All The Time You Need
Page 1
Contents
Book Blurb
Title
A Note from the Author
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Copyright Page
Dear Reader~
Book List
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Highlands of Scotland - 1295
Alexander MacKillican arrives home after a year in Edinburgh, to finds his father dying, his castle under threat of siege by a rival clan, and his twin sister claiming Faeries roam their lands. As the eldest son, it falls to Alex to take on the onerous task of setting things to rights and ensuring the welfare of Clan MacKillican. The last thing he needs is a strange woman arriving unannounced to add to the bedlam that his life has become. Honor demands that he offer her protection. But is he keeping her safe or has he allowed a most enticing spy into his home?
Denver, Colorado - Present Day
Analise Shaw is the perfect daughter. She's even agreed to marry the "perfect" man. But as the wedding nears, a quick trip to Scotland lands her in another time—A time in which she finds a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, and a quiet, brooding Highlander who makes her question all her old arguments against ever wanting to marry.
Alex and Annie face the challenge of their lives taking paths completely different from the ones they anticipated. Just as they begin to suspect that, together, they can face any obstacle, they are presented with the biggest obstacle of all: the Magic that would return Annie to her own time and the man who awaits her there.
Length: Approximately 316 pages
Ages: 18 and up [Story contains sex, mild profanity]
All The Time You Need is the first in Melissa Mayhue’s Magic of Time Series. It picks up where the Warrior Series ended. Welcome back to the world of Faeries and Magic!
ALL THE TIME YOU NEED
MAGIC OF TIME SERIES
Book One
by
Melissa Mayhue
© 2014 by Melissa Mayhue. All rights reserved
A Note from the Author:
Over the years, I’ve always enjoyed reading a good fantasy. But too often they wouldn’t end the way I wanted them to and I’d hurry back to my Romance shelf, seeking the Happily Ever After ending I craved. Then one day, I stumbled upon a Time Travel Romance by Flora Speer and this wonderful new combination of genres quickly became my very favorite books of all. It was only natural that when I wrote my first book in 2005 - Thirty Nights with a Highland Husband - it would be a Time Travel Romance. Twelve books and one novella later, and I still love getting lost in time with a handsome Highlander!
For those of you who have read my Daughters of the Glen series and Warrior series, this novel will feel like coming home. If you look closely, you’re likely to find some familiar characters wandering through — and perhaps even starring in!— this new series.
Welcome back to the world of Faeries and Time Travel. Welcome to the Magic of Time Series!
Here’s the list of stories so far:
1 -All the Time You Need
(Alex and Annie’s story)
2 - Anywhere In Time - coming 2015
(Syrie and Patrick’s story)
Want to stay informed as new books become available? Sign up for my New Release Newsletter!
— Melissa
Prologue
Highlands of Scotland
1295
Alexander MacKillican sat stiffly in the big wooden chair stationed in the center of the dais, doing his best to blank his features of the emotions pummeling his mind. He would never feel comfortable in his father’s seat. No more comfortable than he felt listening to the two bickering idiots in front of him. He’d tried logic and conciliation to end their argument repeatedly over the past half-hour, and still they fussed on.
“Enough,” he bellowed at last, his emotions getting the better of him.
No one—not his father, not him, not even the greatest of all the saints—should be forced to endure this lunacy for even one minute longer. How could he ever have imagined this was how he would spend the rest of his days?
“This is the second time in as many weeks that the two of you have stood here before me, locked in battle over who owns what. If you canna come to an agreement over which of you is the true owner of the beast in question, I’ll settle it myself.”
Though he doubted they’d be happy with his solution to their disagreement.
“Which is why we brought our dispute to the Clan seat to begin with,” the older of the two men yelled, his voice surly in his displeasure. “Yer father would have ended this long past so that Angus and me could be making our way home to the chores that await us instead of standing here in yer great hall wasting the whole of our day while you dither over what’s to be done with us.”
Alex sat back in his seat, positive his mask of calm had cracked wide open at that one. Wasting the whole of their day? How dare they take that tone with him? He was trying to work out an equitable settlement for both of them and this was what he got. They criticized him! It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t have much preferred that it was his father sitting here rather than him.
“Very well, then.” Alex leaned toward the men, fighting to keep his temper in check. “If that’s the way it’s to be, then here’s my decision. The ewe is mine. Neither of you deserve her. Now go home the both of you and think upon what you’ve brought down upon yerselves this day with yer petty bickering.”
“So be it, then,” Angus said with finality. “It’s as Alexander the Elder would have done himself.”
“So it is,” the other man agreed.
Without another word, seemingly satisfied with Alex’s pronouncement, the two of them left the hall together without so much as a harsh word between them.
Though his whole life had been spent in preparing Alex to one day replace his father as the laird of their clan, he’d known since the day he’d ridden out of Dunellen’s gates headed for Edinburgh to continue his education that he wanted something different for his future. He wanted something different from the boring day-to-day sameness that had made up the world of his father and his grandfather before him. Alex dreaded a life without challenge. But more than anything, more even than he dreaded the day he would become the true laird of Dunellen, he did not want that day to come now. Nothing felt less desirable to him at this moment than a lifetime spent in dealing with such as he’d just experienced. Two short weeks at home had served to prove to him, even if to no other in the great hall, that he lacked the patience and the wisdom to be laird of Clan MacKillican. And yet, here he was, forced to shoulder the obligation of this burdensome responsibility.
No wonder his father had taken to his bed. Much more of this mind-numbing, soul-killing, unimportant drivel and Alex would be ready to join him.
He’d had such exciting plans for his life when he’d ridden back through the gates of Castle Dunellen. Just a day to spend at home he’d told the friends who traveled with him. Just a day to inform his fath
er of his intention to return with them to Edinburgh. There they would join the forces that gathered to repel the English threat growing at their borders. In those last moments of unfettered freedom, his life had stretched out before him like a shining path, filled with the golden promise of exciting adventures and surprises of all sorts lying in wait around every corner.
Instead, he’d returned home to find his familiar world in total disarray: his father taken to his sickbed with little hope of recovery, his brothers bickering over who should take control in Alex’s absence, his sister blethering on about Faeries roaming their forest, and, worst of all, rumblings of attacks on his people by Clan Gordon.
In the two weeks he’d been home, uncomfortably occupying his father’s seat of power, wasting his time on the likes of Angus and Oren, visions of his future had begun to slip through his fingers like dust and cobwebs. And though his friends, the brothers of his heart, Jamesy MacCulloch and Finn MacCormack, remained steadfastly at his side, united in their support, he was losing any hope of his days ever again holding the sweet promise of adventure or surprise.
Chapter 1
Edinburgh, Scotland
Present Day
“So you’re Annie.” The elderly woman standing in the quaint doorway smiled broadly, holding out her arms, clearly expecting a hug. “I’ve waited such a very long time to meet you. Your grandmother spoke of you all the time. She loved you very much, you know.”
Of all the things Analise Shaw might doubt, her grandmother’s love had never been one of them.
“Thank you, Mrs.—”
“Now, now…none of that, dearie,” the woman exclaimed, hooking her arm through Annie’s and pulling her into the house. “I insist you must call me Syrie. No need for Ellen Shaw’s granddaughter to stand on formality with me.”
“Syrie, it is,” Annie amended.
“I’ve a pot of hot tea and some lovely biscuits waiting for us in the parlor. I hope you’ll indulge me and allow me some time to get to know you so that you and I might become friends, just as my dear Ellen and I were.”
“Of course,” Annie agreed, following along beside her grandmother’s friend, down a long hallway and into a bright, sunny room.
Annie’s grandmother had warned her that Syrie could be a little strange, but she’d also told her that she trusted this woman as she had no other in her whole life. High praise from a woman like Ellen Shaw.
“Here we are now,” Syrie said as they approached a table overlooking a wildly blooming garden. “Have a seat, dear. Would you like cream with your tea?”
“No, thank you. Just sugar, please.”
“As you wish. Did you have a pleasant flight? Any problems finding me?”
“No, no problems at all,” Annie said. “Your directions were very good.”
She didn’t see any point in telling her hostess that she’d been delayed because the airline had routed her luggage to some tropical island rather than sending it along to Scotland with her. Complaining wasn’t something a proper lady did when making new acquaintances.
Had she really just thought that? It was as if her mother was sitting on her shoulder, telling her how to behave. Four thousand miles separating them and still she couldn’t escape.
Syrie laughed, a musical tinkling sound that struck Annie as something that might come from someone much younger than her hostess. On meeting Syrie’s gaze, she realized that the laugh suited the woman perfectly, matching bright green eyes that seemed oddly out of place in her deeply wrinkled face.
“We work so diligently to find ourselves, don’t we?” Syrie asked, her question seeming more a comment on Annie’s thoughts than on their conversation. “I do hope you’ll accept my most sincere condolences on the loss of your grandmother. Ellen was a shining example of the best mankind has to offer. An extraordinary woman and an even more extraordinary friend.”
Annie dipped her gaze to the cup she accepted, all thoughts of Syrie’s odd question fleeing as she struggled to maintain her composure in front of this stranger. The loss of her grandmother still hurt as if it were a fresh wound, not a loss going on two months past.
Ellen had been more than just her grandmother. She had been Annie’s best friend and most trusted confidante. It was for that reason Annie had insisted on making this trip, this pilgrimage as her grandmother had called it, in spite of her mother’s protests. And, considering how much Ellen’s death still hurt, perhaps her mother had been right. Perhaps this whole trip was nothing more than a self-indulgent excess of foolishness, running off to Scotland when she should be home helping to plan her wedding.
A wedding she wished with her whole heart she could avoid, though she knew there was no way out of it at this point.
“Nonsense,” the woman sitting across from her muttered into her cup before looking up. “I’m sure you must know Ellen put a great deal of thought into sending you here. I’m quite pleased to see that you chose to honor her wishes and come to experience her beloved slice of Scotland.”
A trickle of guilt threaded through Annie’s heart at Syrie’s sentiment. If she were truthful with herself, it really had been her own selfish desire to escape, as much as any loyalty to her grandmother, that had brought her to Scotland. Her grandmother’s will had left her a comfortable trust, along with a cottage in the Highlands, but Ellen had insisted that Annie must promise to travel to Scotland and spend a few days at the cottage by herself so that she might learn why it had been her grandmother’s favorite refuge. As a part of the experience, Ellen had asked her to meet with Syrie to claim the keys to the cottage.
Over the protests of her parents and her new fiance, Annie had chosen to honor her grandmother’s request, as much for herself as for her grandmother’s memory.
After twenty-four years of always obediently doing the right thing, including her having agreed to marry the right man from the right family, she desperately wanted to carve out a small piece of time just for her. A tiny sliver of time, in which she could experience who she really was and what she really wanted before she was forced to return home to live out the perfect life her family demanded of her.
“It’s a difficult path to have everything you need but none of what you want, yes?”
“I’m sorry?”
The cup in Annie’s hand shook as she carefully set it in front of her. In spite of her grandmother’s warning, she found Syrie to be a most unsettling woman. For the second time in her short visit, a strange suspicion nibbled at the back of Annie’s mind, almost as if her hostess had read her thoughts. That sort of thinking, of course, was ridiculous. People couldn’t read one another’s minds.
“You remind me of her, you know,” Syrie said, her steady gaze fixed on Annie, as if she meant to see straight through bone and tissue, right down into Annie’s deepest secrets. “Hard to believe in her later years, perhaps, but Ellen was once as unsure of her path as she’s told me you are. She, too, was wont to run at the first sight of conflict rather than face up to the inevitable.”
Flustered, Annie didn’t know how to respond. She had no idea that her grandmother had discussed Annie’s misgivings about the upcoming marriage with anyone, let alone a complete stranger.
A stranger to her, that is. She had to remind herself that to Ellen, Syrie had been a dear and trusted friend. But that didn’t mean she had any intentions of discussing her most private concerns with this woman, no matter what her grandmother might have shared.
All things considered, her best response would be to ignore the subject entirely by turning to another.
“I’m excited to finally see my grandmother’s cottage. I know she always looked forward to her visits there. She called them her special pilgrimages to her nest.”
“Indeed she did,” Syrie said, a smile brightening her face, as if her memories wiped years from her age. “Did she ever tell you about the meaning of its name? No? Well, Bield means shelter or retreat. In the old Scots, it meant boldness. Ellen always did say a few weeks at Bield Cottage and she coul
d boldly return to the real world and deal with anything.”
Annie nodded, sipping her tea. Her grandmother had never made any excuses for how much she loved her time away from everything.
“She frequently met with you when she came over, didn’t she?” Annie asked. “Will you be going along to the cottage with me?”
“Ellen and I never missed an opportunity to spend time together but, in answer to your question, no, my dear Annie. Though I’ve little doubt your visit will be an interesting one, you’ll be making this journey on your own. I’ll do my best to give you good guidance before you leave here today. As for me, I fear I’ve already spent far too long away from home and, even after all we’ve been through together, my beloved husband gets overly grumpy when I’m away too long.” Syrie smiled, her happiness sparkling in her eyes. “I must hurry home soon or everyone living in our castle will likely desert us over his foul temper.”
“You live in a castle?” The knowledge had caught Annie by surprise. “Nana Ellen never mentioned that. It must be wonderful to be surrounded by so much history every single day.”
“Ah, yes,” Syrie said with a chuckle. “We do have our share of history in our home. But let me assure you, there’s much to be admired in the here and now, too. History is all well and good, but I’ve learned that there’s much to be said for a trusty microwave and some reliable indoor plumbing. Sometimes, to find true happiness, you simply have to decide upon your priorities.”
Something about Syrie’s expression as she spoke sent a shiver down Annie’s spine, as if the woman knew more than she was saying.
“Are you trying to tell me there’s no reliable indoor plumbing at Bield Cottage?”
Such a discovery could put quite a damper on Annie’s plans to fulfill her grandmother’s request. It wouldn’t be nearly as much fun to hide away from life in a place missing what she considered to be the most basic necessities.