Praise for the tales of four Bonnie Lasses of Romance
CONNIE BROCKWAY
“Romance with strength, wit, and intelligence. Connie Brockway delivers!”
—Tami Hoag, New York Times bestselling author
“Brockway’s lush, lyrical writing style is a perfect match for her vivid characters, beautiful atmospheric setting, and sensuous love scenes.”
—Library Journal
“If you’re looking for passion, tenderness, wit, and warmth, you need look no further. Connie Brockway is simply the best.”
—Teresa Medeiros, bestselling author of The Bride and the Beast
PATTI BERG
“Patti Berg is an exceptional voice in the field of romantic fiction today.”
—Romantic Times
“One of the best spinners of tales the genre has to offer.”
—Affaire de Coeur
“Keep on writing, Ms. Berg. You’ve got the gift!”
—Rendezvous
DEBRA DIER
“Ms. Dier gives the reader their money’s worth [sic], and wrings the heart with her secondary characters. Ms. Dier’s men will make you salivate!”
—Literary Times
“The talented Ms. Dier captures the English/Scottish animosity to perfection and weaves an exhilarating tale that will touch our heart and fire the emotions. Great reading!”
—Rendezvous
KATHLEEN GIVENS
“Kathleen Givens’ exceptional talent just sparkles like the best champagne.”
—Suzanne Coleburn, Belles & Beaux of Romance
“Ms. Givens fills the pages with sights and scents, and customs, both beautiful and brutal, that are part of the Scottish Highlands.”
—Romantic Times
“Givens is a remarkable new talent who has freshened up the Scottish historical romance novel.”
—Affaire de Coeur
Copyright
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 2001 by Connie Brockway
Copyright © 2001 by Patti Berg
Copyright © 2001 by Debra Diet
Copyright © 2001 by Kathleen Givens
Compilation copyright © 2001 by Warner Books, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: October 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7595-2514-6
Contents
Praise for the tales of four Bonnie Lasses of Romance
Copyright
Lassie, Go Home: CONNIE BROCKWAY
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
CONNIE BROCKWAY
Sinfully Scattish: PATTI BERG
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
PATTI BERG
Maddening Highlander: DEBRA DIER
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
DEBRA DIER
Castle in the skye: KATHLEEN GIVENS
This is dedicated
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
KATHLEEN GIVENS
Slip away to Scotland…
Lassie, Go Home
CONNIE BROCKWAY
Dedication
For my mother, Marcia Howard,
who taught me to love dogs.
Thanks, Mom, from all the
fur-covered angels or devils
(depending on who’s telling the story
and when) you love and loved:
Spook, Sunny, Corky, D.J.,
Addie, Stella, Ollie, and Tobie.
But most of all, thanks from me.
I love you.
Acknowledgments
Dog people are simply some of the most generous, enthusiastic, and lovely people around. I had the pleasure of learning about Border collies, sheepherding trials, and the United States Border Collie Handlers’ Association from Becky Beckman of Rising Sun farms, Chuck O’Reilly, at whose farm I saw my first national trial, and Bill Johnson, whose Border collies joyfully haze geese here in my home state of Minnesota.
And thanks, Jenny Simonson, for telling me about Wally Szczberiak!
1
“Yo, Braveheart! Whoop! Whoo—”
Devlin Montgomery’s head popped through the neck of his cambric shirt just in time for him to glimpse a pair of long legs flailing above a hedge. Then he heard a thunk and a groan.
Damn American tourist, he thought, striding over to make sure the Yank hadn’t killed herself. And yes, it had to be an American—such an enthusiastic holler could only come from an American.
It wasn’t human kindness alone that hastened his steps. Lawsuits and Americans went hand in hand, and the Strathcuddy Faire, a new entrant in the lucrative business of annual Highland games fairs, couldn’t afford any litigious actions. Besides being bad publicity, it would cut severely into the purses awarded to the winners of the various contests, and Devlin Montgomery, who had every intention of winning several of those purses, badly needed the cash.
Dev looked over the top of the fence capping the yew hedge. A woman lay sprawled in the clover. Platinum blond hair tumbled about her shoulders, half covering her face. She was twisted at the waist, her long jeans-clad legs bent to one side and her arms thrown wide. The position drew attention to her bosom.
Dev sucked in a low whistle. It was a bosom well worth drawing attention to, and right now it was stretching the printing on a snug fitting, and garishly plaid, T-shirt that read “Sassy Lassie.”
He suppressed a groan. God deliver him from tourists.
As he watched she spat a hank of silvery hair out of her mouth. He vaulted lightly over the rail, landing beside her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
A pair of eyes flashed and disappeared behind the curtain of hair. She moaned but made no attempt to straighten herself. His concern redoubled. “Miss?”
“Perfec-lee fine,” she slurred out.
Oh, yeah. Definitely American. Not an East Coast or southern native, though. California blonde?
Dev knelt beside her, carefully brushing some of the hair from her face. What he uncovered would have made a Viking papa proud. Wide cheekbones flared above a firm, clean jawline. Her nose was short, her lips were full and plush. True, the brows and lashes were darker than that which usually went with such a blond mane, but then there was no saying she was a real blonde. Especially that shade of blonde. She still would have made a Viking papa proud. Especially if the length of those legs translated into the height he suspected she owned.
�
��Can you move anything?” he asked.
“Courth… course I can, silly. I can move everything,” she said, eyes still shut
It didn’t sound as if she were in pain, but maybe she just couldn’t any pain. Maybe she’d broken her back.
“How do you know?” he asked worriedly. “Do you think you’re moving things? Because if you do, you’re wrong. Nothing’s moving.”
“I’m not that tanked,” she said with a touch of asperity. Abruptly one hand rose and the fingers wiggled. “There,” she said. “See?’
One eye opened a slit, and she peered up at him. Blue eyes. A blue-eyed maybe blonde. His breath hitched. Okay. So he’d once been a touch susceptible to that particular combination. He was older now, not so easy to impress. Ha.
“Braveheart! You’re still here,” she said in the happy tones of the pleasantly sotted.
“Yeah,” he said. She’d dimpled as she said it, and he caught back a low whistle. She was as cute as a newborn giraffe. “Ah, can I do anything for you, miss?”
“Oh, yeah,” she breathed, still gazing raptly up at him. “Speak Sean Connery for me.”
“Huh?”
“Ya know—’Ye seem to hae fallen on yer nut, haven’t ye, ye great heeland coo?’”
Caught off guard by the atrocious and disarmingly canny impersonation, Dev broke into laughter. She couldn’t be too badly hurt.
“There’s a sport.” She grinned foolishly, her eyes unfocused and sappy with expectation.
“Sorry. I don’t do Sean Connery.”
“Wish I could,” she mumbled morosely, rolling her head to the side. Abruptly her dazed gaze sharpened. She darted a glance at him out of the corner of her eye, squirmed a little closer to his knee, and…
His eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to look up my kilt?”
Her head snapped back to its original position. Her blue eyes went round as she donned an abrupt and completely unconvincingly innocent expression.
“Well?” he prodded sternly.
“Maybe,” she allowed and sniffed. “What’s the big deal, anyway?”
Americans and their kilt fetishes. He brought his face closer to hers. “If you found out the Secret of the Kilt,” he whispered dramatically, “you could never leave the country.”
She snorted, but he noted that a wave of color had unrolled up her throat. He rose to his feet and held out his hand.
“Here. Let me help you up. Braveheart would never leave a damsel in distress.” She hesitated, so he added, `Especially an American damsel. They sue if you don’t meet their expectations.”
“Hey. Scots aren’t supposed to be sarcastic.” She didn’t move, just lay on her back.
“I’m half French,” he explained pleasantly.
“You don’t look French,” she said suspiciously.
“I know. I look like Braveheart. Of course, there is a slight matter of my having eight inches on Mr. Gibson.”
“Oh? Where?” As soon as the words were out she clamped a hand over her mouth. Her fair skin flooded with an intense blood-orange color.
“Five,” she mumbled into her palm.
“What?” Dev asked, confounded and bemused; the color of her eyes was exactly the color of the pansies growing untended beside his back door, and just as velvety—
“I had five Scotches at the Scottish tasting booth.” Her gaze looked abashed above the gag of her hand. “I mean Scotch tasting booth!” She started giggling.
Five? Good Lord. No wonder the girl couldn’t get up. Or even sit up, for that matter. He moved around to her head and squatted down, wrapping his arms under her arms and lifting. She hung like a sack of wet wool.
“Why did you have so many?” he grunted, heaving her to her feet.
Toni Olson squinted thoughtfully up at the blue, cloud-clotted sky, vaguely aware that the gorgeous Scot she’d spied earlier that day hurling a telephone pole around was propping her up. Why had she tasted so many whiskies? Because they were there, that was why. There and cheap, and she was on the last few days of a dream vacation-cum-business trip before returning to Minnesota.
She couldn’t ever remember feeling so… so free. And delighted. It must be the clean air sweeping in off the sea, or being up in a real, live Scottish valley, or seeing her first guy in a kilt who wasn’t either eighty years old or blowing into a bagpipe or both.
But when she’d seen this man, who was the culmination of every one of her lustful, Braveheart-induced fantasies, stride around the corner of the tent in nothing but a kilt, she’d reacted the same way her niece did every time Wally Szczberiak walked on the court for the Tïmber-wolves. She’d whooped. For the same reason she’d drunk all the Scotch: he was there.
He really was gorgeous, she thought, twisting around and grinning at her hero. More-than-Mel might have ridden from the pages of a history book, leading a horde of painted savages on some sort of heroic assault He had a hard, square jaw, a cleft chin, and a firm, wide mouth. He had red hair, too, but not carroty red. It was dark auburn that fell in loopy curls on the back of his neck and went particularly well with his dark, coffee-brown eyes.
Added to all this masculine beauty was a body that shouted, “National underwear ad campaign.” Tall, lean, lithe—if she hadn’t had so much to drink she could have come up with more and better adjectives. She still could have if he hadn’t put his shirt on. Too bad. Right now all she could remember was that his stomach was as corrugated as a mile of country road and muscles had bunched all over his shoulders, chest, and arms as he’d put on his shirt.
“Miss, are you sure you’re all right?” he asked. He had her upright now and kept one hand on her shoulder while cautiously relinquishing his grip on her with the other.
“Ah-huh. Why?”
“You look sort of goofy.”
Some of the glow around More-than-Mel faded. Braveheart wouldn’t have used a word like goofy.
“What say we get a spot of something in you to soak up the spirits, eh?”
Dinner and a date with Braveheart? Hot damn. “Hoo-kay,” she said, turning around—oops. Mistake. The world caught up to her feet and kept moving right on by. She swayed, tilted, and began to pitch forward—
—and a strong hand curled around her waist. Without even a grunt this time, the gorgeous Scot picked her up and resettled her on her feet, facing him. She found herself staring at the tip of his nose.
It had been a long time since Toni Olson, onetime all-state center for the Edina girls’ basketball team, had looked up to meet a man’s eyes. She did so now and all she could think was that it was obscene that those lashes should have been wasted on a man.
“Begads, luv.” The gaze traveling down her body was as slow as molasses, sending tingles along her skin. “I’m surprised you don’t have a chronic nosebleed all the way up here.”
The tingles stopped. Another comedian. “You seem to have adapted.”
“Aye. But I’m a braw manly man, and you’re just a—”
“Don’t say it.” If she had a penny for every would-be comic who thought it hilarious to call her a wisp of a girl—
“—pale American who can’t hold her liquor.” His black-brown eyes sparkled.
“Oh.” Points to him for ducking the obvious. Points to him for still being here. Most men would have left her fiat on her back burping Scotch and moaning. Not that she needed any help. She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. She was a practical, sensible Minnesotan.
She started to sway again. He grabbed her arm, steadying her.
“Can you walk, or should I carry you?” he asked.
Toni shot him a darkly suspicious glare. His expression was perfectly sober. He meant it. If she said the word, this poor man would risk condemning himself to a life of chiropractic care in order to carry her somewhere. She could just imagine what that would look like, all six feet one and one-half inches of her sticking out at odd angles as he staggered toward the fairgrounds gasping, “Help!”
“Nah-uh. But thanks. I jes�
� I just need to walk a lil bit.”
“Sure,” he said offering his arm, and a nicely muscled arm it was, too.
“You have very nice manners for a Scot,” she said graciously.
“We Scots are known for our good manners.”
“No, you’re not,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“No?” He definitely sounded amused. What had she said that was so funny? “What are we known for then?”
“Kilts,” she replied, pleased with her insight. “And Scotch. And thistles. Mel Gibson—”
“Mel Gibson isn’t Scottish!” he said, sounding indignant.
“Don’t be such a stickler,” she answered. “He looks good in a kilt. Almost as good as you.”
She tripped, but he caught her against his hip. He had big, strong hands. Her heart started pitter-patting with teenage lust. And she wasn’t a teenager. Far from it. She was twenty-five. She pulled her thoughts back to the matter at hand and caught sight of his strongly muscled calves.
“You got nice legs,” she said sincerely.
“Back atcha.” He really sounded amused now. She grinned, inordinately pleased with the offhand compliment.
They’d made their way to one of the tented booths crowding the side of the gaming field. A middle-aged man with huge, red muttonchop sideburns snored in a chair behind a counter. More-than-Mel picked up a scone from a plate balanced on the edge of the counter and handed it to her before filling a paper cup from the pitcher of lemonade beside it. He put it in her free hand.
“Eat. Drink. Fd add ‘Be merry,’ but I think you’re already there.”
She complied, chomping off a third of the biscuit It was hard and salty with way too much baking soda, nothing as good a Patisserie Margot’s. But she was a guest “Yum.”
“Birdie makes the best scones in Scotland.”
Toni mumbled noncommittally around the dry crumbs. Poor More-than-Mel if he thought this was what a scone was supposed to taste like. Her hero dropped a couple coins into a tumbler with an “Honor System” placard taped to it Not surprisingly, it wasn’t exactly overflowing.
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