Secrets of the Highlander

by Janet Chapman

  She felt so exhilarated, she didn’t even mind that Jack was tagging along. It rankled that her father had so quickly decided that he liked him on some man-to-man level, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy today’s outing—and maybe even have a bit of fun at Jack’s expense.

  Megan checked her mirror and saw that Jack had caught up and fallen in line behind her, and she stifled a snort. Did he think she was falling for his act? She was on to him now; under that defenseless-appearing exterior, Jack Stone was as hard as his last name implied.

  Megan continued across the lake as fast as she dared, considering every little bump bounced her baby down on her bladder. Damn. She hadn’t thought about having to stop for bathroom breaks with Jack along. She’d borrowed Elizabeth’s suit from when her sister had been pregnant, but she was going to have to take off the damn thing completely to pee in the woods—which was going to be chilly and time-consuming.

  She sure hoped Jack was a patient man.

  Megan frowned. Those had definitely been angry bees, not butterflies, fluttering around in her stomach when she’d stood nose to chin with him yesterday, jostling for position. And she didn’t care how stressed he had looked, or that any fool could see he needed a day in the woods as much as she did. Why had she capitulated so quickly and agreed to let him come along?

  Because she was a softhearted sap, that’s why.

  Megan zoomed past a lone ice fisherman tending his traps, gave him a wave, and aimed her sled toward a well-traveled path leading to shore. She slowed down to maneuver over the rough transition from lake to solid ground, then glided up the winding spur to the ITS trail.

  Maine had an amazing Interstate Trail System that took advantage of many of the unused logging roads in the winter. These virtual highways were proudly maintained by local clubs, to the point that they were nearly as wide and often smoother than their automobile counterparts.

  They were definitely faster.

  Megan stopped at an intersection, looked for sled traffic before turning north onto the ITS trail, and accelerated to thirty-five miles per hour. She noted Jack still in her mirror, and wondered how he liked taking second place. When a man owned a snowmobile engineered to attack the trails at speeds in excess of ninety miles per hour, that usually meant he had a lead dog mentality. Did Jack?

  Of course he did. He’d bought that chick magnet, hadn’t he?

  Good Lord! Did he see her as some fluffy snow bunny who would swoon over a man riding a cherry red rocket?

  Naw. Jack knew her better than that.

  Was he afflicted with little-man syndrome, then?

  Megan snorted. Jack might be several inches shorter than the men in her family, but he sure as heck didn’t appear to be trying to prove anything to anyone. Getting beaten up three days in a row—including Camry’s pie in his face!—wasn’t exactly impressive.

  Megan caught herself gaining speed and realized her sense of urgency was coming from her bladder. Darn. Only half an hour into their trip, and already she had to pee. She drove until she found a little-used spur going off to the right, went up it a few hundred yards, then pulled to the edge of the trail and shut off her machine.

  Jack pulled up directly behind her. Megan took off her helmet, climbed off her sled, and walked back to his. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “Shut off your engine so we can hear if anyone is coming down the trail.”

  He took off his helmet, frowned at her, and said, “How come you didn’t take care of that before we left?”

  “I did. You try riding around with a baby sitting on your bladder.”

  His eyes dropped to her belly and his frown reversed to a lopsided grin. “Oh. I hadn’t thought about that.” He reached out to turn the key on his snowmobile, but stopped and looked at her. “Are you sure it’s okay to just shut if off? Shouldn’t I let the engine idle for a few minutes, so I don’t damage something?”

  Megan reached over to shut off his sled. “It’s the other way around, Jack. If you let a powerful engine like this one idle too long, it can overheat. You grew up in Medicine Lake, so how come you don’t know anything about snowmobiles?”

  “Grand-père was old school. We snowshoed wherever we wanted to go. I did get a snowmobile when I was sixteen, but it was older than I was and broke down within a month. I think it’s still sitting in the woods thirty miles north of Medicine Lake.”

  “You told Camry and me that your great-grandfather died when you were fifteen, and that you got hauled off by human services after that.”

  “I also said that I ran away again.” He grinned up at her. “Since they hadn’t found me the first time around, I headed straight back to where Grand-père and I had been living. The people of Medicine Lake diverted the social workers looking for me, and gave me odd jobs so I could support myself. That’s how I got the sled. I bartered it for some doctoring.”

  Megan narrowed her eyes at him. “You also said you didn’t inherit your great-grandfather’s gift.”

  “But I did inherit his herbs. And I’d gone with him whenever he tended the sick, so I knew the drill.” He shrugged. “People just assumed his gift had passed down to me. And the way I saw it, having fresh eggs to eat in the middle of winter was damn well worth praying over someone.”

  “My God, you were a con artist, deceiving sick people.”

  “No, Megan, I was just a kid trying to survive. Go on, go to the bathroom,” he softly told her, waving toward a thick patch of bushes.

  Megan turned and walked into the woods, unzipping her suit with a scowl. Confound it! She was not going to feel bad for calling him a con artist, no matter how wounded he’d looked. It was a wonder lightning hadn’t shot from the sky and struck him dead. Even idiots knew better than to mess with the magic.

  Still, shame washed over her, making her feel like she’d just kicked a puppy. She couldn’t imagine not having the security and love of her family. What would she have done, how hard would she have fought to survive, if she had been orphaned at nine, raised by an old man who probably needed more looking after than she did, and then been orphaned again at fifteen?

  Heck, Jack literally had raised himself.

  Safely out of sight of the trail, Megan tramped down a place in the snow. She slid her suit down to her knees, sat down on top of it, and pulled off her boots so she could take the suit completely off. She stuffed her feet back in her boots, dug around in her pocket for a tissue, then dropped her pants and long johns to her knees with a sigh. This was so much easier for men!

  “I’m beginning to hope you’re a boy,” she told her baby, cradling her belly while leaning against a tree to support her back. “And I won’t mind if you want to write your name in the snow.”

  A full five minutes later, huffing and puffing as she wrestled her snowsuit back on over her layers of clothes, she heard Jack call out, “Everything okay back there?”

  “Just peachy!” she shouted.

  She growled under her breath when she heard him chuckle, and swore out loud when she had to put her foot down in the snow to keep from falling. She plopped down and brushed her sock clean before pulling on her boot with a sigh. It was going to be a long day.

  Jack handed her a bottle of water when she returned to the sleds. “I prefer hot cocoa,” she told him. “You said you’d bring some.”

  “In the interest of not slowing us down with bathroom breaks, I thought you should limit your cocoa intake, since it contains caffeine. But you need water so you don’t dehydrate, which can happen fast in winter.”

  “You don’t need to lecture me on winter survival,” she said, shoving the bottle at him and stomping back to her sled. She picked up her helmet and took a calming breath. “I’m pretty sure this spur circles back onto the ITS trail in three or four miles. We might as well continue on it, since this whole area is part of the watershed I’m studying.”

  “You’re just pretty sure it circles back?”

  She glared at him. “I won’t get us lost.”

 
“Still, I think I’ll leave a trail of bread crumbs.” He pulled his own helmet down over his head, effectively shutting her out.

  Megan sat down on her sled and turned the key, then shot up the narrow spur. The man obviously had no sense of adventure.

  She drove eight or nine miles before she started thinking she might have to eat crow. The trail wasn’t going in the direction she thought it would; it was taking them northeast.

  She came to another intersection and stopped. Should she go right or left? Even though left was east and she wanted to head west to get back on track, tote roads could be deceiving. Why weren’t these stupid trails marked?

  Jack walked up to her sled and flipped up his shield. “I vote we go right,” he told her loudly, to be heard over their idling engines.

  “Why? That’s east. We want to go west to get back to the lake.”

  “Just a hunch.”

  Megan looked around. Directly in front of them was a small mountain, though she wasn’t sure which one. She looked left and right, but both directions showed only a short piece of the trail, since it was winding through dense forest. She looked back at Jack. “And if I think we should go left?”

  “Then we’ll go left.” He shrugged. “Either direction, it’s got to come out someplace.”

  He turned and walked away, and Megan watched in her mirror as he got back on his sled and waited. She looked up the new trail in both directions again, then gave her sled the gas and turned right, having learned long ago that when someone had a hunch and she had nothing, it was smarter to go with the hunch.

  Within four miles the knot in her gut began to unwind as the trail slowly curved westward, taking them up and over the mountain, heading back toward the lake. She smiled. Jack might not want to admit it, but some of his great-grandfather’s magic must have rubbed off on him.

  Then again, maybe he was just lucky.

  It was another ten miles before the area began to look familiar. The ridge to their right was the north end of Scapegoat Mountain, and she was sure the peat bog that she’d glimpsed through an opening in the forest was Beaver Bog. That meant the mountain ahead of them was Springy, and the deer yard she was looking for was…

  She raised her left hand to warn Jack she was stopping, and brought her sled to a halt. She set the brake and got off, lifting her visor as she walked back to him. “I think the deer yard I’m looking for is just over there,” she said, pointing to a nearby ridge. “Let’s find a place off the trail to set up camp. If the yard is there, I don’t want to spook the herd by getting any closer with the snowmobiles.”

  “That’s fine with me. I’m starved.”

  “It’s ten-thirty.”

  “I overslept and didn’t have time for breakfast. Did you remember the gravy?”

  “Did you bring a pot to warm it in?” she asked, eyeing his small saddlebags.

  He nodded toward her sled idling in front of them. “I’m sure your father stashed a pot in that pack basket.”

  “For a man who grew up in the wilderness, you certainly don’t carry much survival gear.”

  He grinned up at her. “Give me a good knife and some rope and I can live like a king.”

  “Then you can set up camp and cook dinner while I check out the deer yard.”

  “That’ll take you at least a couple of hours.”

  “So have a nap.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me. Pick a sunny spot out of the breeze,” he said, waving her toward her sled and flipping down the visor.

  Once again, Megan found herself stomping back to her snowmobile. She had to stop letting him rile her. What had happened to Wayne-the-nerd, anyway? She actually missed him. Yet Jack-the-jerk was much more…stimulating.

  Which was scary, considering she’d sworn off all men four months ago. Too bad her hormones hadn’t gotten the memo.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jack added more twigs to the small fire he had going, gave the remaining gravy a stir, and licked the spoon clean. He then settled back on his leather jacket and ski pants, which he’d taken off and laid over some fir boughs to make a bed. He closed his eyes with a sigh, thinking that if he got any smarter he might scare himself. Being out here alone with Megan was just like when they’d been out on the tundra, only better. This time there weren’t any squabbling students to babysit or honking geese trying to peck him for messing with their young; it was just the two and a half of them in the middle of miles of wilderness.

  Yup, he sure loved seeing a plan come together. Jack fell asleep with a smile, thinking life didn’t get any better than having the little woman off at work while he kept the home fires burning. With that thought warming his heart, he drifted off into dreamland.

  His mother visited him first, her radiant smile surrounding Jack with familiar serenity. “I like her family,” Sarah Stone said. “Grace MacKeage will make you a wonderful mother-in-law. She’s exactly the feminine influence I’d hoped you would find.”

  “Maybe she’ll be my mother-in-law,” Jack told the childhood vision of his mother. “I need the cooperation of her daughter for that to happen.”

  “Megan will come around. You heeded your grand-père’s warning to send her home, and now you’ll simply have to undo the damage.”

  “But how?”

  “By being who you truly are, my son. The longer you deny it, the harder your journey will become.”

  “You sound like Grand-père.”

  “Because I am his granddaughter, Coyote.”

  “Where are Dad and Walker? I want to see them.”

  “They’re fishing with my father. Grand-père’s here, though. He has something to show you.”

  “I’m not in the mood for one of his lectures.” Jack’s voice rose when his mother began to fade into the shimmering light. “Stay and talk to me about how to fix things with Megan. I need your help, Mama. I miss you.”

  She stopped disappearing, only a faint image of her radiant beauty remaining. “You can’t miss what you’ve never lost, Coyote. Every breath you take is my breath; every beat of your heart is my heartbeat; every time you hear the wind in the trees, I am singing to you. I walk inside you, my son.”

  “Stay, Mama.”

  “I’ll be back again soon, but I must go find your father and brother now. Heed your grand-père’s words, Coyote, for with the gift he brings you, he also brings wisdom.”

  “Mama!”

  “Coyote! Quit your hollering,” Forest Dreamwalker commanded as he appeared out of the ether, the epitome of shamanistic lore from his flowing gray hair down to the wrinkles on his aged face. “You’re too old to be crying after your mama.”

  “I will never outgrow my need for her, old man.”

  “A father must be strong. Do you wish your son to think you weak?”

  “What I wish is for you to stop plaguing my dreams,” Jack growled. “My brother was to be your heir, not me. Wait—you said my son. Megan’s having a boy?”

  “Piqued your interest, have I? So now you’ll listen to me?”

  “What is that under your robe?”

  “This?” Forest Dreamwalker lowered the edge of the thick wool robe he wore. “Why, it’s an infant!”

  “My son?” Jack asked, sitting up.

  “According to what I saw when your mama changed his diaper,” the old shaman said with a chuckle.

  Jack stretched out his hands. “Let me hold him.”

  “In three and a half months, Coyote. Until then, he’s ours to play with.”

  “Jack. My name is Jack now.”

  “Only because some fool social worker didn’t know the difference between a coyote and a jackal. She had no right changing the name your mother and father gave you.”

  Jack dropped his outstretched hands with a sigh. This had been a bone of contention with his great-grandfather for nearly twenty-six years. “She changed it because no one would have adopted a kid named Coyote,” Jack told him for the thousandth time. “And I’ve kept it because it suits me. Move your robe
so I can see my son.”

  The old man peeled back the wool a bit more. “You’ll have to trust me that he’s got your eyes,” he said. “I’m not about to wake him, as he has the scream of a warrior. Which gives me hope that he’ll inherit his mother’s highlander spirit.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to travel a peaceful path.” Jack reached out again. “Let me hold him.”

  “If I do, will you agree to listen to me?”

  Jack stilled. “You would use an innocent child to bargain?”

  “Only because you force me to such extremes.”

  He really, really wanted to hold his son. “Okay.”

  The old man hesitated. “Promise me you won’t wake him.”

  “I just want to hold him,” Jack said, reaching out again. He took the child, surprised by how little he weighed. “He’s not very big,” he said, setting his son on his lap so he could study him.

  “He will be when he’s born,” Forest said with a chuckle. “As I’m sure his mama will discover. No, don’t unbundle him,” he admonished, reaching out and tucking the blanket back around him. “He likes the security of being tightly swaddled.”

  But the child—his son!—started wiggling, then gave a yawn and stretched his little legs, pushing his feet against Jack’s belly with surprising strength. His tiny arms started fighting the blanket, and he suddenly cracked open his eyes.

  “Now you’ve done it,” Forest growled.

  Jack opened the blanket. The baby went perfectly still, staring up at Jack with dark, solid navy eyes. Then his little cherub face scrunched up, his arms and legs started to windmill, and he let out a bellow that rocked Jack right down to his soul.

  “Soothe him,” Forest said frantically. “Hold him up to your chest so he can hear your heartbeat.”

  Jack pulled his shirttail from his pants high enough to expose his chest and carefully lifted his son, cradling the infant’s face against his bare skin. He shuddered at the contact, and closed his eyes on a sigh when the boy started rooting against his skin.