Chapter 15
Sunny sat at her sister’s dinner table and wished she had the guts to take her knife, lean over the table, and plunge it into her brother-in-law’s black heart.
She glared at him but had only a bland look as her reward.
She sent him another look of retribution, then watched as he turned to Cameron and put on his most disarming smile.
“So, Cameron,” he drawled, toying with his fork, “what really brings you to my humble table tonight? Besides seeking forgiveness for almost running over my sister.”
“Isn’t she your sister-in-law?” Cameron asked.
“I have no sisters of my own,” Patrick said with a shrug. “That makes me, as you might imagine, especially protective of Sunshine. ”
Sunny wanted to kill him. But since doing so would make her sister unhappy, she settled for shooting him another murderous look, then burying curses in a triple shot of wheatgrass.
“What are you drinking, Mistress Sunshine?”
Sunny realized it was Cameron talking to her.
She held out her cup without looking at him.
It was better that way. If she didn’t have to look at him, she didn’t have to acknowledge him.
And if she didn’t acknowledge him, she didn’t have to face the fact that while he might be looking at her, he wasn’t seeing her.
“Good heavens,” he gasped, setting the cup back down in front of her. “How do you drink that swill?”
“It’s good for you,” she muttered. She downed the rest, then looked around to see if it were possible that the torture of supper might be over. Patrick was leaning back on two legs of his chair and had reverted to the native tongue. A perfect opportunity to clear the table.
She rose, then shook her head at Madelyn. “Sit,” she said in French.
“Why?” Madelyn asked.
“Because I need something to do,” Sunny said in a low voice.
And she did. She took all the plates to the sink, then came back for the cups and glasses. She reached for Cameron’s last of all, because her worst fault was procrastinating things that were difficult. She took his glass only to have him put his hand around hers.
“Leave it, if you will,” he said.
In French.
She suppressed a grimace. She would definitely have to be more careful about which languages she chose to ignore him in. She would also have to learn to ignore the tingle that ran up her arm every time they touched. Yet another reason to avoid him as often as possible.
She released his glass and pulled her hand away, then quickly went back to the sink and started to do the dishes.
Gaelic flowed freely at the table behind her, as it usually did after supper.
It should have been comforting. Unfortunately, listening to Cameron speak it, with the medieval accent he seemed not to have lost, was about to do her in.
He cleared his throat suddenly. “Perhaps we should speak in English,” he said in that tongue, “in deference to Mistress Sunshine. ”
“Don’t fash yourself,” Patrick said. “Sunny and Madelyn both speak Gaelic like natives.”
Cameron expressed surprise that she and Madelyn would know his tongue, and Patrick told him the Phillips girls were full of surprises. Madelyn laughed and the conversation continued on first to talk of village affairs, then a discussion of the new leisure center.
Sunny wondered if she could make the dishes last all night.
At one point, as she was scrubbing flecks of nonexistent crust off a baking dish, Madelyn came over to her and put her arm around her shoulders.
“You okay?” she whispered.
“Not that you care,” Sunny groused.
“Of course, I care. I just couldn’t send the poor man back out into the night when he looked so green. I will send you there, though, if you don’t stop trying to scrub through my pan.”
Sunny stopped, then took a deep breath and rinsed the pan. “I’m finished.”
Madelyn kissed her cheek. “Details later.”
“There are no details, counselor.”
“Sunny, I’m not stupid. There are things you aren’t telling me. Things you should be telling me. Things you would feel better about if you told me.”
“Please, Maddy,” Sunny whispered, “not tonight.”
Madelyn assessed her ruthlessly for another minute or two in silence, then nodded slowly. “All right. Not tonight. But soon.”
Sunny closed her eyes briefly, nodded, then put the pan aside. She cleaned the counters, then looked around for something else to do. She made tea, but that didn’t take as long as she needed it to. Far too soon, her sister was standing next to her again, cutting slices of cake.
“Go and sit,” Madelyn said, elbowing her aside.
Sunny sighed, then carried tea things over to the table and poured four cups.
Cameron took one, then sniffed. “Mint,” he said. “Lovely, thank you.”
Sunny nodded, but she couldn’t look at him.
She was strung so tightly she feared the least little thing would have snapped her in two.
She was desperately tempted to just bolt from the kitchen and run all the way home.
All that stopped her was the fear that if she did, Cameron would follow her there, and then she would be alone with him.
And that would have been a thousand times worse.
So she sat and listened to him chat comfortably with her sister and brother-in-law and wondered what in the hell he was doing there.
“Give us all your details,” Patrick said at one point. “’Tis a rare thing to have a Cameron at my table.”
Sunny found that if she turned her head just so, she could see Cameron out of the corner of her eye. It was torture, plain and simple, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. She turned a bit more, then let herself look her fill.
He was beautiful. No, not beautiful. Stunning.
His face was as it had been in medieval Scotland, yet something had been added.
Little lines of age at the corners of his eyes that added strength and character.
His hair was just as dark as it had been, still on the longish side, and he still raked it back from his face with his fingers impatiently when it got in his eyes.
And his eyes were still that bright blue, intense, full of good humor.
She watched him a bit longer and decided there was something else there, as well. It was the same sadness she’d seen in his eyes when he’d talked about leaving his clan behind, only this was more pronounced. What had he lost?
And why the hell hadn’t he recognized her the moment he’d seen her?
“Cameron Antiquities is just for sport, really,” he was saying with a small, modest smile. "’Tis just me and a lad or two I trust looking for things that can’t be found and buying them from souls who don’t want to sell them. It doesn’t keep the lights on at home, of course, but I like old things.”
“How old are you?” Madelyn asked.
Sunny kicked her sister under the table. Madelyn glared at her briefly, then smiled at Cameron.
“Well?” she prompted.
“Thirty-five,” he said easily. “How old are you?”
“Careful,” Patrick said with an amused smile, “my wife is a lawyer. If you start this with her, you’ll finish bloodied.”
Cameron smiled at Madelyn. “I’m not afraid, though I reserve the right to refuse to answer anything that makes me look an arse.”
Sunny suspected that Madelyn was giving him her standard answer that she wouldn’t hurt him as long as he cooperated, but she couldn’t hear the exact words her sister was using. The blood was pounding in her ears so loudly, she couldn’t hear much of anything at all.
Thirty-five? When had Robert Francis Cameron mac Cameron become thirty-five years old?
Had he been in the future that long?
Maybe that fortnight he’d spent with her in the past had been so unremarkable that it he’d actually forgotten it. Or maybe he was truly in love with that blonde shrew who thought nothing of stepping on drunks—or innocent herbalists just trying to get away from lousy former employers.
“I didn’t mean to almost run over her,” Cameron was saying. “I was escaping a society dinner and I fear I was distracted.”
“And you thought Sunny would feed you?”
Sunny jumped up. “I hear Hope. I’ll go check on her.”
She bolted from the kitchen before she had to listen to his answer. She didn’t want to know why he’d come or what he was escaping or what he thought of her.
She went into Patrick’s library and hoped Cameron would soon become so irritated by Madelyn’s questions that he would go home. Until that happy event occurred, she was perfectly content to hide.
Unfortunately, there was no fire burning in the library hearth and the stark coldness of it chilled her even more than what she had faced in the kitchen.
It wouldn’t have surprised her to have turned around and seen any number of ghosts sitting in the chairs there.
She’d seen them before. She suspected she would see them again.
But maybe they thought she was unsettled enough without them adding any of their otherworldly selves to the mix.
Cameron was thirty-five. She could hardly believe it.
She stood there with that number spinning through her head until she heard footsteps stop a few paces behind her.
Not enough time had passed for Madelyn to have taken pity on her and thrown Cameron out.
It was probably just Patrick coming to tell her to get a hold of herself and come be polite.
She supposed he had a point. She could manage that, at least. She took a deep breath, then turned, ready to acquiesce. But it wasn’t Patrick standing there.
It was Cameron.
He was leaning against the door frame, watching her. “Your tea is growing cold,” he said quietly.
“I’m not thirsty,” she managed.
He frowned. “Have I done something to offend you, Mistress Sunshine?”
She felt as if someone had just punched her in the stomach, making it almost impossible to catch her breath.
How could he not know what he’d done?
“Of course not,” she managed. She bit her lip, hard. It was all that saved her from bursting into tears.