“Did he ever say he wanted to?”
“Nay. But perhaps—”
Lizzy shot from the chair and fled the room. Amber knew her sister-in-law would search all the hiding spaces around the Keep where they’d hidden the stones. After Tara and Myra left, going in different directions, Amber joined the search up the spiraled staircase to the tallest tower and into what appeared to be an abandoned room.
Behind a hidden door was a space occupied by one of the sacred stones—the stones the ancients charged her family with for their safekeeping—the time traveling stones, that hadn’t been used for over a decade.
When Amber’s fingertips touched the stone, it started to glow. She lifted it out of its home intending to take it to the others as proof.
As she started to stand, the stone in her hand grew hot. Fearing she’d drop it, Amber set it on the floor. Before her eyes, the stone split into several pieces. Light cascaded over the stone and created a searing heat. Amber backed away and watched as the broken stone mended itself back together.
When the light faded, and the temperature in the room dropped, the stone appeared unharmed, but beside it was a thumb size piece of the rock.
Determining the stones wouldn’t burn her palm, Amber gathered them and searched out the women in her family.
She found them in her father’s study, each with a bewildered expression on their face. Amber lifted both stones up. When she did, Lizzy and Myra pointed to the table on which they’d placed the other stones. Once Lora returned to the room all five stones sat beside smaller pieces.
“Should we look in the trunk?” Myra asked.
“Simon would never take that one.” Lizzy said.
The trunk Lizzy spoke of housed the sixth stone. Safely tucked away to be used some 500 years in the future. Simon would die before compromising that one.
Lizzy fingered the smaller stones. “They had babies.”
Myra, six months pregnant with her third child, laughed.
“What do you suppose it means?” Tara laid an arm over Lizzy’s shoulders.
“I’ve no idea.” Lizzy lifted one of the tiny stones and inspected it closer. “There’s writing on it.”
Amber crowded her, taking a better look.
“Aye. ’Tis the same as the larger stones.”
At the doorway to the study, the patter of small feet crowded in. Amber smiled into the faces of her nieces and nephews. Briac, Tara’s oldest son, stepped forward, a strange pack dangled from his hand.
“Grandpa asked me to rush this inside,” Briac said.
Lizzy gasped, and Tara walked to her son.
“What is it?” Amber didn’t recognize the material or design.
“It’s a backpack.”
Amber still had no idea of what her sister-in-law spoke.
“Where did it come from?”
Selma stepped away from the other children and placed her hand into her mother’s palm. “Simon’s horse arrived without him.”
* * * *
Simon wrapped his arms around the lass and braced for the fall.
A scream ripped from Helen’s lips the moment gravity crushed them to the earth’s surface.
They landed on something soft. The air around his body no longer felt cool or permeated with the smells of the forest. Simon jerked his head up, but kept the lass firmly within his hold. Protecting her from whomever may have followed them in the vortex.
Looking from side to side, he recognized the inside of a home similar to the one he’d spent the first decade of his life.
Under the trembling girl was a sofa. To the side of the couch was an end table and lamp. A mechanical noise filled the room and a high-pitched beep repeated every few seconds. Other than the noises of the apartment, there were none.
Simon sighed with relief and closed his eyes. No bloodthirsty warrior had tumbled with them through time. But this was not how he thought his day would end when he awoke this morning. Ah, but the woman under him was wonderfully soft in all the right places,
“Get. Off. Me.”
Simon had no desire to move. But move he must. And explain.
Helen’s small fist pounded against his chest, her legs started to kick out from under him.
“Calm down, lass. I’m moving.”
As soon as his weight lifted from hers, like a frightened rabbit, she scurried several feet away.
Simon stood to his six-foot-two height and glanced around the room.
“You’re naked!”
A necessary evil when shifting from animal to man. Much like an animal wearing only its fur, Simon felt no shame in his nudity.
The woman in the room had other thoughts.
Simon watched a blush rush to her cheeks. The glow brought much-needed color to her face. Her eyes left a fiery path, as she looked her fill. When her eyes settled south of his stomach, his body responded.
Helen gasped and turned away.
Simon chuckled. A small throw blanket sat on the couch. He wrapped his hips into the material before saying, “I’m decent now.”
Helen glanced over her shoulder briefly before turning back toward him. It was then he noticed the blood flowing down her leg beneath the makeshift bandage. Renewed concern for her wellbeing filled him.
“You’re bleeding.”
She glanced at her leg and laughed. “It wasn’t a dream.”
“I’m afraid not.”
Simon stepped toward her and she pulled away. His dirk rose before her.
He lifted his hands. “Do you really believe I’ll hurt you, lass?”
“I-I don’t know what—”
“Come now. We need to clean that before an infection seeps in.” Besides, giving the girl a task would put her mind to work and keep her from falling apart.
She nodded, and started walking toward another room. Simon caught her arm when her body tilted after applying weight on her swelling leg.
Inside the small bathroom, she turned on a light. The action brought a smile to his face. Electricity was a beautiful thing. He remembered it now.
Helen sat on the side of the tub, and lifted her leg to remove her shoes.
“I’m going crazy, aren’t I?” She asked the question but never stopped her task.
“You’re not crazy.”
Simon helped her remove her sock and twisted the knob at the faucet. Water flowed through the pipes. Only when the water started to warm did he ease her leg to the tub. With a gentle hand, he untied the bloody rag and tossed it to the side.
“I was in Scotland this morning.”
“As was I.” Simon found a washcloth and pressed it under the water. Helen stared at the back wall and let him tend to her wound.
“We were in the woods a few minutes ago.”
“That’s right.” She flinched when he placed the cloth on her leg.
“We’re in my apartment. Now. In California.”
So that’s where they were. “This will hurt.” Dirt had caked into her wound, and Simon started to scrub slowly away at the grime.
“How did we get here?”
Her question answered a few of his. She had travelled through time, but had no idea how she’d done so. Earlier, when a flash of light and a roar created by the fabric of time being stretched had detoured him from his task of returning to the Keep, Helen emerged from the fog. Never being sure who, or why, a person would travel from the future to sixteenth century Scotland, Simon had kept his guard high.
This woman, who now held perfectly still while Simon ministered to her leg, must have sought something in the past. And she must also be Druid.
He wondered if she knew that last fact.
“I’m not entirely sure how you managed to move us here.”
“I didn’t do it.” Her voice rose in defense.
Well, I certainly didn’t do it. The time traveling stones were safely tucked away in the Keep and couldn’t have been responsible for their travels.
“What were you thinking about right before we ended up here?�
�� Simon continued to scrub her leg while they spoke.
“I thought I was going to die.”
“Aye, what else?”
She shook her head and shivered, no doubt thinking of the men who chased her. “That’s it. I was going to be killed in a Scottish forest by a bunch of freaks wearing costumes.”
Simon reached back in his own memories of his childhood—to a time when he had believed he would die at the hands of evil. All he had wanted was to go home. Run to his mother and go home. “Did you beg to go home?”
“Yeah, I guess. Anywhere but there.”
In his knowledge, no Druid was able to shift in time by merely wishing it so. There had to be stronger powers at work.
“Before you arrived in the forest,” he kept questioning. The bleeding on her leg had stopped and his hand rested on her knee. “You were chasing a paper, right?”
She nodded and then jumped in alarm. “My backpack, the book.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Things. I’m worried about things and I nearly died today.”
Simon took her hands in his urging her to sit back down. He noticed gravel embedded in her palms and renewed his attention to her skin.
“Where were you before you ended up in the forest with me?”
“Just outside of Dundee. I pulled off the side of the road and was walking.”
“Were you looking for something, or simply enjoying the day?”
Her eyes skirted across his briefly before pulling her hands away and reaching for a cake of soap. “Both.”
“What were you looking for?”
“It’s not important.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Helen pushed away from the tub and hobbled to a cabinet where she removed bandages. “I was following a hunch.”
“A hunch?”
“Looking for a missing person.”
“Are you a police officer?” Simon knew one personally. His pseudo uncle, Todd, spoke of hunches all the time.
“No.”
“Were you looking for a loved one?”
“Just a kid.”
Her own child, perhaps?
“No one I know. It doesn’t matter.” She lifted her leg up onto the countertop and covered her wound with ointment from a tube. “I’ll never follow a hunch again. It isn’t like I even know any of Simon McAllister’s family or anything.”
Everything inside Simon grew still.
At least he knew why Helen practically landed in his lap. She was looking for a child, however, not a man. He needed more answers. “How long has this child been missing?”
“Two and a half years. It’s a cold case. None of the authorities are putting much effort into finding him.”
That hurt. A missing teenage boy meant so little to this world. Simon blew out a long breath. Some pieces of the puzzle were snapping together.
“What is it?”
“Excuse me?” he asked.
Helen ran a hand over her arm as if chasing away the cold. “You know something.”
Definitely Druid. The lass displayed a sixth sense that helped her read people. The women in his family were far better at it than the men.
With as much dignity as one could manage when wrapped in a blanket, Simon stood and made a grand gesture of bowing. “My lady, Helen, allow me to introduce myself.”
She held perfectly still, waiting.
“Simon McAllister, at your service.”
Chapter Five
Helen laughed in his face. “Right. Dude, you are not a fourteen year old kid.”
“True. But Simon McAllister I am.”
“The men in the woods called you MacCoinnich.”
“A name my stepfather honored me with when he married my mother, Elizabeth McAllister, now Elizabeth MacCoinnich.”
“You’re not fourteen.” So far away from fourteen, in fact, Helen needed to remind herself to keep her eyes glued to his or risk licking her lips while gazing at his very manly chest.
“You’ve just traveled from a forest in the Highlands to your apartment in California in only minutes. Believing I am the Simon McAllister you’re searching for can’t be impossible.
One crisis at a time. Emergencies were tumbling over themselves screaming for attention, but she could only deal with one drama at a time.
This would be easier with wine.
Without another word, Helen walked around the massive man in her bathroom and made a beeline for the kitchen. She found an unopened bottle of Cabernet and set it on the counter with a plop. The man watched her every move, but she didn’t bother with explanations or even conversation. Not yet.
Scotland. They’d both been in Scotland an hour ago.
She rummaged through a drawer and found a corkscrew. Maybe she was dreaming. Yeah, that must be it. She was asleep. Why on earth would any dream of hers with a man draped in nothing but a throw, involve men slicing through her leg with swords? And, why the hell did it hurt so much?
Helen struggled with the cork for a couple of seconds before it popped free from the bottle. She poured a generous portion of wine into a tall, plastic glass before lifting it to her lips for a long drink.
She probably should have tried something stronger. Whisky. Leaning a hip along the counter, she watched the man in her apartment settle his very sexy ass on the backside of her sofa and regard her without saying a word.
Simon?
The boy in her picture had dark hair and blue eyes.
Helen went ahead and allowed her gaze to settle on her guest’s face.
Dark hair, blue eyes.
Big deal. Half the men in this country had those characteristics.
After another drink, Helen let her shoulders relax. She couldn’t completely. Her body was too charged to let go of the energy of the day. Humming. She was positively humming and had been since she’d first laid eyes on this man. That same hum had sizzled when he touched her.
Even his innocent touch while tending to her leg felt like a thousand butterfly wings brushing against her skin—similar to the buzz she’d felt before she’d found the book in Mrs. Dawson’s library, and the same buzz that had struck when she’d first seen the picture of Simon.
What did that say?
If the man in front of her wasn’t Simon, what would he gain by saying he was?
“You’re Simon?”
“Aye.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
“Exactly how is that possible?”
“Time travel.”
What did she expect him to say? Falling through a rabbit hole and waking in the Land of Oz didn’t hold a candle to this conversation.
“Time travel.”
Simon folded his roped-with-muscle arms across his chest. His lips didn’t crack into a chiding smile. He was serious.
“Two years ago, your time, my mother and I were whisked back in time, just as you were today. We found happiness there and decided to stay.”
“Decided?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
She took another drink. Damn glass wasn’t full enough so she poured more wine. “If you decided to stay, how is it I found you in 2011?”
“You didn’t. You found me in 1596.”
Whisky. There had to be at least half a bottle somewhere. Helen shifted back to her cupboard and opened it wide. There it was. A few years ago, she’d had a boyfriend who liked Canadian whisky. Thank God.
The eyes of the man who called himself Simon followed her around the kitchen as she found a clean glass. Glancing at him, she went ahead and grabbed a second glass. After pouring the amber liquid, she handed him a drink, which he took with a nod.
Still he said nothing. It was as if he was giving her time to digest everything. Only offering answers to the questions she asked.
1596. “I guess that answers the questions about the men in costumes swinging their swords.”
In a strange way, the time travel explanation sat easier on her mind than Simon being a thirty-year-old k
ilted man. Scratch that, naked man. She was about to ask what happened to his clothes, but didn’t think she’d like his answer.
The whisky burned the back of her throat.
“If you decided to stay back in time, why are you here now?”
Simon narrowed his eyes. “That is a very good question, lass. One only you hold the answer to.”
“I don’t have any answers. I didn’t think time travel was possible until today.”
“So you believe me?”
Helen barked out a laugh. “Sure. Why not? This is all probably some crazy dream, and I’ll wake up tomorrow in Scotland with a hangover.”
“I understand why you’d wish that. But tomorrow you’ll wake here in California. The hangover is a possibility if you continue to drink the rest of that bottle.”
Licking her lips, Helen felt some of the sizzling buzz generated by Simon’s presence start to numb. The threat of a hangover didn’t deter her from lifting the glass to her lips again. A hangover sounded better than dealing with time travel sober.
“You think I’m the reason you’re here?”
“You were searching for me, right?”
“I was.”
“Then you are the reason I’m here. What you and I need to discover is how you shifted time so I can return to my family.”
His family? Was he married? Did he have children of his own?
He finished his drink and set his glass to the side.
“I’m not sure I can help you.”
“No need to worry about it tonight. We’ll think more clearly in the morning.”
In the morning? Did he think he was going to sleep in her apartment? She didn’t even know this guy.
“Listen, I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to stay here.”
“You’re safe with me.” Simon walked around the couch and propped up one of the throw pillows for him to use.
“I don’t even know you.”
“That is changing with every minute. Besides, if you have no idea how you shifted time, there’s no way for you to stop it from happening again. Facing those Highland warriors again, alone, might not have such a pleasant outcome.”
Helen grimaced and finished the contents of her glass.
“I’ll find you an extra blanket.”
Highland Shifter Page 4