Chapter 17
Sunny walked quietly through the forest to the north of her house, grateful for the trees that kept the rain off her head and even more grateful that she could touch the back of that head and not feel a lump anymore. Sleep, tea, and green things had wrought a remarkable bit of healing in her.
And a week without a sighting of Robert Cameron himself had almost left her feeling that her heart might heal as well.
After she’d gotten over the shock of having spent the evening near him at Madelyn’s, she’d allowed herself to wonder about him in a detached sort of way.
She’d wondered if that bump on the head had wiped out all his memories, or just his memories of her.
She’d wondered if his stunning fiancée had any idea when he’d been born or if she merely thought of him as a successful businessman who happened to own a castle in Scotland.
She likely would have believed the latter herself if she hadn’t known better.
She had used Patrick’s computer to its best advantage one morning and found out all sorts of details about the modern Cameron, his business, and his very public engagement to Penelope Ainsworth less than two months ago.
It had been very odd reading about his life in the future, a life that she hadn’t been a part of in any way, a life he’d been conducting just up the way while she’d sat in Moraig’s house, busily sniffing herbs and being completely clueless that she would fall in love with that same very public man in a completely different century.
She’d let the wind blow for a week and decided that it wasn’t going to blow any stray Cameron lairds back her way, so perhaps it was time to let it all go.
He would marry the gorgeous Lady Penelope and she would continue to look for a decent guy to date.
Nothing had changed. In time, maybe she would even manage to stop sleeping with his plaids wrapped around her.
And if she managed that, she could still bring herself to call Scotland home. She would still be able to roam over Scottish soil, still have the mountains and trees, still have the rain. She wanted that very much.
She paused at the edge of Moraig’s forest and looked up the meadow that stretched in front of her, then pulled her hand-drawn Jamie map out of her pocket and looked for any potential problems. Either the ground in front of her was safe, or Jamie felt some small bit of hesitation about investigating the quirks of Cameron soil because the land north was remarkably free of Xs.
She felt no compunction at all about her own ramblings, though, mostly because she knew the laird in question wasn’t home.
She knew this because Patrick knew John Bagley, who apparently lived to fence with Cameron, and John had said Cameron was currently trapped in London, no doubt escorting his beloved to party after party and happily living a socialite’s life she was happy not to be a part of.
She stuffed Jamie’s map back in her jacket pocket, then started across the meadow. She walked for a very long time, finding that the longer she walked, the better she felt. She would get over him. In fact, she felt fairly confident that she was over him.
After all, it wasn’t as if she knew him very well.
She didn’t, for instance, know what his favorite color was, or what his favorite food was, or what sort of music he liked.
She couldn’t have said whether or not he would hog the remote, squeeze the toothpaste from the top instead of the bottom, or leave his dirty dishes on the floor for her to pick up the next day.
She pointedly ignored the fact that she knew exactly how he looked when he was watching over her, or teasing her, or wanting her.
She knew how he looked with a crown of wildflowers on his head, how his hand felt around hers, how his muscles worked when he was fighting with a six-foot broadsword so she would live another day to wonder what his favorite color was.
He’d wanted her to call him Cam, because he wanted to hear that name from someone he loved.
She closed her eyes briefly. She couldn’t go back down that road again. He had his life; she had hers. They were obviously not destined to be together. The sooner she came to grips with that, the better off she would be.
And for the moment, maybe the best thing she could do was get herself back to Moraig’s.
She pulled her coat closer around herself and shivered suddenly.
The sky above her was black and a bitter wind had come out of nowhere.
It had been stupid to come out so late in the afternoon.
She looked around her and realized that she hadn’t been paying attention to where she was.
She was in the middle of a very long meadow, but she couldn’t see any of the mountains that should have flanked the ground she stood on thanks to the mist.
She wondered, with a substantial bit of alarm, if she’d just blundered into the past again.
The whinny of a horse right behind her startled her so much that she screamed as she whirled around to face the sound. A chestnut horse skidded to a halt five feet from her. She put her hand over her heart, then looked up to see who was trying to run over her.
It was Cameron.
She was so surprised to see him that she couldn’t do anything but stare up at him in astonishment.
Well, at least he was in jeans this time.
She wasn’t sure that that wasn’t worse, actually.
He might have been dressed in modern clothes and alive in a modern year, but he was as inaccessible as if he’d been hundreds of years in the past.
He pulled up close to her. “Give me your hand, Mistress Sunshine. ”
She put her hand into his before she realized what she was doing, then shivered at the tingles that went through her just from touching him. She would have pulled away, but he wouldn’t release her.
“Let me take you home,” he said.
“I don’t need you to,” she protested.
“Don’t be daft, woman. You can’t walk back in this storm.”
She had to admit that he had a point. If she walked back home—assuming she could actually find home—she would arrive half frozen.
Riding with him was the lesser of two evils.
She wanted to ask him why he was there just when she needed him, but she couldn’t bring herself to.
Perhaps he’d just been out riding and she had been in his way. It had been chance.
Just like his coming to look for a healer for his brother almost 650 years ago and finding her instead.
“Sunshine.”
She looked up and met his eyes. He was looking at her and actually seeing her with some sort of recognition, though she supposed it was nothing more than the look a man might give a damsel in distress he was trying to rescue, a look that said she really should comply with his heroic attempts before they both caught their deaths out in the wet.
She took a deep, fortifying breath, then nodded. She put her foot on his, then let him pull her up so she could swing around behind him.
He pulled her arms around his waist. “Hold on.”
She supposed she didn’t have any choice when the alternative was falling off his horse.
She didn’t want to, though. It reminded her far too much of the last time she’d ridden with him.
Only then he’d had a six-foot Claymore strapped to his back and she’d been terrified they wouldn’t live to see dawn, much less the future.
Now, he merely rode easily over his land and then Jamie’s, apparently not overly worried that an angry MacLeod clansman might plunge a sword into his chest for daring to come on MacLeod lands.
Times had changed.
He stopped in front of her house, then swung his leg over the saddle and jumped down lithely to the ground. He turned and held up his arms for her.
She closed her eyes briefly against the absolute familiarity of what he’d just done, then put her hands on his shoulders.
He caught her around the waist, then carefully set her on her feet.
She pulled away from him immediately and wondered if she had the guts to simply tell him to get lost while she still could.
Then she made the mistake of looking up at his face. He looked terrible.
“What happened to you?” she asked in surprise.
“Hangover,” he said, rubbing his forehead gingerly.
“What in the world were you doing out riding, then?” she asked in surprise.
He smiled faintly. “I wanted to see if you might have something to ease me. As you did before.”
It took her a moment to realize what he’d said. “You rode down here to see me?”
“Actually, I flew home to Scotland to see you.”
She backed away before she realized what she was doing. She would have turned and bolted for her door, but he caught her by the arm before she could.
“Please, Sunshine,” he said, giving her a pained smile. “Please. If you have any pity in you at all, please put aside whatever it is you have against me and make me something that doesn’t include raw eggs.”
She didn’t dare look in his eyes, so she stared at his chin. “You could have stopped at Boots, you know.”
“I didn’t want to stop at Boots.”
She wanted to tell him to go look in his own medicine cabinet, but she couldn’t bring herself to get the words out.
“Besides,” he said, rubbing her arm where he’d held it, “surely you aren’t going to send me away without at least allowing me to dry off a bit by your fire, are you?”
Actually, sending him right back off into the storm seemed like the best idea she’d heard all day. Unfortunately, Cameron didn’t look as if he would make it to her fire, much less all the way back home.
Damn it anyway, she hated that Florence Nightingale side of herself.
“I’ll make you something,” she said heavily. “You’d better drink it fast, though, so you can get home before it’s completely dark.”