With Every Breath (Macleod Family #7)

Chapter 1

SCOTLAND

Scotland in the rain.

There were, Sunshine Phillips decided, not many other words that could conjure up more romantic imaginings than those.

She pulled the exercise studio door shut behind her, then lifted her face to the sky and closed her eyes.

The rain that fell on her wasn’t particularly warm—it was the end of March after all—but it was still the sort of rain that made a woman want to curl up in front of the fire with a cup of something hot and listen to it falling softly on the roof. She smiled in pleasure. It was perfect.

She absolutely loved Scotland. She loved how the sky pressed down against the land and left her feeling grounded. She loved the cycles of the earth, the seasons in the Highlands, the family her sister had married into.

But she loved the rain most of all.

She’d had her first taste of Scottish drizzle the year before when her sister had invited her to come to the Highlands. She’d happily left her hectic life in Seattle behind for a visit that had stretched all the way through her sister’s pregnancy and delivery.

And somehow during all those months, she’d begun to wish she had a reason to stay in Scotland for quite a bit longer than a single spring and summer. She hadn’t dared hope for it, though.

Then, unexpectedly, she’d been offered a little moss-covered cottage that looked as if it had come straight from some Highland fairy tale. She’d accepted it without hesitation and happily spent the previous winter sitting by the fire and dreaming.

Then spring had hinted it might arrive and she’d grown restless.

She’d even thought about going back to the States to pursue that raw-food catering business she’d been ready to start before Madelyn had come home from Scotland with her life turned completely upside down.

But going back to Seattle would have meant leaving the Highlands and she couldn’t bring herself to even consider that.

Her lovely, crooked little house was full of herbs, the forest around her house was full of quiet, the meadows and mountains outside the forest full of flowers and heather.

She couldn’t give that up. Not yet. Not until she was certain she wouldn’t find what her heart wanted the most.

All of which she could think about later, when she was sitting comfortably in front of her own fire.

For now, she really needed to get out of the wet.

She wiped the rain off her face, then started toward the corner.

She jumped in surprise at the sight of a woman standing not twenty feet away from her wearing dark sunglasses that were completely unnecessary for the day.

Actually, it wasn’t just the woman’s sunglasses, or her jet-black hair that was so disconcerting.

There was something about her aura as a whole that was rather dark and forbidding.

The woman gave her the creeps, and she wasn’t unacquainted with things of a spooky nature.

Madelyn would have had a field day with that admission.

She gave herself a little mental shake and decided promptly that too much time in the rain had rotted any good sense she had once possessed.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m waiting for someone.”

“From yoga class?” Sunny asked, puzzled. “But I’m the last one out.”

“So you are,” the woman said, without any inflection at all to her voice. She stood there motionless for another minute, then turned suddenly and walked away.

Sunny watched her go, then considered. Maybe the woman had been stood up by her boyfriend, or been pulled over by a cop on the way to the village, or was waiting in the wrong place and frustration had gotten the better of her.

Whatever the case, it wasn’t her problem.

She shouldered her bag and walked up the alleyway between buildings, putting the woman and her potential troubles behind her.

She rounded the corner of the building and paused to take in the view.

The village was not large, but it suited her purposes.

There was a post office, a greengrocer, and a few other stores that sold goods that one might not want to make a trip to Inverness for.

It also boasted an herb shop where she worked a few hours a week to kill some time after teaching yoga in the studio attached to the back of the shop. It was a charming place.

Well, the village was. The herb shop wasn’t.

She looked at the shop front. FERGUSSON’S HERBS AND SUNDRIES was announced in precise, unforgiving letters.

If it had been her place, the letters would have swirled and enticed and invited the would-be herbal shopper to come inside, have a cup of tea, and sniff the herbs and sundries.

Her brother-in-law, Patrick MacLeod, offered on a weekly basis to buy the place for her, but she declined just as often.

She had money enough to buy at least part of it herself, but she hadn’t wanted to.

Her heart was not in being a shopkeeper, even a shopkeeper of things she loved.

She had other things in mind for herself.

She ducked under the awning and walked into the shop.

Unfortunately, remaining on her current side of the Pond would probably require marriage and marriage would require that she find someone within a fifty-mile radius to date.

She was still working on that— and not having much success.

She glanced at the man behind the counter who sported the enormous shiner under his right eye.

Case in point.

“You’re late.”

Tavish Fergusson didn’t even look up at her as he spoke.

He was obviously very busy tallying up something on that sheet of paper in front of him.

Perhaps he was making a list of all the bottles she hadn’t arranged on the shelf precisely so.

Perhaps he was counting how many flakes of peppermint tea one could reasonably subtract from a prepackaged bag yet still have it taste remotely like it should.

Perhaps he was calculating how many seconds had elapsed between the time when he’d first attempted to grope her in the storeroom yesterday and the precise instant her fist had connected with his eye.

Not very many, by her count.

She walked behind the counter and set her bag down on the floor. “What do you need me to do?”

“Go restock soap.”

“I did that yesterday.”

He shot her a dark look. “Do it again.”

She caught her breath at his rudeness. All right, so he’d never been much of a gentleman. At least he’d pretended to be civil. Obviously there was no need for it now.

She pursed her lips and went off to see what he’d managed to sell during the day. She checked the clinical, silver shelves stocked with unimaginative bits of soap, then headed into the stockroom to gather a lone bar to replace what had apparently been purchased.

She walked around the store, looking for other things to do.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to even take the job in the first place, but she’d needed something to keep herself busy.

How could she have refused, especially when Tavish had offered her a job in spite of the fact that she was related, by marriage, to those evil MacLeods up the way.

It had seemed like a gesture of goodwill to accept.

Besides, she’d been certain that even after Tavish had ignored her less-than-subtle hints—and in spite of the fact that he tended to unbutton his shirts too far in a misguided attempt to look sexy—she could avoid any entanglements with him.

Of course, that had been before last night. After four months of knowing her, he’d suddenly decided it was time to know her quite a bit better. She glanced at him briefly as she went to throw a carton in the trash. That black eye was a good one. Patrick would have been proud.

It had been Patrick who had insisted that she learn to defend herself—and quite ruthlessly, actually.

She’d gone along with it because she’d suspected he might be right.

She and Madelyn had spent a good part of the previous summer learning various useful things.

Well, she had learned various useful things.

Madelyn had spent most of her time with her very pregnant self reclining in a chair and her feet propped up on a stool in front of her, calling out encouraging words as Sunny had practiced repeatedly fending off Patrick’s merciless attacks.

She had put in extra effort, just in case she had needed to take care of herself and Madelyn both.

Then she’d put the knowledge aside, figuring she wouldn’t need it except in a pinch, sort of like tenth-grade geometry.

Who would have thought that she would need to use it when she realized Tavish Fergusson wasn’t interested in discussing any inclines other than horizontal?

She spent a pair of hours helping the odd customer and generally making herself useful. She was, however, unusually happy to see the clock strike six.

“Want me to lock up?” she asked.

Tavish looked at her coldly. “I wouldn’t trust you to.”

She rolled her eyes. “Get real, Tavish. I may not appreciate your advances, but I’m perfectly capable of appreciating the value of your sundries. I wouldn’t leave the store unlocked.”

“You definitely won’t because you won’t be here any longer to do so.”

She stared at him for a minute until she realized just what he was getting at. “Are you firing me?”

“Aye. Nessa Paine can teach the yoga classes.”

“Who?” Sunny asked in surprise.

“Nessa Paine,” Tavish repeated with a smirk. “She’s young and very beautiful. Just what we need. Why don’t you go back up the hill where you belong and be grateful I don’t file a complaint against you for assault.”

“Assault?” she echoed.

He pointed to his eye.

She shut her mouth and started across the room. She was marginally satisfied to note that he backed away when she came behind the counter to pick up her bag. She dug around in it for the key to the store, then laid it carefully on his papers.