenless white witch.”

“Let me see.” Patience snapped the book from her friend’s fingers, flipping through the pages.

Marta ignored them, glancing at her watch to see if her tarot client would soon be arriving. “I’ll need to get in the back—Hey!” She blinked, glancing around.

“Where did the old woman go?”

Patience and Ardelle looked up from the book box.

“What?” They spoke in unison. “She was just here.”

“Well, she isn’t now.” Marta rubbed at the chills on her arms.

As when the little woman had arrived, the door chime hadn’t tinkled.

“She’ll be back.” Patience pushed to her feet, a hand on her hip. “No one would leave such valuable books behind, whether she wants money for them or not. Why, look at this one. ...”

Bending down again, she picked up a leather-bound brownish volume, its title,
Myths and Legends
of the Viking Age
, raised in red and gold lettering.

“Isn’t this the book Margo bought just before she went to Scotland?” Patience held out the book to her friends. “I’m sure it is.”

Marta and Ardelle leaned close, peering at the book.

“Let me see.” Ardelle snatched the book from Patience’s fingers.

Frowning, she began flipping through the pages.

She stopped when she came to a two-page color illustration of a Viking warship off the coast of Scotland.

“Look at this.” She set the book on Margo’s old display counter, holding the pages open to the drawing. “This is just the kind of place Margo would love.”

Patience and Marta joined her, framing her, as all three women leaned over the book to admire the oh-so-romantic landscape spread across the rich, creamy pages.

Beautiful as a master painting, the illustration showed a rocky shoreline with steep, jagged cliffs soaring up around a crescent-shaped cove. The sky above shone with the blue, purple, and gold luminosity of gloaming and the sea gleamed like beaten silver.

A haven of a place, the dreamlike background was made perfect by the man and woman embracing on made perfect by the man and woman embracing on the golden-sanded strand. They stood at the water’s edge and the man’s long dark hair was tossed by the wind. Clearly a Highland warrior, he was big and strapping, and wore a plaid slung boldly over one shoulder. A huge sword was strapped at his side, and he was holding the woman’s face with both hands, leaning down and kissing her fiercely.

He looked deeply in love with her.

And the blue-gowned, fair-haired woman enjoying his kiss was his perfect match.

“Hey, look at her hair.” Marta frowned, leaning close to peer at the illustration. “She’s wearing her hair cut chin-length with bangs.”

“That can’t be.” Ardelle nudged her aside, examining the page. “Medieval women didn’t—agh!” Ardelle jumped back, her eyes round. “It’s Margo!

She looked at me and smiled.”

“She was smiling at me.” Patience grabbed the book, clutching it to her breast, a bosom just as large and formidable as Ardelle’s. “It was our dear girl and she was looking right at me, not you.” Marta bit her lip, not wanting to ruin their claims with the truth.

She’d been the one Margo had smiled at, even winking as if they held some special secret.

“Can we try again?” Marta turned to Patience, opting for diplomacy. “Maybe if we all look at the drawing at the same time, we can tell for sure?” Patience frowned, not yet ready to hand over the tome.

Ardelle snatched it from her, slapping the book onto the counter again. But this time when she flipped through the pages, the beautiful drawing was gone.

It’d vanished from the volume as if it’d never been.

“I know she was in there.” Patience started pacing back and forth in front of the display case. “My eyes aren’t deceiving me.

“You both saw it, too.” She looked from Marta to Ardelle, and then back at the book. “Or will you be denying it?”

Ardelle shook her head.

“We could’ve been mistaken.” Marta avoided answering truthfully.

She didn’t want to see Patience hurt.

“There are probably a lot of copies of that book.” She eyed it again. “This one can’t be Margo’s and we—”

“It is Margo’s!” Ardelle’s voice rang with triumph.

“See here.” She was pointing to something on the inside front cover. “She’s written her name in the book. I recognize her handwriting. Look.” And so Patience and Marta joined her, peering down at the opened book and reading Margo’s inscription aloud:

Margo Leeanne Menlove.

And as the three women bent over the book, puzzling over the significance—or not—of Margo’s full name, a tiny white-haired woman lifted her ever-so-curious nose from the shop’s window glass and gave a most satisfied sigh.

Things were good in the world this day.

She’d done well.

So she smoothed her skirt, lifted her chin, and set off down the sidewalk, the heels of her small black boots with their red plaid laces tapping jauntily.

Don’t miss the next delightful

Scottish paranormal romance

from Allie Mackay!

Read on for a sneak peek.

Coming from Signet Eclipse

in January 2012.

Balmedie Beach, Northeast Scotland She wasn’t alone.

Kendra Chase—a hardworking American from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and a woman much in need of some private downtime—knew the instant someone intruded on the solitude of the wild and rugged North Sea strand she’d been walking along for the last two hours.

In that time, she hadn’t seen a soul.

Now her skin tingled and the fine hairs on her nape lifted. Awareness flooded her, her entire body responding to the changed nuance of the air. The responding to the changed nuance of the air. The atmosphere was charging, turning crystalline as her senses sharpened. Everything looked polished, colors intensifying before her eyes. The deep red-gold of the sand glowed, as did the steely gray of the sea, and even the crimson sky. The brilliance was blinding, the chills slipping down her spine warning that the changes weren’t just a trick of the light.

Something other than the sinking Scottish sun was responsible.

Kendra took a long, calming breath. So much for surrounding herself with white light to block unwanted intrusions from the Other Side, though ...

No ghost was causing the back of her neck to prickle. As one of the top spirit negotiators employed by Ghost-catchers International, she always knew when she was in the presence of the disembodied.

This was different.

And although she’d been assured by the desk clerk at her hotel that Balmedie Beach, with its high marram-grown dunes and long, broad strand, was a safe place to walk, the teeming city of Aberdeen was close enough for some wacko to have also chosen this strand for an afternoon jaunt.

She doubted there were many ax murderers in Scotland, but every urban area had its thugs.

Yet she didn’t actually feel menace.

Just something unusual.

And thanks to her work, she knew that the world was filled with things that were out of the ordinary.

Most people just weren’t aware.

She was, every day of her life.

Just now she only wanted to be left alone. So she pulled her jacket tighter against the wind and kept walking. If she pretended not to notice whatever powerful something was altering the afternoon, she hoped she’d be granted the quiet time she really did deserve.

But with each forward step, the urge to turn around grew stronger.

She needed to see the source of her neck prickles.

Don’t do it, Chase,
her inner self protested, her natural defenses buzzing on high alert. But the more her heart raced, the slower she walked. Her palms were growing damp and she could hear the roar of her blood in her ears. There was no choice, really. She had to know who—or what—was on the strand with her, affecting her so strongly.

“Oh, man ...” She puffed her bangs off her forehead and braced herself for anything.

Then she turned.

She saw the man at once. And everything about him made her breath catch. She blinked, surprise, astonishment, and also a thread of alarm, rising in her astonishment, and also a thread of alarm, rising in her throat.

For a peace-shattering interloper, the man was magnificent.

No other word could describe him.

He stood on the high dunes a good way behind her, his gaze focused on the sea. Even now, he didn’t glance in her direction. Yet his
presence
was powerful, claiming the strand as if by right.

Tall, imposing, and well built, he was kilted and wore a cloak that blew in the wind. Even at a distance, Kendra could tell that he had dark good looks. And—she swallowed—there was an air of ancient pride and power about him.

Limned as he was against the setting sun, he might have been cast of shadows. But there could be no doubt that he was solid and real.

He was a true flesh and blood man, no specter.

Yet....

Kendra’s pulse quickened, her attention riveted by his magnetism. She pressed a hand to her breast, her eyes wide as she stared at him. The same wind that tore at his cloak also tossed his hair. A dark, shoulder-length mane that gleamed in the lowering sun and that he wore unbound, giving him a wickedly sexy look. His stance was pure alpha male. Bold, fearless, and uncompromisingly masculine. He could’ve been an avenging angel or some kind of sentry.

Whoever he was, he seemed more interested in the sea than a work-weary, couldn’t-stop-staring American female.

And that was probably just as well because even if she’d hoped to enjoy her one night in Aberdeen, she wasn’t in Scotland as a tourist.