Highlander Unraveled (Highland Bound Book 6) (16 page)

“We’ll protect what is ours,” Ewan said, standing beside Rory, the both of them looking like a couple of heathen warriors bent on murder. Their fingers were already wrapped around the hilts of their swords. Chests puffed. Teeth sufficiently bared. There was something very sexy in how protective my warrior was of me.

Mr. McAlister shrank back a little, but didn’t change his tune.

He shook his head, hands fisted at his side. He stiffened, even his tallest height coming nowhere near the stature of the warriors. “I understand ye want to keep them, but they are not yours to keep.”

“The hell they aren’t,” Rory roared. “They are our wives.”

Before the argument could come to blows, I stepped forward.

“Mr. McAlister, my sister and I have often appreciated and followed your advice throughout our lives, but in this, I think I speak for the both of us when I say that we don’t want to leave here. This is our home. We’ve made our lives here. We’ve married. We’re starting families.” I pointed to Shona’s belly so as not to get Rory’s hopes up about my own questionable condition. “If we were to leave, we’d need assurances we could come back.”

“Aye, aye, of course. We’ll come right back,” he said.

“I don’t believe you,” Shona said, her voice soft but full of conviction. “You just said we had to leave because we are in mortal danger. You’re only agreeing with Moira to get us to agree with you.”

“Did ye see Emma?” Ewan asked. “Is that how ye knew to come here?”

Mr. McAlister’s gaze shuttered, his eyes roving toward our feet. But that had to be the only reason, if he’d not known where we were before.

“Answer him,” I demanded. “Did you see her?”

“Aye.” He didn’t expound on his answer.

I’d never felt the urge to shake an answer from someone more than I did at that moment.

“Where is she? How is she?” Ewan asked. “Is she the reason ye’ve come back?”

“She is fine.” But his voice held a note I’d not heard before. A falsehood that, had I not known him my entire life, I might not have been able to pick up on so easily.

He was lying.

“She is not fine,” I said. I fisted my hands at my side to keep from yanking on his torn jacket. “What has happened to her?”

“Ye’re right.” He met my gaze then. “And if ye dinna come with me, she might not ever be.”

“Why? Who has her?” Ewan asked.

“I dinna know.”

“How can ye not know?” Rory bellowed.

“Was Logan there?”

We fired question after question that went unanswered, and finally Mr. McAlister held up his hands.

“When I left… Her husband, Steven, had a gun to my head. And another barrel pressed to the head of the woman who brought Emma to your house. The woman who betrayed her.”

I let out a gasp, my hands slapping to my mouth. “No!”

Chapter Sixteen

Emma

I didn’t know where I was going. And I’d never driven on the left side of the car, left side of the road before.

Vast expanses of highway passed us by. The city of Edinburgh disappeared into my rearview mirror and soon the view from the window was immense spans of dark wilderness. The shadows of trees, mountainsides, and the glow of the moon on the lochs.

The sun started to rise, purple in the distance, giving way to deep reds and orange, and the finally yellow, giving life to our surroundings. All in a myriad of colors. Green, red, yellow. Lush colors of autumn.

At first, I thought it was beautiful, and that it would be easier to navigate the roads to the Highlands, with the sun up, but that quickly changed. It was like I was learning to drive all over again. I was disoriented. Probably partly from the driving, but also because I was exhausted, hungry and I had to pee.

I felt bad for Logan who gripped tight to the seat as I swerved out of the right lane, nearing getting us both rocked by a semi-truck—and not for the first time since we’d gotten into the car.

“Love,” Logan ground out. “Why do ye not pull this thing to a halt.” He pointed at some woods a few dozen yards from the road, which also happened to be right next to a rest area. “We’ll go into the forest and see if we can’t figure out that black box.”

“Okay, good idea. I need to make use of the facilities anyway,” I murmured.

“I dinna know what that means, but I will follow ye.”

I pulled the car over, wrenching on the parking break as I did so. I turned it off and started to climb out. Logan let out a long breath, patted my hand and smiled.

“I’d be verra happy never to ride in one of these things again.”

I couldn’t help laughing a little. “It wasn’t fun for me, either.”

“Glad I’m not the only one.”

I showed him how to pull the lever to push open the door and he followed my actions. On the highway, one car after another whizzed past us. I walked to the women’s side of the rest area, and Logan opted to wait outside. When I was done, he still stood there, completely on edge. I don’t know why I’d been terrified that I’d come out and he’d be gone. But I was infinitely grateful to see that he was still there.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Never more.” He leaned in, kissed my temple, and I pressed my hand to his heart, breathing in his scent and feeling calmer.

Hand in hand, we rushed across the asphalt of the parking lot until our feet hit the grass. A car honked behind us and Logan jumped.

“Just keep going.” It was likely no one we knew, maybe someone cheering us on. From the looks of it, we might have been running off to the woods for quickie. No one knew we were actually running for our lives. And why would they have any reason to believe we were? Our story was completely our own. Our world was one in which fairytales were carved. Not the visualizations of reality.

As soon as we cleared the trees, we slowed to a stop, and I shivered with nerves and the fall chill. There was no time to grab a jacket and the thin black dress I wore was definitely not weather appropriate.

Logan searched our surrounding area, a habit I knew, and one that left me feeling safe. He seemed to have super human powers when it came to his senses. He could hear things, see things, and smell things well before I could.

“It appears no outlaws or Sassenachs are within the vicinity,” he said.

I chewed my lip, trying to figure out the best way to tell him the woods now were a lot less scary then they were in 1544. “I don’t think we have to worry about that so much now.”

He raised a brow, frowning, a slow nod slightly bringing his chin down and up. “Right. I think ye mentioned something about Scotland and England uniting.”

I nodded, wrapped my arms around his middle. “I know this is all so confusing and different for you.”

“What about outlaws?”

“It’s rare for them to live in the woods now, though you do find the occasional hermit, or serial killer.”

Logan grunted. “So then we could still face dangers.”

“Yes, but it is unlikely. The biggest worry I have is that if we were followed from Edinburgh, they will recognize Mrs. MacDonald’s car and come searching for us. Mr. McAlister did put a tracker on the car and we were in such a hurry, I forgot to remove it. Maybe we should walk a bit further from the road, rather than contemplating the box here,” I suggested. “Just in case anyone sees the car and comes looking.”

“Good idea.” Logan studied me, seeing me shiver and rub at my arms.

He unpinned his plaid from his shirt and tugged it over his head, revealing the ridges of his abdomen, his muscled chest, before passing it to me. “I dinna want ye to freeze afore we get to where we need to be.”

I smiled and pushed it back, though I truly did want to pull its warmth over me. “Thank you, my darling, but I don’t want you to freeze either.”

He smiled and puffed his muscular chest, a sight that made my heart skip a beat. “I never freeze. Wear it, for me.”

“All right.” I pulled it on, grateful for the instant warmth. The shirt still held some of his heat, all of his intoxicating earthy-spicy scent. The fabric swarmed around me, coming to just below my knees. The arms were easily six inches past my hands, so I rolled them up. “I am very warm now.”

“I am pleased.” Logan held out his hand to me. Once I’d slipped my hand against his larger, coarser palm, he scanned the woods. “Any idea where to?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think it will matter. Maybe a mile or so?”

We walked for about fifteen minutes, Logan keeping pace with my smaller strides. I was thankful that at Gealach I’d ignored his edicts to stay in bed after having the baby, or else I wouldn’t have had the stamina I needed now to walk quickly and far, while being extremely exhausted.

We stopped in a natural clearing with a large flat stone, warmed from the sun that shone through the bare trees. I sat down, trying to soak up the warmth.

Logan sat beside me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me close. I leaned my head on him, absorbing some of his strength and heat.

He kissed my forehead and then my lips, a languid, loving kiss.

We stayed like that for several heartbeats. Just the two of us, quiet and peaceful, one with nature. Funny how this part of the woods, so far from any sort of technology or modern life, could have been any time.

We changed, what we could do transformed, but the world around us, it stayed the same. Tranquil, wild beauty.

Logan whispered. “Let’s try to go home.”

I nodded, pulling the black box from my purse with trembling fingers.

There was a small latch on the front, and when I opened it, it looked a little like a miniature, but thick, laptop. Almost like one of those handheld games from my youth. There was a screen, a power button, a keyboard, and a red button, that like in all movies, I assumed was the emergency “don’t ever press this,” button.

I studied the small computer. A time jumper’s key to any period within all our history. What about the future? Did it have to be a time that had already passed? This small box, seemingly insignificant, was actually a tool that if it got into the wrong hands could change the course of history for good or bad. Terrifying, really.

Blowing out a breath that was harsh enough to make my hair flutter around my face, I pushed the power button and the machine whirred to life.

But then there was nothing, just a blinking cursor on a blank, blue screen. Obviously a protective measure should it be stolen. There had to be some sort of code. Or could it truly be as simple as typing in where a person wanted to go?

“What do ye do?” Logan asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Hold onto me. I’m going to try a few things and I want to make sure if any of them work, we are not separated.”

“Do ye think it is as simple as that?”

“I don’t know, but it seems so. I mean, if couples can time travel by making love? It has to be touch, right?”

Logan shook his head, looking just as perplexed as myself. “I dinna know. But if I had to make a guess, than aye.”

“All right.” I blew out another breath, my heart pounding hard. “Here I go.”

Logan wrapped his arms around my middle, his chin resting on my shoulder.

I typed in
1544
then pressed the return button. Freezing. I didn’t know what to expect. But I didn’t feel any different. There was no shift in the wind. In fact, nothing happened, and the 1544 disappeared from the screen.

“Okay, that didn’t work,” I mumbled. “Let me try to be more specific.”

I typed in
Gealach, 1544
and pressed enter. Again, nothing happened.

“Dammit,” I muttered, so frustrated. I gritted my teeth. Tore my gaze from the screen to stare at the sky for a minute.

What had Mrs. MacDonald said?
Punch in where you want to go.
I’d done that. My eye lit on the red button. Maybe
that
was
the
button. Not an emergency, don’t press it button, but the one that made you disappear.

“Breathe, love. We’ll figure it out,” Logan murmured, massaging my shoulders.

“I’m going to try something different,” I said.

“All right.”

“Put your arms around me again, and don’t let go. No matter what, hold on tight,” I said.

This time, I typed,
Castle Gealach, July, 1544
. My finger hesitated over the red button, scared to press it and not have it work, but equally terrified that it would and one of us wouldn’t end up going. I settled the black box on my knees, and with my free hand threaded my fingers through Logan’s where his palm rested around my waist.

“I love you,” I said, touching my temple to his.

“I love ye, too.”

I bit my lip hard, still unable to make my finger move.

“Press it,” he whispered.

And I did.

Reality pulsed in an out around me, like it had the first time I’d time traveled. I heard noises that were different, and then nothing. The air turned warm, then frigid. Through it all, I held tight to Logan—and the black box, the logical part of me realizing if we ended up somewhere else, not where we wanted to be, we’d need that thing to get back. We’d been given an enchanted prize, and we needed to keep it safe. No matter what. We couldn’t allow it to get back into Mrs. MacDonald’s wretched hands.

Beside me, Logan groaned.

“I think it’s working,” I said, my voice sounding so far away, like I wasn’t the one who’d said it.

“Aye. I feel queasy.”

The dawn bloomed into a bright sun, then faded, and then brightened again.

I felt woozy, and as though my limbs were being pulled in forty different directions.

“Stay with me,” I heard Logan say, his voice echoing remotely, though his arms were still locked tight around me.

“Always,” I shouted, wanting to hear my voice louder than the pounding of the earth as it shifted this way and that.

But shouting didn’t help. I still sounded far away. I wanted to close my eyes, to hide from view the way the world pulsed in and out around me, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to lose sight of Logan’s hand twined with mine.

A moment later, the atmosphere sucked in on itself, turning black. I blinked, screamed. I couldn’t see anything. Like we’d been forced into a void. Logan’s breath pounded against my ear, and then, just as suddenly, the world was light again.

We sat in what looked to be the very same clearing.

“It didn’t work,” I said.

“Or it did.” Logan stood on shaky legs and held out his hands to me. “We won’t know for certain until we go back toward the road.”

“You’re right.”

“Nature is nature. The same as it’s always been for hundreds of years.” He pulled me up and I tucked the black box back into my purse. “For one thing,” he said. “It is a hell of a lot warmer here.”

“Then it must have worked.” Heat touched my face. “It was summer when we left Gealach.” I held out my hands. “This feels like summer.”

I pulled off his
leine,
handing it back and watched him pull it on, pinning his plaid in place. A twinge of disappointment passed through me at his having to cover himself. I certainly had enjoyed the view, and the touch of his bare skin. Soon enough, we’d be back at our castle, and once I’d gotten to snuggle with Saor, I was going to lock Logan up in our chamber for a month or more.