by Becky Banks
I made it to my knees before he plowed into me from behind, sending me face first back into the heather.
I let out a blood-curdling scream and elbowed him in the ribs. “Get off of me!” I shrieked into the shrubbery.
“Not until ye calm down,” he said, as quietly as if we were playing chess.
I bucked and slammed my elbows back against him in response. Rowan felt like a ton of bricks on my back. He methodically grabbed each of my wrists, securing them under his power, pinning me bodily to the earth, and ultimately bringing me to a screeching halt.
I was trapped, downed, and helpless.
My breath came quick. A low and terrifying sound growled out of my throat, tearing the air in aggravated frustration.
“Cole . . . ” Rowan’s voice was warm on the side of my face, pleading. “Calm down and I’ll let ye up.”
“Go to hell.” I slammed the back of my head against his face.
“Oh!” He rolled off me.
I scrambled up on all fours. The heather caught my shoes and grabbed at my sweater. I’d lost control over my arms and legs as they all fought, but not in sync, to propel me forward fast enough, unwieldy with a lethal dose of adrenaline roaring through my system.
I didn’t get to the car.
Rowan came up like a tidal wave behind me. His arm grasped me about my middle, lifted me into the air, flipped me over, and slammed me down hard onto my back. I realized belatedly that earlier, he had been playing nice.
Despite the shrubbery breaking the blow, air flew out of my lungs and my head thumped the ground like a door knocker. It took me a moment to orient myself. Rowan came down upon me, his legs pinning mine, his hands over my wrists.
“I’ve already been shot at and otherwise threatened by my own kin, and I bloodied a man who was going tae do god knows what with ye. I’m all out of patience, so ye can either do what I say or I’ll tie ye up until ye are calm enough to think straight.”
The sight of his blood (from a split lip) and the sound of his rapid breathing (which I noted not without a little satisfaction), along with his confession of what had happened to him already that day, had a profound effect on me.
A single, uncontrolled tear rolled fat and hot down the side of my face.
“Cole . . . ” Rowan whispered.
All I wanted to do was relax every muscle in my body so much that I would be swallowed up by the earth and wake up elsewhere, but I could not stop the hot liquid squeezing out my closed lids.
Then Rowan pleaded, “Stop. Oh Cole, no, no, don’ cry, please?”
I felt a rough thumb wipe my cheek. His forearm still pressed my wrist captive.
I just shook my head. “I don’t know what’s up from down anymore, Rowan.”
“Aye,” he said then wiped my other cheek. “Fighting with me isnae going to help ye any.”
I looked at him. “You might be right, but in this case you just told me more than you did during the entire car ride here.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’ve been focused on one thing, and tha’ was to make sure ye were safe. I’ve no’ given much thought to much else.”
My head was coming back to normal but I was starting to lose feeling in my hands. “Safe from who? And Rowan? I can’t feel my hands.”
Rowan sighed. “It feels like I have to keep ye safe from everyone. Listen, the drive back down is booby trapped. I’ll drive ye back in if ye want. Just don’t go tearing off without me; ye will get hurt when ye get to it—even in this thing,” he said, nodding at his vehicle.
I nodded. “I think I’m just going to lie here for a while. My head is still ringing.”
Rowan sat back on his haunches, and I slid my legs free. He touched his lip where it was split. “Aye, mine, too. I think your head is made of rock.”
“Bakers are known for their hard heads.” Adrenaline’s aftereffects started to give me the shakes. “OK,” I said, “I think I need to hear the whole story. Start from the beginning. What happened today?”
Rowan told me about finding Kelly at the terrace and Eryka nearly shooting him.
After my initial horror, I realized that Rowan’s nonchalance was almost comical. “Took her gun. Wow, so she just gave it to you, huh?” I said, coming up on one elbow.
“Och no, but it didn’t take much to get it from her. If ye have a gun, Cole, use it, then chat later—much more effective. Hesitating to use it means ye don’t want to, which makes ye seem weak. And then ye are weak.”
I held my breath for a moment and then said quietly, sobered, “Like the difference between Eryka and the man who shot you?” It was blunt and unladylike of me, but I hoped beyond hope that he would answer my question.
Rowan slowly sat forward, bracing his arms on his knees. “Aye, like tha’. I knew he was no’ the hesitating kind.” He looked back at me. More words were on the tip of his tongue, I could tell, yet his mind wrestled with whether or not to divulge them. He looked away again and made up his mind. “He had just dispatched my best friend and navigator not two seconds before, blowing his brains out as I watched.” Rowan turned to look me in the eye, his pain visible and raw, as if he were in the desert right then, reliving the very moment.
My stomach dropped. This was the darkness of Rowan James Douglas MacLaoch.
“So ye could say I had an inkling on what he would do when the muzzle turned its black eye on me.”
“How’d you not get shot in the head too?” I asked softly, knowing that he could close me out at any moment.
He snorted in mirth, a dark, deeply dark, sound. “A bit of luck,” he said. “We were both on our knees.” He hesitated over something again, and again decided to continue. “I had the advantage of going second. Vick took the first bullet, and my name was on the second, but I leapt up as he pulled the trigger and instead of death, he gave me a token to remember him by for the rest of my life.” His hand seemed to drift reflexively to his side, where his scar was.
I couldn’t stop the flood of questions, especially now that the secret seal had been broken. “How did you get out?”
“Get out?” he asked, looking over at me.
“You were in the Middle East, right? How’d you get out of the desert?” I said, coming up on one elbow.
“Aye, we were in the desert, but how did ye know that?”
I opened my mouth to tell him all about the dream he and I had shared, to let my wall down as well. Instead I said, “I just assumed, since you were RAF and saw combat.”
“Aye,” he said reluctantly, as if not believing what I said, even though it made perfect sense. “Your Americans airlifted us out.”
“But how, with all those men shooting at you?”
Rowan took a deep, purging breath. “Aye, they barely did.” Then, to my surprise, he began to retell the dark tale. “Going in, it was a single strike effort, in an’ out ye could say, but a surface to air missile probably from a deaf and blind man—tha’ would be my luck of it—shot the wing off us.”
The fog about us thickened like shredded clouds falling down on us, misting our woolen sweaters and dewing the heather. The creatures of the mountain were silent, seemingly listening to Rowan retell his darkest moment, rapt and thoroughly disturbed.
“Vick was struck unconscious as we ejected, or from the blast from the missile. By the time the desert wind had dragged him to where I had landed, he was torn up. I carried him behind a rock as the desert rats surrounded us . . . Right after Vick was shot—” Rowan stopped speaking, and instead started rubbing his thumb on his forehead as if the simple act would erase the imagery that was burned there. “I dinnae remember much but I do remember tha’ when the plane crashed, I thought tha’ because of the type of errand they’d sent us on, we’d no’ be getting immediate help. But the Americans in the area responded to the plane’s crash beacon. They were the ones who rained down enough metal to send tha’ small town back to the Stone Age and lift me and Vick’s body out.”
Rowan had gone pale and sat like
a stone on the hillside, his lips alone moving, spilling his horror into the cold mountain air.
“The hardest thing I’ve ever done was to tell his parents tha’ he died as a chance of luck, to stand there telling them tha’ their youngest child, their only son, was dead. Had we no’ been hit from the sky, had I crashed us somewhere else, had I leapt up sooner, had I just . . . done something else, he might still be here.
“The months after were a blur. The hospital in Germany, the news my uncle died, that plane ride back with the pain pills steadily coursing in my system, then inauguration to the chieftain’s seat: I barely remember. Then the dreams started, realistic and demonic. I drank—excessively,” he said honestly. “But I realized tha’ made them worse. Then I started running and swimming in the ocean loch, and took up the laird of MacLaoch position with a ferocity tha’ scared some folk. But it was the only remedy tae the dreams, to be too exhausted at night tha’ I slept a dreamless sleep.”
He had been picking at the pink heather, restlessly plucking the flowers and tossing them down the hillside, one by one. As if realizing the nervous habit, he stopped then and laced his fingers together.
“With the Gathering, something was happening,” he said so quietly that his voice was like a whisper inside my head. “The dreams started back up again. I was there again, gripping my side and coming back up with my blood—Vick’s hollow eyes looking up at me, saying if I hadn’t fucked up, he’d still be alive. Stopped sleeping for a while—it’s easier just to avoid it. Then ye arrived here and when the visions of Vick would come to me, ye would walk up and take my hand, pulling me away with ye.” Rowan continued, “So ye see Cole, I’ve been completely selfish with ye and all this business. That’s why I didn’t drive ye straight to the airport and put ye on the next plane. For the life of me, I could not do it. I cannae bare to have ye go a moment sooner than ye must.”
Rowan’s words had been simple, and straightforward, and they had my insides rolling about, tying themselves into emotional knots.
“But ye know what did me in, Cole? Was just a little bit ago when ye asked me about the sandbox and the men who had surrounded us. No one told ye, did they?” he asked turning to face me. “No one told ye tha’ it happened in the Middle East and tha’ we had been surrounded.”
“Ah . . . ” I said, feeling the gunmetal gaze of the MacLaoch chieftain pin me under it. Rowan put a hand back next to my elbow and very slowly lowered himself next to me so that we were face-to-face.
“Tell me the truth,” he whispered.
My insides became honey, slowly churning into a sweet intoxicating liquid, making my voice barely audible even to my own ears. “No, no one told me,” I admitted, giving him what he wanted to hear—I’d have given him anything he wanted.
“Tell me,” he said, looking at my mouth, then back to my eyes. “Where was it, Cole, tha’ ye knew it from?”
I wet my lips and my wall came tumbling down. “You were in my dream,” I said slowly. “You’ve been in many of my dreams since I first arrived in Glentree.”
“Tell me.”
And so I did.
“Rowan . . . ” I whispered afterward. “In the dream last night . . . I could even smell your blood.” I shook my head at my own disbelief. “You asked me to help you, and I tried to. I hope that I was able to take you from the darkest moment of your life and show you the beauty that still exists in this world.” I smiled at the memory, and I could see he was following them exactly, as well as he had in my dream. “Peaches in South Carolina will make you weep for joy, especially the ones still warm from the day’s sun, the ones that fall into the palm of your hand they’re so ripe. And the juices . . . ” I said, watching Rowan’s face.
A smile pulled at the corner of Rowan’s mouth as he looked down at me. “Aye, I didn’t know peaches could bring me so much joy.”
The way he said it, the way he lay on the ground next to me, up on one elbow, a smile playing upon his lips, told me volumes about what he really meant.
Slowly Rowan reached for me, hooking a finger through a belt loop on my jeans, and pulled me closer to him. “Do ye remember how the dream ended?” Rowan asked, his hand slowly tucking under my sweater, making sweet skin-to-skin contact.
My mind went fuzzy. “I—I’m not sure exactly. I just remember a few seconds after you . . . ” I was unable to complete my thought.
“After I what, Cole?” he said as his hand glided over my belly, sending ripples of excitement through my midsection, cold air kissing the small, exposed area of my bare stomach.
“Oh my,” I breathed. I put my hand over his, capturing it. “Maybe you should tell me what happened next.”
I felt him move in, the heat of his skin warming the air between us, his lips a hair’s breadth away from mine. “Maybe it’s better that I show ye.” Rowan shifted farther over me, his knee settling between my thighs.
“Oh god,” I whispered, closing my eyes against the emotional onslaught.
Rowan’s lips brushed against mine. “I like Rowan, but ye can call me anything ye want.”
And right then I wanted nothing more than to live out my dream in the hot and humid peach orchard with the MacLaoch chieftain, despite my misgivings.
The cold night air electrified goose bumps along my skin, and I shivered. The little chill brought me to a more immediate point: the heather was stabbing me relentlessly in the back, and it was far from hot and humid out.
A smile tugged on Rowan’s lips. “I felt that all the way through my sweater. Are ye cold,” he asked, “or are ye really excit—”
“Cold,” I said, cutting him off and looking back at him.
And yet I wasn’t sure that I still wouldn’t end up naked and frozen with him in the heather if I let him keep talking.
“OK,” he said, breathing deeply over my lips, sounding regretful of what he was about to do. “I believe you. You did wake up after I suckled ye, didn’t ye?” He kissed my neck lightly, breathed deeply.
“I-I did.” I shuddered.
“Are ye sure ye don’t want me to show ye what we did?” he asked, hopeful, and planted another soft kiss on my jaw, then my ear, warming them both with his breath.
I didn’t trust my mouth any more, not with him that close—I simply nodded.
“OK,” he said again. He gave me one last long look before he stood, helping me up as well. Dusting the debris of the heather from our clothes, we climbed out of the brush and hurried to the front door.
There, Rowan paused, one hand on the old wrought iron knob.
“Just for the record, Cole,” he said, slowly and forcefully bringing me in against him, his pelvis pressed against mine, his hand at my lower back. “I’ll have ye know tha’ I made randy fucking love to ye until the sun came up, and now I want to know if it’s the same in real life.” He gave his words just a moment to sink in, and watched my face as the recognition played across my features. With a wicked grin, he yanked the door open and strode inside.
CHAPTER 34
I took a moment more in the foggy damp outside to collect my thoughts that had just gone dark and sultry with the chieftain’s honest words. They mingled with the heat of his hand from just moments before in the heather. A few seconds later I went in, unable to fully shake them. Rowan met me in the living room with a whisky in hand, the only visible effect of his true mood in the amount of whisky he had poured himself, it being twice the measure of mine.
“Let’s see,” he said, “Kelly and Eryka want to kill me, and Kelly to then marry ye. And then Eryka to kill ye, so she can marry into the family. Gregoire was waiting with a sword in his hands for ye in your room, after swearing at the gala the other night tha’ ye were his to marry and complete the curse with. And you are now stuck with the cursed MacLaoch chieftain in his hunting lodge without cell-phone reception. I’ll no’ lie, I’m getting the better end of this, I’ll tell ye tha’,” he said and lifted his tumbler at me in cheers.
I gave a derisive snort and felt reality break
through the lusty fog in my mind—placed there, no doubt, by his design. “Yes, that you are.” I smiled, taking a sip of the warm liquid. “And all of it is because of a legend. You said you called the police, right?”
“I made sure tha’ was done before I left. Thinking clearer now, I should have stayed instead of snatching ye and running. But I’ve no’ been thinking clearly since I met ye.”
I smiled; I knew exactly what that felt like. Before I could comment on that subject, my stomach rumbled loudly in protest at being ignored.
Rowan laughed, heartily, one that seemed to start from deep inside, quite unlike anything I’d ever heard from him.
I felt my head go light with his joy and said distractedly, “I’m not sure I can survive on a whisky-only diet.”
“Och, not many can—tha’ is, unless ye are a Scots, which in your case, ye are, just out of practice,” he said, his smile still bright on his face. “Come now, no need to starve, with the hunt being canceled all tha’ food needs to be eaten.” He walked past me and into the kitchen.
Moments later we were back in the living room with bread, cheese, cold cuts, pâté, dried fruits, nuts and, of course, more whisky, spread on the wooden coffee table between us. I’d also set out the files I’d gotten from Deloris and Dr. Peabody before Rowan had yanked me out of the library.
Rowan sat in the leather chair across the table from me and I sank into the buttery leather couch. We washed bread and cheese down with the sweet whisky and I felt it blooming with heat on the way into my stomach. “About the curse . . . ” I said, feeling it was now or never. “I think I need to tell you about Peabody’s newest theory.”
“Aye?” Rowan said, curiosity and a healthy dose of wariness coloring his tone.
“That the curse is over,” I said plainly.
Rowan’s brows rose in surprise. “Aye? And how did he come to that?”