He stood on wobbly legs and squinted into the darkness. Just ahead, the silver gleam of the loch beckoned to him. He lived on the loch, just around the bend, but he had chosen this place on the shore for its unobstructed view and isolation. No one was about.
He stumbled forward and thought not a whit about the other stones that were conspiring to trip him. The loch belonged to Terence. Loch Ceo’s waters ran through his veins; her waves beat against the shore in the precise rhythms of his heart. He was as shallow as her shoals and as profound as her uncharted depths. He was wed to her in a way that he would never be wed to Jane.
“I’ve a son now,” he shouted when at last the icy water lapped at his shoeless feet. He had lost his shoes somewhere on the journey here from the village—it was not the first pair. He waded deeper, ignoring the shock. “I’ve a son, darling! A wee laddie with hair as red as his mum’s and eyes like autumn heather. Did you hear me, darling?”
The waves picked up, as if in answer. But it was not the loch to whom Terence spoke.
“I dinna know what we’ll call him. Fergus, perhaps. Or Geddes. Geddes MacDougall. Do you like that, darling? Does that suit you?”
His words echoed back to him in spurts and wisps. He knew immediately that neither name suited. He tried again to remember what Jane had wanted to name the bairn if it was a lad. He regretted for an instant that he hadn’t listened harder. Jane was a good lass. She deserved better than he gave her. Was it her fault that his loyalty, his deepest love, was reserved for another?
“Andrew!” The name came to him in a flash. Aye, he and Jane had discussed names one night before he wandered into the village for his nightly rounds at the hotel pub. Now it popped into his whisky-sodden brain. “Andrew MacDougall. Do you like that, darling? Does that suit you better?”
There was no movement on the loch, but he knew that Andrew would suit, and well. “There were two others born this night,” he shouted. “But our lad was the brawniest, darling. There’s some who are saying already that the births are an omen, it being Hallowe’en night and all. That the three laddies’ destinies are entwined. Do you think so?”
The picture of the three infants formed in Terence’s head. When he had arrived at the hospital, they had already been laid out side by side in three wee cradles, and even the laird had not dared to make a fuss. In the presence of the others, each babe had quieted, as if the laddies belonged together and knew it somehow. They were uncommonly handsome weans, not a puny one among them.
He didn’t know he was weeping until the tears frosted against his cheeks. Only then did he realize that his feet were numb and the numbness was creeping toward his knees.
“Show yerself, darling,” he crooned. “Show me ye’re happy, too.”
A large part of Terence’s life had been spent staring at the loch. Had he pursued his studies with half as much concentrated zeal, he would possess a university degree. Had he spent his energies on a job, he would possess a country estate and a braw house somewhere north of Princes Street in Edinburgh.
“Show yerself, and let me see how happy ye are for me!”
He stood motionless and waited on legs that had lost all feeling. A cloud crossed over the crescent moon, and the loch was a shrouded mirror. Then, as the cloud passed, the loch shone clearly again, an undisturbed stretch of water that passed seamlessly into the horizon, undisturbed except for a large ripple in the center, widening and dipping and lapping its way toward the shore.
“Darling,” Terence breathed. “My very own darling.”
He shaded his eyes, although there was no glare. He wished for field glasses, for the crystal clear vision of his youth, for a head unclouded by the pub’s best whisky. A shape appeared, a silhouette as graceful, as proud as a beautiful woman. “Mercy.” But he needed no mercy, no rescue, no explanation.
“Mercy, darling. At last! And what a night ye’ve chosen.”
He stared for what seemed like forever, until the loch was once again as still as the moment before dawn. His legs were numb clear to his hips when he finally turned away. He stumbled, but he had expected to, and he caught himself as he fell. The icy waters washing his hips and chest chilled him to the core, but they were no match for the warmth blazing inside him.
He was Terence MacDougall, husband of Jane, and now, father of Andrew. He was a failure in all the ways that the world counted success. He was a drunken fisherman and tour boat guide, a worthless storyteller and composer of bawdy songs.
He was the man who had just witnessed a miracle.
He clawed his way to the shore and slapped and rubbed his legs until feeling began to return. Then he stood gingerly and headed around the bend in the direction of the lochside cottage that had always been his home. At the precise point where his view would become obscured by trees, he turned. His voice was choked with emotion.
“Farewell, darling.”
There was no answer, but Terence hadn’t expected one. Miracles neither spoke nor showed themselves twice. He would live the rest of his life on the strength of this one. He would teach his son about miracles.
“Farewell, darling. And remember the lad’s name is Andrew. Just so’s ye’ll know when you meet him. He’ll be a fine laddie, our Andrew. I promise. A fine, fine lad.”
There was no answering ripple, but Terence knew his darling had heard. He had lost his hat along with his shoes, but he tipped it anyway before he disappeared into the trees.
CHAPTER 1
Not too far away, in a lake so deep that its waters lap at the very center of the earth, there lived a young water dragon named Stardust. Perhaps that seems like an odd name for a dragon, but even on nights when the stars shine their brightest over Serenity Lake, they are only twinkling, shifting specks of dust to the creatures who live beneath the surface. On such a night, Stardust was born.
Fiona Sinclair looked down at the hint of green peeking through an eternity of cotton candy clouds. To anyone gazing skyward from that lush landscape, the plane on which she traveled would be a tiny speck, a silver daylight star. She had gazed at the skies often enough in her twenty-five years, gazed and dreamed and made a wish on every passing plane that she would be on the next one.
It was a clich;aae, but too true, anyway. She should have been more careful about what she wished for.
“Do you have a little girl?”
Fiona turned her gaze to the dark-haired child seated at the end of the opposite aisle. She hadn’t really noticed her before. Fiona hadn’t noticed much of anything since boarding the plane except the fear generating and regenerating inside her. Now she summoned a smile. “No.”
“Then who’s that for?” The little girl, dressed in a red skirt, red tights and a red T-shirt swirling with silver and gold pinwheels, pointed to the book in Fiona’s lap.
“My niece. Her name’s April, and she’s almost eight. How old are you?”
“Oh, much older,” the little girl said with a world-weary sigh. “Nearly ten.”
Fiona nodded gravely. “Then I suppose you’re too old for picture books.”
“Definitely. But I read the Stardust books. When I was a kid.”
Yesterday, Fiona translated silently. “And what did you think of them? Did I make a good choice?”
“She’ll probably like it okay. Is that a new one?”
High, high praise. Fiona surprised herself with a genuine smile—the kind she thought she’d left somewhere back on the ground. “Yes. The newest.” As a matter of fact, the book wasn’t even in the stores yet. Fiona was the author, and her advance copies had come as she was gathering her luggage for the trip to the airport.
The little girl leaned across the aisle and squinted at the cover. “It looks like Stardust has a new friend.”
“I think she finally decides she has to swim to the other side of the lake and look for another family of water dragons.”
“But she was scared to leave her cove. She was scared to go anywhere else.”
Fiona silently handed the book a
cross the aisle.
The little girl took it with naked enthusiasm. She was halfway through the first page when she looked up. She struggled to look bored again. “I’ll just read it and tell you how it is, in case it’s no good.”
“I know you’ll be honest.” Fiona sat back and closed her eyes.
There were so many routes to those dragons across the lake, and so many ways to get there. Swimming was only one.
She heard a giggle across the aisle, and the rustle of a page. She wondered—as she had every minute of every day since she had begun to plan her own escape—if she would survive this taste of the world beyond her own cove.
* * *
It was not Andrew’s fault that his clothes smelled of smoke and his fingernails were imbedded with ashes. Nor was it his fault that his hands weren’t quite steady. He had scrubbed them repeatedly, blistered skin and all, at a cottage near the scene of the accident, scrubbed them with soap designed to dissolve everything it touched, including a layer or more of skin. But the ashes and the blisters would remain for a long time still.
So would the memories.
He was not a man to be easily shaken. He had worked on North Sea oil rigs since the day he graduated from university, and he had seen his fair share of disasters. In his days as a diver he had discovered the body of a comrade wedged between two pieces of pipe, deep in Davy Jones’ locker. As a drilling engineer on a control platform he had watched a ninety-knot wind sweep a pair of Norwegian roughnecks to Valhalla. He had volunteered for rescue missions on land and sea and never flinched when called upon.
But the tragedy he’d witnessed this afternoon was enough to make him wish he could pull over to the side of the road and have a good cry.
He couldn’t pull over. He was already late, despite his promise to Duncan Sinclair that he would not leave Duncan’s sister Fiona waiting at Prestwick Airport. He had been entrusted with Fiona’s safety, fragile, frightened Fiona, who had rarely been away from her home in New York. Fiona, who at twenty-five was beginning a journey that might lead straight back home if Andrew didn’t get to the airport soon.
For a man in a hurry, his driving was nothing short of pitiful. In the past hour he hadn’t come close to the speed limit. Each time his foot pressed the accelerator, he saw twisted metal and clouds of poisonous, choking smoke.
And he heard the cries of a child.
The surrounding traffic slowed to his speed as he neared Prestwick. Now there was nothing he could do except pull into line at the motorway exit and follow the stream of cars to the airport car park. It was an hour beyond Fiona’s arrival time when he locked his door and started toward the terminal.
Prestwick was a maze of airline counters and waiting areas. He scanned computer monitors, but he was so late that Fiona’s flight was no longer listed. He stood in an interminable line to find out where her plane had landed, then jogged toward the appropriate gate, weaving his way through crowds colorfully dressed in saris and turbans, Savile Row business suits and skimpy resort wear. He asked for directions from a teenager whose pale green hair clashed with a plaid kilt worn above knee-high cowboy boots. But only when the young man pointed at the gate just behind him did he spot the woman sitting in a remote corner.
Andrew stood absolutely still as he gazed at her. Fiona had been three at their last meeting. He had been eight. She was the wee sister he’d never had, the sister torn from him by tragedy and the manipulation of unfeeling adults. In the years since, he had tried more than once to imagine her growing up. Through Duncan’s eyes he had followed her progress, even gazed at rare photographs. But nothing had prepared him.
Nothing.
Fiona looked up, and her eyes met his. He was not a man to wax poetic. Gold was gold, and brown was brown. But as he walked toward her, he could see that Fiona’s eyes were a glorious combination, butterscotch sunshine, molasses moonlight, vibrant, courageous beacons in a face fast giving way to terror.
“Andrew?”
“Aye.” He approached her slowly, carefully, as he would approach a wild creature. “Aye, I’m Andrew. And it’s glad I am you’re still here, Fiona.”
Her lips curved into a forced smile. Her words emerged one at a time, as if each took great fortitude. “Where would I have gone?”
Gingerly he took the seat beside her. They were the only people at the gate. A sign explained that the next flight scheduled to use this area wasn’t due to arrive for another two hours. “I was afraid you might turn around and go home.”
She looked away, presenting him with a snub-nosed profile and clouds of pale red-gold hair. “Well, I thought about it. But it’s a very long trip.”
“I left in plenty of time this morning. I truly did. It’s just that there was an accident….” He didn’t want to go on.
Curls whirled in disarray as she faced him. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Are you all right? You weren’t hurt?”
“No, I came along afterward.”
“Then the road was blocked?”
That had been the least of it. “Aye.”
“Do you know…? Was anyone…?”
“It was a bad crash.” He looked down at his blistered hands, still red from their scrubbing, still imbedded with ashes. He clasped them behind him so that he wouldn’t have to look at them and remember. “So, tell me about your flight. Was it comfortable? Did they feed you well?”
“I didn’t eat.”
“And why was that?”
“My heart took up all the room in my throat.”
He surprised himself with a laugh. If he’d thought about it, he wouldn’t have dared. He knew Fiona was deadly serious, that the flight here had probably cost her every ounce of courage she’d ever hoarded. But at his laughter, she smiled again. And this time the smile—a Mona Lisa beauty—was almost genuine.
“I know it sounds funny.” She made a wry face, and soft ginger-colored freckles danced along her nose and cheeks. “I’m afraid you’re about to find out what a barrel of laughs I am.”
“Never.” He sobered. “Have I told you how glad I am to see you?”
“Are you?”
“You’ve changed a bit. Grown a foot or three, but you’re still our Fiona.”
“Am I?” She shrugged, and the movement sent the collar of her long-sleeved blouse sliding up her neck before it settled against her throat again. Only then did he notice the scars that her hair and collar had hidden.
His gaze wandered with studied casualness back to her face. “Aye. Welcome home, darling. It’s been far too long.”
Color washed her cheeks, a pale apricot hue that warmed her fair skin. “Maybe not long enough.”
He reached for her hand. Like his father before him, he was a man who touched easily. For all Terence MacDougall’s faults, he had taught his only son there was no shame in touching. Andrew wove his thick, ash-darkened fingers through Fiona’s slender ones, ignoring her when she tried to pull away. Her hand was as soft as he had expected against the raw skin of his. He felt it tremble.
“Far too long,” he said again. “This is where you belong, Fiona. It always will be. You have more family here than just Duncan, Mara and April. You’ve Iain and me, too, and Iain’s wife, Billie. There’s nowt that any of us would no’ do for you.”
“That’s very kind, but—”
He squeezed her hand before he withdrew his. “Now we’ll get you a bite to eat before we’re on our way back to Druidheachd. Have you talked to Duncan?”
“I phoned him. He told me that two different inspectors had shown up at the hotel unexpectedly last night, and both insisted on his undivided attention today. He said that you had volunteered to come here instead, and that you’re a man of your word.” She looked up at him through gold-tipped lashes. “If a bit slow about it.”
He laughed. “Well, he’s right, for all that. Let’s find some food, then I’ll ring him and explain.”
She made a soft sound of protest, but he ignored it. He stood. “What about your bags?”
“A
man from the airlines promised to store them for me at the baggage claim. I gave him my tickets.”
“Then we’ll eat first.”
She stood, too. “I can easily wait, Andrew.”
“Then you’ve more self-control than I do.” He took her elbow as if he had been guiding her through crowds all his life. The gesture seemed to surprise her, but she didn’t pull away. “I saw a caf;aae with sandwiches and coffee no’ too far away. Will that be good enough?”
“Plenty good enough.”
He walked slowly, purposely shortening his long stride. Duncan had told him once that Fiona limped. He noted now that there was an artfully feminine swish of her hips each time she stepped forward with her right foot, but nothing like he had expected. It did slow her pace a little, and he compensated easily.
He made conversation as much to put her at ease as to put the accident out of his mind. “Did you get any sleep on the plane?”
“Not a bit.”
“I know your heart was in your throat, but what kept your eyes from closing?”
“I propped them open with my fingers so I wouldn’t be sleeping when we crashed.”
He groaned. “I was the same way the first time I flew.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true. But I was in a helicopter flying out to my first job as a diver off an oil platform, and I was supposed to be fearless. My job depended on it. So I whistled as loud as I could until the gent beside me threatened to loosen a few of my teeth.”
“Not good for whistling.”
He was already charmed by the sweetly serious way that she joked. She wasn’t a bit sure of herself, but she wasn’t so shy or retiring that he had to work to draw her out. From everything he had been told, he’d expected a woman who wouldn’t meet his eyes. A floor watcher. Instead, the woman beside him was gazing avidly at everything and everyone that passed. She stayed close beside him, as if she were glad for his sheer masculine bulk, but as they walked, her eyes drank in every airport detail.
“Here we go.” He abandoned her elbow and grabbed a door instead. “It’s casual and quiet inside. You can eat and rest a few minutes before we start back.”
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