Loving the Highlander

by Janet Chapman

  So, with all her dirty laundry loaded in the truck and her empty cooler packed, all she had left to do was convince Ping that there was nothing ignoble about riding in a cat carrier.

  Just as Sadie finally caught Ping and put her in the carrier in the front seat of the truck, another truck pulled up to the cabin. Sadie quickly closed the cage before the spitting-mad cat could escape and cursed her terrible timing. Heck. It was worse than Grand Central Station out here.

  At least she knew this visitor. Eric Hellman, her boss, jumped out of the truck before it had fully shut off, his hand full of papers and his expression saying he was a man on a mission.

  “You’re still alive, I see,” he said by way of greeting as he strode toward her.

  Sadie looked down at herself in mock surprise. “I guess I am,” she agreed, giving him a broad smile she hoped would disarm his obviously bad mood.

  He stopped in front of her and glared at her answer. “I’ve been calling your cell phone since yesterday morning. Why haven’t you answered it?”

  “Because it’s broken?” she offered, still forcing a smile but bracing herself for the outrage she knew was coming.

  His face turned bright red. “That’s the third phone in two months! What are you doing, chopping wood with the damn things?”

  Sadie wanted to tell him that this last one wasn’t her fault, but she remained mute. It was nobody’s business what had happened in the woods yesterday—not the priest’s and not Eric’s.

  “This is the last one,” Eric told her angrily. “They said they would cancel the insurance the next time I brought them a smashed phone.” He held out his hand. “Give it to me so I can get it replaced. But the next one you break is coming out of your paycheck.”

  Sadie looked at his hand, shifting her feet uncomfortably. Damn, she knew he needed the ruined phone to get the credit from the insurance.

  “I don’t have it. It’s at the bottom of Prospect River, probably halfway to the Penobscot by now.” She steeled herself for the next explosion. “And so is the GPS. I lost my backpack overboard when I dumped at Portage Falls.”

  Instead of the explosion, there was silence. Eric’s gaze shot to the kayak strapped to the roof of her truck. His face incredulous, he looked back at her.

  “You’re a class four kayaker, Quill. You don’t dump your boat on class two rapids.”

  She shrugged. “Hey, anyone can have a bad day.”

  “Why wasn’t your pack in the dry hatch?” he asked, looking back at the nineteen-foot-long yellow kayak.

  The boat was really an ocean or calm-water kayak, since Sadie usually traveled lakes and dead-water streams, but she did need to get down swift water on occasion, and she wasn’t lugging around two different boats to do the job. This poor kayak carried the scars of rough use, but it was still an excellent vessel, a gift from her dad on her sixteenth birthday.

  “The hatch popped,” she said, straight-faced.

  The bluster seemed suddenly to go out of Eric. He shook his head. “What were you doing at Portage Falls? Do you think Jedediah’s gold is that far north?”

  “I was mapping the river, looking for possible campsites.”

  “That kind of stuff can come later,” he said, dismissing her work with a wave of his hand. “You need to find that gold, Quill. It’s going to be the focal point of the park.”

  “I’m looking, Eric. Honest to God, every day I’m out there, I’m looking for it.” She sighed and rubbed her forehead. “It was Dad’s obsession to find Plum’s gold, before the fire. You know that. I spent every school vacation and summer and every weekend looking for Jedediah’s claim.”

  “And that’s why I suggested the consortium hire you, Quill. You have the best chance of finding it. You know this valley, and you know your father’s research. So why can’t you find it?”

  “It might not exist, you know. Even Dad was aware of that possibility. Maine is not a state known for gold.”

  “It exists,” Eric said through gritted teeth. “Frank spent the better part of his life looking for that gold.”

  “As a hobby, Eric. He found some writings on Jedediah Plum, even unearthed an old journal. But it all could have been the romantic delusions of an eccentric old hermit. Jedediah claimed he’d found the source of Prospect River’s placer gold, but the man died a pauper nearly eighty years ago.”

  Eric’s face suddenly brightened, and he handed her the papers he was holding. “I’ve been doing some research of my own,” he said as Sadie took the papers and unfolded them.

  She gasped when she saw what they were. “Where did you find this?” she asked, leafing through the photocopies of an old handwritten journal. “This is the diary Dad found just before…well, just before the fire.”

  “It is?” Eric asked, moving to look over her shoulder. “Frank had this diary? I found this in an obscure little logging museum about sixty miles north of here and got permission to photocopy it. It’s the journal of a logging camp cook who lived in Jedediah’s time. It seems that just before the old hermit died, he came back out here one last time. The cook, Jean Lavoie, thought he was after some of the gold. But Jedediah disappeared a few days later. They found his body after the spring thaw.”

  “Yes. They also found that he had been shot,” Sadie added. “That part of Plum’s life—or, rather, his death—is well documented. I can’t believe you found this.” She looked at Eric, smiling sadly. “I tried cajoling Dad into gathering back his research, but after the fire he lost his passion for the hunt.”

  Eric moved back to face her, smiling sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Quill. But maybe now you can study this diary and finally come up with a location. I’ve read it at least a hundred times, but I don’t know this valley as well as you do. Maybe you can find where these logging camps were, and that will tell you the vicinity of Plum’s claim.”

  “I wish I had the rest of Dad’s research. We’d been so close eight years ago.”

  “Everything burned?” he asked, tempering his voice with kindness.

  “Yes. The fire started in the study where he kept his research,” Sadie confirmed, turning away and walking to the driver’s side of her truck. She opened the door and put the papers inside.

  “You’re going home? It’s only Thursday,” Eric said, seeing that the truck was packed with her belongings.

  “I need a few days off. And I want to contact the geological people in Augusta.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been studying my model and began wondering about approaching the mystery of Plum’s gold from a different angle.”

  “A geological angle?” he asked, suddenly not looking so disgruntled about her self-approved vacation.

  “Yeah. Instead of only trying to follow Jedediah’s path, which is all but nonexistent, why not see where Mother Nature would most likely have set her gold?”

  He looked skeptical. “Frank never tried that approach?”

  “Sure he did. But all his maps and aerial photos burned with his research.”

  Eric got a far-away look in his eyes as he rubbed the back of his neck and stared over the hood of her truck. “I never thought of that. And I wasn’t aware Frank had, either.”

  Sadie climbed into her truck and looked at Eric, still standing in the open doorway.

  “Come by my store Sunday,” Eric said. “I’ll have a new cell phone for you. And you can pick out a new GPS while you’re at it.” He gave her a stern look. “You pick out a waterproof one, and you wear the damn thing tied around your neck. The budget we’ve allocated for this phase of the project is nearly spent. And until we can raise more funds, or you can find that gold, anything else you lose is coming out of your paycheck.”

  She gave him a salute. “Gotcha. I’ll cherish my new equipment as I would my own child,” she promised, reaching to close her truck door. Eric stopped her by grabbing the handle.

  “Oh, one more thing,” he said. “The Dolan brothers are in town. It seems they’re actively looking for the min
e again. You keep an eye out for them, Quill,” he told her. “You also be sure you stay one step in front of them, not behind them. If they find that gold before we do, our plans for the park will be set back by several years. We’re counting on that gold for funding.”

  That reminder given, he closed the door, walked back to his own truck, and headed back toward town as quickly as he had arrived.

  Sadie was about to start her own truck when the wolf stepped out of the woods right beside her. Only he wasn’t looking at her but in the direction Eric had gone. His hackles were raised on his back.

  Goose bumps lifted on Sadie’s arms. What had Father Daar said? Something about Faol protecting her from strangers?

  Oh, she needed to get out of here. Now.

  But even before Sadie realized what she was doing, she rolled down the window and actually spoke to the wolf. “Thank you, big boy,” she said in a whisper.

  Faol turned his head and looked up, his regal green eyes calm and direct, and whined.

  Sadie gaped at the animal, then shook her head to clear it. She was acting more foolish than the priest, endowing the wolf with human emotions.

  It was definitely time to go home.

  But home had its own host of surprises, not the least of which was a very tall, very naked man standing in her mother’s darkened kitchen. He was peering into the fridge, singing rather loudly and off key as he sorted through its contents.

  Sadie yelped and nearly dropped the cat carrier on the floor. The man’s song turned to a shout, and he spun around as if ready to fight. His eyes wide and his mouth frozen open in shock, he suddenly grabbed one of the kitchen chairs and held it up in front of his waist. The man turned as red as his hair, from his forehead to his feet, as they stared at each other in silence so thick Sadie actually could hear her heart beating.

  “Why did you yell, Callum? Did you drop the milk?” Charlotte Quill asked as she walked into the kitchen.

  Sadie’s jaw dropped. Her mother was dressed in the sexiest, most beautiful nightgown she had ever seen.

  “Mother?” Sadie croaked. She looked back at the man. This was Callum? In her mother’s kitchen? Naked?

  She looked back at her mother, who had stopped dead in her tracks and was blushing to the roots of her blond tousled hair.

  “Oh, dear,” Charlotte whispered.

  It was Callum who broke the triangle of stares. Still holding the chair like a shield to protect what modesty he had left, he sidled over to Charlotte, then backed through the doorway before disappearing into the darkness of the hall. Her mother walked over and closed the refrigerator door, then walked over to Sadie and took the cat carrier out of her hands and set it on the floor. Charlotte leaned up and kissed her still shocked daughter on the cheek.

  “Hi, sweetie. I wasn’t expecting you home tonight.”

  “I see that.”

  “He’s a fine figure of a man, don’t you think?”

  Sadie stared at her mother, then suddenly broke into laughter. She gave her mother a huge hug. “Oh, Mom. Only you would ask your daughter what she thought of your lover’s bod.”

  “Well, you did get a good look, I take it,” Charlotte said into her shoulder, hugging her back.

  “I guess I did.”

  Charlotte pulled away and took Sadie by both hands, absently running her thumb over Sadie’s glove-covered scars. “He’s so embarrassed, sweetie. He’s probably dressing right now and practicing what to say to you when he comes back out here.”

  “Maybe I have something to say to him. Like asking what his intentions are toward you.”

  “I intend to marry your mother, lass,” Callum said from the entrance to the hall.

  He was fully clothed now and no less impressive for being dressed. He had obviously tried to smooth down his hair with his hand but had fallen quite a bit short of taming it. Charlotte let go of Sadie’s hands and crossed the kitchen to stand at Callum’s side.

  “Hush, Callum. Now is not the time.”

  “Not the time, woman?” he asked in a growl, looking down at her with a gleam in his eyes. “Your daughter has just caught us in a compromising position. Her question is fair.”

  He wrapped one arm around Charlotte in an embrace that said he wanted no more interference from her. He looked at Sadie.

  “I’ve asked your mother to marry me, lass, at least once a week for the last two months. But she’s being stubborn about giving me an answer.”

  Sadie lifted her shoulders into a shrug. “Don’t look at me. It took two years of coaxing just to get her to visit me in Boston.”

  “Two years!” he said, looking a bit sick in the face as he glared down at Charlotte. “I’m getting old, woman. I can’t wait two more years.”

  Charlotte patted his shirt, then ducked out from under his arm to move away. “Well, Callum MacKeage, you’re going to have to wait a while longer,” she said, going to the kennel.

  Charlotte’s cat, Kashmir, had silently come into the kitchen and was standing with her nose pressed up against the kennel. As soon as Charlotte freed Ping from her carrier, both cats took off at a run to the nether regions of the house.

  “Well,” Sadie said into the awkward silence. She held out her gloved right hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Callum. I’m surprised we haven’t met before now.”

  Callum took her hand in a warm, gentle embrace. “I’ve wanted you and your mom to have some time alone together,” he told her. “I know you’ve been living away since college.” He looked at Charlotte and smiled. “She’s glad to have you back.”

  “And I’m very glad to be back. I think I’m going to stay this time.”

  Callum looked back at Sadie, the rugged planes of his face softened by the warmth of his smile. “Good. Now, I must be going. You two have a good visit together.”

  “You don’t have to leave,” Sadie quickly assured him. “I can go down to Nadeau’s and have a beer.”

  “Alone?” he asked, looking somewhat scandalized.

  Sadie refrained from laughing out loud, but she couldn’t stop a smile from escaping. “But I won’t be alone once I get there, will I?” she said, holding her mirth in check. She didn’t want to tease her mother’s friend. At least, not until she knew if he had a sense of humor.

  Charlotte groaned and came to Callum’s rescue by physically pushing him toward the door. “I’ll talk to you soon, Cal. Thanks for the…um…lovely visit,” she said, standing on tiptoe and pulling his mouth down to meet hers, giving him a quick kiss on the lips and then pushing him again.

  Only he wouldn’t be hurried. He kissed her a bit more thoroughly and then straightened and smiled at Sadie. “It was nice to finally meet you, lass. I’ll see you again this Saturday evening.”

  That said, he allowed Charlotte to send him out the door. Sadie moved to stand beside her mother, and they both watched Callum walk to the truck parked a short way down the street.

  “What’s happening Saturday night?” Sadie asked.

  Charlotte turned to her, excitement lighting her already beautiful face. “We’re going to double date.”

  “You, Callum, me, and who?”

  “His cousin, Morgan.” Charlotte clapped her hands together. “Oh, I don’t know why I didn’t think of the two of you together before now. Morgan is perfect, Sadie. He’s taller than you. Well, actually, he’s a lot taller than you. And he’s handsome and well mannered, and he seems very interesting to talk to, the few times I’ve met him.”

  “If he’s so perfect, why isn’t he already taken?”

  A worried frown creased Charlotte’s brow. “He’s—ah—Morgan is a bit of a loner, sweetie, from what Callum has told me. He’s building a house someplace in the middle of the woods, and that’s taken up most of his time.”

  “Great. A hermit. You’ve matched me up with a tall hermit this time.” Sadie kissed her now fretting mother on the cheek and then walked to the table and sat down. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll go on a date with you and Callum and Morgan-the-h
ermit,” she assured her once Charlotte had joined her at the table. “Why won’t you marry him?”

  Charlotte looked startled, if not a little confused, by the change of subject. “You wouldn’t mind if I got married again?” she finally asked.

  Sadie leaned back in her chair and stared at her mom for a full minute. “You’ve been holding the man off because of me?”

  “Of course I have.” Charlotte reached out and took hold of Sadie’s hands. “You didn’t just love your father, sweetie, you adored him. I always assumed you would never want anyone to take his place.”

  “Oh, Mom. No man ever will. But that doesn’t mean I expect you to spend the rest of your life alone, as some sort of shrine to Frank Quill. You’re only forty-three years old. You’re not even halfway through your life yet.”

  Charlotte pulled back, fingering the folds of her gown nervously. “It’s been only three years, Sadie. How can I live with a man for twenty-four years, then suddenly expect to move on with a new life so soon, as if he never existed?”

  “Because Daddy is dead, and you’re not. Because nothing says you stop feeling, or wanting, or needing human contact. Because even though you have me, I know that’s not enough. If you love this guy, I say go for it.”

  “I still can’t marry him,” Charlotte said in a barely audible voice, still toying with her gown.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m pregnant,” she whispered, looking up finally, her eyes two stricken circles of worry-washed blue.

  For the third time in thirty minutes, Sadie was rendered speechless.

  “I married Frank when I was sixteen because I was pregnant with you, Sadie. And even though I loved you and Caroline and your father with all my heart and have never regretted a day of my life, I just can’t start another marriage that way.”

  Sadie still couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “Oh, Sadie,” Charlotte cried, burying her face in her hands. “I’m so foolish. How could I let this happen again!”

  Sadie dove from her seat to her knees, wrapping her arms around her mother, hugging her fiercely. “You’re not foolish,” she assured her, lifting her mom’s face and wiping her cheeks. She gave her a warm, affectionate smile. “You just have the damndest luck with men. What is Callum, the second guy you’ve dated in all your life?”