Chapter 20 #3
“This is a great addition,” she said finally. “It wasn’t here in the Middle Ages, was it?”
He blinked. “Actually, nay, it wasn’t. It was done first in the sixteenth century, then expanded during the eighteenth. I made a few changes several years ago as well.”
“Of course,” she said, looking supremely uncomfortable. “I should have realized that.”
“Have you seen drawings?” he asked carefully.
“Um, sure,” she said, nodding vigorously. “Lots of them. Oh, look over there. What a great hearth.”
He watched her walk over to stand in front of the fire. He wanted to think on what she’d said, but just the sight of her was so distracting he found he couldn’t. He merely stood and watched her as she watched his fire.
In time, he took a tray full of delicacies from Madame Gies and set them down on the coffee table.
Sunny left the older woman beaming from compliments on her superb cooking.
Madame Gies gave him a look that told him quite clearly that he was a fool to let Sunny get away, then left them alone.
Sunny knelt down next to the coffee table and began to fill up a plate for him.
“Your French is perfect,” he said quietly.
“My parents are linguists,” she said with a shrug, “and I spent a year at a Swiss boarding school where French was de rigueur. Then I spent another year in Paris after med school.”
“Your parents must have been pleased with that, if languages are their life’s work.”
“Actually, they were furious,” she admitted. “I’d finished medical school, but bailed before taking a surgical residency so I could go to Paris to learn to cook—to their eternal disgust.”
“Why didn’t you want to be a physician?”
She shrugged. “I couldn’t see myself spending all my time in a hospital, cutting people open. I’d rather be outside.”
He could believe that. “So, what else have you done to drive your poor parents mad?”
“I’m thirty-three, Cam,” she said, handing him his plate. “I’ve done it all.”
He blinked in surprise at the sound of that name, then had to set his plate down so he could leap up and catch Sunny before she bolted from his solar. By the saints, she was fast. He barely managed to stop her at the door.
“Don’t run.”
She was trembling badly. “I meant to say Cameron.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around slowly. “I don’t mind,” he said slowly. He very carefully took her hand and tugged. “Come back to the fire, lass, and eat. You’ll never live it down if you don’t make substantial inroads into what Madame Gies has brought you.”
Sunny nodded though she looked ready to run again at the slightest provocation. He saw her seated, then sat and concentrated on his meal, giving her time to relax and himself time to digest what she’d called him.
It had been so long since he’d heard that name from anyone, just the sound of it was startling. But she couldn’t have meant anything by it. It had just been an aberration.
Unbidden, that vision of a woman standing in Moraig MacLeod’s house in a long, flowing black skirt came back to him.
That was just the beginning of the things that puzzled him.
How had Sunny known about the state of his hall in any century but the current?
There were no bloody drawings of his hall over the years that he knew of save the ones in his private library.
How had she known he’d had siblings? As far as anyone knew, he’d been the only surviving child of a distant cousin of Alistair’s who had died with his wife in a fire thirty-five years ago.
How had she known to call him Cam?
He felt a cup be pressed into his hands.
“Drink. You look pale.”
He felt pale. He drank what she’d given him, then looked at her. She was studiously avoiding him, dividing her time between pretending to eat and eyeing the exit. He wanted to ask her if she had . . . if she had what? Known him in another time?
It sounded completely barking. She would look at him as if he’d lost all sense, then bolt for good.
He rubbed his hands over his face, reached for some vestige of common sense, then looked about him for something to do.
He saw a stool near the hearth, hooked it with his foot, then beckoned to Sunny.
“I’ll do your hair for you.”
She closed her eyes briefly, then sighed deeply and walked over on her knees to sit on the stool. She held up a comb.
He unwrapped the towel from her hair, set it aside, then began his work.
It was perhaps the single most pleasant thing he’d done in years.
It gave him something to do besides think, and it afforded him the opportunity to have Sunshine Phillips within arms’ reach without giving her reason to flee.
He dragged the affair out as long as he could, then simply sat there and dragged his fingers idly through her hair, marveling at the fat curls.
She shivered, more than once. So did he.
He finally crossed his arms over her shoulders and pulled her back against him. He rested his chin on the top of her head and closed his eyes. By the saints, he was lost. Completely and totally lost.
What in the hell was he going to do now?
He would sort the rest of his life later. For now, there was only one thing to do. He took a deep breath, then slowly turned her around until she was facing him. She looked up at him with absolutely enormous eyes.
“Cameron—”
He shook his head, then slipped one of his hands under her hair and put the other against her cheek.
She didn’t move, didn’t pull away, didn’t do aught besides stare up at him with a desperate sort of longing.
It was something akin to that look of hope she’d worn at Ian MacLeod’s, only this time he understood it perfectly because he felt the same way.
He smiled faintly, then closed his eyes as he bent his head to kiss her—
The phone rang suddenly at his elbow.
It startled him so badly, he almost fell over onto her. He sat back and cursed. “Don’t move.”
She shook her head, as if she’d just woken from a dream. Cameron cursed again under his breath, then reached for the receiver on the table next to him.
“Aye?” he demanded.
“That is hello, Mac. Hello.”
He sighed heavily. “Hello, Penelope.”
Sunny stood and walked to the door. He put his hand over the phone. “Wait—”
She looked at him, shook her head, then walked out his door.
“Mac? Mac, you aren’t paying attention to me!”
“What do you need, Penelope?” he asked wearily.
“I’m reminding you about the charity event we’re hosting tomorrow. You’re supposed to be down here tonight, remember? Today is Monday, Mac, or hadn’t you noticed?”
He had noticed, because he’d had to rearrange several things very early that morning in order to have what he’d hoped would extend into an entire day of leisure with Sunny.
“Think about who’s coming,” Penelope urged.
He honestly couldn’t remember and, better still, he didn’t give a damn. “I’ll be there,” he said, vowing it would be the very last time he went.
Well, perhaps not the last time. He supposed he would be attending quite a few more things just to keep both Nathan and Penelope Ainsworth close.
“Mac, are you listening to me?”
“Of course,” he said automatically. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”
“Tonight,” Penelope insisted. “I said tonight.”
“I can’t. I have business.”
“Finish it early.”
The phone went dead. He clicked it off with a curse, then ran from the solar.
He paused in the passageway, then heard the front door slam.
He ran down the passageway, took the stairs three at a time, then sprinted across his great hall.
He hauled the door open just in time to see the passenger door of a black Range Rover close.
The gravel was miserably uncomfortable on his bare feet, but he ran across it just the same. He rounded the boot of the car and pulled open the door.
“You’re wearing my pajamas,” was the first thing that came out of his mouth.
The look Patrick MacLeod shot him from the driver’s seat was simply murderous. Cameron looked at him.
“How did you come here so quickly?”
“I saw the note in Sunny’s bathroom and thought she might need a rescue,” Patrick said coldly. “I can see that was indeed the case.”
Cameron reached out and put his hand on Sunny’s arm. “Please don’t go,” he said quietly. When she continued to ignore him, he looked for a way to at least distract her until he could convince her to stay. “Why did you call me Cam?”
“Because it’s what Sim called you,” she whispered. She looked at him then. “Because you once wanted to hear that name again from someone you loved.”
He felt as if she’d slugged him in the gut. He doubled over and was glad to be there. It made it easier to breathe.
Patrick reached over her. “Back away, mate.”
Cameron did, certain that Patrick would simply shut him in the door otherwise.
He stood back and flinched as Sunny’s brother-in-law gunned the engine and sent gravel scattering backward.
It almost put his eye out. He managed to look up far enough to watch the Range Rover fly down the road away from him.
Because it’s what Sim called you. I want to know about your brothers. I’m a MacKenzie through my mother. Because you once wanted to hear that name again from someone you loved.
Her words echoed in his head so loudly, he thought he might be ill.
He remained outside his front door in the rain until he thought he could straighten successfully.
He heaved himself up, then turned and walked unsteadily back into the hall.
Madame Gies accosted him before he was halfway to the stairs.
“Her clothes are dry now.”
“I’ll take them to her in a bit,” he managed.
He made it to his bedchamber, then fell onto the bed only because he’d run into it and had no choice. His head was pounding mercilessly. He wished, absently, for a bit of Sunny’s vilest brew.
Cameron, ride for the MacLeod witch.
By all the saints above, had he known her in the past?
By the time his headache had passed well enough that he could sit up, a good part of the morning had passed as well. He heaved himself up to his feet and went to look for his keys.
He had a few questions for that glorious MacLeod witch and he had no intention of waiting any longer to have answers.
He drove to her house because it was quicker than riding, then staggered out of his car and over to her door. He was so ill, he wasn’t even troubled by her threshold. He knocked.
The door was opened by Patrick MacLeod, who didn’t even bother with a friendly hello before he punched Cameron full in the face.
Cameron whirled around and went sprawling—all along the bonnet of his quarter-million-pound-sterling Mercedes.
He got to his feet only to have Patrick’s iron fists connect with his gut several more times.
“Bloody hell, man,” Cameron gasped, holding up his hands to hold him off, “that’s enough!”
“Enough would be you fertilizing my garden,” Patrick snarled.
Well, at least Patrick’s fists were now down by his sides. Clenched there was better than clenched and coming toward his face. Cameron put his hand on the wall of Moraig’s house just to keep himself upright and waited until he thought he could speak without losing his breakfast.
“I want to see Sunny,” he wheezed.
“She’s not here.”
“Where did she go?”
“Inverness, so she could catch a flight to London. She’s headed back to the States.”
Cameron wondered if he was seeing stars because of Patrick’s tender ministrations, or because of the tidings. “The States?” he echoed in disbelief. “Why?”
“Why do you think, you bloody fool?”
Cameron felt his way over to his car and looked down. The top button of his jeans had left a scratch from one side clear across to the other, damn it anyway. He sat down, took a few more bracing breaths, then looked up at Patrick. “I don’t suppose you’d call her and stop her, would you?”
“I don’t suppose I would.”
Cameron took another deep breath, then winced at the pain in his side. “I don’t suppose,” he managed, “that it would make any difference to you if I told you I loved her.”
“It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me,” Patrick said sharply. “At this point, I don’t imagine it would make any difference to her, either. You’ve treated her abominably.”
“I haven’t meant to,” Cameron said quietly. He put his hands on his knees and considered. It took a bit of digging to find words he thought might convince Patrick he wanted to help him. He looked at Sunny’s brother-in-law. “I need your aid. Name your price.”
Patrick folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the door frame. “Your birth date.”
Cameron wasn’t surprised by the question and he supposed Patrick wouldn’t be surprised by the answer. “The twenty-fifth of November, 1346.”
Patrick grunted. He pushed away from the door frame and reached into his back pocket. “That earns you what Jamie left for you. We’ll discuss Sunny after you’ve read this.”
Cameron stood up to take the letter, then felt something shudder in the air around him as his fingers touched it.
He didn’t believe in magic, as a general rule, but that moment, he felt quite certain he should rethink his position.
He looked at Patrick, but Patrick only stood there with his arms folded over his chest, watching silently.
“Who’s it from?” Cameron said uneasily.
“Moraig to Jamie.”
Cameron unfolded the letter and began to read.
He had to read it three times before the words sank in. And once they did, he did the most sensible thing he’d done in a month.
He swayed into Sunny’s doorway, hit his head on the threshold, and knocked himself unconscious. He surrendered to the blackness without hesitation.
It seemed fitting.