My Scottish Summer

by Connie Brockway

  Colin Dunbar wanted to make his home impenetrable, but Emily was determined to stick around and see more— and more included seeing the laird himself.

  Colin stood in front of the bank of security monitors, hands folded casually behind him as he watched the leggy, long-haired blonde sneak through the game-room door and enter the Regency Room. She ran a delicate hand over the gilt harp and the harpsichord. The same hand trailed over the French writing table and the elegant Grecian-style sofa. She moved languidly, her hips and breasts swaying provocatively beneath her skin-tight clothes, which left little to his imagination. Too bad. He’d tired of women who blatantly showed off every facet of their personality, and this one might as well have GREEDtattooed across her chest.

  Losing interest in her, but not the security of his possessions, his gaze darted momentarily toward the monitor that gave him a clear view of the tourists milling about the gift shop. A gray-haired woman pocketed a Dunbar Castle souvenir magnet, a trinket worth not much more than a pound, and then she proceeded to the register and paid nearly two hundred pounds for a bottle of Dunbar whisky. As long as he lived, he’d never understand tourists.

  Again he caught a glimpse of the blonde, lounging now in one of his chairs. If she thought she’d get to meet the laird of the castle if she hung around long enough, she was mistaken.

  Looking back at the scene in the gift shop, Colin searched the group for the one woman who’d caught his eye when the tour began. Ah, there she was, the short redhead with the curvy body she tried to conceal beneath an altogether too masculine looking suit. She was trying to conceal herself now, too, halfway hiding behind a rack full of whisky jiggers and silver spoons imprinted with the words DUNBAR CASTLE.

  The redhead knew about the cameras. He’d seen her scanning the gift shop and hallway when the tour group entered the castle an hour before, and it hadn’t taken her long to spot the security equipment. Of course, it hadn’t taken him long to figure out that she had something hidden, too, but what she had secreted away in her coat pocket was still a mystery.

  The woman intrigued him. Intelligent. Wary. Clever. From her movements he could tell she was after something, but he didn’t know what He couldn’t read the redhead as easily as he could the leggy blonde, and that made her all the more interesting.

  He wondered how long it would be before she figured out that if she were just a few inches shorter, there would be a lot of places she could go where she wouldn’t be seen by the cameras. He’d find her again, however, because the monitors not only protected the castle’s interior but its grounds as well. The secrets and legends surrounding Dunbar Castle, not to mention his exclusive, highly sought-after whisky, had helped to make him a rich man, and no expense had been spared to guard his privacy and those things he wanted to remain a mystery.

  The blonde in the monitor to his left wasn’t much of a mystery. She’d finally spotted the camera and walked toward it now, her hips and breasts swaying even more provocatively than before. A smile touched her wide, sensuai mouth as she looked directly into the camera and motioned him, or whoever she thought was watching, toward her with her little finger.

  “You’re pretty, sweetheart, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I join you.”

  He chuckled as his gaze drifted back to the gift shop and searched the crowd again for the petite redhead. Maybe he’d stroll down there and make an uncharacteristic visit Of course, the last time he’d done that one of the tourists had fainted at the sight of him, sure that the ghost of Alexander Dunbar had materialized before her. Strong genes had made him the spitting image of his ancestor, just one more Dunbar curse he had to contend with.

  Contending with tourists could sometimes be just as big a blight on his existence, especially when they disappeared. “Blast!” Colin jabbed at a few keys on the security equipment and zoomed the camera in for a closer look at the people milling about. The redhead was nowhere to be found.

  He quickly scanned the hallway leading out of the gift shop. Empty. Even the rooms she could access off the hall showed no signs of life. And then out of the corner of his eye he caught a flash of red behind the hedgerow leading to the distillery. Smart. Definitely smart. She’d figured out how to get out of the gift shop without being seen, even knew that the cameras didn’t cover the strip of ground behind the hedge—a problem he’d have to remedy before someone else tried to outsmart his security system.

  But what the redhead had failed to realize was that even though she was crouching as she walked, her wild curly hair continually bobbed over the top of the hedge.

  What did she want? he wondered. Was she a spy sent to find the recipe for Dunbar whisky? He laughed cynically. Others had tried and failed, and she’d be unsuccessful, too, no matter how much she fascinated him. The recipe was in his head and nowhere else, locked there for safekeeping. It was tradition for father to hand the recipe down to son and no one else; that tradition, however, would end with him.

  “Excuse me, Colin.”

  He turned at the sound of Gillian entering the room. “What is it?

  “Two of the tourists failed to get on the bus.”

  “I know. I’ve been watching them.”

  Gillian crossed the room and stared at the monitors. “I see the blonde, but where’s the redhead?”

  “On her way to the distillery.”

  “Good. I was worried she might have gone looking for the hidden bedroom, since she was asking about it during the tour. I’ll go after her now and make sure she gets on the bus.”

  Colin found himself frowning. “What about the blonde?”

  Now Gillian frowned. “What about her?”

  “Aren’t you going to take her to the bus?”

  “And why would I do that? She’s tall. She’s a bonnie lass, exactly the kind of woman you usually date.” Gillian folded her arms across her chest. “Dinna tell me you’re not interested in her.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  “But—”

  “How much did you wager that she’d stick around and that I’d invite her to stay?”

  “A week’s labor! If I lose, I have to clean the Devil’s Cup, and you’ve seen what that pub looks like on a summer morn. I’ll be sweeping and scrubbing half the day… for seven days in a row. You canna do this to me, Colin Dunbar.”

  “If you and the rest of the villagers would quit betting on my love life, you wouldn’t end up in these predicaments.”

  “And if you didn’t flit from one woman to another, we wouldn’t bet.”

  Colin shrugged and turned away from Gillian’s nagging to look at the distillery monitor, where he caught a quick glimpse of the redhead knocking on the door, then unsuccessfully trying the handle. Don’t waste your time, he wanted to tell her. It’s locked good and tight, and no one gets inside but me.

  Gillian cleared her throat to catch his attention, and he tilted his head to look at her annoyed frown over his shoulder.

  “Meg bet on the redhead,” Gillian said. “I told her she wasn’t your type, so please dinna tell me you’re going to let her stay.”

  Colin grinned, then turned his eyes back to the monitor. “Do you know her name?”

  “Aye.” Gillian drew in a deep breath then let it out in a huff. “Emily Sinclair. Age twenty-eight. Single, American, and never been married.”

  “You found all that out during the tour?”

  “She’s staying at the Devil’s Cup, and Meg—dear, sweet Meg, whose pub I’ll have to clean for two weeks, not one, if you let the redhead stay—plied her with stories this afternoon. If you give Meg a call, I’m sure you can find out an endless number of facts.”

  “All gathered for my benefit. Right?”

  “If you dinna get married, if you dinna produce an heir—”

  “The village will fall apart. Yes, yes, “I’m well aware of your worries.”

  “You might take it lightly, Colin Dunbar, but there are forty-three people living in the village of Dunbar who take your
love life quite seriously.”

  “And there are an equal number of people on the tour bus, plus a blonde in the Regency Room, that you should be taking back to the village. As for the redhead… she intrigues me. I’ll watch her a while longer, and I’ll make sure she gets back to the village… sometime.”

  Gillian harrumphed, spun around on her sensible shoes, and stalked out of the security room.

  Again he turned his gaze to the redhead, who was still trying to find a way inside the distillery, but his mind wandered back to Gillian’s words.

  Marriage. He shook his head at the miserable thought. In eight hundred years only one Dunbar laird— Alexander—had had a successful marriage, and that had surely been a fluke. It was certainly not a fact anyone living in the village of Dunbar wanted to discuss or even believe, because it would tamper with their blasted legend about every Dunbar laird doing away with his wife in one lascivious way or another.

  If truth be told, too many wives had run away from their philandering husbands, too many had died giving birth to an heir, and too many, like his own mother, had married only for wealth, and once they’d produced the obligatory son, took the money they were offered to get out of their husbands’ lives and moved on.

  No, he would not marry, and sadly, he would not produce an heir. Never. It was time the cursed history of the Dunbars came to an end.

  2

  Emily was stuck—literally—and in an ancient graveyard, of all places. Ghosts haunted cemeteries. So did murderers and grave robbers, and they always did it at midnight. Didn’t they? The witching hour was the perfect time for the unspeakable to happen, and it was bound to happen to her if she didn’t get her ankle out of some long-dead person’s blasted crypt

  She grabbed at the bend in her knee and tugged, but it did no good at all because she was wedged in way too far and way too tight. Obviously the fates were not smiling down on her this evening. Oh, no, why would they smile when they could roll in the clouds laughing themselves silly? “Serves you right for trespassing!” they’d probably say, followed by a stream of snickers. And they’d be right.

  If she could just get out of this mess, she’d promise to make up for her error in judgment.

  Until then, she gave herself permission to be a neurotic wreck. She drummed her fingers on the raised tomb to her right, jerked her stuck leg fruitlessly, and wondered uneasily why the slab covering the ground-level crypt she was caught in had been shoved aside. So a ghost could escape? It sounded reasonable, given her current state of near panic.

  She tried not to think about her foot dangling in that person’s burial plot, or the fact that her shoe might be touching someone’s remains.

  How, she wondered, could everything have gone so wrong after she’d executed such a brilliant, undetected escape from the gift shop? She’d made it to the distillery where Colin Dunbar reputedly spent the biggest portion of his time, but no one answered her knock on the door. And then a gardener spotted her with her hand on the knob and obviously thought she was a burglar trying to break in. He’d yelled, and she’d run—which proved to be her first really big mistake—straight for some hedges. Of course, the hedges turned out to be a maze. An endless, six-foot-high maze, which was not a good thing for a five-foot-two-if-she-stretched woman to get lost in, especially at night and for at least three hours to boot.

  She drummed her fingers a little harder on the granite crypt, thinking about her relief when she’d finally escaped. She’d taken a deep breath and headed for the castle. Unfortunately, she’d always had trouble figuring out north, south, east, and west and ended up at the abbey instead.

  The next time she was determined to have a conversation with an elusive, whisky-making Scottish laird, she’d pack a flashlight. She might even pack something to eat; her stomach had long ago started to growl.

  It made one of its ridiculous little rumbles now, the sound horribly loud in the stillness of the night. And then the quiet was further disrupted by the shriek of wind through the menacing gargoyles and ghastly medieval carvings that glared down at her from atop the abbey ruins.

  A chill snaked its way up her spine, and her nervousness became absolute fright when the ancient stone walls began to wail, as if the spirits of long-dead monks were crying over the devastation the centuries had wreaked on their cloistered home.

  This was definitely not the place to be at midnight, all alone, with the moon and stars hiding behind the clouds.

  She took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, but a bright circle of light suddenly appeared out of nowhere and joined the eerie screeching and crying inside the abbey, making her entire body tense up into a million unbearably tight knots. What was she witnessing here in the dark—at midnight? A ghost dancing from crypt to crypt? A spirit wanting to hightail it out of this place almost as badly as she did?

  She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that would make it go away, but when she cracked her left lid open the light was still there, moving closer. Closer.

  Popping both eyelids open again, she tried frantically to get her ankle out of its trap, but it wouldn’t budge. She swallowed hard, and her heart began a drum roll inside her chest as the circle of light grew larger and larger, blinding her when it stopped and stared her straight in the eyes.

  Slowly the apparition began to materialize, a face from the past emerging from the cloud of light. It was swarthy and shadowed, and its wicked sapphire eyes burned into her. Hair so black that it almost blended in with the nighttime sky whipped around its face in the wind.

  It was immensely tall. Its shoulders were broad.

  If she didn’t have a lump of fear stuck in her throat, she might have laughed at herself, because she found the apparition… stunning. She’d seen the face before, marveled at it in fact, when she’d gazed at a certain castle painting, one of a magnificent Highland laird on a massive black steed.

  “Alexander.” She whispered the name in awe, frightened but enthralled because he was far more gorgeous than in his portrait.

  “Colin.” It spoke, its voice a deep baritone, its Scottish burr soft, mesmerizing.

  She frowned at the name the ghost had uttered. “Colin?”

  “Aye. Colin, not Alexander, although it’s his tomb you’ve been drumming your fingers on.”

  “Colin!” She swallowed hard when she recognized the name, but still a lump hung in her throat. “The current one or a long-dead ancestor?”

  “Flesh and blood, although there are some who believe I’m made of stone.”

  Dizziness hit her—so did shock, but only an ounce of relief, and she clutched Alexander’s tomb to keep from crumpling to the ground when her knees turned to quivering jelly. “I thought you were a ghost.”

  “I assure you I’m not.”

  His Sean Connery-voice all but echoed through the graveyard and abbey, a welcome and comforting respite from the eerie howling. At last he turned his flashlight so it was no longer half-blinding her, and she could see that the man was definitely 100 percent flesh and blood, not to mention solid-packed muscle, all wrapped up in an off-white Arran wool sweater and well-fitting jeans.

  Slowly a smile touched her face as she realized she’d finally come face to face with the elusive man she’d set out to meet. The circumstances weren’t the best, however. He’d caught her trespassing on his property at midnight, she’d almost fainted dead away at the sight of him, and her foot was stuck in one of his ancestor’s graves. Not exactly a professional meeting, but she aimed to rectify that immediately.

  She held out her hand in greeting. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Dunbar. I’m Emily Sinclair.”

  He stepped closer, towering over her like one of the ominous dark spires on his castle, and took her hand. As intimidating as he looked, his grip was warm and almost gentle, and he didn’t let go. In fact, it felt as if he planned to hold on to it indefinitely.

  This was good, she told herself, trying to think about her agenda instead of the heat rippling through her. If he was in no hurry to let her
go, she’d probably find time to discuss business. Of course, the fact that he wasn’t letting go of her hand had some bad aspects, too, because that rippling heat flowing through her body felt really, really good, and everyone in their right mind knew that a smart businesswoman never mixed work with pleasure.

  “Well, Emily Sinclair,” he said, rolling the R in her name and halfway mesmerizing her, “did you enjoy your tour of the castle?”

  She frowned at his question. “You knew I was on the tour?”

  “I know everything that goes on here.”

  How could he possibly know? Unless… Her frown tightened. “Were you watching me in the security cameras?”

  “I was.”

  His intense, dark-eyed gaze trailed over her body. Again he was watching her, as he had through his blasted cameras, only this time he was watching far too personally, which made her very uncomfortable.

  When his stare fixed on the slab that held her captive, he let go of her hand and crouched at her side, wrapping his long, powerful lingers around her ankle. “Does this hurt?”

  “No.” Amazingly, it felt good, now that he was touching it. “I’m sure it’s not sprained. Just stuck.”

  “Here, hold this.” He handed her the flashlight. “I’ll have you out in a moment.”

  Take your time. That was an odd thought to creep into her mind when only minutes before she would have sold her soul to the devil to get out of this place. But it was nice to have a moment or two to enjoy the heavenly sensation of his hands on her ankle, and from this vantage point she could leisurely enjoy the sight of his muscular arms and shoulders, their strength visible even through the wool of his sweater.

  The aftershave he wore wafted around her, as did the now gentle breeze that tossed his thick and wavy ebony locks of hair. Why was it, she wondered, that men looked so rugged and handsome with their hair all mussed, while women usually ended up one big mess? She could only imagine what her springy bright red curls looked like at this moment. More than likely they stood on end, corkscrews flying everywhere.