Chapter 1
Chapter One
“Only if it wants to end in the water—there’s not a runway long enough there. They’ll land down Glasgow and then make their way north. We have a few hours to set the welcome mat and clean things up.”
I looked around as Rowan stood and started to cross the room away from me. “Welcome mat? I was thinking razor wire. And besides, we don’t need to sweep and mop to impress TJ.”
“No, not that.”
Then I remembered. “Oh, the field.” Then: “Oh, the castle still has our clan in the upper halls.”
“Aye, we did just fight mystical beings, get married, and turn the library into a makeshift hospital.”
He seemed calm when he started the sentence, but by the end of it, he had turned back to me and was looking panicked. And by something, it turned out, wholly different than what was causing me to panic. “I’m meeting your kin.”
“Right, and—”
“And the place is a bloody mess. Literally.” He shoved his hands through his hair and looked around as if he hoped the answer might show itself from under the couch cushions. “Ugh, fuck!” Then he winced and put a hand on his abdomen.
I went to him. “Are you all right? Maybe we put all this TJ nonsense aside and get you properly checked out at the clinic over the hill? I wanted to do it last night, but—”
“Nae, it’s nothing.” He added, seeing that I wasn’t wholly convinced, “I think my ulcer came shooting back.”
That, I understood. “During the chat”—I pointed at the now-closed laptop—“they knew we were married, which, damn, that news traveled fast, and for my mother, going through that without her is unforgivable. She’d prefer I commit murder before getting married or having babies without her input.
I think your ulcer may be contagious.” I felt a nervous giggle bubble up.
I was a grown woman, but my parents’ opinion still held sway over a small but consequential part of my brain.
My plan for a wedding with them post-supernatural event just sank into the sea.
“I’ll change clothes, and we can head up to the castle and get things tidied. The field…can wait.”
Luckily, it wasn’t my mother coming. TJ was amiable, and the secrets I had on him were akin to what a priest had on his local parishioners. Still I was changed and back in under a minute, tugging on fresh woolen socks.
“Row—” I cut off. He was on his phone calling in favors, one of which sounded like fixing the newly ruined bridge.
Our Glentree residents heeded their laird’s call a few weeks back when he asked for ideas to keep the estate out of bankruptcy.
They responded in vastly different ways.
One was tampering with the Lady MacLaoch bridge.
If the banker couldn’t physically meet with Rowan, the foreclosure and ultimately bankruptcy proceedings could be stalled until “God only knew when.”
As he hung up, I noticed his skin was taking on a sheen. His slate-blue eyes went pale and wide as he looked at me. “Ye have family.”
I looked around the room as if they were standing there. “Yeah, of course I do—”
“No, you’re not an orphan. Like me.”
I nodded, unsure what he was saying. “Right. I have—”
“I’ve even spoken to them, but now it’s real. They’re real. The things I’ve done, the things we’ve done together. How do I face your da someday? And most importantly, now, your brother? They’ve every right to give me a proper hiding—”
“Whoa,” I said, going to him and sliding my arms around his middle. I laid my ear to his chest and heard his heart hammering. “You’ve faced down much worse than a couple of country folk like us—you’ll be fine.”
“All right then, but if you allow it, we MacLaochs like our traditions, so I’ll be rolling out the red carpet.”
“Fine, but when we mess it up, don’t come crying to me.”
He laughed and kissed me again. “Ye know I’m a sensitive boy—dinnae make fun of me.” I hugged him tighter, and Rowan hissed, “Not so tight.”
“Oh, right.” I gently touched his abdomen. “Are you sure we shouldn’t see Dr. Moore about it? It looked rough this morning when you showered.”
Even on a bad day, spying Rowan from the bed was always a good way to wake up.
He was an incredibly early riser, something the Royal Air Force instilled in him that never left.
The small bathroom off the main bedroom was tight enough that a man could—if so inclined—pee into the toilet and wash his hands in the sink, never leaving the comfort of the instant-hot shower.
It was as wide as Rowan’s shoulders and made for viewing only.
The last time I attempted to join him in it, we ripped the shower door off.
That morning, I had enjoyed watching the way water blew off his upper lip as he exhaled within the pressurized spray. But the water dripping over his musculature had also highlighted the fist-sized bruise on his abdomen.
Now, against my lips, he murmured, “Nae, nothing but a few days of low abdominal work and I’ll be fine. Dinnae fash yersel’,” and his palm went to the round of my bottom. “But none of this”—he squeezed—“until I’m recovered and yer brother is tucked into a nice bed of his own far away.”
That sounded like an eternity. “That could be…forever.”
He kissed the end of my nose and said in a dry tone. “Then it’s forever till we have sex again.”
I grinned at him. “I think we’re worrying about the wrong things.”
“Aye, but it’s a fun distraction. Shall we get to it, then?”
I took a deep breath and grabbed the button of my jeans. “Yes.”
Rowan’s gaze glittered with laughter at my antics and inability to hear anything from him as something other than a turn-on. “No. Cleaning and prepping for his visit.”
I feigned a sad frown. “OK, fine.”
Rowan held the door open for me as we stepped into the weak sunshine of the late-summer afternoon. Our fingers interlaced as we ambled up the trail that would take us past the cairn knoll, the name I’d come to use for the field after seeing what was below the meadow plants.
“I’d like to look at the field to see what’s left and if we have to wrap up our research work with ‘Everything is a charbroiled briquette. The End’ or if there’s an epilogue here.
In college, I studied the aftermath of crown fires—fires that travel from treetop to treetop, leaving nothing but ash in their wake—and discovered solid ecological work still to be done.
Even in the ash. Basically, we can study the regrowth.
But with lightning from an ethereal being, I don’t know what we’ll be dealing with… ”
Rowan simply nodded; his eyes were on the horizon. When he took a stabilizing breath, I looked up. The charred soil came down far across the research field, and after walking only several yards through green grass, we were crossing yellow, then brown, and finally, black-scarred earth.
I gripped his hand tight, and he squeezed mine in return; we both remembered the hellscape of the night before. That charred grass was a reminder of the near loss of everything we held dear.
“I’m sorry TJ is popping in at a time like this.
I can take care of him and let you focus on the recovery of the clan and the foreclosure threats.
” Then I thought on it for a moment, “Or rather, lack thereof, since Sir Dick Asshat never showed.” I was having trouble remembering the man’s name.
We were on day four of radio silence from the man, a record, to my knowledge.
With the battle-wedding consuming so much of my attention, I certainly hadn’t been itching for this early fight, but now I was starting to wonder about his absence.
Maybe he was finding a printer large enough to handle the loan foreclosure documents.
“It’s a matter of time. He reminded me of something in our shared history when he was here last. For him, what he’s doing is personal; he’s taking perverse joy in it.”
“I’m sorry. He’s an odd duck. Every banker I’ve meet—mind you, in the States—tries to help a long-standing client through the hard times.
Outside of basic humanity, it’s just good business: Get the loan back on track, and they continue to make money.
Force a default and the opportunity for financial improvement, and just plain revenue, is gone. ”
“Ya, not sure what’s wrong with tha man.” He thought on it and pressed his MacLaoch gumption into it. “We’ll see it through. I’ve no idea how, but we must.”
“We could sell the Ulfberht,” I said as the field turned proper black, with plant shadows blasted against rocks. The castle loomed over us as we made it up the low slope and approached the Circle Garden.
“Och,” he said.
With everything that had happened, a foreclosure proceeding was the one thing that seemed fixable. “I’m just saying, the Ulfberht sword—”
“And I’m just saying, while tha’ may make a fine collectible in a posh Bronze Age Viking nut’s collection for several million pounds, I’ll not sell the sword that is your birthright.”
“Yeah, yeah, so you have said. I’m saying that if it will help save the castle from the banker’s noose, as you so eloquently put it, then I think it’s worth it.”
“Och, no.”
“Fine,” I drawled the single syllable out.
“Anyway, it might bring tha’ damned man back.” He sounded like he was hocking the words from the back of his mouth like a foul taste.
That shut me up. No one wanted that. I squinted into the distance where the Circle Garden was rising into view.
The beds had seen some trampling the night before but were incredibly intact.
Pink, purple, and white cosmos nodded as the earth warmed up and the cool breeze off the cliffs ambled inland.
And cutting a swagger along the once well-manicured grassy path was a brown-haired figure with a high, tight haircut.
He wore a smirk as if he’d heard a good joke and took in his surroundings like an eager American GI on holiday in a new land.
Seeing his stupid, happy face, I was suddenly back at home in South Carolina laughing, trading bawdy jokes, and eating Mother’s tooth-achingly sweet pecan pie. A pie she baked whenever my brother and I made her “stressed to the gills.”
“My brother…” I breathed, the exhalation redirecting Rowan’s gaze. I felt his fingers tense in mine. “He’s not… That’s not…actual skipping,” I said as if I had to explain why TJ walked the way he did. “He walks like he owns the world and he’s on a stage before millions.”
We stopped, and Rowan released my hand as if scalded. He wiped it on his pants as TJ, in his civilian gear, holding a green camo rucksack over his shoulder, came at us.
“But it’s never a good sign to see TJ smiling like that,” I whispered through the teeth of my own smile. “He’s up to something.”
His eyes were bright and clear. He was on cloud nine, and when he saw me, his smirk broke into genuine joy. I felt it too. We were two peas in one pod coming back together.
“Well, my, my, if it isn’t Miss Nicole Ransome Baker!” he shouted.
I couldn’t help but laugh. It was as if just seeing him made me relive every funny moment we’d ever shared. “TJ, you jackass!” I exclaimed with love. “How the hell are you?”
“Great!” he said. “And this must be Rowan.”
“It is.” I opened my arms for a hug. Instead, he said, “Hold this,” and tossed his rucksack to me.
I caught the fifty-pound sack with an “Oof,” just before TJ socked Rowan in the stomach.