Moonlight Warrior

by Janet Chapman

  He stiffened, not letting her go. “What does when I was born have to do with anything? I’m here now, we’re a good match, and I’m asking ye to marry me.”

  “Do you love me?”

  His cheeks darkened even more. “Love is different for men and women.”

  “How?”

  He was definitely getting hot under the collar, and Eve was intrigued despite her growing frustration. Not only was her rabbit hole getting deeper, but her definition of a highlander was expanding exponentially.

  He shifted uncomfortably. “Women are born needing to love their husband and children, whereas men are born just needing.”

  “Needing what?”

  “Women,” he snapped. “We need a woman’s softness to…to keep us…”

  “Civilized?” Eve hazarded a guess.

  “Fine, yes, to keep us civilized!” he growled.

  Boy, did the MacKeage women know their highlanders, or what?

  “And we women need men to protect us from bad things like…oh, I don’t know…bogeymen, maybe?”

  His golden eyes—which had tiny flecks of green in them—narrowed. “Are ye trying to divert the conversation?” His features softened, and he let go of her hands to cup her face. “I see that I’ve shocked you and ye don’t know what to say, so you’re asking questions to distract me.” He kissed the tip of her nose, then smiled. “You don’t have to give me an answer right now, little one. You can sleep on it a few days. Just allow yourself enough time to plan our wedding on the fall equinox.”

  “When?”

  “I believe it’s September twenty-first.”

  That was less than three months away! “Oh, God,” Eve said, grabbing her belly. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Eve scrambled back to stand up, but she wasn’t fast enough.

  “Shhh,” Kenzie said, gently patting her back as she crouched on all fours and alternated between dry heaving and sobbing in utter humiliation. “Easy now. Fighting it just makes it worse. Try to relax and breathe through it.”

  If he continued patting her, she was going to smack him! “Go away,” she groaned, hugging her belly.

  He actually left!

  She looked around and didn’t see him; it was as if he’d vanished into thin air. Eve straightened to her knees and peered into the woods on either side of the path. Where had he gone?

  She stood up and walked over to Butterball, took the horse’s reins just in case she woke up and decided to leave, too, then sat down on a rock.

  Sheesh, hurl on the man, and he vanishes!

  Eve placed her hand on her belly. Suppose their baby threw up on him? Would he hand the kid off to her and leave?

  She tried to picture Kenzie with a chest pack like Jack Stone had worn last night, and couldn’t help but smile. Baby Walker certainly had looked safe and cozy on his daddy’s chest. Their baby would be safe and cozy on Kenzie’s chest, wouldn’t it?

  Eve rubbed her chin with her sleeve, then buried her face in her hands as tears began to fall. What a mess she was in. Kenzie wouldn’t make love to her until after they were married, so how could she tell him she was already pregnant?

  She jumped when something suddenly touched her hair.

  “It’s just me,” Kenzie said, crouching in front of her.

  Eve barely had time to register that he was naked from the waist up before he pressed a wet cloth to her face and began wiping her teary eyes. She leaned into the cool cloth even as she tried to take it from him to do it herself.

  Of course he wouldn’t cooperate. “Maybe we should ride over to the MacBains and have Libby take a look at you. You seem to be sick a lot lately, and it’s starting to worry me.”

  “Camry offered to take me to see her yesterday,” Eve said, finally getting the cloth away from him. Oh—it was his shirt. “There’s no need to bother her. I have a doctor’s appointment in Ellsworth next week. I’ll ask about my mor—My motion sickness then.”

  When her gaze strayed down to his lovely, bare chest, she forced her gaze back to his eyes. “Where did you go? You left me out here all alone.”

  He sat down beside her, then picked up a rock and rolled it back and forth between his hands. “Unlike your first husband, I will never abandon you. In fact, I have a fear I may be quite smothering.”

  He looked at her with a crooked grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes, then back at the woods again. “I ran away from home when I was fifteen,” he said softly, “abandoning my aging mother and father, and my younger sister Fiona, which left no strong male to defend them.”

  “Where was Matt?”

  “He’d gone seeking a new life of his own the year before. I was all they had left, and I let them down.” He started rolling the rock in his hands again. “Several years after I left, a man raped Fiona and got her with child, and she died giving birth. And because our mother had taken sick and died two years before that, Fiona’s son only lived a couple of weeks.”

  Eve’s skin prickled at his obvious pain, and she touched his arm. “You’re talking as if you blame yourself, when it had nothing to do with you.”

  “Aye, but it did. I wasn’t there when my sister needed me the most.”

  “Did she press charges against the man who raped her? Was he convicted?”

  “He was punished for his crime.”

  “But you couldn’t have stopped her from dying, if the doctors couldn’t even save her. As for the baby…your father must have taken him to the hospital.”

  Kenzie looked out at the woods again. “Papa was quite insane by then.”

  Eve held his damp shirt on her lap, not knowing what to say but desperately wanting to say something. “It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered. “If you had known, you would have come back immediately. But you were in the army, weren’t you? It’s not like you could just up and leave.”

  He shifted to face her, and took one of her hands in his. “If you agree to marry me, Eve, ye have my word that I will never abandon you.”

  The top of that rabbit hole was way, way over her head now. Oh, God—the minute she told him she was pregnant, he would have her standing in front of a minister before she could finish explaining how it had happened.

  And love would forever be beyond her reach, because duty would take its place, possibly even usurping his need for her.

  At this point, even need sounded better than duty.

  She patted his hand. “I have to think about your proposal,” she said softly. “But I promise that if the answer is yes, we can be married on the fall equinox.”

  He stared at her, saying nothing, then stood up to lead her over to Butterball’s side.

  “Can we walk?” she asked. “We’re not that far from Gù Brath.”

  “I was hoping to show ye the view from the ridge.”

  “Is it much farther?”

  “It’s just around the next corner and up a short rise.”

  She started walking up the path. “Then come on, Mr. Highlander. Let’s see if you can walk faster than you drive,” she said with a laugh, determined to chase away the somber mood.

  He caught up with her, then took her hand in his as he matched her stride.

  She glanced over her shoulder. “What about Butterball?”

  “We might as well let her nap,” he said, gently swinging their hands between them. “She’ll be right there when we come back.”

  They walked in silence after that, and Eve felt her heart expanding with each step she took. It really had nothing to do with his wrenching story, but more with the very things about him that drove her crazy. There was something rather endearing about his ancient behavior—maybe even romantic.

  What she saw was exactly what she got with Kenzie: no pretenses, no posturing to impress or suppress, and only a tad of arrogance. He always meant what he said, and wasn’t afraid to say what he thought.

  She could do worse. She had done worse. She’d been living in Boston less than a year when Parker had started making her feel like he’d
done her a really huge favor by marrying her, a sentiment that was echoed by everyone in Midnight Bay whenever she came back for the summer. How smart she’d been to snag herself such a handsome and rich husband who had taken her off to the big city. She had to be the luckiest girl in the world!

  But at the first mention of her mother’s illness, instead of being concerned about Mabel, Parker had only seen the ensuing costs of her long-term care. Around the time Eve suggested moving her mom and Nathan closer to them, Parker had turned openly hostile. And when Nathan had died last winter and Eve had suggested her mother come live with them, the bastard had cut and run.

  “You know that if we were to get married, I come with a sick mother,” Eve said into the silence.

  “I am aware of that.”

  “And the medical bills are going to pile up, and she’s eventually going to have the mind of a child.”

  “I’m quite fond of children.” He lifted the hand he was holding and kissed it. “And do you know that if we were to get married, that I come with a cranky old priest who eats every meal as if it were his last?”

  “And a man who thinks he’s a dragon?”

  He chuckled. “Aye, we mustn’t forget about William.”

  “And if we did get married, we’d probably have children,” she whispered.

  “Do ye want children, Eve?”

  “When I was a little girl, I always pictured myself having a bunch of kids.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Our house will be near to bursting, then. If we were to get married.”

  They broke out of the forest and up onto a ridge, and Eve sucked in a deep breath of surprise. Pine Lake stretch for miles below them, surrounded by spruce-and pine-covered mountains.

  “This is too beautiful for words,” Eve said.

  He led her to a patch of dried grass that had blades of brilliant green shooting up through it, urged her to sit down, then sat down beside her. “That’s Bear Mountain,” he said, pointing to a long-ridged mountain hugging the east side of the lake. “Can ye see that clearing halfway up the middle, just below that sharp cliff? That’s where Matt and Winter are building their new home.” Then he pointed toward the shoreline. “Right now they’re living in what will become their summer cottage after they move.”

  “Did you live with them when you lived here?”

  He moved his hand to encompass not only Bear Mountain, but the mountain they were on. “The entire forest was my home.”

  “But where did you sleep?”

  “Wherever I wanted. There was one particularly sweet spring that I liked to bed down near, over there.” He pointed east of their ridge.

  “But where did you sleep when there was snow on the ground and it dropped to twenty below at night?”

  He lowered his arm to his lap. “I like being out in the weather.”

  Eve blinked at him. “So…um…if we were to get married, you’d still camp out?”

  He laughed and pulled her into his arms, then lay back on the grass, settling her against him so that her head rested on his shoulder. “Trust me, little one, I will be in your bed.” He hesitated, then said, “But maybe sometimes we can sleep under the stars.”

  Eve smiled, figuring she’d never have to worry about getting frostbite since he radiated heat like a blast furnace. She snuggled comfortably against his still-naked chest, threw her arm over him with a huge yawn, and fell sound asleep.

  Kenzie stared up at the clouds as he savored the feel of Eve sleeping in his arms, and tried to decide how his marriage proposal had gone. She hadn’t exactly jumped for joy as he’d hoped, but she hadn’t run away screaming, either.

  Though her throwing up on him had certainly given him pause; he’d feared that the thought of marrying him made her physically ill. But she’d been throwing up a lot lately, possibly because the full weight of her mother’s sickness was starting to sink in, and her body was trying to purge her worry.

  At least Eve appeared to be taking his proposal seriously, asking questions about what their life would be like together. He smiled. It would be chaos, he figured, with several generations living under one roof, surrounded by a farm load of animals. He rather liked the chaos of Gù Brath when everyone was home, and he wouldn’t mind if An Tèarmann followed suit.

  He could even picture Eve sitting on the front porch, fat and happy in her fourth or fifth pregnancy, shelling peas as she watched their own little heathens chasing an ecstatic puppy around the yard.

  On that note, Kenzie drifted off to sleep, a smile of utter contentment on his face.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Eve breathed a sigh of relief when Kenzie reached Midnight Bay and turned down the road leading to An Tèarmann. She was quite proud that she’d had to stop only once on the entire ride home, and then only for a pit stop. Her stomach seemed to be settling down!

  She didn’t know if it was because her body was finally getting used to being pregnant, or if Libby MacBain really did have a magical touch.

  At first she thought Libby and Michael had come to Gù Brath last night simply to visit with family. But when Libby had asked Eve to go for a walk after dinner, Eve realized Kenzie had trumped her refusal to go see Libby by bringing the doctor to her.

  The moment they’d gotten outside, Libby had taken Eve’s hand, smiled warmly at her, and asked when she was due. She immediately assured Eve that her secret was safe with her, she just wished to help her get through the first trimester, and would she mind if they simply held hands for a few minutes.

  Eve had heard about medical intuitives—people who were able to read a person’s body—and didn’t see what it could hurt. Though she felt a bit silly holding hands with a stranger in the moonlight, she’d placed her other hand in Libby’s.

  She hadn’t known what she expected, but the only thing she had felt was an overwhelming sense of peace. There wasn’t any heat, no tingling or goose bumps, no sudden jolts of anything. After what seemed like only a minute, Libby had let go and given her a hug, then asked if she wanted to know if it was a boy or girl.

  Well, of course she did!

  So she had learned that on February seventh of next year, she was having a son.

  Then they’d simply walked back inside and had dessert.

  And Eve hadn’t felt sick ever since.

  Then this morning, Winter Gregor had handed her precious newborn daughter to Eve, and Eve had discovered she was definitely ready to be a mother. Where she’d been praying for time to slow down while she came to terms with her pregnancy, suddenly February seventh seemed years away. She couldn’t wait to hold her baby son in her arms, change his tiny diapers, and put him to her breast.

  Some of her eagerness may have come from the warm intimacy she’d felt in the Gregor home when Kenzie had taken her and Mabel to visit them this morning. The whole house had practically throbbed with magic.

  And when Mabel had held baby Fiona, her face so relaxed and at peace, a surreal sense of calm had suddenly washed over Eve. In a flash of insight, she knew that whatever may come of her illness, Mabel would not suffer for it. And Eve had decided that she would not suffer for her, and that if her mother wanted to teach a dragon to read, she would simply help her make up some lessons plans.

  But it was when Matt had placed Fiona in Kenzie’s arms that Eve had a complete and utter meltdown. Just seeing that tiny infant in his strong, capable hands had started her heart pounding so wildly, she’d had to excuse herself. She’d sat on the edge of the tub staring out the window, huge tears running down her cheeks, fighting to get her emotions under control.

  She hadn’t succeeded then, and she still couldn’t seem to; because she kept picturing Kenzie holding their baby in his big hands, in their living room, with their home exuding that same intimate sense of magic.

  Mabel sighed when Kenzie pulled the truck into their dooryard. “My creaky old bones don’t like sitting for three hours straight,” Mabel said when he opened her door. “I think I’ll take a short walk to stretch my legs.”<
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  “Wait, Mom,” Eve said, reaching behind her and grabbing a plastic bag. She leaned across the seat and handed it to Mabel with a smile. “Don’t forget William’s surprise.”

  “Oh, gracious, yes,” her mother said, clutching the bag to her chest. “Camry said he actually starts drooling at the smell of doughnuts,” she confided, looking over her shoulder to see where Kenzie was. “But she told me not to give him more than half a dozen a day, because they make him sick, and not to let Kenzie know I’ve given him any.”

  Eve wasn’t surprised Camry had sent something down for William, since it seemed everyone had seen the dragon man but her. She was beginning to feel discriminated against.

  “Do ye love riding in my truck so much that you can’t bring yourself to get out?” Kenzie asked, standing by Eve’s open door.

  She straightened in her seat with a smile. “You don’t have to wait for me to get out. I know you’re dying to check on your precious horses.” She broadened her smile. “And kiss their huge noses.”

  He leaned in and gave her a kiss on her nose, then headed for the barn, his laughter trailing behind him. Eve got out and had just opened the rear hatch when Maddy pulled into the yard in Eve’s car.

  Her friend got out and gave her a hug. “I know you’ve only been gone three days, but I’ve missed you.” She stepped back and gave Eve the once-over. “Something’s different,” she said. “Don’t tell me. It’s not your hair, or your clothes—though I was afraid you’d come back dressed like Paul Bunyan.” She snapped her fingers. “I know. You’re glowing!”

  “What?”

  Maddy hugged her again. “You’re finally over the morning sickness, and you’re into the glow-of-pregnancy stage,” she said softly. “Which means that you are now officially ‘with child.’”

  Eve rolled her eyes and reached in the truck, pulled out her overnight bag, and handed it to Maddy. “He asked me to marry him,” she whispered.