Perfect Timing 2: Highland Fling

by Jennifer Labrecque

  Finally. They were getting somewhere. Kate looked at Hamish. “See, he’s on my side. He doesn’t want me or a baby and I don’t want him or a baby. That should count for something. It’s two to one.”

  Hamish smiled and shook his head. “I am just about solving the puzzle of your being here and how to get you back.”

  Kate felt better. It wasn’t as if he had an inside track or knew something they didn’t. He was just speculating and throwing out ideas. “We call that brainstorming. Brainstorming’s good.” She turned to MacTavish. “Okay. Let’s look at the other possibilities. Perhaps you don’t have to die.”

  “I will nae live again as a coward.”

  She looked to Hamish, hoping for some guidelines. “Can history be re-written? Can a course of events be changed?”

  “Aye. If it is meant to be. I think yer both forgetting an important piece of this puzzle. There is destiny, which is a greater plan beyond our control, and there is free will and often we do not know which is which. We do not know what we can change and what we can not. So, it may matter not what either of you think you want.”

  Kate impatiently shoved a curl behind her ear. “But you said it was both of our wants—” she shot MacTavish a hard glance, he owned this as much as she did, actually more in her opinion “—our needs, that brought me here. So apparently our wants do matter.”

  Hamish acknowledged her reasoning with a reluctant nod. “It would seem so, but mayhap only if in keeping with your destiny. ’Tis an enigma only the two of you can discern. Your connection was through a Sex Through the Ages exhibit.” He glanced at Kate in apology. “Begging your pardon for speaking blunt but mayhap ’tis nothing more than you shagging him ’til he dies.” He shook his head and grinned. “Hardly seems fair. If Darach is to die at Drumossie, then ’tis likely my fate as well. Couldnae you have brought along a friend fer me?”

  MacTavish laughed and Kate stared at both men, confounded. One minute they were embroiled in a serious discussion of destiny and their impending demise and the next they were laughing like schoolboys. “If I’d only known…”

  MacTavish seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. “Daft Scot and his gallows humor.”

  “Very few people laugh when they find out they’re going to die soon,” she said.

  “I am not afraid tae die.” MacTavish shrugged. “I’ve waited a long time for death. But I cannae sit by and do nothing for my people. I cannae leave the women to be raped and worse and the men to be hunted and killed by the English dogs.”

  Kate shuddered at the scene he painted, the scene due to play out all too soon. “Then we don’t have a choice. We have to keep working on it until we come up with a solution.”

  MacTavish rocked back on his heels. “There is a possibility we have all overlooked.”

  “Yes?” Kate said.

  “Speak up, man,” Hamish said.

  “A few minutes ago you said if Hamish had not sent you through the painting so quick you would have had more facts for me. You also said you were not of the problem, you were of the solution. Mayhap, there lies our answer. No answers lie here, only questions and uncertainty. All the answers belong in your time. Hamish was right after all. I do need you. You need to take me back with you, Katie-love.”

  Hamish nodded. “Bluidy brilliant.”

  MacTavish turned his dark eyes on her. “But I will wager I can only come if you want me. Do you want me, Katie-love?” His gaze pierced her very soul.

  Her heart thumped so loudly, surely he could hear it from where he stood. “You’re arrogant and bossy and ill-tempered, MacTavish.” He had only asked her to take him for a short period of time—long enough for him to gather facts and devise a plan. Why then, did it feel as if she was about to utter an eternal vow? “Aye, I want you.”

  8

  KATE CLUTCHED HER PURSE and paced across the room, almost giddy with excitement at their impending journey. Once again, she wore the MacTavish plaid. MacTavish had finally donned one himself. She stifled a laugh at the thought that they looked like a couple doing the matching outfits thing—only to the extreme. “Are you ready for the twenty-first century?”

  She wasn’t sure what she looked forward to the most—the comfort of a modern bathroom, a good cup of coffee, or the advantages of modern technology such as her pager actually working.

  “There is no guarantee this will work,” MacTavish warned her as he pulled on his boots.

  “It will. I’ve always been very practical and fact-oriented and this is neither…but since I saw the painting that first time, it was as if something awakened in me. I don’t quite know how to describe it—a sixth sense maybe, a latent intuition. And since I’ve been here, it’s grown stronger and stronger.” She held up her hands in a questioning gesture. “Maybe because facts as I know them no longer make sense. From a factual standpoint, I shouldn’t have been able to walk into a picture and travel back more than two-hundred sixty years in time.”

  “’Tis a strange thing to be sure.” He stood and Kate silently admired the figure he cut in his kilt and boots.

  “It’s beyond strange. But I have a sense that this is right—you’re supposed to go with me—and this is how we’re supposed to do it.” She hadn’t been so sure until they’d made love the second time. Now she knew with absolute certainty.

  “You are ready to go home, are you not, Katie-love?”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “Aye. You made it very clear that this—” he swept his hand toward the room “—does not compare to your home.”

  Oops. She’d definitely wounded his pride with her earlier comments. It really wasn’t like her at all to fly off the handle. “I’m sorry I said those things. I was angry. The main thing is I don’t belong here. This isn’t my home and these aren’t my people.”

  She was a total fish out of water with no chance of adapting to this place and time.

  “No. You do not belong here.” His dark eyes held hers. “’Tis definitely time for you to go home.”

  “Where I’m from is wonderful. Just wait, MacTavish. You won’t believe it.” It almost bordered on cruelty to give him a taste of the good life only to send him back to this land of hardship and deprivation. But this had a rightness to it and they’d each do what they had to do. “The hardest part will be getting you to my condo. Then we’re home free. I’m nervous, though, as to where we’ll show up and how we’ll be dressed—make that if we’ll be dressed. I assure you I wasn’t wandering the museum naked but that’s how I showed up here.” She glanced at the picture on the wall beside her.

  MacTavish offered a wicked grin. “Aye. And twas a pleasure to behold.”

  Men. She shook her head at him. “Thank you. But it’ll be better if we have on clothes when we get there. The most important thing, and I know this won’t be easy for you, is you’ve got to do what I tell you to do. I know you’re accustomed to being in charge, but let me do the talking and follow my lead.”

  “’Tis true I am used to being in charge.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “But I will do as you say…as long as I agree with what you tell me to do.”

  “That’s not the way it works. You might not particularly understand why I’m saying something or doing something. You know, I wasn’t crazy about being locked in this room. But you told me to stay and I stayed.”

  He leveled a glance that immediately brought to mind her meeting him in the circular stairwell.

  “Okay. Except for that one time. But it’s like here.” She waved a hand around the room. “You can’t tell anyone you’re almost three hundred years old. People will think you’re crazy. And if they think you’re crazy and dangerous…well, they’ll lock you up.” Simply thinking of the psych ward sent a shiver through her. “And you don’t want to be locked up. It’s not a good place to be and it’s not going to help you help your people. I need your word on this, MacTavish.”

  He stood with his feet planted apart, a stubborn cast to his jaw.

  “You’
ve got to trust me. I’m just trying to help you. But I can’t if you won’t let me. So, even though it might seem that I’m in charge, you’re ultimately in charge.”

  The glower in his eyes turned to a glimmer of amusement. He shook his head at her doubletalk. “You have my word. I’ll do as you say.”

  She knew that hadn’t come easy for him. “Thank you. This shouldn’t be that difficult if you keep sort of quiet. Atlanta’s a big city and there are people there from all over the world so, as long as you’re not naked and if we can get you in some regular clothes, no one will notice, MacTavish.”

  “I have a suggestion tae make…before you are in charge.”

  “Yes?”

  “Mayhap you should call me by my given name.”

  She knew that. She really did. It was irrational, and as a rule she was never irrational, but even though she’d slept in his bed, worn his clothes, eaten his food, and made love with him, there was an intimacy and familiarity in calling him by his first name that she’d avoided. “You’re right. I’ll make sure I do.”

  “Do it now, so that you get used to it,” he said.

  She could swear he knew how reluctant she was and why. Fine. “Darach.”

  Dammit. She knew it. Even though she’d been matter-of-fact, it felt intimate. MacTavish kept him at a distance. MacTavish was larger than life, the laird of Glenagan. But Darach…Darach was just a man.

  An expression she could almost mistake for tenderness chased across his face and vanished. “I know you’re very sure we will both travel to your Atlanta. I cannae say I feel as sure. And if that’s the case, I cannae let you go without saying good bye.” He stroked the backs of his fingers along her face. “’Tis been a pleasure to know you, Katie Wexford. Godspeed to you.” He splayed his hands intimately across her belly. “And if mayhap, you are carrying my bairn, be it lad or lassie, will you give it the MacTavish name and one day tell it of me?”

  Despite the fact that she had found him infuriating on more than one occasion, the unexpected pain of his goodbye nearly tore her asunder, as if a limb was being ripped from her body. “Yes. You have my word. If there’s a baby, it will carry the MacTavish name.” It almost made her wish…. No.

  “My mother’s name was Isobel. ’Tis a bonnie name for a lass.”

  She caught a glimpse of the boy he must’ve been before circumstances and time had molded him, hardened him. Tears burned behind her eyes and she had to swallow hard before she could speak. “Isobel is a lovely name.”

  Obviously she hadn’t swallowed hard enough because a tear trickled down her cheek. She brushed it away impatiently. She would not leave him behind to die at Drumossie.

  “I’m not saying goodbye because you’re coming with me,” she said. “I need you so that we can figure this out. This can’t be the way it was meant to end. I need you. Come with me, Darach.”

  She linked her arms around his neck and kissed him. She poured herself into the kiss, into him—her soul, her mind, her body. He bore her back against the wall and it was more than a mere fusing of mouths and tongues. It was a fusing of souls and wills that transcended the physical. Locked together in a kiss she felt herself spiraling, tumbling, whirling in the dark as she’d done once before.

  Darach broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers. “Katie-love…” He sounded as dizzy and disoriented as she still felt.

  Kate blinked her eyes open, adjusting to the dim lighting. She and Darach were leaning against the museum wall, next to the painting, near the exact spot she’d stood to admire the portrait before Hamish had shoved her. “Look. Look around us.” They’d done it without really trying. They’d done it! Together, they’d traveled through time.

  “Welcome to Atlanta and the twenty-first century, Darach MacTavish.”

  WHAT HAD HE EXPECTED the journey to be like? Perhaps the wind rushing by him? Perhaps he’d soar through the air like a hawk, an Icarus, with majestic sweeping views of the Highland wilds below him?

  He for certain hadn’t expected to spin so out of control that he almost lost consciousness.

  Darach looked about him. Various portraits hung about on smooth plaster walls that soared high. Some lamps with no torch or candle actually burning. Gleaming wood floors. Aye, ’twas a strange place.

  “Glad to see you made it here.” He turned and found himself face to face with a man who appeared to be a much older version of Hamish by thirty or forty years.

  “Hamish?”

  “One and the same.” He grinned and Darach for sure recognized his friend. “Good trip?”

  “Aye. ‘Twas a bit rough but it happened in not much more than the blink of an eye.”

  Hamish cast a concerned eye on Kate and Darach. “Time travel affects everyone differently. It leaves some feeling a bit sickish. You two okay?”

  Kate nodded, her face wreathed in a smile that reminded him of a glimpse of the sun following a storm. “I’ve never felt better.” She turned to Darach. “How about you?”

  Well, truth be told he had been better because ‘twas all strange and even Hamish sounded different. But, he’d made it and at least now he had a glimmer of hope that he could save his people. “Aye. I’m fine.”

  Hamish passed a change of clothes to Darach. “I thought you might show up and I figured you’d need this. You’ll blend in much better without the plaid. Quick. Change here. There’s no one around but you’ll want to hurry, the museum’s just closing now.”

  Darach looked at the garments in his hand.

  Hamish nodded toward the room’s open doorway. “I’ll keep an eye out while you dress. Perhaps your lady can give you a hand, since it’s a bit different from what you’re used to.”

  Kate. He’d been so busy taking it all in, he hadn’t noticed until now that she wore trousers and a shirt with a jacket. He preferred her naked or wrapped in his kilt. Or mayhap it was because he’d just left a bit of himself with her in that kiss and now she looked more a stranger than the woman he’d come to know.

  She plucked a white undergarment from the top and presented it to him.

  Darach briefly examined it before he handed it back.

  “Nay. Scotsmen dinnae wear those. ’Tis a matter of pride.”

  Katie planted a hand on her hip. Different century and country or not, that must be a universal lass gesture. “Are you suffering short-term memory loss? We just talked about this. You know—that discussion where you agreed to do what I say without arguing. When we get to my house, you can take them off and turn your big boy loose, but until then, put them on.”

  He wasn’t taken in by her sweet smile. Damn the wretched woman, but she was enjoying this.

  He stepped into the underwear and pulled them up. “Bluidy hell. How can a man think with his rod all bundled up next to his sack?”

  “Don’t whine, Darach. Take off the kilt and put on this shirt.” While he took off his kilt and shrugged into the shirt, she examined the jacket and turned to Hamish. “Versace? Did you pick this out?”

  Hamish, from his lookout, nodded and offered a sheepish grin. “Aye. Since I’ve been in the twenty-first century, I’ve discovered I like shopping. The shopping network is addictive.”

  “You bought a Versace suit on the shopping network?” she asked.

  Hamish laughed. “Neiman’s was having a sale and I couldn’t help myself. I kept the receipt in case he didn’t show up.”

  They might as well have been speaking a foreign tongue, Darach thought, because he dinnae ken Versace, the shopping network, or Neiman’s, but he knew fer damn sure he preferred his kilt to this. And while Hamish looked the same, except a good bit older, he dinnae know this man the way he knew the Hamish of old—the Hamish of his boyhood. This Hamish owned a worldliness that was at odds with the man Darach knew—neither good nor bad, just different.

  He finished dressing while Kate and Hamish talked.

  “Where do I store my kilt and boots?” he asked.

  Hamish crossed to a small table displaying dil
does. He reached beneath the cloth draping it and pulled out a black-handled leather satchel.

  “This should hold them,” he said as he passed Darach the satchel.

  Katie looked at him, the heat in her eyes almost worth the discomfort of the clothes he wore. But mayhap he also knew a moment of disappointment that she seemed to like this better than his plaid, which was as much a part of who and what he was as the blood that flowed through his veins.

  “Oh. My. I’m going to have to beat the women off with a stick.” She looked to Hamish. “He might as well have worn the kilt. He’s going to be noticed regardless of what he wears.”

  If that was the case…. “I will be glad tae change.”

  “No. You will actually fit in better this way—” another look that stirred his blood “—but certainly no one’s going to overlook you.” Kate glanced at her wrist and then looked once more. “My watch is working again. What day is it?” she asked Hamish. “What time is it?”

  “It’s the same day, same time it was when you left. Because you spent your time in the past, you lost no time here. The future had yet to exist. But it doesn’t work that way when you come from the past. The sand is still sifting through the hourglass at Glenagan just as it is here now.” He nudged Darach and gestured to the painting behind him. “It’s weathered the years well, don’t you think?”

  For the first time Darach looked at the painting. “’Tis the same, just a bit older.”

  Hamish nodded. “This is how Kate got to you and this is how you’ll return to Glenagan. As you know, the exhibit is now closed here. After tonight, it’s officially in transit. It reopens in New York in two weeks and will be there for two months. Before I leave, I’ll secure a passport for you to make sure there’s no trouble flying to New York. We’ll get a photo taken in a couple of days. Once there, you have but to find the portrait when you’re ready to return.” He clapped his arm about Darach’s shoulder, enveloping him in a hug. “Good luck, Darach.”