Chapter 5 #2
She’d searched for the same with no success. “Do you think either of us will ever find any of those things?”
“If we are brave enough—aye. But we must first find the courage to take hold of them when we find them, or all our efforts will be for naught.”
She pushed herself back into the pillows and hugged her knees to her chest. “I can bluff a good game, but I don’t know about ever finding that kind of courage ever again. Not when it could be nothing more than a false start or another stupid mistake.”
“Everything happens for a reason, lass. Yer daughter died, and a part of ye died with her. But look at the precious time the two of ye shared. Without that mistake ye think ye made, ye never would have known the joy of her wee life intertwined with yers.”
“I suppose that’s true,” she admitted. “But the pain of that last year with her makes the joy part hard to remember.”
“Joy can be elusive. Sometimes, ye have to hunt it down and hold fast to it so it canna escape ye.” He twitched a shrug as he idly laced his fingers together and stared down at his folded hands.
“Joyous memories can be the slipperiest of them all. Yer mind is just as capable of drowning ye in darkness as it is in bringing ye into the light. It takes discipline and sheer stubbornness to train it to serve ye properly.”
The emotions in his tone touched her far more than his words, and it scared the living daylights out of her. “How did you get so wise?”
Still staring down at his hands, he smiled, but it seemed more sad than happy. “I have lived many years. Alone. With entirely too much time to think about life’s riddles.” Then he rose and came over to the couch and settled down beside her. “May I?”
Trying to ignore the shiver his nearness sent through her, she hugged her legs tighter to her chest. “Looks to me like you already have.”
“Shall I move back to the chair, then?”
“No.” She fixed her gaze on the flickering flame of one of the candles in front of her on the table and sank into it.
With Otto on her left and Mathison on her right, an odd sense of safe contentment washed across her, giving her the strength to get her chaotic emotions in check.
At the deepest level of her heart and soul, she knew Mathison would neither hurt her nor take advantage of her.
What a strange thing to know about someone she had just met.
“I’m tired,” she said more to herself than him.
And she didn’t just mean physically. She was tired of constantly having to battle all the crappiness life kept throwing at her.
She relaxed her head back against the cushions and stretched out her legs, propping her feet on the coffee table.
“Maybe it’s the jet lag or just…everything. It seems later than it really is.”
“Aye, it does at that.” Shoulder to shoulder, he propped his feet next to hers. The man radiated the warmth of a bonfire—both physically and emotionally.
She fell ever deeper into being helplessly mesmerized by the candlelit room, the storm outside, and the indescribable yearning for him to hold her as if she were the most precious thing in his world.
No. I don’t do one-nighters. She fought to hang on to whatever shred of control she could find.
Talk. She needed to talk. About something—anything.
“Mairwen said the tarot cards helped her decide to sell the house to me.”
“Did she now?”
The slow, deep laziness of his voice, delivered in that sexy Scottish drawl, chipped away at her diminishing control even more.
She folded her hands in her lap, tightly clenching them together.
“And she read them again when I showed up to pick up the keys. Said they showed that my hopes were about to be realized.”
He didn’t speak for a long moment, then slowly nodded. “A good thing, aye?”
“If you believe in that sort of thing.”
“Ye dinna believe in the auld ways?”
“Auld ways?”
He reached over, took one of her hands, and laced his fingers through hers. “The magic of Scotland is a powerful thing.” Then he kissed the back of her hand before tracing the lines of her veins with his fingertip. “’Tis the land’s lifeblood, in fact. Mystical energy is strong here.”
She found it hard to form a coherent sentence.
His touch repeatedly sent insistent jolts of what could only be described as pure, adrenaline-laced excitement through her.
Static electricity couldn’t begin to explain the feeling.
Her common sense finally kicked in, dousing her with a strong enough surge of fear to jerk her hand away and tuck it under her folded arms.
Mathison blew out a heavy sigh that made her wish she hadn’t reacted the way she had.
“I believe what I can see and touch,” she said, hating that she sounded like the biggest killjoy in existence.
“A sad state of affairs, lass. Sad indeed.”
“It’s safer.”
“What about the magic of holding yer wee daughter the first time after ye birthed her?”
All the magical times with Gillian flooded her mind: that first ultrasound, the first time she’d heard her heartbeat, her first baby belly laugh, and a thousand other firsts. Her eyes stung with those damn tears that were never far away. “That was magical—not magic—there is a difference.”
He shook his head. “Nay, lass. ’Tis one and the same. Ye but need to realize that and accept it for what it is.”
“Just stop. I hate crying.”
“Forgive me.”
She sniffed in response and swiped at the tears, determined not to speak again until she could think of something to say that wouldn’t trigger a dive into the deep end of her grief or her need for a mindless night of abandon in somebody’s arms.
The cozy silence of the popping fire, the sputtering candles, and the raging storm, occasionally interrupted by Otto’s groaning snores, helped her get a grip on what little sanity she still possessed.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, nudging Mathison with her shoulder.
“I didn’t mean to go all weepy, emotional on you. I promise I’m not crazy…much.”
“I have known addled folk before,” he said. “Ye’re nay like them.”
“Thank you.” She softly snorted. “I think.” She drew in a deep breath and released it with a heavy sigh. “You’re a good man. Thank you for your patience.”
He surprised her with a tender kiss on her temple. “Ye are a fine woman, Calia.” His whisper was low and husky. It sifted through the ever-increasing cracks of her resolve like sand through a broken vessel. “A woman I am thankful to have met.”
Unable to resist, she snaked her way under his arm, hugged him close, and rested her head on his chest—all the while promising herself that she still didn’t do one-nighters or permanence. But this…this was okay. At least, for a little while.
He accepted her need for closeness with a gentleness that threatened to make her weep again, as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
She closed her eyes and breathed him in.
His scent of wild, rain-soaked woodlands and a man she both feared and needed so badly that it hurt seemed so familiar.
But how? Maybe they’d met in a past life, if you believed in that sort of thing.
She snuggled closer, shooing away the silly thought.
Scotland and all its talk of magic must be getting to her.
His heartbeat thumping beneath her cheek relaxed her even more. It was strong and steady. Unlike anything in her life had been other than her love for Gillian, and the sweet, loving trust her daughter had always given in return.
“I don’t do one-nighters,” she reaffirmed more to herself than him.
Stroking her hair as she melted into his chest, Mathison shifted beneath her with a deep breath and the exhale that followed. “What are these one-nighters of which ye speak, lass? I dinna ken what ye mean.”
“You know. Where you share a night of unbridled…intimacy…and then never bother to see that person again because the physical side of the equation is all you share.”
His fingers slowed in their mesmerizing tickling through her hair. “One night with ye would never be enough. I know that without a doubt.” He kissed the top of her head again. “And we share more than the physical. Can ye not feel it?”
She raised her head and propped her chin on her fist, studying him.
“I’m a mess, Mathison. A mess you want no part of.
I promise.” She longed for him to kiss her, but was so afraid that he would.
Never in her life had she been this torn about a man.
He was dangerous. “I feel like I know you even though I don’t. Is that what you mean?”
His faint smile as he stared off into nothingness warned her he was about to say something she didn’t want to hear.
“Our souls are timeless, ye ken? Our bodies die, but our souls never do, and each of us possesses only half of what we need. If we are fortunate during our lives, we find our other half, the piece that the gods and goddesses splintered away, and we reunite and become whole.”
Even though she didn’t believe in such stuff and nonsense, she adored the way he told the story and wanted to hear more—in spite of herself. “Why would the gods and goddesses splinter our souls into two halves?”
“Because when we reunite and become whole, we are more powerful, and they fear us. Fated mates, soul mates, are capable of a kind of love which the gods and goddesses can only dream.”
“Soul mates.”
“Fated mates who reunite every lifetime.” He barely nodded, his conviction unmistakable. “Their love is so strong it strengthens the Highland Veil that keeps the realms and layers of time separated as they should be. If not for the blessed Veil, every world would plunge into the darkness of chaos.”