Wishing For a Highlander (2 page)

The sensations of spinning and falling fed off each other, disorienting her and dousing her with nausea. She released the box to cushion her womb.

I’m not supposed to fall. It could hurt the baby.

She landed on her back. The hardwood floor of her office didn’t knock the wind out of her like she’d expected it to. It felt like…springy grass?

When the black spots cleared, she stared up at a drab-gray sky. Distantly, the sounds of clanging swords and hollering men pierced the damp air. Rolling her head gingerly to the right, she saw a large, flat stone looming like an oversized domino on the verge of falling. Beyond it rose a grassy hill dotted with smaller rocks and scrubby brush. To her left, a path wound around the hill, and in the distance the edge of a sparse, mist-shrouded forest looked like a nice place to meet a ghost or get murdered. She’d narrowly missed landing in a muddy puddle.

Which was strange since she didn’t remember her cramped little office having grass, boulders, or puddles. Definitely no gray sky.

She blinked a few times to bring her office back into focus, but her brain wouldn’t cooperate. The scenery stayed put.

A blur of black motion out of the corner of her eye made her think Alan might have heard her fall and hurried back to see if she was okay. But it wasn’t Alan with his calf-length wool coat. It was a bulky, shirtless man in a…was that a kilt?–running past her little nook of insanity. He did a double take and altered his trajectory when he saw her sprawled on the ground. In two heartbeats he was crouching at her side.

The man had wild black hair and a matted beard. Up close, she could see the dark-gray wool of his shoulder-wrapped great kilt was coarsely mottled with lighter gray to give an effect much closer to camouflage than plaid. In one hand he gripped a utilitarian sixteenth-century dirk with fresh bloodstains on the blade.

Great. She’d had a doozy of a pregnancy-related dizzy spell and hit her head. Hard. While her body lay unconscious on the floor of her office in Charleston, her brain thought it might be fun to dump her into an illusion based on her romance novel.

Could this be the hero who would rock her sexually deprived world and tempt her to forsake her friends, family, job, and all she held dear, in favor of steamy nights in his hay-stuffed bed and a significantly shortened life span due to lack of modern medicine and a diet heavy in salt and low in vegetation?

She narrowed her eyes in appraisal. He certainly had the biceps for it. The boulder beside her had nothing on the man’s massive chest. And his eyes were an intense shade of blue that might be appealing if he weren’t sneering at her. But he was a little on the hairy side for a romantic hero. Weren’t they usually waxed to show off their washboard abs? And she could do without the smears of dirt covering every inch of his exposed skin. And in the books she loved so much, the hero was always taller. But she was short, so why not conjure up a five-foot-eight hero for her five-foot-two self?

The dirk went to her throat and pressed lightly, not breaking the skin but threatening to if she made a wrong move.

She rolled her eyes. “Hello, melodrama, anyone? Like little old me could possibly be a threat to a big, strong warrior like you. Puh-lease. Can we get to the romance, already? I’d hate to waste a perfectly good concussion on the whole build-up of sexual tension thing. What if I wake up before the good part? Although, maybe we could go to your place and have ourselves a little bath first. And maybe comb out that hair. How would you feel about shaving?”

The man bared his teeth. “An addled Sassenach spy,” he said in a rocky Highland burr. “And oddly dressed.” He grunted. “Only one thing English lasses are good for, and since skirmishes always give me a wicked cockstand–” With the hand not holding the dirk, he pushed up the hem of her skirt, clumsily, as though he weren’t used to dealing with such a snug-fitting garment.

“Really?” she said with another roll of her eyes. “You’re going to ‘take me’ right here?” She made little quotes in the air. “Come on. Just because I want to get to the good part doesn’t mean I don’t need a little warming up. Ever hear of preheating the oven? Sheesh, Kyle had more romance in his little finger than you’ve got in your whole body, and that’s not saying much. That bastard.”

The man gave up on lifting her skirt and simply ripped his dirk through the thick material, tearing a line up one thigh.

“Hey! That was a nice skirt!” And the movement had been too quick to be careful. He could have cut her as easily as not.

A surge of fear sped her pulse. This was feeling less and less like something her imagination might have conjured. And yet it couldn’t possibly be real. Not unless she’d somehow stumbled into a reenactment, and since the damp, almost balmy landscape looked nothing like anyplace within stumbling distance of the Charleston Museum in mid-January, that was highly unlikely. No, it had to be a hallucination. A frighteningly realistic hallucination.

When the man shoved a knee between her legs and rubbed his non-dirk hand up to grab her breast through her top, indignation filled her lungs. Hallucination or not, she wouldn’t stand for being felt up against her will.

“Get your hands off me!”

The man didn’t relent, kneading her breast through the lightweight cashmere. Sour breath seared her cheek as he moved over her, pinning her to the ground. “Don’t make a fuss, lass. I need aught but a few minutes and then ye can return to your English bastard and his romantic ways.”

The man stabbed his dirk into the grass an inch from her ear in an obvious warning. Her heart jumped into her throat and beat frantically until all she could hear was the thunder of her pulse.

The man held her down with one hand while he reached between her legs with the other. Seemingly confounded, he leaned back to study her clothing. She sent a heartfelt thank you heavenward for the thick cotton tights that made biking to work in January possible. She took advantage of the moment and blindly reached for the dirk beside her head. When the hilt met her palm, she curled her fingers around it and yanked the blade free.

She’d planned to merely wave it at the man and tell him to back off, but when he cocked his fist back, aiming a punch toward her face, something in her snapped. It wasn’t so much rational thought as sheer instinct of self preservation that drove her to squeeze her eyes shut and thrust the dirk forward.

It sank into flesh. The blow she’d braced for never came.

She opened one eye.

The man’s face was a mask of disbelief. Both his hands were wrapped around her hand, around the dirk’s hilt. A good two thirds of the twelve-inch blade was buried in his stomach through the diagonal swath of wool wrapped around his torso. Warm wetness spread through the fabric, staining their joined hands red.

She yanked her hand away. The man slid the blade out of his stomach and a spurt of blood came with it, splattering her bunched-up skirt and marring the peach cashmere of her sweater. The man toppled to his side, groaning and clutching the wound.

Horror washed over her in an icy wave. What had she done?

Defended yourself
, her practical mind supplied. But what had felt necessary a few moments ago now seemed like overkill. Torn between running away and offering to help the man, she scrambled backward until her back hit the leaning boulder. Her breath came too fast.

“It’s only a hallucination,” she chanted to herself over and over.

But her senses conspired against her, insisting this place was real. The blood on her hands quickly cooled, and the moist ground chilled her bottom. Heather and field grass scented the air. Shouts, groans, and the clang of swords persisted behind the boulder. The man on the ground breathed in and out with harsh whooshes of breath.

No hallucination could do all that. Her imagination simply wasn’t that good.

She was inexplicably and undeniably present at what appeared to be a clan skirmish in Scotland, and judging by her attacker’s wardrobe and weaponry, it was a far cry from modern-day Scotland. While she tried to process this new reality past several layers of shock, the man on the ground pushed to his hands and knees.

Relief that he wasn’t dead made her shoulders sag.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to, um, stab you. But you were going to rape me. I had to defend myself. Is there anything I can do to help?” As she pushed up on shaky legs, she thought about her cellphone, lying on her workbench in Charleston. Even if she’d had it in her pocket, 9-1-1 wouldn’t do any good here.

The man struggled to his feet. A glint of bloodied steel drew her eyes to his right hand. Oh God, the dirk! Why had she let it go?

“There’s somat ye can do, all right,” he ground out through clenched teeth. “Come ’ere, so I can show ye how a stabbing’s done.” He launched in her direction.

She screamed and ran. Straight into a hard chest swathed in muted brown wool.

Chapter 2

Melanie jerked her head up, way up, to find deep brown eyes glaring past her out of a chiseled face surrounded by wild, dark-blond hair. One of the man’s hands gripped her shoulder. The other held an enormous Highland broadsword. The look on his face spelled death for her would-be rapist.

Relief washed through her. She was hallucinating after all.

Men this tall, rugged, and handsome didn’t actually exist, not on any continent in any time. Air-brushed masculinity like this only lived on the covers of romance novels.

He was definitely something she would have imagined. There. Dilemma solved. She’d hit her head and was having an Emmy-winner of a hallucination.

Drunk with elation that she hadn’t really almost been raped and hadn’t really stabbed a man, she slapped the muscled arm of her very own imaginary Highlander and quipped, “What took you so long? That was cutting it kind of close, don’t you think?”

The man flicked her a distracted glance, then shoved her away so hard she stumbled into a prickly bush. Thorny barbs bit her hands and face and snagged her clothes.

Okay, that wasn’t very heroic. Even if it appeared he’d done it to save her from her charging attacker. In the romance novels, the hero always managed a graceful, chivalrous rescue.

While she detangled herself from the bush, the new man dodged the bloody dirk and struck the bearded man with his sword. The warrior had to be at least six and a half feet tall. Between the bearded man’s shorter reach and smaller weapon, he stood no chance. He fell under two ruthless skewerings.

Her gut clenched with horror and sympathy before she managed to remember that none of this was really happening.

But if none of this was real, then she’d bonked her head on her office floor hard enough to endanger herself and her baby. She clutched her belly.
Please be okay, little one. Hang in there. We’ll figure a way out of this.

Looking at her belly, she saw blood still on her hands and soaked into the fabrics of her skirt and sweater. She willed it to go away. She willed the tear in her skirt to close. She willed herself back to her office, back to consciousness.

Nothing changed.

If this was all happening in her head, shouldn’t she be able to control it or at least nudge it in a certain direction, like in a dream? Unfortunately, she had no time to ponder why her delusion ignored her whims, because the honey-blond warrior came at her, pushing her against the boulder with the mere force of his presence. His eyes blazed. She gulped, fearing she might be worse off with this man than she’d been with the one on the ground.

“And just who might you be?” he asked in a deadly, deep burr. Every inch of his tall, muscled frame was tensed for battle. His sword, so long she’d be hard pressed to lift it one-handed, remained poised for attack and perfectly stationary at his side. The tight muscles in his forearm didn’t even twitch with its weight.

She shook her head, too terrified to answer. Would he accuse her of being an English spy, too? Would he try to rape her?

Was he real? Her stampeding heart thought so.

The new man’s eyes scanned down her body, fixing on her belly.

She gripped her slight swell protectively.

“You’re wounded,” he stated with a modicum of concern, seemingly too distracted by the blood all over her to notice her knocked-up state. He sheathed his sword. Rough hands yanked at the blood-soaked hem of her sweater, undeterred by her swatting.

“I’m not,” she blurted, tangling her hands with his. “It’s not my blood. Please stop touching me.”

Proving he had at least an ounce of chivalry, he stopped before exposing her gently rounded belly. Was that a flicker of hurt she caught in his eyes? For a second he’d almost looked vulnerable. The expression took years off his face. He looked no older than her twenty-six years, maybe even younger.

He took a step back from her and narrowed his eyes, becoming the hardened warrior once again. “Are ye English? A spy?”

Oh cripes. Here we go.

“I’m not English. I promise you. Not a single drop of English blood in these veins.” That was the truth. She was Scottish, Irish, Swedish, and German by heritage and had never been more grateful.

The man harrumphed. “Mayhap. Ye dinna sound English. But ye dinna sound Scots, either. I havena heard speech like yours before.” His brow pinched with curiosity, and his lips puckered ever so slightly in concentration.

She sagged with relief. His was not the face of a man who would harm her intentionally. It was the face of a man who might keep her safe in this hallucination or whatever it was.