A Highlander’s Homecoming Read online

  He was none too sure his arsenal was back to normal even now.

  Remembering the small waterfall and pool he’d spotted in the distance farther up the mountain, he decided on a short detour in that direction. If the setting sun did catch him, he’d only need to follow the stream that ran from the pool straight back to Isa’s cottage to find his way even in the dark.

  Without the weight of any saplings or his axe, he covered the distance quickly. In no time at all, he’d chucked his plaid and shirt and plunged into the deep, dark pool.

  Once the shock of the cold had passed, the water enveloped his body, soothing his aches and pains. He ran his hands across his chest, looking down quickly as his fingers brushed over a sensitive spot.

  His scar. Odd. It had been almost ten years since he’d taken a sword to his chest saving Connor MacKiernan’s life, but the scar looked much newer. Pink and sensitive to his touch.

  He didn’t think Isa’s elbow to his chest last night could have somehow caused new damage, but he had felt a sharp pain with her blow.

  What foolishness! Surely it was a trick of the fading light and nothing more that caused the scar to look strange. No time to go blaming Isa.

  Even if she was a redhead.

  He glanced to another jagged silver line, this one on his forearm near his elbow. There had definitely been a redhead to blame for that one.

  It was the summer he’d turned fifteen. He’d gone to Inverness with his father and Richard to sell the flock of sheep his father had given him the year before. The silver he made from the sale was the first money he had been able to call his own. He’d invested months into dreaming of how he would spend that silver.

  And then he’d met Marie.

  Robert and his brother had waited until their father was meeting with a group of merchants. They’d hastened off to one of the seamier local taverns, though they’d been strictly forbidden to go there.

  Marie had struck his eye the moment they’d entered, and a short while later, emboldened by the heat of forbidden whisky burning in his chest and Richard’s goading, he’d approached her table.

  It had seemed like a dream when she’d invited him to her room in the back of the tavern, where she’d given him another tankard of drink, promising him a trip to heaven when he finished it down.

  Whether the whisky was drugged or just too much for his young system, the next thing he remembered was waking in a haze, to find her sneaking out the door. He had tried to stop her but his legs refused to work properly. He managed to grab her skirts, but she attacked him with his own dirk and he fell backward, hitting his head. When he awoke the next time, Marie was gone.

  And along with her his silver.

  No, he had no doubt that redheads were dangerous. It had taken him only two encounters with them to learn that lesson and learn it well. He had the scar on his arm from Marie and another on his heart from the even more treacherous Elizabeth to prove that fact.

  He closed his eyes, splashing water over his face as if he could wash the memories of those two women from his mind. While the first had been an embarrassing lesson, the second had driven him to leave his family, trekking across the world, throwing himself into battle, risking his life on foreign soil. The campaign where he had met Isabella’s father.

  Isabella. Another redhead.

  To clear his tangled thoughts, he swam over to the waterfall, allowing it to crash down over him like an icy shower.

  It wasn’t as good as what had become part of his daily ritual back home, but it would do. Next time he came up here, he’d have to bring along some soap so he didn’t end up stinking on a regular basis.

  Like everyone else in this time.

  The thought had barely formed before he realized with a start it was a falsehood. Not everyone smelled bad.

  Isa smelled of a summer breeze and fresh-mown grass, not the common stench of unwashed body. Even now, if he let his mind wander, he could recall her enticing scent as if she were somewhere nearby, but, of course, that was no more than his overactive imagination.

  The same overactive imagination that forced his body to harden with need at the thought of her.

  He dove under the water and turned, pushing off from the bottom to propel himself to a shallower spot before he stood. Breaking through the surface, he rose, lifting his face to the setting sun, hoping the waters would wash away his impure thoughts of Isa.

  To no avail.

  The memory of her standing before him, her wet nightdress clinging to every enticing curve, filled his mind even as her scent filled his nostrils, stronger than before.

  Surely she should be asking some higher power for forgiveness. She was wicked. Truly wicked. She should back away as quietly as she’d come upon this scene. Back away, run down the mountainside to her cottage and forget she’d ever seen any of this.

  And yet, Isa could not bring herself to turn away.

  Ahead of her, Robbie bathed in the waters of her pool. What she’d only glimpsed last night, she stared at openly today.

  He dove, then burst up through the surface, water sheeting down his sculpted body as he stood. When he flung back his head, droplets from his hair glinted in the sun’s last rays as they flew into the air, forming a shining arc around him. Not even the scars on his body could detract from his allure. He was more beautiful than any nature god could ever hope to be.

  Isa sank to her knees and huddled next to a broad tree trunk. She was ashamed of her inability to turn away, ashamed of hiding in the foliage where she could continue to watch. Ashamed of the physical need building inside her.

  She might be inexperienced in the ways of men and women, but that didn’t mean she had no knowledge of such things. You couldn’t function in the natural world or raise your own animals without knowing the ways of life.

  Except that the difference between the knowledge of what happened and the feelings she actually had coursing through her body right now was vast beyond belief. It left her with a frustration beyond anything she’d ever encountered.

  Once. To have a man like that take her in his arms and sweep her off her feet. To crush his mouth to hers and lower her body to the ground underneath him. To put an end to the heavy wanting filling her loins right now. What she wouldn’t give to experience that for herself just one time.

  Her freedom. That’s what she wouldn’t give.

  She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, rubbing as if she intended to force the vision of his naked beauty from her memory.

  Pointless, of course. And damned unfair.

  She’d realized long ago that people simply served to bring grief and unhappiness into her world and she would be better off without them. All of them. As a result, she’d spent the last eight years building her own life of solitude, away from everyone. She’d learned to hold her emotions tightly in check and spend her days doing as she pleased.

  Now he’d come along, determined to insert himself into her life whether she wanted him in it or not, bringing with him all these . . . feelings. All these wants. All these needs.

  And if she gave into these feelings? If she followed the path her body urged her down?

  She would never be rid of him. Any man who held on to an unfulfilled vow for twenty years took honor much too seriously to dally with a woman he saw as his responsibility and then leave simply because she told him to.

  She wanted him gone. Didn’t she?

  She opened her eyes and focused on an early wildflower blooming just in front of her, crushed by her own footstep when she’d first arrived in this place. The delicate weed had struggled to make its way here, alone in the forest, constantly pushed aside by the larger plants, wanting nothing more than a bit of sun and rain. It had needed so little to live.

  It had needed to be left alone.

  There was only one choice open to her. Robbie had to go, even if it meant driving him away.

  That should be an easy enough task for her. When she was younger, Auld Annie, the cook who’d looked after h
er, had always said her bad attitude could force the saints themselves to run away in terror.

  That was it, then.

  Her decision made, she looked up to find Robbie had moved to deeper water, his gaze fixed directly on the spot where she hid.

  Bollocks.

  She was caught.

  She rubbed her damp hands down the front of her apron and stood up, defiantly jamming her hands onto her hips.

  “And what do you think yer doing out here?” she demanded.

  “I might ask you same, missy. I wondered how long you planned to spy on me before showing yerself.”

  Isa felt the red heat crawling up her neck and onto her face. That would never do! Better to attack and take him off his track.

  “Plan? I have no plan. I’m no spying. It’s only my disbelief of yer rude behavior that kept me here. Splashing about with yer dirty self, fouling up the water I use for cooking my food, the water I drink.”

  She paused for a breath, surprised to see him headed toward her, a smile growing on his face. A few more steps and he’d reach the shallows!

  “What are you doing?” she screeched, oblivious to the fact that she repeated her earlier words.

  “I thought you wanted me out of yer water. I’m getting out.”

  He took another step, his smile so broad now it danced in his eyes, and she wondered if he’d be bold enough to keep going.

  Two could play the game of dares if he liked. She was every bit as stubborn as he could be, if that was what it came down to.

  “That’s exactly what I want.” She crossed her arms over her chest, waiting.

  When he took the next step, she felt her knees weaken.

  The dark waters swirled below his waist and her eyes fastened on the enticing trail of hair that moved down his abdomen and disappeared into the lapping waves.

  The water flowed up as he pushed forward yet again, and her hands dropped to knot in her apron at her sides. Anything to keep from reaching out to touch him as he drew near.

  The waves that had flowed up as he moved now withdrew, caressing his skin like silver fingers as they fled away, exposing all of him. She turned her back as quickly as she could, but not so quickly she missed one last look at the whole of the man.

  Her blood pounded in her ears and her face flamed, even as low in her belly she felt a matching burn.

  Lo, but he was a beauty.

  When, a moment later, his warm breath tickled her cheek, she lurched forward—and would have fallen had he not grabbed her arm.

  “A word of advice, my lady. I excel at poker. I’m no a man to walk away from a bluff. Never point a weapon if you dinna intend to fire it.”

  “I’ve no need for any of yer so-called advice.” As if she needed him to tell her what to do. As if what he told her made even the least bit of sense. “Everything I do I do with a reason.”

  “Is that so?” He leaned in closer. “Then perhaps yer real reason for standing so long in trees was that you wanted to join me in the pool?”

  “Hardly!” She jerked her arm from his fingers and stepped a pace away, all too aware of the heat his body gave off, even as water dripped from his hair, forging a cold trail down the side of her neck. “Now get away from me, you great oaf. Yer getting me wet.”

  She didn’t turn at his strangled reply nor did she give him the satisfaction of responding when the sound turned into laughter.

  Infuriating man.

  So, she’d been too weak for this particular game of dares after all. No matter. It only confirmed she’d been right from the beginning.

  Robbie MacQuarrie had to go.

  She was a feisty one, all right.

  Robert smiled to himself as he watched Isa now, her head bent low over Jamie’s as she helped him make a soft pallet on the floor by the fire. Seeing her like this, it was hard to believe she was the same woman who’d argued with him all the way back to the cottage this evening.

  Attempted to argue with him was more accurate. Considering the circumstances of their meeting at the pool, there was no way he was allowing her to drag him into her verbal sparring. Some men might be able to channel their emotions into words but he wasn’t one of them. He felt what he felt and preferred to act upon those feelings, not talk them to death.

  When he’d seen her there in the woods, the hunger sparking in her eyes as she’d watched him, he’d known it would take very little to push him over the edge.

  He’d tried to warn her.

  One more dare. One more challenge. One more anything and they’d likely have found themselves on the ground, going at it like wild animals in heat.

  That wasn’t an option he could allow. So he’d ignored her verbal jabs though her underlying meaning was clear. She thought to drive him away with her sharp tongue and hateful comments.

  But all that had changed mere feet from the cottage.

  “Jamie’s inside,” she’d warned, her demeanor instantly transforming from scolding nag to mother tiger. “You’ll be kind to him or you’ll deal with me for it, you ken?”

  The memory brought another smile to his lips as he watched the two of them now, the boy’s face shining with happiness when Isa sat down next to him on the pallet. There was something about the child, something so familiar, and yet he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “Come on with you, lad. Lie down. I ken that it’s hard to get to sleep in a strange place, but we’ve a great deal of work tomorrow if we’re to be ready to leave for the castle.” She patted the blanket beside her and Jamie climbed under the covers, snuggling his head into her lap.

  For his part, Robert finished off the mug of weak ale Isa had offered earlier. Relaxing in his spot against the rock wall, he was amazed that he could feel so comfortable, so natural, so at peace. The moment was almost perfect. A man, a woman, a child. If he had his little dog, Charlie, here, the scene would be complete.

  Isa stared down at the boy in her lap, one long finger delicately stroking the side of his poor, misshapen face as little snores wafted up from him.

  “What accident befell the lad?”

  She looked up, startled, at his question, as if she’d been so lost in her thoughts she’d completely forgotten he was even there.

  Not exactly a major stroke for his ego.

  “Fire,” she answered at last, running her fingers lightly through the child’s hair. “Though his grandmother swore to me it was no accident, their home burning to the ground. He was just a wee thing at the time. Must have been going on five years ago? Maybe six. I dinna believe he was even walking when it happened. Annie, his grandmother, was the one who pulled him from the flames. Burned her hands so badly she couldna ever fully return to her duties as cook.”

  “His parents?” From the ill-kempt look of the child, he had a pretty good idea what her answer would be.

  “His mother died in the fire. He had no father. Well—” Here her eyebrows lifted in a knowing manner. “No father that ever stepped forward to claim the poor lad.”

  Robert nodded. It happened. People were people. The only thing worse was that he knew it would continue to happen. The passage of time wouldn’t much change people for the better.

  “Was the battle you fought near here?”

  This time it was his turn to be surprised by a question.

  “Battle?”

  “I could no help but notice yer wound this afternoon. The one on yer chest.” Her cheeks colored and she fastened her gaze back on the sleeping boy. “I’ve no great experience with battle wounds, but yers looked to be serious. Was it recent?”

  “No. It was a long time ago.” Another lifetime ago.

  Her eyes cut to him, her brow wrinkled. “But I could have sworn . . . It looked to no to have been healed too long.”

  His gaze locked on hers until she looked back down.

  The old scar had looked oddly pink this afternoon, but he’d reasoned that was likely a trick of the fading light. Or perhaps the result of her having elbowed him in that exact spot.

&
nbsp; Surely it couldn’t be anything more serious than that.

  “Of course, I am no a healer,” she muttered, cradling Jamie’s head in her hands as she slipped out from under him. She lay the boy down gently as she stood, then stretched out her back before hurrying to the other end of the room. There she bent over her wooden chest before returning, her arms wrapped around a thick woolen.

  “I suppose I’d best take my own advice and get some rest.” Her eyes flitted nervously around the room, refusing to light anywhere.

  Was she waiting for him to go?

  “Well, then, I guess I’ll be out to the stable.” He rose to leave but she stopped him with a hand to his forearm, which she removed as quickly as she’d touched him.

  “There’s no a need for you to do that. Yer welcome to take yer rest here by the fire, with the boy.”

  She held out the bundle in her arms as if in offering. When he took it, his hands covered hers and her eyes widened, the spark he’d seen in the woods this afternoon returning. A tingling rushed through his body and the mark on his arm felt alive with movement.

  Isa jerked away and stepped back. Averting her gaze to the floor, she clasped her hands tightly behind her.

  “I . . . I’ve a boon to ask of you, Robbie.”

  As if the look he’d just seen in her eyes wasn’t enough, her familiar use of his name sent a rush of heat chasing after the tingle that dove straight to his loins. He lowered the bundle in his arms, holding it in front of him like a shield to protect him. Or a screen, to hide the effect she had on him.

  “Do you suppose you could find something for Jamie to do for you tomorrow? Odd jobs to keep him here for another day until we’re ready to travel to the castle?”

  The thrill he’d felt building fizzled away like cold water tossed on embers. Was she so desperate to keep the boy here because of him? How ridiculous! Why on earth would she feel that was necessary? She didn’t need protection from him. He was sworn to be her protection.

  “I suppose he could . . . he could maybe help me gather the saplings and bring them down for the fence.” He stumbled through his response, stung by her lack of trust in him.