by Emma Prince
“Family…has a way of finding one another,” he offered.
“You don’t understand. I’ve already failed them once. When our parents died, it was so sudden. They were in a car accident.” Her troubled gaze flicked to him. “Kind of like a horseback riding accident. We had no warning, no way to prepare. I…I wasn’t ready. I didn’t step up when I should have. I let them down, and I can’t do that again. I can’t—”
Her voice broke off on a sob. Without thinking, Callum leaned across the plaid and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her onto his lap.
She buried her face in his tunic, her tears dampening the linen. She felt so small and fragile in his embrace, her shoulders shaking and her breaths coming in stuttering gulps and sobs.
He ran a hand along her spine, murmuring words of comfort and endearment in Gaelic. In all likelihood, she understood him as well as he did when she spoke of car accidents and time travel and making drinks from beans, but he hoped the gist came across.
When she began to quiet, he spoke. “There now, lass. It cannae be as bad as all that.”
“You don’t know what I did.” Her voice was so small that he almost didn’t hear her.
His gaze drifted to the stones, which stood silent and accepting before them. No matter what had troubled him, he always felt as though his burden had been lightened after coming to this place. He wanted to give that same relief to Caroline.
“Tell me,” he murmured. “And I promise no’ to judge whatever ye have to say.”
She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “My parents owned a flower shop. In my time, people pay for cut and arranged flowers to bring to their loved ones.”
He nodded, silently encouraging her to go on.
“I used to work summers there when I was in high school. I think everyone in the family assumed that since I already liked plants, I would take over the shop one day. But then ‘one day’ came too soon, and…and I couldn’t do it.”
Her hands curled in the front of his tunic and he could hear her swallow, clearly fighting to go on. He only held her, wordlessly willing her to draw strength from him.
“My sisters encouraged me to keep the shop open, in memory of our parents and all they’d built with their little business. They needed me to step up—for the family. To keep the shop alive, and our parents’ dreams with it. But I couldn’t.”
“Why no’?” he prodded gently.
She shook her head against his chest. “That place…I didn’t mind it so much before Mom and Dad died, but I’ve never liked cut flowers. They’re beautiful, but they’re already dead. I always preferred to plant things, grow things. But then after the accident—”
Another sob escaped before she managed to calm herself with a few more deep breaths.
“All I saw in the shop after the accident was death. Dead flowers everywhere. Mom and Dad, dead. All their hopes for my sisters and me, for the shop, their dream of visiting Scotland—all gone in the blink of an eye. It was too much. So I bailed. Flaked out. I told Hannah and Allie that I was too busy—being a barista, of all things.”
She made a sound that was half snort of disgust, half moan of frustration.
“The truth was, I was terrified,” she continued. “Terrified to be an orphan at twenty-three. I couldn’t handle it—the responsibility of running the shop, but also the idea of taking over my parents’ dreams and goals. I was afraid I’d wither and die in that shop just like all those cut flowers. So we sold the shop. In two weeks, it was no longer ours, and all the flowers inside had died.”
“From all ye’ve told me, yer parents loved ye verra much,” Callum said. “I cannae believe that they would think ye’d failed them in selling the shop.”
“Not just my parents. My sisters…they didn’t understand. They thought running the shop would be a perfect fit for me, that it would give me structure and purpose. I haven’t exactly been the most focused, high-achieving person—not like Hannah and Allie, who both finished school and got real jobs.”
She gave a sad chuckle at that before continuing. “But more than that, I think they wanted to keep the shop in the family as a way of remembering Mom and Dad. None of us was ready to lose them. And the shop was a connection to them. It would have eased their grief if I had stepped up and taken over the shop. I let them down.”
She lifted her head, fixing him with watery blue eyes. “Which is why I have to get back to them. I didn’t do my part to hold our family together once. I can’t do that again.”
“Ye are a brave one,” he murmured, scanning her tear-streaked features. “But ye neednae be so hard on yerself.”
She opened her mouth to contradict him, but he went on.
“My mother died ten years past—after a long illness that stole her strength and left her a shadow of her former self. And my father departed this world three years ago with no warning. He had a headache one eve and retired for bed, but he never woke again.”
Caroline’s eyes widened and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “I-I’m sorry for your loss,” she murmured, ducking her head against his chest once more. “I didn’t mean to blather on about my problems when—”
“Nay, lass,” he cut in. “That wasnae a criticism of ye. What I meant was, losing a parent is never easy. Whether it is drawn out or sudden, ye cannae ever be ready for such a thing. But that doesnae make ye a bad person. Mayhap ye didnae react as ye would now, but ye were in the throes of grief then.”
He fiddled with a wisp of her dark hair, letting the silky strand slide along his fingers. “I’ve only kenned ye for a short while,” he continued quietly, “but I can say with certainty that ye are a good daughter, and a good sister.”
She raised her head again, and this time her gaze was unguarded.
“Have you ever…feared that you’ve disappointed your family?”
“God, aye,” he breathed. “My father left a hell of a mantle to carry. He was a good father and husband, but most of all, he was a good Laird. He always put our people first. When the time came, he wasnae afraid to lift his blade against our enemies, yet more often he fought for peace, for he kenned that a people cannae thrive if they are always at war. I struggle every day to live up to his legacy.”
Callum raked a hand through his hair before settling it around Caroline’s back once more. Bloody hell. He was coming dangerously close to tossing aside prudence and betraying the memory of his father right now.
Some small, sane voice in the back of his mind screamed that in lingering here alone with Caroline, he was threatening all his father had built, and all he’d continued to work for after becoming Laird. Yet the need roaring through him at Caroline’s nearness drowned out the whisper of rationality.
He didn’t want to think about duty and responsibility at the moment. He didn’t want to think at all. Caroline shifted in his lap, her bottom nestling more fully onto his manhood. Her clear eyes pierced him with a searching look.
The air suddenly felt thick and warm around them. The forest fell away, and he felt as though he was sinking into the pale blue pools of her eyes. She reached up and brushed her fingertips against his lips. He shuddered at the heat that shot through him like lightning—straight to his cock.
“Ever since that day in the garden,” she breathed. “I wondered what this would feel like.”
The last of his control snapped. He closed the distance between them and claimed her mouth with his.
Chapter Thirteen
At the first contact of Callum’s lips, Caroline melted like ice cream.
It was so much better than she’d even let herself dream in her wildest fantasies. His mouth was soft and gentle at first, the barest brushing of lips. But when she sagged against him, he took control, tilting her back in his arms to deepen the kiss.
She opened to him, and with a feral growl, he found her tongue with his. An answering moan rose in her throat at the velvet heat of his mouth. Their tongues tangled in an erotic rhythm that soon had her breathing fast and hard.
/> Raw emotion intertwined with the heat lacing her veins. She’d never opened up to anyone about the tangle of guilt and grief left in the wake of her parents’ death the way she just had with Callum—not even her sisters. He made her feel safe—safe to be imperfect, to lay her heart bare.
And he made her feel wanted.
Beneath her bottom, she could feel the hard length of his cock straining against his trews. He was more than turned on already—and so was she. All the looks and touches they’d exchanged over the course of the day had felt like a long, drawn-out dance that had been leading to this moment.
Yet to her surprise, Callum didn’t immediately start ripping her clothes off. Instead, he kissed her, slow and deep, until every inch of her skin burned beneath her gown and she couldn’t hold still any longer.
She shifted restlessly, rocking against him and sinking her fingers into his shoulders to draw herself impossibly closer. With another groan that sounded half-hungry, half-pained, he clamped his hands on her hips to hold her still.
But one of his hands began to drift upward, straying into the curve of her waist and higher to the swell of her breast. She arched eagerly into his palm, aching for his touch.
When his hand closed over her breast, they both sucked in a hard breath. Her nipples were already pebbled beneath her gown. At the slide of his thumb over the wool, she practically jumped out of her skin.
But he held her together with his strong arms, his mouth fused to hers and his thumb moving in torturously delicious circles against her nipple.
Sensation was building so fast that Caroline’s head spun. A pulse of need thrummed between her legs, insistent, mounting. She squirmed again in his lap, craving so much more. She wanted to feel his bare skin against hers, his mouth on her breasts, his cock driving into her, filling her.
“Touch me,” she panted, breaking their kiss. “God, Callum, please.”
He sucked in a breath, his arms going stiff around her. “Bloody hell.”
His features contorted with frustration, he lifted her from his lap and set her away on the plaid.
He might as well have dumped a bucket of ice water over her head. What the hell?
“What are you doing?”
“Stopping this before I cannae anymore.”
She stared at him in confusion, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “But why?”
“Honor demands it.”
As the haze of lust began to retreat from her mind, his words sank in. A realization clicked into place. This was 1394. People killed and died over honor and virtue—and a woman’s virginity.
Caroline let out a shaky breath, relief washing her. “Um, you don’t have to worry about my honor, Callum. Things are different in my time. Women have a lot more freedoms. So we can keep going without doing any damage to my reputation.”
He leveled her with liquid gold eyes that burned with feral hunger. Wolf’s eyes. “Dinnae,” he practically growled. “Dinnae say things like that, else I’ll forget myself again.”
“But I’m not a—”
Callum jerked to his feet, giving her his back as he stomped several paces away. He put a hand out to lean against a tree trunk, and his fingers curled into the bark like claws for a long moment. At last, he seemed to regain control of himself, though his breathing was still ragged when he turned back to her.
“It isnae just yer honor I must mind,” he said, his voice low and tight. “My duty cannae stray from my clan.”
Her brows knit. “What do your responsibilities as Laird have to do with this?”
Muttering something that sounded like a curse, he dragged a hand through his dark hair.
“Forgive me,” he said at last, meeting her eyes.
“I told you before, there’s nothing to forgive. If you couldn’t tell, I wanted that.” She waved at the plaid where he’d been embracing her a moment before.
A muscle in his jaw began to dance. “It willnae happen again.”
She rose to her feet, planting her hands on her hips. Who knew medieval Highlanders could play mind games with the best of them? “Fine, but I don’t understand. I’m not asking for anything from you. This isn’t a trap or a ploy. I want you. I thought you wanted me, too.” She dragged in a fortifying breath. She couldn’t forget her true aim. “I only wanted to see what this could be—until I find a way home, that is.”
He seemed to latch on to her last words. “Since ye plan on leaving so soon, it is best no’ to muddle things between us. I made ye a promise to keep ye safe until—”
“Until I prove to you that I’m from the future,” she cut in.
“Aye, until that time,” he said through gritted teeth. “And then I’ll take ye to Leannan Falls myself.”
“But you said you believe you’re just as likely to see pigs fly as accept what I’ve told you about King James’s birth. So which is it? Are you pushing me away because you actually believe I’ll be gone soon? Or do you think I’m just some crazy loon who’ll be stuck at your castle forever?”
“I dinnae ken,” he rasped. “I dinnae ken aught—what to think of ye, what to do with ye, and what to make of my feelings for ye.”
Oh. She stood in stunned silence, staring at him.
“Only a fool would try to deny what lies between us,” he said, his voice low and soft now. “I have never been drawn to a woman the way I am drawn to ye, Caroline. And that kiss—”
He cut off with a noise that sounded like a strangled curse. “But aught surrounding us is a damned hornets’ nest. Ye say ye dinnae belong here, that ye must leave to find yer sisters. But this is my home. My people are counting on me to bring peace, to do what is necessary for the betterment of the clan.”
A shadow crossed his face, and he worked his jaw for a long moment. Fleetingly, she wondered if more lay beneath his words than she knew, but he went on before she could contemplate that possibility further.
“I dinnae ken what could grow between us if circumstances were different, but they arenae. And when it comes to kissing ye, touching ye…” He sucked in a ragged breath. “I dinnae trust myself to be able to stop. This could never be just a dalliance, Caroline, or naught more than a trifle. I would always want more. So it is better to halt things now before I cannae halt them anymore.”
Caroline swallowed hard. Her stomach swirled with a maelstrom of emotion. He felt it too—the undeniable pull between them, the desire burning hot, the longing for so much more.
And the knowledge that nothing could ever come of this. Not if she had even a sliver of hope to return to her sisters and her own time.
Fresh tears pricked at the back of her eyes, but she blinked them away fiercely.
She didn’t want to cry anymore, but what kind of cruel trick was fate playing on her? Why had she been thrown into this time and place, right into Callum’s path, only to learn that whatever crazy connection drew them together could never grow into more?
She wanted to scream in frustration, to say to hell with everything, to go to Callum and lose herself in his arms, his hands, his lips again. But doing so would mean throwing away her hope of finding her sisters.
No, she wouldn’t turn her back on her family ever again. Even if that meant forsaking her budding feelings for Callum. Relinquishing a place in his life, his home, his time. His heart.
“You’re right,” she said at last, the words barely making it through the tightness in her throat. “It would be best if we put a stop to this before it turns into something that could…distract us from our responsibilities.”
He nodded, then moved past her to clear away their little picnic in silence. She stood gazing at the two rings of standing stones while he readied the horse for their departure.
Callum had said the stones always helped him sort through a problem. In a way, they’d worked. Caroline knew what she needed to do—set aside her feelings and stay focused on finding her family. Simple.
But as they rode back toward the castle, chasing the last rays of sunlight, she couldn’t help
wondering—if things were really so simple, why did it feel like her heart was being torn in two?
* * * *
Eagan stood on the battlements, squinting into the rapidly falling dusk.
The Laird should have been back to the castle well before now. Bron and the others had ridden through the gates hours ago, reassuring Eagan that the Laird was taking Caroline Sutton to the standing stones and had specifically instructed them to return without him.
But Callum had said they would be back before the evening meal, which had already come and gone. With night drawing closer, Eagan feared something had gone terribly wrong. Mayhap the Laird’s horse had been lamed. Or mayhap a band of audacious MacBeans had strayed well past the border.
Or mayhap that woman had gotten up to something.
Eagan resisted the urge to spit in disgust over the edge of the curtain wall. He was the seneschal to the Lairds of Kinmuir Castle, not some crude farmer or mercenary.
Still, it did not take a seneschal’s sharp attention and knowledge of all that went on in his keep to see what was happening.
Caroline Sutton was casting some sort of spell over all those in the castle—and most especially the Laird.
Whether it was true black magic or merely a fascination with her odd ways and the allure of her feminine wiles, Eagan didn’t care. It wasn’t his place to know the difference—only to protect the castle, his Laird, and his clan.
And the lass was threatening all three.
The Laird was clearly taken with her. Eagan had seen them nigh kissing in the garden a sennight past, and watched from the keep as the Laird had ridden off with the lass in his lap that morn.
If Callum continued to forget his place, his responsibility, the whole clan would suffer. Their alliance with the MacConnells would fall through, and the peace Callum’s father Duncan had fought so tirelessly for would be squandered.
And if the MacBeans were truly bold enough, they would break not only their border, but might even try to claim Kinmuir as well. Though MacMorans had held this castle for several generations, one weak link in the chain could destroy all that. That was the way of things in the Highlands. Any sign of vulnerability, and the wolves descended.