The Very Thought of You

by Lynn Kurland

  The Very Thought Of You

  Lynn Kurland

  One

  The Highlands, Scotland

  February 1998

  The horse scrunched up his nose, tossed his head in obvious discomfort, and then sneezed.

  Alexander Smith opened his mouth to curse, then realized the precariousness of his situation. He grasped the top edge of the stall door and very deliberately clamped his lips shut. He blinked furiously to clear his eyes of a substance he didn't want to examine too closely.

  He should have stayed in bed.

  He'd known that, of course, from the moment he'd woken. His first clue had been the sound of rain on the roof—day fifty-six of the Scottish deluge. His next warning had been shivering through a cold shower, courtesy of his younger brother. The final straw had been counting on a breakfast of sausage, eggs, and fried potatoes only to find nothing but dangerously aged cottage cheese and on-the-verge-of-turning-green bread in the fridge. By the grease stains on his brother's chin, Alex had known immediately where to lay the blame.

  And now this.

  He looked down at his snotty shirt and wondered just how long it would take for it to crust over so he wouldn't drip all over the house.

  His horse, looking much more comfortable and rather contrite, bumped him companionably with his nose.

  "Beast, Beast," Alex said, carefully dragging his sleeve across his mouth, "do you really think I can go out looking like this? What if we run into some beautiful Scottish girl? What kind of impression are we going to make?''

  Beast ducked his head in obvious shame.

  Alex grunted. "That's right. Well, have a nice day. I'm sure you will, now you can breathe again. I'm going back to bed."

  It seemed the safest alternative.

  He wiped his face with a patch of clean shirttail, then left the stables and walked across the courtyard. The castle rose up before him, an impenetrable wall of gray stone relieved only by a few windows on the second floor. His brother-in-law Jamie had spent a fortune seeing the keep restored and the results were chilling. Alex could almost see medieval Scottish clansmen bursting out the front door in their plaids, brandishing their swords and screaming like banshees.

  Alex entered the hall and pulled the door shut behind him with a bang. Once his eyes adjusted to the interior light, he saw his younger brother sitting in front of the hearth, warming his toes by the fire. Alex marched across the great hall, prepared to give the runt a second installment in the berating he'd given him earlier. He didn't want another Saturday starting out like this—sans hot water and saturated fat.

  Zachary glanced up from his book, took one look at Alex, and started to laugh.

  "Gggrrrr," Alex said, wondering if strangling his brother would be half as satisfying as just contemplating it was.

  "Good grief," Zachary gasped out between guffaws. "What'd you have—an encounter with the Blob?"

  Alex gritted his teeth. "How'd you like to have an encounter with my fists?"

  "Eeuw," Zachary said with a shudder. "Maybe after you clean up."

  "As if I could," Alex growled.

  "What's your problem? I had plenty of hot water."

  "I know!"

  Zachary only blinked innocently. Then he rubbed his disgustingly well-fed belly. "There's nothing left in the fridge, you know," he said.

  "And whose fault do you think that is?" Alex demanded.

  Zach sighed again, the mournful sigh of a man left home alone with nothing to graze upon. "Man, I hate it when Jamie and Elizabeth go out of town. The least they could have done was leave Patrick or Joshua behind. Josh makes great desserts." He looked at Alex narrowly. "Why'd I get stuck with just you? You won't even keep the fridge stocked."

  Alex relived briefly in his mind some of the more choice experiences he'd had pummeling his baby brother. His irritation momentarily soothed by those warm and fuzzy memories, he managed to speak very calmly. "And what's wrong with you that you can't go to the store?"

  Zach settled himself more comfortably into his chair and moved his toes closer to the fire. "I'm too busy. You go instead. And get something good. None of that health food garbage."

  Alex mentally counted to ten. When that didn't work, he set his sights on a larger number.

  "Oh, and Alex? I'd go shower first if I were you." He looked at Alex and started to grin again. "Really. I think it would be the right thing to do."

  Alex wanted more than anything to wring his brother's neck in payment for ruining his Saturday morning and to stop the brat's giggles. Unfortunately, his shirt was beginning to crust over and he was starting to itch.

  "I'll go to the store later," he growled, contenting himself with giving Zachary a murderous look and a smart cuff to the ear on his way to the stairs. With any luck there would be hot water by now.

  He rummaged around in the armoire for clean clothes, then headed for his bathroom. He was just reaching into the shower for the taps when the phone started to ring. He ignored it and turned on the water. He hesitantly put his fingers under the spray and smiled in faint surprise at the increasingly warm temperature. Maybe things were starting to look up.

  He started to strip when he realized he had no towel. He had a vague memory of having flung it into the hamper in disgust after his earlier foray into chilly waters. After turning off the shower to conserve what precious hot water there was, he opened the bathroom door only to hear the phone still ringing. Alex growled in frustration.

  "Zach, get the phone!" he yelled.

  The phone continued to ring. Alex cursed as he gingerly rebuttoned his shirt, then made his way into his brother-in-law's study.

  "What?" he barked into the receiver.

  "Nice to talk to you, too, buddy," a male voice said with a laugh. "All that lovely Scottish scenery getting to you?"

  Alex rolled his eyes heavenward. His day had just taken a decided turn for the worse. "Tony, what do* you want?"

  "What, no chitchat?"

  "Not with you, thanks anyway."

  "How's Elizabeth?" Tony continued. "The baby? Your barbarian brother-in-law?"

  "My sister's fine, her baby is fine, and Jamie is fine. Now what the hell do you want?''

  "Well, since you asked," Tony said with a strained laugh, "I'll get right to it. We need your services."

  Leave it to Tony not to mince words. Alex took a deep breath.

  "Tony, I quit eight months ago. I haven't changed my mind."

  "But you haven't heard the deal on this one, my friend."

  "I don't want to hear."

  Tony made a sound of impatience. "It's the sweetest takeover I've ever seen. Smooth, easy. They'll never see it coming. I've already got controlling interest. I just need you to come in and close the deal. It will make you richer than your wildest dreams."

  "I'm already richer than my wildest dreams, Tony."

  "You can always use more—"

  "No. Don't call me again."

  "Alex—"

  "Don't." Alex hung up the phone.

  He leaned back and let out his breath slowly. Was it possible he had ever enjoyed any of this?

  Unfortunately, he could remember all too well just how enjoyable it had been. And he remembered just as clearly how it had all started. Anthony DiSalvio had hired him fresh out of law school, when Alex had still been green and full of chivalry. He'd become a lawyer to save the world from injustice. And then Tony, a senior partner, had come to him with a special assignment. Alex had been flattered beyond belief. A little corporate raiding, a takeover done by the book; it had been a rush. He'd saved all the little guys by getting rid of the big bad guys.

  He'd been a smashing success.

  It had gone to his head.

  He'd woken up
seven years later. It had taken his sister's mysterious disappearance to make him take a good hard look at what he was doing with his own life; he hadn't liked what he'd seen. He had become a pirate—a very rich pirate, but a pirate nonetheless. The little guys had become lost in the shuffle. Alex had raided just for the sheer sport of it, and for the money. He'd started out to save the world from injustice; instead he'd wound up being the cause of more injustice than he cared to think about.

  So he'd walked away. Far away from New York and London and all the places where he'd hoisted the skull and crossbones. Leave it to Tony not to take his blunt and offensive resignation seriously.

  "I need a change of scenery," he said to the contents of Jamie's study. "To somewhere sunny, like the Bahamas."

  Maybe Jamie had a few travel books on the shelf above his desk. Alex put off his shower a few minutes more in deference to Jamie's private library. Surely there was some destination detailed there that would interest him. He had the time for a vacation. He certainly had the need for one.

  He ran a finger along the spine of each book above Jamie's desk, mentally checking off the ones he'd read.

  Then he stopped.

  Trails Through Time. Now, this was a new one. Alex pulled the book down and opened it. He read the inside jacket. "In Trails Through Time author Stephen McAfee takes the reader on a marvelous journey down roads in Britain, from Roman times to the present day."

  Interesting. Alex flipped through the pages, then stopped when something slipped out and landed on the desk with a soft plop. Alex put the book aside and reached for the folded piece of paper. It was very worn, as if it had been folded and unfolded dozens of times. He gingerly straightened it out, then looked at it in astonishment. It was a treasure map. Considering the day he was having, he was fairly impressed with his ability to recognize that.

  Not that he should have been surprised. He'd been an Eagle Scout, after all, and one famous for his mapmaking skills. Add to that the board and plunder skills he'd acquired after law school and he had the piracy category all sewn up. This was, however, one of the oddest maps Alex had ever seen in his long and illustrious career.

  There were the normal things, of course: requisite directional arrows, landmarks aplenty. In fact, the landmarks looked suspiciously like the surrounding countryside. Yes, Jamie's mountains were there to the north. The castle sat prominently in the middle of the map, with the meadow below it due south. There was the forest to the west and another part of forest to the south. And that squiggle over there had to be the stream that fed into the pond not far from the garden. Alex stared at it for several minutes wondering what looked so strange.

  Then it hit him.

  There wasn't just one X marking the spot. There were several.

  To another man, such a flagrant disregard for treasure-mapmaking standards might have only indicated slight befuddlement on the part of the mapmaker. But Alex wasn't just another man. And the mapmaker was his brother-in-law, James MacLeod. And Jamie wasn't befuddled, he was an honest-to-goodness, former mediev—

  Alex put on the mental brakes before he traveled any further down that well-worn path. Traveling down any path Jamie was associated with was hazardous to one's health. Maybe Jamie had just been scribbling in his spare time.

  Unfortunately, those didn't look like scribbles. Alex looked at the map again and frowned at what was very deliberately scrawled next to the X's in Jamie's bold handwriting.

  Medieval England.

  17th Century Barbados.

  The Future.

  It couldn't mean what he thought it meant. The map was just Jamie's doodles. People didn't just walk over certain spots in the ground and up and disappear.

  Though Barbados didn't sound too bad at the moment. At least it would be sunny there. And look, there it was, due north of Medieval England. Alex left the map sitting prominently on top of the book where Jamie couldn't help but notice that Alex had seen it. He would realize he'd been caught, and Alex would enjoy the opportunity to give Jamie a thorough ribbing. Heaven knew he deserved it.

  Could it be true? Alex turned the possibility over in his mind. Barbados at least would be a pleasant change of scenery. What could it hurt to just go have a look and indulge in the fantasy for an hour or so? He had a great imagination. He could hang out under a tree and pretend he was loitering on some sunny beach. Maybe he'd even pretend he'd traveled there, just to see if he could rattle Jamie. Yes, the morning was starting to shape up nicely.

  Alex left the study, grabbed his coat, and headed downstairs. He was still covered with horse snot, but there was no sense in getting cleaned up now. He wouldn't need his shirt much longer because he'd be sunning himself on a nice beach, watching bikini-clad women strut their stuff in front of him—or at least pretending to do so. Given the fact that he hadn't seen blue Scottish sky in weeks, Barbados was starting to sound mighty nice.

  If there just wasn't that disconcerting seventeenth-century business attached.

  Alex plowed into his brother at the bottom of the steps.

  "Hey," Zachary said, annoyed, "watch it. You're going to get me dirty and I have a date."

  Alex steadied himself with a hand on the wall. Zachary had a date? Alex hadn't had a date in eight months, and he was the owner of a huge portfolio and worked out every day to keep his body from turning to fat. Zachary was a semi-starving former student who ate junk food in front of the television and grew things on paper plates under his bed. How was this possible?

  "With whom?" Alex asked, stunned.

  Zachary smirked. "Fiona MacAllister."

  Alex reeled like a drunken man.

  "Fiona?" he gasped.

  "Yeah," Zachary said with a shrug. "You snooze, you lose, bro. And I wasn't snoozing. I gotta go get cleaned up." He gave Alex's crusty shirt a pointed look before he mounted the stairs and disappeared out of sight.

  Alex shook his head. Fiona MacAllister was the grocer's daughter. Alex had been planning to ask her out for weeks. He'd just been waiting until he thought she might be used to him. After all, he was a rich and powerful former corporate raider, and he hadn't wanted her to want him just for his money.

  Alex pushed away from the wall. There was something very wrong in the world when his brother could get a girl to go out with him and he couldn't.

  He made one last detour to the kitchen on the off chance that some undiscovered cache of junk food was hiding there. He rummaged through the pantry and found his secret box of Ding-Dongs still safely hiding behind a container of oatmeal and a bag of rice. It was a good thing Zachary never came close to anything resembling a raw ingredient. Alex indulged himself immediately and tucked a second snack into his coat pocket. One never knew what one might find for dinner on the beach. No sense in not being prepared.

  He shut the hall door behind him and put on his coat. As he walked across the courtyard to the stables, the rain increased with every step he took. It wasn't a good sign, but he ignored it. Within minutes he had Beast saddled and was heading out the front gate.

  He turned back to the north to look at the mountains behind the estate, with their last dustings of snow. Spring was right around the corner. He could smell it. He followed his nose as it pointed him to the west where a little stream ran into the pond which sat serenely next to the garden. Jamie had certainly done a good job reproducing that stream on the map. And there lay Barbados just past Medieval England on the other side of the pond.

  Alex felt an uncomfortable tingle in the air and frowned. He could believe anything of the forest on the other side of the keep, but this bit of ground in front of him? There were no gateways to the past lurking under those boughs. Maybe his sister Elizabeth was just using the map for one of the romance novels she wrote.

  Alex urged his horse forward, wondering as he did so just what he thought he was doing out in the rain on a horse who had a cold, following directions on a map made by his lunatic brother-in-law. He was losing it. It was the only answer. His breakfast of fermented cottage c
heese had obviously had adverse effects on his common sense. Even the thought of mentally spending a morning in Barbados was starting to sound unappealing. He would probably be better off calling a travel agent.

  But he had already come this far; there was no sense in turning back now. He continued on his way under the boughs of the rowan trees. The silence was palpable. A chill went down his spine. Alex pulled his collar closer to his neck and gave himself a hard mental shake.

  All the same, he wondered just how Jamie had discovered all that business about those little gates.

  Probably better not to know.

  The trees thinned and suddenly gave way to an intimate little glade. The forest floor was carpeted with moss and clover and a large circle of plants. Elizabeth called it a faery ring. Alex looked narrowly at it. Was this the gate? Was it possible? He shook his head. It just couldn't be anything more than a very simple ring in the grass.

  Right?

  Alex pulled out his spare infusion of chocolate and lard and munched thoughtfully. He'd traveled back to the fifteenth century through Jamie's forest, but he didn't remember having felt this kind of tingle in the air. Though at the time he'd been too worried about keeping his head on top of his neck to think much about the mechanics of the process.

  Alex looked at the silver ball of foil in his hand and smiled faintly. It could be his version of the breadcrumb trail. He dropped it outside the ring, then patted his gelding's neck.

  "Well, Beast, we're here so we may as well give this a try. We'll sit here for a few minutes, pretend we've hiked on over to blue ocean and white sands, then we'll go home and see what we can do about putting Zach out of commission. I'll run to the market myself and take some action on this thing. Maybe Fiona just needs to know I'm interested. And if by some miracle we wind up on the beach, maybe Jamie will see our Ding-Dong trail and come get us. But not right away," he added, nudging Beast forward until they were standing in the middle of the circle. "I could really use a dose of sunlight."

  Something whistled past his ear and Beast reared. Alex fought to stay mounted but it was a hopeless battle. He crashed to the ground, feeling a sharp pain in the back of his head. Then he saw stars, lots of them. He gritted his teeth as he struggled to stay conscious. He should have told Zach where he was going. Well, at least his brother would eventually realize Beast was gone. Maybe the brat would have the good sense to come after him before he drowned in the rain.