Charmed by His Love

by Janet Chapman

  “And for the buckets of your blood that he spilled, what did Mac get?”

  Duncan lost his grin. “He gets me keeping an eye on a widow and her four little heathens for the next two months.”

  “Then you got the best of him after all. You actually like little heathens, and I’ve yet to meet a woman who didn’t fall all over herself trying to get your attention.”

  “Oh, Peg Thompson got my attention, all right.” Duncan ran a finger over the claw marks on his neck. “These are from her, not Mac. And yesterday, after nearly running me down with her minivan, I went to her house and thought she was shooting at me only to walk up on a deer that she’d nailed right between the eyes.”

  Alec folded his arms with a grin. “Does that mean my summer job comes with hazard pay?” His expression suddenly perked up. “No, never mind; I’ll settle for fringe benefits. How about if I keep an eye on the obviously discerning widow, since she doesn’t seem all that enamored with you? Is she as pretty as she is lethal?”

  Duncan sprang to his feet before he remembered it was going to hurt, his snarl all the more threatening for his pain. “I even catch you talking to Peg and you’re going to find yourself limping all the way back to TarStone Mountain.”

  Alec lifted his hands in supplication—although he was still grinning. “A tad protective, aren’t you, considering ye don’t seem all that enamored with the widow Thompson yourself.”

  “And pass the word along to the crew; the woman is off-limits.”

  “Including you?”

  “Especially me,” Duncan hissed as he bent down to swipe his pants off the floor. “Unhook the bulldozer you brought and hook your wheeler up to the excavator,” he said, carefully slipping into his pants. Christ, he hurt. And the worst part was that he’d agreed to meet Mac up on the mountain for another round tomorrow. “Did you happen to notice any lights on in the dining hall?” he asked as Alec headed for the door. “It’s the building behind this one.”

  “Sorry, all its windows are dark.”

  Duncan slid on his shirt, gritting his teeth against the pain. Damn, either he’d gotten out of shape over the winter or skiing required completely different muscles than sword fighting. “Wait. You got any coffee left in your thermos?”

  “Not enough to cure what’s ailing you this morning. I do believe I packed a fifth of liquid gold in my duffel bag, though.”

  Duncan waved him away with a snort. “Sure, why not? A shot of Scotch sure as hell can’t hurt. Warm my truck up while you’re at it, would you?”

  “Anything else? Ye want me to crush some aspirin to put in the Scotch, or dab ointment on your boo-boos, or give you a massage … Boss?”

  Duncan stopped looking for his boots and picked up the sword, then took a threatening step toward him. “It’s not getting any colder outside, and I’m not so sore that I can’t still outrun you.”

  “Hell, if I’d wanted this kind of abuse I’d have stayed in my nice, warm, occupied bed,” Alec said with a chuckle, heading outside.

  Duncan closed his eyes on a curse, feeling a really long day coming on.

  And if he’d had any idea how true that was going to be he would have crawled right back in bed, because damn if they didn’t pass Peg’s tired old minivan half an hour later sitting on the side of the road with its hood up about two miles from her house.

  “Keep going,” Duncan said into his radio mike when the trailer brake lights came on ahead of him. “But keep an eye out for a woman and four kids walking.”

  “Our merry widow?” Alec responded way too cheerily.

  “If they haven’t made it home yet, I’m putting her in the excavator and the little heathens in the truck with you.”

  “Since when are you afraid of women?” Alec returned, the radio doing nothing to disguise his laughter.

  “Since I saw this particular woman shoot a deer right between its eyes,” Duncan said, a bit startled to hear the laughter in his own voice. Although it might only be the three aspirin and healthy swig of Scotch making him smile. Damn, he had a thing for stubborn, too-proud women—which usually meant trouble for any stubborn, too-proud man foolish enough to find himself attracted to one of them.

  “There they are,” Alec said, just as the trailer brake lights came on again.

  Duncan keyed the mike. “Swing past them and stop. But stay in the lane,” he added. “The road shoulders are still soft.”

  “Whoa, maybe I will risk limping back to TarStone.”

  “Alec,” Duncan hissed in warning as the excavator slid into the oncoming lane, allowing his own headlights to land on Peg and her four children standing out of the way clear across the ditch.

  “I’m just saying,” Alec continued as he pulled back into his lane and came to a stop. “I don’t have a problem with deer-shooting women.”

  Duncan tossed down his mike and got out of his truck, watching Peg help one of the twins back across the ditch before gathering all four children around her.

  “Do you know what’s wrong with the van?” he asked, stopping two paces away when one of the boys scooted behind her.

  “It might be the alternator.” She lifted a hand to her eyes against the glare of his headlights and he heard her sigh. “Or it could only be out of gas, because I think the fuel gauge might have quit working last week.”

  “Peg, this is my nephew, Alec MacKeage,” he said when Alec walked back to them. “He’s going to be helping me build Mac’s road this summer.”

  “My pleasure, Peg,” Alec said with a smile. He squatted down. “And who are you?” he asked, extending his hand to the twin Duncan assumed was not Jacob, since he wasn’t the one hiding behind his mother.

  “I’m Pete,” the boy said, lisping through a missing front tooth as he shook Alec’s hand. He gestured over his shoulder. “And that’s my brother, Repeat, and Charlotte and Isabel. Will you give me a ride in your evascator?”

  “Well, Pete, I do believe the boss won’t let anyone near the equipment unless they’re at least twenty-five years old,” Alec said, standing up and ruffling Pete’s hair. “Heck, he only let me start driving it last year, and I’m thirty!”

  Pete shot Duncan the evil eye, then looked up at his mom. “We could ride the school bus to town and still go to the Drunken Moose for cimminin buns. And we’ll bring a jug with us for some gas. Repeat and I can take turns carrying it back to the van.”

  “How about if Alec and I take you home,” Duncan offered, giving the kid a warm smile, “and once we get the van running, your mom can take you to the Drunken Moose for cinnamon buns? How does that sound, Pete?”

  All he got for answer was another evil eye—which ended abruptly when Peg gave the boy a nudge. “Um … if you’re headed our way, we’d appreciate that ride,” she told Duncan. “But you don’t have to deal with my van. I have gas at home.”

  “And if it’s the alternator?”

  “I can have my brother-in-law, Galen, tow it home.”

  “He owns a tow truck?”

  She blinked at him, then began herding her children toward his pickup. “No, he owns a rope,” she said over her shoulder way too cheerily.

  Alec gave a quiet chuckle, slapping Duncan on the back. “Oh man, are you in dark blue–eyed, sassy-mouthed trouble.”

  “Turn right about a mile and a half up the road,” Duncan told him as he limped toward his pickup, only to break into a painful jog when he remembered there was a sword lying on the backseat. “Wait up,” he said across the hood on his way by. “I need to make room for everyone.”

  Peg left her girls and one of the boys standing on the passenger side and walked around the front with the other boy in tow. Duncan opened the rear door and grabbed the sword, and had started to slide it behind the backseat when the opposite door opened and the older girl stumbled back with a gasp just as a shout of excitement came from beside her.

  “That’s a sword!” the boy—he was pretty sure it was Pete—cried. “Is it real? How come you got it?”

  D
uncan closed his eyes on a silent curse and backed out of the truck holding the sword, causing the twin holding Peg’s hand to scurry behind her again. Oh yeah, it was already a long day, and the sun was only just now peeking over the horizon.

  “I have it because every summer my family goes to something called the highland games down on the coast and we …” He smiled through the truck at the boy, feeling the back of his neck heat up. “Well, we all spend the weekend pretending we’re highlanders living centuries ago.” He slid the sword behind the seat, then grabbed his duffel bag and straightened. Smiling again to cover his grimace when his muscles protested, he tossed the bag in the cargo bed—only to jump back when he turned and nearly bumped into Peg, who was gaping at him in the rising sun.

  “What?” he asked, looking down at himself. He touched his cheekbone when he remembered his bruise. “This? Oh, I … um, I fell when I was hiking the mountain with Mac yesterday.”

  “Peter, get out of the truck,” Peg said, backing away. She gestured for her daughters to do the same. “Charlotte, take Peter’s hand and start walking home,” she instructed. “Here, Isabel, you take Jacob.”

  “Wait,” Duncan said, grabbing her sleeve. “I’m going to give you a ride.”

  She checked to make sure her children were out of earshot, then turned on him, her nose wrinkling as she pulled out of his grip. “Thank you, but I have no intention of putting my children in a truck being driven by someone who smells like a distillery.”

  “What? Hey, I’m not drunk.”

  “No, you’re obviously hungover.”

  “I fell.”

  “Because you were drunk.”

  “No, I wasn’t. I just … fell.” He blew out a sigh—which made her wrinkle her nose again and start walking backward. “Okay, look, I’ll admit that I had a small swig of Scotch this morning, but only one sip just to make my muscles stop screaming.” Too bad it wasn’t doing a damn thing for his pounding head at the moment. Duncan looked up the road to see Alec’s taillights disappearing around a curve, then looked back at Peg, who was halfway to her children. “Dammit, quit walking away from me.” He opened his driver’s door. “Okay, then, you drive.”

  She stopped and turned to him. “Only if you ride in the cargo bed.”

  “What!”

  “That’s the only way I’m putting my kids in your truck.”

  Christ, she was contrary. “God dammit,” he growled under his breath, turning and limping to the rear of the truck. “I didn’t do one damn thing to deserve this. Not one goddamned thing,” he muttered, hoisting himself onto the bumper and practically falling over the tailgate into the cargo bed.

  “Come on, guys, we’re riding,” Peg called out, running to the driver’s door with her children scrambling after her.

  Duncan settled against his duffel bag and turned up the collar on his jacket, grinning tightly at the little heathen kneeling on the backseat giving him the evil eye. Forget the long day; it was going to be a damn long two months.

  Chapter Six

  Peg sat at the picnic table the boys had helped her drag down next to the beach and watched them alternating between using sticks to fling seaweed back into the water and stopping to watch the equipment working on the hillside across their … new cove. She in turn was alternating between keeping an eye on them and studying her copy of the agreement she had just signed with MacKeage Construction.

  It was all happening so fast, it didn’t seem real. Yesterday she’d been desperate enough to shoot a deer out of season, and today she was on the verge of being able to buy the rest of the materials to finish her house and also upgrade to a newer used van. And she would still have enough money left over to finally stop feeling like she was one second away from … prostitution, she thought with a grimace.

  Of all the crazy things to have said! When she’d climbed into her lonely bed last night, Peg hadn’t been able to stop remembering the look on Duncan’s face when she’d mixed up destitution and prostitution. His jaw may have gone slack, but she hadn’t missed the unholy gleam in his sharp green eyes that had immediately followed. She’d spent all night being hot and bothered by that gleam, and it had been all she could do to face him this morning without blushing to high heaven. That is, until she’d gotten a good look at his face and smelled his breath.

  Peg lifted her gaze to the excavator digging another test hole and saw Duncan standing off to the side talking to the logger he’d contracted. Oh, she hoped there was gravel up there, because if there was, then a good many of her troubles would be over. But if that horseback continued running west, all of those big fat checks would be going to her neighbors every Friday afternoon—assuming the Dearborn brothers were willing to give up growing pot on their land to sell the gravel beneath it.

  She’d had a couple of go-rounds with the two old coots who’d bought the rickety old shack a quarter mile up the road last spring. They’d started out neighborly enough, but not five months after they’d moved in, Evan and Carl had knocked on her door and accused Peg of sneaking over and stealing buds off their maturing plants—which had made her laugh so hard when they’d left that tears had streamed down her cheeks. But she sure as hell hadn’t been laughing a week later when she’d discovered the two idiots had set booby traps all through the woods around their illegal crop.

  Afraid the twins would get maimed—because what did little boys know about property lines when they were stalking squirrels with imaginary guns?—Peg had waited until she saw the brothers go into town one morning and had marched over and smashed their traps to smithereens. Then she’d cut down one of their pot plants and left it wilting on their doorstep, along with a note saying that she’d turn them in if they didn’t start growing their crop away from her property line.

  Surprisingly, they’d both come over that evening and apologized. They certainly hadn’t meant to endanger her children, they’d assured her, but had only wanted to catch whoever had been raiding their … garden. Then, after saying they admired her spunk at how she’d gone about getting her point across, the older brother, Evan, had asked her out to dinner at the Drunken Moose. Only problem was, besides missing more teeth than he had left and smelling like a skunk and desperately needing a haircut, Evan was old enough to be her grandfather.

  Peg had politely turned him down and waited until they’d reached the woods before she’d shuddered all over, then started laughing so hard that she’d cried again.

  “Mom! Did you see that?” Jacob shouted, pointing at the hillside. “They just cut down a big tree and I felt the ground shake when it landed. Did you feel it, too?”

  “I’m pretty sure I felt something,” she called back, returning his huge smile only to frown up at the woods the moment he turned away to watch again.

  What were they doing cutting trees already? Good Lord, not ten minutes after Duncan and Alec had started digging holes this morning, a virtual convoy of three tractor-trailer log carriers, several different styles of tree harvesters, a pulp loader, and who knew what else had arrived, and were now lining the road in both directions of her house. She’d assumed they were here to clear the timber off the road Duncan was building up the mountain, which is why she’d been surprised when one of the harvesters had been driven around her old pit and up onto the hillside.

  Peter and Jacob had been so excited by all the activity and huge machinery, Peg had promised to sit outside with them to watch, if they in turn promised to stay on the beach and at least try to keep their sneakers dry. They’d both nodded vigorously at the double joys of not only watching big machinery working but also beachcombing for the jellyfish and crabs and snails that were now calling their flooded gravel pit home. For the love of God, the air actually smelled salty.

  Peg frowned again when she saw another large pine tree topple to the ground, wondering if Duncan wasn’t getting ahead of himself. After he’d introduced the owner of the logging convoy as his cousin Robbie MacBain, also of Pine Creek, Peg had asked Duncan why he was cutting trees before he
even knew what was under them. He’d suddenly gotten one of those unholy gleams in his eyes and said that if she was willing to drop her price to one seventy-five a yard, he’d pay her even if all he found was sand. And, he’d added, that gleam intensifying, he would also have his crew finish her house.

  Knowing he somehow knew there was gravel on that hillside, Peg had smiled sweetly despite being aware of Mr. MacBain’s amused interest and told Duncan that if he cut all her trees and didn’t find any gravel—at two twenty-five a yard—then he was replanting every last one of them and finishing her house.

  Peg looked down at the purchase agreement again and pulled in a shuddering breath at the realization that she was holding the answer to her prayers. Too bad the angel who’d brought it was an overconfident, drop-dead handsome giant with broad shoulders all but begging a tired, lonely widow to lean on them.

  Duncan was also a study of contradictions. For all of his gruffness—as well as his habit of cussing under his breath—there appeared to be a true gentleman lurking behind those rugged good looks. Because honestly? She didn’t know any man who wouldn’t have defended himself when she and her children had attacked him. Then, after nearly running him down with her van, Duncan had helped her butcher an illegal deer. And this morning he’d loaned her his truck to take the kids to the Drunken Moose as she’d originally planned, and even to drive Charlotte and Isabel to school in Turtleback Station—which was seventy miles round trip—because they’d missed the bus.

  And if that weren’t enough proof there was a good man inside the battered, Scotch-sipping grouch, Peg had returned home to find her van parked in her dooryard, making her doubly glad that she’d brought back a half-dozen cinnamon buns for him and Alec as thanks, which both men had wolfed down without even tasting.

  “Uncle Galen’s here!” Peter shouted, running up the beach brandishing a stick full of seaweed, Jacob in hot pursuit.