Loving the Highlander

by Janet Chapman

  His kicking feet suddenly touched bottom, and Morgan stood up, brushing the water from his face and wringing it out of his hair. He walked onto the gravel beach but stopped at the sight of Faol standing at the edge of the forest, staring at him.

  “Dammit. Go away,” he said, turning to walk down the beach towards Gràdhag. His horse took several steps back as he approached and began to prance nervously in place. Morgan stopped and looked behind him.

  Faol was matching his steps, ten paces back.

  Morgan pulled his sword from its sheath tied to the saddle and turned to face the wolf. He raised the weapon threateningly. “I want nothing to do with you tonight.”

  Faol lowered his head and dropped something out of his mouth. Morgan lowered the tip his sword and squinted at the ground. “What is that?” he asked, taking a step closer.

  Faol whined, nosing it forward in the dirt.

  Morgan bent down in front of the wolf, set his sword across his knees, and picked up the metallic object. A hot, wet tongue suddenly ran up the side of his face.

  Morgan fell back in surprise.

  “Damned beast,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “You’d better not be seeing if I’ll make a good meal.”

  Morgan reached out and touched the wolf on the side of his face, just below his right ear. Faol nosed the palm of Morgan’s hand, then rumbled a contented growl deep in his chest. He took a step forward and nudged the forgotten object in Morgan’s hand.

  Morgan turned his attention to what looked like the ammunition clip of a hunting rifle. A powerful rifle, judging by the size of the bullets.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked, turning it over in his hand. He looked at the wolf. “Where did you find this?”

  Faol turned and started into the forest but stopped and looked back. Morgan stood up, placed his sword back in its sheath, and pulled clothes down from his saddle. He dressed quickly, tucking Faol’s gift into his pocket, then mounted Gràdhag and turned them into the forest to follow the now running wolf down the narrow, darkening path.

  Faol turned onto a tote road and headed north, deeper into the valley. Morgan followed Faol for several miles along Prospect River, then pulled Gràdhag to a halt when the wolf suddenly left the road and leaped onto the crest of a knoll. Morgan followed on foot, making no sound as he moved through the woods.

  The voices of men carried softly across the stillness of the evening. The wolf abruptly stopped and lay down; Morgan did the same and watched the two men in the camp below.

  “Jesus Christ, Dwayne. A bigger idiot was never born. How in hell can you lose an entire clip full of bullets?”

  “I swear, Harry, I left the clip right here,” the man named Dwayne said in a whine, pointing at the tarp spread out on the ground. “I was cleaning our guns and went to the truck for a polishing rag. But when I tried to put my gun back together, I couldn’t find the clip,” he continued, holding up the gas lantern as he scanned the ground. “It’s got to be here somewhere.”

  The man named Harry also scanned the forest floor, using a flashlight. Morgan looked around the camp the men had erected. It appeared they planned to be in the valley for quite a while. They had boxes of supplies stacked against the outside wall of a large tent, several gas cans, backpacks, and a canoe strapped to the rack of their truck.

  They’d set up camp near the river, just far enough back that anyone coming down the Prospect by boat would not see them.

  Morgan didn’t like this, that these men were here in Mercedes’ valley, looking for all the world like a pair of poachers. Hunting season was not for several more weeks in this area, but there were two high-powered hunting rifles leaning against a tree near the tarp.

  And poachers, in Morgan’s experience—both from eight hundred years ago and from these last six years—were unconscionable men who thought only of themselves and were a danger to anyone who crossed their reckless paths.

  Which Mercedes was bound to do, eventually, if she kept planting her ribbons.

  With a silent sigh, Morgan retreated down the knoll and headed toward Gràdhag, leaving Faol to watch the men. And as he rode through the night, Morgan tried to decide how he could protect Mercedes while trying to protect this valley from her—and not let his wanting to possess her distract him from either duty.

  Chapter Ten

  When it came to the weather, September and March were transition months in Maine, and Sadie had decided long ago that they were also the most interesting. It had to do with the equinoxes, when the sun sat directly over the equator, equalizing the hours of daylight and darkness. It was the turning point of the seasons, the final push of the air masses that moved with the tilt of the earth, producing great battles between the warm airs of the south and the cold airs of the north.

  And September, in Sadie’s estimation, was the greatest time of year to be living in Maine, caught in the middle of those timeless meteorological wars.

  So this morning she packed accordingly and filled her kayaking dry bag with shorts, T-shirts, jeans, and heavy sweaters. She also packed a pair of long johns, a full rain suit, a tent, and enough food for several days.

  She checked her equipment next—GPS, cell phone, new camera, five rolls of film, matches, lighter, knife, water bottles, duct tape, two flashlights, and several lengths of rope. In another dry bag she placed her carefully folded maps and the copy of the diary of Jean Lavoie that Eric had brought her, as well as her own journal of the last ten weeks.

  Finally, satisfied that she had everything, Sadie headed to the cabin door. She was driving to the headwaters of the Prospect, a good eight miles upriver past Fraser Mountain. Then she’d make the eighteen-mile run down the river, in three days if she didn’t dawdle too much.

  And if she were really lucky, she’d talk her mother into driving to the end of the valley to pick her up. If not, well, she’d have a mighty long hike back to her truck.

  Sadie opened the cabin door with her foot and had just stepped onto the porch when she suddenly halted and dropped everything she was carrying. She stared at the note skewered to the nail on the porch post: DON’T GO INTO THE WOODS TODAY.

  Sadie ripped the paper down and glared at the boldly scrawled letters of an obviously masculine hand: DON’T GO INTO THE WOODS TODAY. That was all it said. No name of the writer. No explanation. Only a dictate that she was expected to obey.

  Morgan MacKeage was manhandling her again, from a distance this time. And, as in every minute of their date two nights ago, he was expecting her cooperation.

  Sadie frowned into the forest in front of her cabin. What was this about? The guy just leaves a note and expects her to obey meekly?

  Sadie crumpled the paper in her hand, crushing it with angry force and then throwing it at the woods. Dammit. She was being paid to do a job here. Morgan couldn’t expect her to change her plans simply because he was in the mood to test their friendship. She didn’t care if she still hadn’t found the socks he’d kissed off her feet; she was not playing his game.

  He had plenty of nerve to leave such a note, instead of having the decency to knock on her door and explain his reasoning.

  What to do? What to do?

  If she stayed in camp today, what message would she be sending him? That she was a good, obedient little lass whom he could bend to his will on a whim?

  Yet Morgan didn’t strike Sadie as a man who issued idle orders. Nor was she a woman to ignore a sincerely given suggestion if there was sound reasoning behind it.

  “Dammit, MacKeage!” she hollered, shaking her fist at the woods. “You’re an arrogant jerk!”

  Her echoing outburst unanswered, Sadie let out a frustrated breath and returned to her fallen gear. She picked up the dry bag that had her papers inside and took out Jean Lavoie’s diary and her own journal. Then, still angry at herself for letting six simple words rule her day, Sadie stomped down the steps and strode to a pair of towering maple trees with a hammock strung between them.

  She pretty n
early hung herself getting into the hammock. As it was, she ended up on the ground, creating a cloud of dust that made her cough.

  She had to get a grip here before she did herself bodily harm. Oh, she would stay out of the woods today, but Morgan MacKeage would be getting a rather scorching lecture on friendship—if and when she ever saw him again.

  It amazed Sadie the amount of work she could get done when driven by a healthy dose of anger. She had spent more than three hours lying in the hammock, completely engrossed in Jean Lavoie’s diary, furiously scribbling notes in her own diary that would help her map out Jean’s movements through the valley.

  Now she was giving her old kayak a good waxing and replaying Jean Lavoie’s diary through her mind. This entire valley had been heavily cut in the early 1900s. The logging camp where Jean cooked had slowly migrated upriver with the cutters. There seemed to be three camps at least, maybe four, she’d been able to discern from the diary, erected over a six-year period.

  But all of this had taken place more than eighty years ago. The remains of the camps would be mostly rotted back into the forest by now.

  And Jean Lavoie, for all his attention to detail, was not a very gifted writer, especially considering that the diary was laced with enough French-Canadian words to make the reading downright impossible in places.

  Still, it seemed that Jedediah Plum had visited camp number three during the fourth year of Jean’s stint as camp cook. And camp number three appeared to have been set someplace on the west side of Fraser Mountain, away from the banks of the Prospect River.

  Sadie turned her kayak over on the picnic table and began rubbing wax on the top surface. She needed to find camp number three. That was the last known place Jedediah had been seen alive. And the west side of Fraser Mountain was also the area near which Frank Quill had suspected the gold was located.

  Her daddy’s years of research had only been able to pin the location down to about a two-thousand-acre area, however. And finding a small pool full of placer gold in two thousand acres was like trying to find one particular grain of sand in a desert. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of tiny streams running down off these mountains, and any one of them could be the source of Jedediah’s gold.

  Sadie tossed the wax-covered rag onto the table, picked up a clean rag, and began wiping the kayak with strong, circular strokes. She would travel to the base of Fraser Mountain tomorrow and set up her camp there. She’d search not for Jedediah’s stream, though, but for the site of the third logging camp. If she could find it, then maybe, just maybe, she could also find a clue that would lead her to the gold.

  The sound of a fast-moving truck broke into Sadie’s thoughts, and she looked up to see Eric Hellman arrive in a cloud of dust-laden gravel and pine needles, making a mess of her newly raked yard.

  “It’s Monday,” he said as he jumped out of the truck and strode toward her. “Which means you’re on the clock, Quill. Why aren’t you out looking for Plum’s gold?”

  Sadie set her fists on her hips and glared at her boss. “Because I’m just now deciding where to look. And the question is, Eric, if you thought I was out hunting for gold, what are you doing here now?”

  Her words, and quite possibly her posture, stopped him in mid-stride. “I…er, I brought the aerial photos you asked for,” he said, lifting his empty hands and staring at them. He turned around and returned to his truck.

  “I drove to Augusta this morning,” he said over his shoulder. He opened the truck door, took out a cardboard tube, and walked back to her. “I didn’t want to wait until they mailed them out. After you came by my store yesterday and told me which sections you needed, I decided it was easier simply to drive down this morning.”

  He held the tube out to her. “And here they are. I was going to leave them in your cabin.”

  Feeling a bit foolish for snapping at him, Sadie took the tube and pulled the photos out, unrolling them on top of her kayak.

  “You take good care of these,” Eric said, looking over her shoulder at the photos. “They cost a small fortune.”

  Sadie turned in surprise. “Didn’t you tell them in Augusta that they were for the park? They shouldn’t have charged you a penny.”

  Eric shook his head. “Not a chance, Quill. The consortium is footing the bill until the park is accepted. Then the state will take over the costs. Which is why you need to find Jedediah’s gold, so we’ll have all the funding we need.”

  “The gold might not exist,” she shot back through gritted teeth, not liking what he was implying. “Dammit, Hellman. I was never told the consortium was counting on that gold for funding.”

  “How in hell do you think we intend to buy the land? Do you have any idea what productive timberland goes for?”

  Sadie set her hands back on her hips and narrowed a level gaze on Eric. “Are you saying a group of intelligent businessmen is actually putting up the money for this proposal based on a legend?”

  “Jedediah Plum is not a legend,” Eric countered, getting angry himself. “The man roamed this valley for nearly sixty years. He knew every inch of it. And he did find gold. My great-grandfather saw it himself when the old prospector came into town. Hell, Jedediah bought beers for everyone that entire summer.”

  Eric suddenly sighed and sat down on the picnic table, looking up at her. “And the plans for the park are real, Sadie. It will help this area in countless ways. And we’ll eventually pull together the funding we need to buy the land. But finding Jedediah’s gold will make it happen that much sooner.”

  “But if we find an actual lode? We can’t just walk in and take it if we don’t own the land.”

  Eric grinned. “Even your daddy knew there’s no mine, Sadie. Jedediah was a panner, not a digger. And if you pan for placer gold, you get to keep it. As long as it’s not in the ground but in state waters, it’s finders keepers. And that means we can legally keep the gold to build our park.”

  Eric stood, rolled the photos up, and stuffed them back into the tube, then used the tube to point at her. “So if I were you, lady, I’d use every daylight hour available for hunting. If the Dolan brothers find the gold before us, it’ll be years before we can raise the money we need.”

  “What’s in it for you, Eric?” Sadie asked, remembering Morgan’s accusations two nights ago. “Are you part of this as an environmentalist or a businessman?”

  Eric rolled his eyes. “Get real, Quill. The consortium is made up of businessmen. It’s a win-win situation. We profit from having a beautiful park in our backyard, and the land gets protected.”

  “If I find the gold.”

  “That’s the plan,” he agreed, tapping the tube of photos on her kayak. “So see that you keep ahead of Harry and Dwayne in this little race.”

  “The Dolans have been hunting nearly as long as I have,” she told him. “They’re no closer now than they were three years ago.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Eric said. “How do you think I got the diary?”

  “How?” she asked softly.

  “Harry and Dwayne actually discovered it and were foolish enough to brag about it. I snuck into their house one evening while they were out, made a copy, and returned their original.”

  He nodded in the direction of her hammock, where he could see her stolen copy, then used the tube of photos to point at it. “Just figure out the connection between Jedediah and the cook before they do.”

  But before Sadie could let him know what she thought of his business ethics, a low and ominous growl suddenly came from the woods just off to their right. Eric, a man not at home in the forest, turned in surprise, his eyes widening when he spotted the wolf standing at the edge of the clearing. Eric took a quick step back and to the side, placing first the table and then Sadie between himself and the large set of teeth the wolf was so nicely displaying.

  But Faol wasn’t the reason for the shiver that suddenly ran down Sadie’s spine. No, it was the man standing beside the wolf that made her mouth go dry.

  T
he note writer had returned to the scene of his edict.

  Why wasn’t she surprised that these two green-eyed, wild-looking males knew each other?

  “Who the hell is that?” Eric asked out of the corner of his mouth. “The guy looks meaner than his dog.”

  “That’s Morgan MacKeage,” Sadie told him in a voice that wouldn’t carry across the clearing. “And if you want this park to work, it’s his land on Fraser Mountain that has to be purchased first. Without that acreage, there’s no south access to the valley. And that’s not a dog, Eric,” Sadie added, just to rile him. “That’s a wolf.”

  Eric stiffened and moved another step closer to her. Faol, apparently not liking the direction Eric had taken, stepped forward and growled again, hackles raised in warning.

  “Jesus Christ,” Eric said on an indrawn breath. “Get me to my truck, Quill. Now.”

  More from wanting him gone than from pity, Sadie moved around the picnic table and toward Eric’s truck. Keeping herself between him and her uninvited guests, she tried not to laugh as Eric latched onto her side like a shadow. Together they walked the short distance, and Sadie opened the truck door. Eric quickly climbed in, slammed the door shut, and locked it, then started the engine and rolled up the windows.

  Only then did he turn and glare at her. Sadie smiled back, waggled her fingers in a mock wave, and stepped away just as Eric sent the truck spinning backward, sending another cloud of dust into the air and leaving a groove in the gravel an inch deep.

  Brushing herself off, Sadie turned and headed back to her cabin, completely ignoring her guests. She picked up her dry bag, her pack, and her tent and carried everything to her truck. She opened the back hatch and threw the gear inside, only to turn around and nearly run into Morgan MacKeage.

  “I don’t like your boss,” he said, not moving out of her way.