Not Without Juliet (A Scottish Time Travel Romance) (Muir Witch Project #2) (2 page)

Thankfully, the boy was quick to follow orders, and Quinn continued his acting until the sound of Orie’s retreat faded to nothing.

Long Legs’ sudden burst of laughter sent a chill up his spine.

“A grand idea, that. Ye’ll be carrying the flowers, but they’ll be for yer own grave, not yer sister’s.”

Quinn was content with the irony that Morna was neither dead, nor his sister, but was living happily ever after in the twenty-first century. A year before, Morna had faked her death and then been taken into the future, along with the real Montgomery Ross. Quinn had volunteered to switch places with him, due to the plain fact Montgomery had the love of a fine woman to live for, and Quinn had naught.

And if Isobelle, Morna’s sister, danced, it wasn’t with the devil as she, too, was alive and well, though it was uncertain where she hid. It was a fine trick the Rosses had played on their neighbors, and all for the health and happiness of their women.

Ultimately, if Quinn was about to die, history would play out as it should, and no one would know the Gordons would be killing the wrong man.

CHAPTER ONE

Something dripped on Juliet’s head.

“I swear, if it rains on me one more friggin’ time...” She looked up and watched a squirrel disappear against the trunk of a pine tree. The small branch he’d run across still bounced, flinging little drops of moisture from its needles. “Damned rodent.”

She was sure he’d done it on purpose, but she wasn’t going anywhere. He’d just have to deal with having his forest invaded for a while longer.

She stood among the trees on a hillside that ran along the west and north sides of Castle Ross, close enough to keep an eye on the place while she worked up her courage. She’d been working it up for two days, arguing with the same stupid squirrel. At least, she thought it was the same one.

Using her voice had felt good. She couldn’t remember the last person she’d had an actual conversation with that wasn’t a waitress or something. But that was about to change. As soon as the gray Hummer returned to the castle grounds, she was going to suck it up, march down there, and say what she’d come to say. It wasn’t her fault
that woman
was always taking off with her husband every time Jules was ready to confront her. Even getting up early that morning hadn’t helped, either. The Hummer was already gone.

What were they doing? Shopping their brains out? Trying to spend all the money?

The thought of all that money disappearing made her nauseous.

No way, she told herself. No way could they spend even half of it in the year since
that woman
had inherited it, even if they bought a real life Scottish castle—which she knew they hadn’t—it belonged to the husband’s family. And a whole fleet of Hummers wouldn’t make a dent.

“It’s okay,” she told the squirrel. “Half is all I want.” She looked back at the castle. “And I’m not leaving here without it.”

She rolled her shoulders and worked out the kinks from sleeping, folded up, in the front seat of a car for two miserable nights in a row. She’d have stretched out a little in the back seat, but if someone caught up with her, she needed to be behind the wheel.

Sticking earbuds in her ears was a luxury she couldn’t risk, no matter how frightening it was to sleep alone in the woods at night. And thanks to her wild imagination, she’d imagined all kinds of animals breathing on the car windows every time she closed her eyes.

The only thing she should really worry about was the FBI catching up with her or one of Gabby Skedros’ men. But even that concern was second on her list. Her biggest fear was what kept her on that hillside—the probability that
that woman
and her big Highlander would decide that they weren’t going to give her what was hers.

She’d dreamt of him again last night. Exactly the same dream she’d been having for the last six months. Only this time she knew who he was...

It was dark, just like always.

His head fell forward, his black hair made it hard to see his face. When he moved, she would see just a little curve of his cheek, a little reflection of light from his eyes. She wanted to reach out and push that hair behind his ears, but she didn’t. Why didn’t she?

At least she could hear him breathing and feel his arms as they came around her. So warm. So soft. So hard.

"Stay with me," he begged.

"I will. I promise."

"Stay with me, just until the end. Then you may go."

"'Til the end of what?"

"'Til the end, lass. You'll know when it's over."

Frantic desperation hung in the air all around them.

"I'm not who you think I am," he said.

That was what she was supposed to say.

"Neither am I,” she confessed.

He pulled her closer, but there was something between them, again. She needed to get closer, to feel his hard chest against her cheek, to know, just for a minute, that she was safe.

But something was stopping her.

Finally knowing he was a living breathing man, and not some guy her subconscious had conjured up?

Good news.

Realizing he was married, and to whom he was married?

Bad news. Bad,
bad
news.

Wondering how the hell her mind knew about a man across the ocean, six months before she’d ever seen him?

Freaking insane.

Water dripped on her head again. At least she hoped it was water. She didn’t look up because she really didn’t want to know. If the little thing had peed on her, she had no place to wash her hair anyway. Not until she got her money.

She wished she had her gun...if only to kill her a friggin’ squirrel.

“I hear you taste like chicken,” she said, still not looking up.

It was time to resume the position.

She felt the ground. Thankfully, it was no more damp than before. Not much of the last little rainstorm had made it through the thick branches. She was on a little plateau, so she stretched out on her belly, propped her elbows up, and looked through the old field glasses she’d bought in a second-hand store, in a little town just outside Glasgow. She wasn’t about to go shopping in East Burnshire, the village down the road. Running into
that woman
in a public place was not the plan. And if the FBI figured out where she was headed, they’d be watching East Burnshire for any sign of one Juliet Bell.

She’d tried not to get her hopes up about the Rosses helping her, considering what she planned to say to the new lady of the manor. The big Scot seemed so...courteous...from afar, she tried to keep worst case scenarios out of her head. She only wished she could say the same about her fantasies. The guy was just too gorgeous.

Just one more reason to dislike his wife.

Below her, Castle Ross protruded out of an ancient hill, a massive wreck resisting its lush green grave. The main body of the castle was about three stories tall. The towers, on the corners, looked more like arms reaching for the sky. Just a few fingers left on each hand.

As she studied the place for the thousandth time, a stone tumbled away from the west wall that was painted liberally with the orange light of the setting sun. She raised her field glasses to see what might have shaken loose a building block placed hundreds of years ago.

A couple of blue-grey figures stood on the battlements. Of course she didn’t believe in ghosts, but there was something about Scotland that made you believe you weren’t in the real world anyway.

She rolled the focus.

Two old ladies—identical in every way—were fighting over a pair of binoculars. Jules would lay odds on the one on the right since the strap was around her neck. Every time the one on the left pulled at the prize, her twin was pulled forward.

Jules couldn’t help laughing.

Nothing to worry about. Even if they’d been a couple of ghosts, they couldn’t scare her off. The only thing capable of raising her heart rate now was a sexy Highlander or someone with the power to stop her—like the people she’d just escaped. The FBI was staffed by a bunch of mean sons-o-bitches who didn’t take too kindly to sole eye-witnesses squirming out from under their thumb. And if she could get away from them, a couple of Scottish ghosts shouldn’t even raise her heart rate.

She moved back into a thick cluster of pines, hoping against hope that the fighting sisters had poor eyesight too. She steadied the boughs bouncing around her and hoped her black leather jacket and new dye job would blend into the shadows. Then she looked through the binoculars again.

The old women weren’t fighting anymore, and the one on the left was gesturing over her shoulder with her thumb, toward the North. Jules was just relieved the old girl wasn’t pointing her way. The other one took the strap from around her neck and handed over the binoculars, then she looked over her sister’s shoulder while that one turned and aimed the lenses up at the road running along the ridge behind Castle Ross.

Whatever it was, the sisters found it fascinating. But when the sisters suddenly ducked down behind the wall, Jules swung her own binoculars to the North to see what had scared her would-be ghosts.

The trees were in the way. She had to inch out a bit, but kept well below the boughs that would give away her progress. A prickly branch reached out and snagged her coat, as if it would hold her back. She unhooked a sticky pinecone from her precious coat, rubbed her thumb over the scratch it had made in the smooth leather, then crawled forward, grateful for the lengthening and deepening of the evening shadows around her.

At first, all she could see was a car tire with a shiny hubcap. She kept losing track of it between branches heavy with pine
cones and dense green needles. When she pulled the glasses aside to get a natural perspective, she realized the car was well off the road, intentionally hidden.

Like hers.

Through the binoculars, once again, Juliet followed the hill as it sloped away from the car. Spindly black legs stood on a visible patch of grass. A tripod. Then, a man’s knees as he squatted behind it.

“Shit!” Her voice sounded like a gunshot in her ears. She clamped her lips between her teeth and held her breath until she realized she was too far away for him to have heard her.

A Skedros. It had to be. If he were FBI, agents would have been skulking around the castle, hiding on the roof and taking over the big manor house where human beings actually lived. They wouldn’t care about disrupting lives while they waited for her to show up.

She tried to calm the panic ringing in her ears, telling her to run, reminding her that every second she waited lessened her chances of getting away. But she didn’t want to run. It had taken her days to get psyched up to confront
that woman
. If she ran, she’d never get that chance again. And no one could be expected to run away from all that money, let alone the chance to look into that man’s face just once.

She tried to think rationally, to keep her heart from jumping through her ribs.

Maybe the guy was a photographer. Castle Ross probably smiled for a couple dozen cameras a day. Maybe the North side was its good side. Maybe the FBI had decided to give her what she’d asked for—just a little time to take care of some personal business. Maybe the Skedros family had no clue she’d left the country. Maybe she was just being paranoid.

Yeah, and maybe Gabby Skedros hadn’t murdered Nikkos right before her eyes. “You’re like a son to me,” he’d told the kid, just before he shot him. And how many times had he told Jules she was like a daughter? Yeah, she could live without that kind of family affection. She was better off as she’d always been. On her own.

Paranoid? Yeah, right. Paranoid was a way to stay alive. And she wasn’t the only one freaking out. Those old sisters had disappeared fast, as if their footing had given way.

No. They were hiding. And Jules wasn’t hiding well enough. Even though she was well hidden beneath branches and shadows, she wanted to inch back into the trees, but she couldn’t move. Her arm and legs were frozen with fear, as they had that night when Nikkos fell to the floor. She hadn’t moved then either. She’d blended in. Gabby hadn’t even looked around to see if any of his restaurant employees might have been working late. Freezing in place had saved her then. Apparently her body thought it was a good enough plan to try again.

Great.

She took a deep breath, then another. She just had to relax. It was just like the bears she imagined outside her car windows. They weren’t real. Maybe the danger she felt wasn’t real either. She just had to be brave enough to look.

From the corner of her eye, she saw movement to her right. There were now two blue forms at the entrance of the castle grounds, jumping up and down. Weren’t they a little too old for that?

Thankfully, she found her arms willing to move once more, and she raised her glasses for a better look at the pair of lunatics.

At the bottom of her hill was a road and beyond that, a wide parking lot. Between it and the crumbling outer wall of the castle was a bridge of land the width of a car. Once upon a time, there would have been a moat and drawbridge, she figured. Where the wall began, there was also a large gate that opened inward. Next to this gate bounced the blue sisters.