by Olivia Norem
“Somethin’ named rugby,” Simeon said.
Ian burst into a hearty laugh and clapped Simeon on the shoulder. “Rugby. Now that we can work with. You had me worried, Seamus.” Ian winked and opened the door.
“Ye dinnae look worried.”
“If you had said Seamus was a wanted criminal, we’d be walking into different place to get you outfitted.”
“So ye and yer sister share in the same business, do ye?” Simeon cocked a brow at him not expecting an answer.
“Used to. I’m retired now,” Ian said nonchalantly, and then addressed the salesman walking toward them. “We’re in need of some fine clothing for my wee friend, Seamus here,” Ian smiled.
He watched recognition come in slow degrees to the stoic face of the salesman. His bushy eyebrows arched up, and he broke into a wide smile. “Och! Seamus Campbell! ‘Tis our pleasure laddie! Come this way, this way.” Before Simeon could protest, the man took his arm and ushered him deeper into the store.
Ian feigned interest in a rack of ties and checked his phone. Typing “Seamus Campbell” into the browser, he tapped the results for images. Simeon was right — he could have been an identical twin to the rugby player. Seamus even wore his hair long. Good, that eliminated the need to visit the barber.
Ian logged on to his secure server. A message from Colin. Kat made a hotel reservation using Janine Garrison. The alias was one of their coded triggers. She was either in trouble or was being extra cautious. He sent a reply to his brother indicating that he was on it. As soon as he sent the message, it disappeared from his phone. A few more taps and he dialed Kat. His relief was immediate when she answered.
“Everything cool?” Ian asked without preamble.
“I thought I picked up a tail. If I did, I’ve lost them,” Kat said. There was no mistaking she was in the city; Ian heard the traffic noises in the background.
“Too soon for all that,” Ian frowned.
“I thought the same thing. I’m good, okay. How’s Sim?” Kat asked. Sim she called him. Kat froze at Ian’s overly long pause. So, his sister was attracted to the man from the past, huh?
“I mean Simeon,” Kat tried to sound casual.
“He’s good, Kitty Kat. Don’t worry. I’ll look after your man until you get back,” Ian teased. He heard her blow out a gusty breath.
“Shit, Ian! I wasn’t worried until you said that. And he’s not my man,” Kat quipped. She heard Ian chuckle. He wasn’t buying it at all. Sim? Could she be more obvious? Ever since she was a child, she’d never been able to keep anything from Ian; his perception was uncanny.
“Stay sharp, sis. I’ll check back in with you in a few hours, okay?”
“Geez, Ian, this isn’t my first rodeo.”
“Oh, you thought I’m checking on you? Hell no. I just want to see Simeon’s face when he hears your voice through the phone for the first time.” Ian could picture his sister bristling on the street in Geneva. As if she had been standing next to him, he could almost feel the sting on his arm.
“Goodbye, Ian,” Kat groaned and ended the call.
Ian looked over at Simeon standing in front of the three-way mirror as the tailor fussed over his jacket cuffs. So little sis finally set her eyes on someone, had she? It figured that Kat would go for the biggest anomaly she could find. The fact the man was older than she was, by about four hundred years, might be a problem, but then again, who was he to judge?
Kat certainly could do worse. In the short time he’d spent with him, Ian had already determined a few things about the ancient Highlander’s character. Simeon was a commanding presence in sweats, let alone in the black suit he now wore. But it wasn’t the clothes that made him who he was. Witnessing the brief exchange between Simeon and his sister, Simeon hadn’t backed down from her once. Kat needed someone who respected her fire and met her on equal terms. She’d steamroll a passive man and make herself miserable in the process. Kat was a strong woman, and she needed a strong man.
And thinking about strength, Ian knew Simeon had held back when they fought. Simeon was easily the more powerful between them and could have easily snapped his neck, but he didn’t. He wasn’t given to rash decisions; he was merely defending Kat. The man had patience, and if he was going to get involved with his sister, he’d need that in spades.
“How’s it feel?” Ian asked. He walked closer, holding three ties in his hand.
“Och, Ian, ‘tis a far cry from a kilt for certs,” Simeon nodded appreciatively. Ian leaned casually against the mirror and crossed his arms. Then he nodded to the tailor and handed him the ties.
“Throw in two more pairs of slacks and half a dozen shirts — white, black, blue. A few of those silk pullovers you have on the rack near the front and a couple of sweaters.”
The tailor hurried away with a huge smile on his face, and Simeon arched a brow at Ian. He spoke in a hushed tone.
“Ian, I willnae steal from this mon.”
Ian waved his hand slightly and shook his head, still leaning against the mirror.
“It’s the least I can do,” Ian told him, “besides, you’re not going to get very far in the clothes my sister put you in.”
“I cannae accept…” Simeon started, but Ian interrupted him, silencing his protests.
“A guy your size who looks like Seamus Campbell isn’t really going to blend in, so we have to make you stand out a little bit. It’s a tactic that works well. You can pay me back another time — or not. I don’t really care.”
“Och, more blending. Yer sister said as much,” Simeon frowned.
“Well, I think the Scottish lassies are going to appreciate it.” Ian rocked on his heels in triumph.
“Whot lasses?” Simeon glanced around the shop.
“All the ones we have yet to meet, my friend,” Ian laughed. So Kat’s brother was intent on a bit of wenching, was he? Simeon could hardly refuse him company, but seeking the company of other women was not what he wanted.
What he wanted was the woman who left him this morning. Tomorrow she would return, she’d said. From the moment Katherine closed the door behind her this morning, the minutes had ticked by with interminable slowness. He thought with a wry smile how tortuous the wait had become — and waiting was his specialty. But not this time.
He was impatient to feel her shudder against him again. To bury himself inside her and wrest those sweet cries from her lips. And strangely, he was impatient just to see her. Simeon wanted to hear her laughter and watch the way her green eyes sparkled when she spoke. He wanted to smell the warmth of her skin, tinged with a sweet fragrance and her own scent, marking her as Katherine.
No, seeking out other company wouldn’t do. Simeon burned, and he burned for his green-eyed lass with her short skirts and uncontrolled passion. Each minute spent away from her was slowly unfurling into a far worse torture than the centuries spent imprisoned in Isobel’s mirror.
Chapter 13
Kat groaned as she paid the third cab since exiting Inverness airport. She had doubled back on the outskirts of the city, circling closer to the safehouse. Instructing her final driver to stop in front of a pub three blocks away, she slammed the door to the cab and started to walk. Ian wasn’t answering his phone or responding to a single text message, which compounded her uneasiness. This was also highly unusual for her brother, who she assumed would stay on high alert until she returned.
Hefting her tote on her shoulder, Kat reminded herself that he must have a good reason, or he was in trouble. None of this made sense, and she was flying blind. Experience taught her making assumptions without intel was a waste of time, but in this case, no news couldn’t be good news. Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, she decided she’d reconnoiter the safehouse where, hopefully, she’d find her brother asleep. Then she’d wake him up and give him an earful. He’d obviously been out of the game too long.
Sticking to the shadows, Kat’s mood was crumbling. No matter how many times she told herself to calm her anger, it made her ang
ry to have to repeat it. Anger was a self-preservation response that clouded judgment — anger was destructive. She tried to resist, but she was caught in a vicious downward spiral of mood. She was confused, rattled, tired, and frustrated. What happened in Geneva had left her nervous and shaken, and to make matters worse, it started to rain.
The drop had gone off without a hitch. Setting up the safety deposit box, tucking the coins and the painting neatly inside, and leaving the key in an envelope at the hotel desk went like clockwork. In fact, she’d completed everything so expeditiously, Kat found herself with several hours to idle away before catching her return flight.
She had wandered the shops in Geneva playing tourist and trying to distract herself from thoughts of Simeon. When she’d stopped to admire a window of artful chocolate, the feeling slammed into her again. She was being watched.
Kat ducked into the shop. It had multiple entrances and an easy access to a long hallway of other shops. It was an easy place to get lost quickly if she needed to. She took up a vantage point with her back to the wall and scanned the pedestrian traffic beyond the brick archways.
Directly across the street was a woman who locked eyes on her. If this was her tail, she certainly wasn’t trying to hide. The woman stood firmly planted in the center of the sidewalk. People moved around her, like a school of fish. It was a blatant stance. She wanted to be seen.
An unnerving feeling of dread settled in her gut like a cold lump of oatmeal. Kat immediately catalogued the woman’s description to memory and palmed her phone. The woman was about five foot seven, thin build. She had shoulder-length blonde hair that looked professionally flat-ironed. It was hard to determine her age behind her sunglasses, but she was impeccably dressed in a black business suit paired with an Hermés bag.
Anyone looking at her wouldn’t have given her more than an appreciative glance, but there was something very strange about the woman. The heavy noises of traffic seemed to quiet and as if the sun had suddenly disappeared behind the clouds; the air turned to chill. Kat felt a cold finger of anxiety course down her spine. The woman’s red lips curved into a slow smile, and Kat swore a shadow passed over her face. It was a taunting smile and chillingly bizarre.
Kat snapped several discreet photos and exited into the throng of foot traffic, losing herself deeper in the crowded shops. She slipped onto a main street and sped away in a taxi. It took one more taxi change to convince her she’d lost the creepy woman in black. Swapping her outerwear, pulling her hair into a ponytail, and donning a baseball cap, Kat looked like an ordinary college student. She made her way into a sidewalk café, plopped down, and ordered an espresso.
What had happened next defied logic. As Kat lifted the espresso to her lips, a waft of cinnamon mixed with an unidentifiable rot wrinkled her nose. Kat frowned at the espresso and sniffed just as her tote fell off the table, spilling the contents on the concrete. Kat bent down to shove everything back in and froze. A perfectly manicured hand closed around her wallet, handing it up to her. Kat looked up and forgot to breathe.
It was the woman in black. Impossible. Who was this woman? Scotland Yard? Interpol? FBI?
“It seems you’ve dropped this,” she replied silkily. Her English was strangely accented. Albanian maybe? Kat took the wallet and held her breath. They silently regarded each other behind their sunglasses for an uncomfortable stretch of time.
“Merci, madame,” Kat finally responded in a flawless accent.
“Vous devez être prudent avec vos choses,” You should be careful with your things, the woman smiled slyly.
You should be careful with your things? What the hell did that mean? But Kat recognized the veiled threat in her tone. She nodded and continued to stuff her things in her bag.
As the woman walked away, she paused and said over her shoulder. “Broken mirrors are said to bring seven years of bad luck.” Kat stood up defensively and heard a crack beneath her shoe. She moved her foot and splayed on the sidewalk was her broken blush compact. When she looked up again, the woman in black was gone.
This was no coincidence. Someone knew something. There was no possibility of a leak on Murray’s side of this operation, so it had to be coming from the buyer. Pale and shaking, Kat shoved a few Euros at the waiter and quickly left.
Now she was skittering through a back alley and the rain had turned from an annoying mist to a steady downpour. Wet and cold, Kat moved quietly up the back entrance of the safehouse. Everything was dark and quiet. No forced entry, no signs of anything out of place. Ian and Simeon were nowhere to be found.
Kat grabbed a towel to wring the rain from her hair and quickly checked their rooms. Ian’s luggage was still present, and a well-stuffed garment bag lay across Simeon’s bed. Well thank you, Ian, Kat frowned at the bag from the high-end shop. Knowing her brother, he’d probably shelled out ten grand on the contents of that bag without batting an eye. So much for keeping a low profile.
Kat checked her watch. Eleven p.m. The house was disturbingly still. The only ambient sound was the steady beat of rain on the roof. With her nerves stretched thin, she found the peaceful atmosphere disconcerting and began to pace. Another text and another call to Ian with no response. As they say in Boston, isn’t this just a wicked pissah?
Where the hell were they?
Without bothering to change out of her sodden clothes, Kat plunged into the rainy night and immediately cursed the stinging downpour. The prudent thing to do would be to stay inside, make something hot to eat, follow it with a scalding shower, and then crawl into bed and sleep for a week. Instead, she was wandering the streets of Inverness in this ungodly downpour searching for a man from the seventeenth century and her brother and didn’t have the first clue where to look.
Kat gritted her teeth as she mis-stepped and landed in a deep puddle. The water filled her ankle boot, and another curse ripped from her throat. Damn Ian, damn Simeon, and damn that woman in black. She decided to turn back when the sounds of lively music and laughter drifted from across the street.
The pub’s amber light flooding onto the street beckoned. The crowd of bodies glimpsed through the glass panes tripped her sensibilities. They were warm. And dry. Screw Simeon and screw her brother. She’d dry off, get a hot meal, and sip enough scotch to numb this uneasiness. She practically sprinted across the street, shielding her eyes from the stinging rain. Catching her breath under the overhang, Kat shook out her hair. As she squeezed out the water and pushed the wicked strands from her eyes, loud bellows of laughter from a table near the window snapped her attention from her sodden state. She squinted.
It couldn’t be. But it was.
Tucked inside a corner table, all cozy and dry on this miserable night, sat Ian and Simeon. It wasn’t their heads thrown back in laughter or the multiple glasses crowding their table that sparked her anger. It wasn’t even the throng of people that surrounded them, their faces wreathed in smiles and hands raised with glasses — though that did sting a bit. Ian knew better than to draw such obvious attention. No, it was the pair of giggling brunettes draped around Simeon that sent Kat into a seething rage.
The raindrops turned to steam as they pelted her face. Kat burst into the pub without a second thought as to how she might have looked. Shivering from the sudden change in temperature, she stood just beyond their table, dripping puddles onto the floor. The decibel level of the crowded pub explained why Ian hadn’t heard his phone, but this… couldn’t he have set it to vibrate?
Ian caught her eyes. He squinted and rocked toward her.
My God, was her brother… drunk?
“Just in time to join us for a drink. And you look like you need one,” Ian slurred. His words were barely coherent as he slammed back another shot. Simeon’s head whipped around in her direction. A stunned look of surprise crossed his face and then dissolved into a wide smile. His happiness quickly faded when he took in her bedraggled state — and the daggers shooting from her eyes. For the life of him, he couldn’t fathom one reason for her anger. D
isentangling himself from the women, Simeon swayed to his feet and shrugged out of his jacket.
Kat quickly glossed over the devastating picture he made in that dark suit with the crisp contrast of his shirt. He was even more heart-stoppingly gorgeous in the modern clothes than his rugged kilt. He didn’t seem nearly as drunk as Ian, but he didn’t appear too sober either. She could only imagine what she looked like. Soaked to the bone and makeup melted to her chin. Pitiful.
“Katherine,” he called jovially, trying to sidestep the two women. He had every intention of getting her out of her wet coat and wrapping her up in his, but the drunken lasses were practically impregnable.
“Och, Seamus, where ye off to?” One of the blurry brunettes cooed and blocked his path. The other took her cue and curled into him, running her pink nails up his chest.
“We were kenning aboot gaun back tae my place. Fer a bit o’ privacy, ye ken?” The second one breathed as she rubbed against him.
“Nice to see you’ve made some friends, Seamus,” Kat said tightly.
Simeon gave her a questioning look. He certainly hadn’t invited the two women to the table; somehow, they just ended up there. And he certainly hadn’t any intentions with tavern wenches, especially when Katherine had consumed his every thought. Brushing away the unwanted pair with little success, he heard Kat breathe a disgusted snort. Ignoring him, she reached for Ian’s arm and tried to pull him to his feet.
“Time to get you home, Ian.” Kat tugged her drunken brother to his feet. He pitched dangerously toward her and Kat braced for the crush, her wet boots slipping on the wood.
Simeon practically jumped around the table, shoving his shoulder to brace Ian’s weight before Kat stumbled to the floor.
“We’ll take him together, lass.”
“I don’t need your help,” Kat snapped. Secretly she was relieved to have found them.
“Ye are no’ in a position tae argue. Come, lass. We’ll see him home, and then we’ll see tae ye.” Simeon hefted Ian so his feet skimmed the floor and he shouldered his way toward the door.