Charmed by His Love

by Janet Chapman

  When in hell had that happened? He’d met Peg and her tribe only a little over a week ago—by being attacked by them, no less—yet he’d felt almost naked the two days he’d gone back to Pine Creek. He gave a derisive snort, realizing he was literally naked right now and missing the hell out of them again. As for Peg, he—

  Duncan turned to stone at the realization he was being watched.

  Making sure not to make eye contact with the blond body of fur creeping along the perimeter of the clearing, he slowly sat up and reached for the skewered trout, smiling when he saw the pup freeze in place. He laid all four fish on a flat rock and used his knife to peel back the sizzling skin on one of them, then flicked the blade to send the skin flying into the woods in the general direction of his visitor. Using the knife and his fingers, Duncan began eating the succulent trout, making soft slurping noises as he watched the pup slowly creeping through the shadows as quiet as a church mouse.

  He continued eating, again making slurping sounds interspersed with hums of pleasure. The pup crept out of the shadows on its belly, then reached out a dog-sized paw, snagged the skin and pulled it back, snatched it in its mouth, and darted back into the shadows. Duncan used his knife to peel another trout and flicked the skin a little farther out into the clearing. “I don’t mind sharing my dinner with a fellow traveler,” he said conversationally, keeping his tone light, “and my campfire. I believe it’s going to turn chilly tonight by the looks of that moon.”

  The pup came creeping back, taking two steps into the clearing then hesitating before taking another cautious step, which allowed Duncan to finally get a good look at what appeared to be a male dog. “Delicious, isn’t it?” he said when the pup scoffed up the skin and swallowed it in one gulp. Only this time, instead of slinking back into the trees, the brave and obviously hungry mutt turned to face Duncan, its head canted expectantly as it wagged its tail ever so slightly. “Would ye care for a little flesh along with the skin this time?” He slipped his knife deeper into the next fish to leave a good deal of the meat attached, and tossed it between him and the pup.

  The dog pounced on the prize without hesitation, and once again swallowed it in one gulp. It stepped closer, its gaze darting from Duncan to the fish to the knife in Duncan’s hand, then back to him. Then another step, its thick yellow tail wagging a bit more robustly as its pink tongue made a swipe around its mouth and over its nose.

  “It looks like I’m going to have to throw a line in the water again,” Duncan said with a chuckle. He used his fingers to pull off a large piece of meat, then held his hand toward the pup. “Come on, fella. Come eat your fill.”

  The pup sat down and ducked its head with a soft whine, its tail thumping the moss like a drumming partridge as it trembled with indecision.

  “Be a brave lad and come to me,” Duncan crooned. “Come on, now.”

  The young dog slowly slinked closer, crouching submissively with its tail tucked between its legs, until its nose was only inches from Duncan’s hand. Duncan stretched the rest of the way and turned his hand palm up so it could get the food.

  Again the fish was gone in one gulp, and the pup started licking Duncan’s fingers with such delicate care that he chuckled again. “That’s a good boy. Come on and have some more,” he said, reaching for another fish. “So, do ye live around here or are ye just passing through?” he asked as he ran his knife along the backbone and peeled away the entire side of the trout. “Because I was wondering if ye happened to know of any special areas.” He handed the dog the large filet, which required three gulps to get down this time. “Like a cave maybe, or a grotto, or an unusually large tree. Anyplace ye might have felt an unusual amount of energy.”

  The pup’s tail thumped as it canted its head to listen, even as its large brown eyes remained trained on the fish on the rock.

  “All right,” Duncan said with a chuckle. “I know it’s hard to focus when your belly’s rumbling and there’s food around.” He started cleaning all the meat off the bones only to watch it disappear down the pup’s throat as fast as he could hand it over. “I have the same problem when a pan of apple crisp is in the vicinity. Sorry, pal, but that’s the last of it,” he said, holding his empty hands out—which the pup immediately started licking. Once it had licked off all but Duncan’s fingerprints, the young dog stepped back to eye him. It then ducked its head and slinked up onto the edge of the jacket, flopped down against his side, and rested its chin on Duncan’s thigh with a doggy sigh. And just like that, with only a brace of trout and a warm body to lean on, Duncan realized he and the pup had just formed a bond that God himself wouldn’t be able to break.

  And when he found himself wondering what he’d done to deserve this, this time he decided it must have been one hell of a good deed.

  Duncan felt his foothold giving way and made a desperate lunge for the other side of the gaping hole he was trying to cross, but only managed to slam into the ledge with enough force to bounce him into nothing but heated air rising up from only God knew how far below. His muttered curse ended in a grunt of surprise when he landed a hell of a lot sooner than he’d expected, the sharp pain jerking him awake with another shouted curse.

  The pup pushed off his side with a startled yelp, making Duncan protectively grab his ribs as he opened his eyes and immediately closed them against the bright sunshine pouring into the clearing. Shaking and sweating and breathing heavily, he replayed the terror of his dream—which felt so real that every muscle in his body started screaming at just the thought of moving.

  Christ, he hurt. He slowly cracked open his eyes again and looked around until he saw the pup standing a few feet away, staring at him in concern. He slowly reached out a hand only to turn it back toward himself when he realized it was covered with bloody scrapes. And then he noticed it also happened to be sticking out of his shirtsleeve; the only problem was he couldn’t remember getting dressed last night.

  The pup came slinking over with its tail wagging hard enough to move its entire rear end and flopped down to rest its head on his belly—only to jump away again when Duncan bolted upright at the realization the sun was at least two hours high in the sky.

  “Damn, I’m late,” he groaned more than growled, wrapping his arms around his protesting ribs. “I have an entire crew in place to start hauling gravel today,” he told the pup, forcing his voice to soften. He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. “It’s okay, though, Dalton knows what—” He stopped in midrub and ran his fingers over the length of stubble covering his jaw. “Son of a bitch!” he snarled, dropping his hands away to look down at himself. His pants and shirt were filthy and definitely looked like he’d been living in them for at least four or five days, and his new boots looked like he’d nearly worn off the treads, the uppers scuffed and cut in places and stained with mud.

  He flopped backward with a groan and closed his eyes as he recalled the dream he’d actually lived through, apparently. He remembered hiking up and down and across the mountain with the pup like a man possessed, searching for something he hoped he’d recognize when he found it; making camp every evening wherever they happened to be, and eating whatever he could hunt or catch.

  Duncan’s breath hitched when he remembered finding the cave three-quarters of the way up the mountain facing the fiord, and how he’d followed the pup when it had run inside as if it had been there before. It had been tight going for the first ten yards before the cave had opened large enough that he could stand, and the first thing Duncan had noticed was that the air had been unusually warm. The second thing being that the walls were glowing, emitting enough light for him to see the tunnel continued at a downward incline farther into the heart of the mountain.

  He’d also noticed that the snoring had been more pronounced.

  He’d let the pup lead him deeper into the cave, and estimated they were a good quarter mile inside the mountain when the floor had simply stopped. Duncan had tried to look down what appeared to be a chasm, but hadn’t been able to te
ll how deep it was because its walls weren’t glowing. However, there had been a noticeably hot column of air whooshing out of it and then suddenly sucking back in, sort of like … breathing. He could see the glowing tunnel continued on past the thirty-foot-wide chasm and opted for the route he could see—assuming he could get past the hole. Hence the fall that had awakened him from his dream that had really happened.

  He remembered how lying at the bottom looking up had allowed him to see the hole was about twenty feet deep. He had then tried to figure out if any bones were broken that would force him to lie there until he rotted, or if he was going to be able to escape a hole he suspected had been carved out of sheer contrariness.

  Although he didn’t know how someone with less broad shoulders and smaller hands would have helped him out of this particular predicament, he supposed Peg could have at least thrown him a rope if he’d brought her along—whereas the pup had only stared over the edge and whined, dropping an occasional bit of drool on him. Thanks to his never-say-die DNA, it had taken him nearly half a day by his estimation to find the combination of foot- and handholds to climb out, and most of the night to limp back to his original campsite at the pool.

  Duncan scratched the thick stubble on his jaw as he stared up at the crystalline blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds shaped like whales. If he believed the length of his beard, he’d been on his mountain at least five days. “So is there a reason the sky’s not filled with search helicopters?” he growled. “I’ve been missing for five goddamned days. Or are ye all forgetting that I sign your paychecks?”

  Hell, Peg could have at least been worried enough to send someone looking for him. And what was up with Alec and Robbie? He’d told them he intended to explore his mountain Sunday night. Granted, Robbie had gone home to his wife and own little heathens Sunday morning and wasn’t due back until Tuesday, but this was goddamned Friday, so where in hell was everyone?

  Duncan used his righteous indignation to propel himself upright again, then set his elbows on his bent knees to hold his head in his hands. He was going to have to stop growling at people, he supposed, so they wouldn’t all be celebrating the fact the boss had gone AWOL.

  “Peg could at least be missing me,” he repeated out loud this time, rolling onto his hands and knees. He slowly stood up, then had to grab a nearby tree to keep from falling flat on his face before he finally felt steady enough to limp to the pool and gingerly sit down. He wrapped an arm around the pup when it came over and had to lean away when it tried to lick his face.

  “Hey, you’re fattening up,” he said, running his fingers over its ribs. “Apparently I’ve managed to put some flesh back on your bones this week.” He hugged the dog to him. “You’d rally the troops if I went missing, wouldn’t you, because we’re buddies now.” He snorted. “And I feed you.”

  He nudged the dog away and rolled onto his side to dunk his head in the water, then rubbed his face with his hands. Slowly beginning to feel human again and really not wanting to rot here, Duncan stood up and looked around. “I guess we walk down to the shoreline and hope the scientists are more interested in studying the fiord than the main body of Bottomless,” he told the dog as he started following the stream from where it spilled out of the pool.

  Inglenook was on the opposite shore of Bottomless, but Peg’s gravel pit was only about two miles up the fiord. “It’s at least a mile across if we mosey down the shore in that direction,” he told his faithful traveling companion—the one that hadn’t abandoned him and had whined encouragement the entire time he’d crawled out of that hole. “But we’d have to swim across whale-infested waters to get there.”

  Or maybe he could signal whoever was on Peg’s hillside clearing the top off the new pit. It sure beat the hell out of walking the entire way around the fiord. His decision made, Duncan started hiking diagonally toward where he’d come ashore five goddamned nights ago, only to have to stop and cut himself a walking stick when his right knee kept threatening to give out.

  Oh yeah, he must have really pissed off the magic at some time; probably when he’d been a full-of-himself teenager more interested in nailing every ski bunny that came to the resort instead of buckling down to learn the business he was due to take over with the other first-generation MacKeage males. He finally reached the place where he’d come ashore and stood staring across the waterway at the opposite side and snorted. He wouldn’t be taking over anything anytime soon, since Laird Greylen, Grey’s brother, Morgan—who was Alec and Ian’s father—and his own father, Callum, showed no signs of slowing down even though Callum was in his eighties, Grey in his midseventies, and Morgan was turning sixty-nine later this year.

  But then, the MacKeage men were charmed, apparently, according to their new resident wizard’s bride, Miss Talks-a-lot. He couldn’t believe the woman had actually told Peg he was old-fashioned.

  Christ, he just wanted to fall into a soft bed and stay there until his body quit screaming. And then he was firing his entire crew for not coming to look for—

  The pup started barking excitedly, snapping Duncan out of his black mood at the thought it had spotted something. He started down to what was left of the beach only to have his knee finally explode in pain, the rest of his descent made in a tumbling roll that finally ended when he slammed into an unmovable metal object.

  A boat. His goddamned boat! It was sitting high and dry on a gravel bar the low tide had exposed, and when he stretched to look over the gunwale he saw his backpack and sword sitting on the floor right where he’d left them. He leaned back with a groaned sigh and didn’t even try to stop the pup from licking his face. What were the chances of his boat drifting back to the exact same spot? He snorted. More likely it had been pushed here by a diabolical whale with a warped sense of humor.

  “We’re okay now,” he murmured, finally nudging the pup away. “I’ll have ye back in civilization in an hour. I’m buying you a fifty-pound bag of dog food and then I’m taking you to meet a tribe of little heathens you’re instantly going to fall in love with.” He grabbed the dog’s snout to look him in the eye. “Ye can have the children, but I don’t want ye making puppy-dog eyes at the lady, understand? If she’s going to be fawning over anyone, it’s going to be me. And she owes me an apple crisp today, so ye don’t get under her fee—”

  The sound of a racing engine pushing water made Duncan stretch to look over the top of his boat, and he spotted another small boat heading up the center of the fiord. It suddenly turned toward him, and he recognized Alec at the tiller.

  “Ye have my permission to bite the bastard if ye want,” he told the pup as he leaned back with another groaned sigh. “Or if that’s a little too intimidating for you, ye might at least lift a leg and whiz on his boots.”

  The engine slowed to an idle, then shut off, and Duncan grabbed the pup when it tried to run off just as the boat scraped to a stop on the gravel bar a few yards away.

  “You intend to spend the morning sitting here contemplating life, Boss?” Alec said, stepping onto the gravel bar. “You’re late to work.”

  “I’m late?” Duncan growled. “I’ve been gone five goddamned days and you’re just now coming to look for me?”

  Alec halted in midstep, his expression going from confusion to shock. “What in hell happened to you? Ye look like ye tangled with a bear and lost.”

  “I fell. So where in hell have you been for the last five days?”

  Alec went back to looking confused. “Five? I’ve been with you up until yesterday morning, when I helped ye saddle the horses for your picnic with Peg.” He finished walking over and squatted down, then gave the pup a pat. “Who’s your friend?”

  It was Duncan’s turn to be confused. “I found him when I landed here five days ago. So how could you have been with me yesterday morning when I was lying twenty feet down in a hole in the middle of my goddamned mountain?”

  Alec shook his head and sat down to lean against the boat beside him. “It’s Monday morning, Duncan.” He sudd
enly straightened away to look at him. “You believe you’ve been here—for Christ’s sakes, ye have a beard.” He scrambled to his feet and stepped away before turning to look up at the mountain, and then slowly lowered his gaze to Duncan. “You did it; you traveled through time just like Robbie did when he took old Uncle Ian home to the eleventh century. You just spent five days on your mountain, but were only gone overnight in this time.”

  “Robbie said the magic was turned off here,” Duncan whispered, hugging the pup as he tried to decide if the notion thrilled him or filled him with terror. “And I couldn’t find anything that might be considered an instrument of my power, so I couldn’t have turned the magic back on.”

  “Ye must have found something,” Alec said just as softly. “Because no one grows that kind of beard overnight, and I swear this is Monday morning.”

  Duncan snorted. “I found a twenty-foot-deep hole inside the mountain.” He looked up at Alec and grinned. “And a pool that has brook trout the size of salmon.” He lifted the pup. “And this guy. Or rather, he found me within two minutes of my coming ashore. I think he’s been stranded here since the earthquake created the fiord.”

  “Can ye walk?”

  Duncan shook his head. “My last fall just blew out my knee. And if my ribs didn’t get cracked when I fell down the hole, they sure as hell feel like they are now.”

  Alec folded his arms over his chest and grinned down at him. “When did you become a walking disaster? Or should I say a falling disaster?”

  Duncan rested his chin on his dog. “It started about half an hour after I landed in Spellbound Falls, right about the time I was attacked by the Thompson tribe.” He snorted. “And it’s been all downhill from there.” He lifted narrowed eyes to his nephew. “It’s Mac; I think he’s out to get me.”