A Highlander Christmas Read online

  She blinked at him, then suddenly threw herself at his chest, knocking him back against the cupboards. Luke quickly set down his beer to wrap his arms around her just as she buried her face in his shirt.

  He cupped her head to his chest. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”

  “They’re never going to forgive me.”

  “Of course they will. They already have.” He lifted her chin. “They’re just waiting for you to forgive yourself.”

  “But you don’t understand,” she whispered, burying her face again.

  “Then explain it to me,” he petitioned, holding her tightly against him.

  She quietly sighed, saying nothing.

  Luke contented himself with just holding her as he stared at the tiny transmitter sitting next to the stove . . . and resigned himself to the fact that he was about to add stealing a snowcat to his growing list of crimes.

  Chapter Ten

  It had taken Luke less than twenty minutes to throw his belongings in his suitcase, so he’d spent the rest of the afternoon studying Podly’s transmitter—which for some reason had stopped chirping. Camry had stayed in her bedroom, supposedly packing, but Luke suspected she’d taken a nap. It was early evening, and they were sitting across the table from each other, eating the only thing he knew how to cook: scrambled eggs and toast.

  Or rather, Camry was eating. He was getting one hell of a lesson on letting his lower brain call the shots. “What do you mean, I have to go stay at the hotel?” he repeated. “I thought we were leaving for Pine Creek in the morning?”

  “I’ve decided not to leave until Wednesday.” She shoved her fork into her eggs. “Or maybe Tuesday evening, so we’ll arrive in Pine Creek around midnight. It’ll be easier to steal the snowcat then.”

  Dammit, she was ditching him! “Then let’s leave tonight,” he offered, careful to keep his frustration from showing. “The sooner we get going, the sooner we’ll find the rest of Podly. I had the Weather Channel on all afternoon, and they’re talking about another snowstorm heading north by Thursday or Friday. With any luck, we can be on and off the mountain before it hits.”

  She shot him a confounded look. “You said you spent two months searching for Podly. You expect that because I’ll be with you this time, we’re going to drive directly up to the satellite, load it in the snowcat, and be off the mountain in a matter of days? It will probably take us weeks to find where it crashed.”

  “Then all the more reason to leave now.”

  “I can’t,” she muttered, poking her eggs a bit more forcefully. “I have a couple of commitments here I have to deal with first.”

  “What commitments?”

  “I babysit four dogs, remember? I can’t just take off all of a sudden and leave my clients without day care.”

  “They’re dogs, Camry, not kids. They can stay home while their masters work, like normal dogs do.”

  “But I promised Tigger’s and Max’s owners that I would keep them over the holidays. The Hemples are leaving for England tomorrow, and I’m supposed to have Tigger for an entire month. And Max’s mother is leaving on Tuesday for Wisconsin, and she won’t be back until after New Year’s.”

  “Call and tell them you have a family emergency or something.”

  “You want me to lie to them?”

  Luke very kindly refrained from pointing out that she’d been lying to her parents for almost a year. “Then let’s get on the phone and find alternative accommodations for their pets. Surely there are kennels around here.”

  “Tigger can’t stay in a kennel! She’d be scarred for life. And so would Max. Why do you think these people have me babysit them? They’re not dogs, they’re family.”

  Luke sighed, not wanting to ask his next question, but seeing how his lower brain was in charge, he asked it anyway. “So what’s your plan, then?”

  She looked back down at her eggs. “We’re going to have to take Tigger and Max with us,” she said, so quietly that Luke had to lean forward to hear her.

  He reared back. “You expect to take two dogs to Springy Mountain in the middle of the winter? Camry, the snow’s deeper than Tigger is tall. And the snowcat’s going to be crowded enough with the two of us and our gear. Where are you planning to put Max? He’s the size of person.”

  “We can carry most of our gear on the roof, and we’ll steal one of the resort’s larger groomers. That way we can even sleep in it if we have to.”

  Luke dropped his head in his hands to stare down at his plate. Had she changed her mind about his going with her, or did she intend to go home at all?

  She touched his arm, and he lifted his head. “You have my word, I’m not trying to ditch you,” she said, apparently reading his mind. “It’s just that while I was packing this afternoon, I suddenly remembered I’d committed myself for the next month.” She smiled crookedly. “We’ll find Podly, I promise. And who knows, maybe Max and Tigger will come in handy. They’re both hunting breeds; they can sniff out the satellite for us.”

  Luke laced his fingers through hers. “If you’re really not trying to ditch me, then why do I have to go back to the hotel until Tuesday?”

  Her cheeks turned a lovely pink, and her gaze dropped. She tried to pull away, but Luke actually tossed her hand away with a snort. “You’re out of here ten minutes after I leave. Only you’re not going home, you’re running away again.”

  “That’s not true! It’s just that . . . I don’t want . . . Dammit, I’m not going to be fit company for the next two days! I just want to be left alone, okay? Come back Tuesday afternoon, and we’ll leave after supper.”

  “Not fit . . . What in hell are you talking about?”

  Her cheeks turned blistering red. “Look, I started my period today, okay? And for the next two days, I’m going to be a miserable, achy grump.”

  He was so relieved, he started laughing.

  Camry jumped up and ran out of the room.

  Luke instantly sobered. “Hey, wait! I’m sorry!” he called, scrambling after her.

  Her bedroom door nearly hit him when she slammed it shut, and she managed to get it locked before he could open it.

  He thunked his head against it with a groan. “Camry, I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you. I mean, not really. Dammit, don’t shut me out.”

  “Go away,” she said, her voice coming through the wood only inches from his. “I’ll be right here come Tuesday, I promise.”

  God, he was an idiot. For a man who’d managed to earn several degrees, he didn’t seem to have a clue when it came to women. Which was surprising, considering he’d spent the first thirteen years of his life in an all-female household.

  “Have I mentioned that I was raised by my single mother, my grandmother, and my aunt?” he asked, his head still resting on the door.

  “No,” she whispered after several heartbeats.

  “And I can certainly attest the old myth is true, that when women live together their menses gravitate to the same schedule.” He chuckled.

  “What’s so funny about that?” she growled.

  “I just thought of your poor father, living in a household of eight women.”

  “That’s a sexist remark!”

  “It’s not sexist if it’s a scientific fact.”

  “Go away, Luke.”

  He straightened away from the door, running his fingers through his hair. Dammit to hell. He didn’t want to leave. “The only reason I pointed out my having been raised by women was to let you know that I don’t care how grumpy you get. I can pretty much handle anything you dish out.” He hesitated. “Except being told to get lost.”

  When she didn’t respond, Luke walked to the living room, threw himself down on the couch, and glared at the transmitter sitting on the coffee table. He leaned forward and picked up the stubbornly silent instrument. “You are obviously the design of a feminine mind,” he muttered. “Why in hell do women have to be so complicated?”

  “Because it’s our job.”

  Luke jumped,
fumbling to hold on to the transmitter, but it still went flying when Camry plopped down on the couch beside him.

  “Because men are such simple creatures, women need to be complicated to balance things out,” she continued, preventing him from going after the transmitter by snuggling against his chest.

  Luke wrapped his arms around her and sighed heavily.

  “Did your mother really tell you to get lost all the time?”

  “No, my aunt did. She was a grumpy woman every day, but it wasn’t until I was nine or ten that I realized she was downright mean a few days each month.” He softly snorted. “The day we moved out of Gram’s house and in with my new stepfather, my mother actually apologized for making me live with Aunt Faith for thirteen years.”

  “Why was Aunt Faith so grumpy?”

  “Who knows. My guess is she was bitter. Even though my biological father took off the day he found out about me, I think Faith was jealous that Mom had even had a passionate affair.” He shrugged. “Faith didn’t have much luck with men, and I finally decided she was lonely.”

  “Maybe she would have had better luck if she wasn’t so grumpy.”

  Luke chuckled humorlessly. “I actually told her that once. It was around the time my mother met André Renoir. I was eleven. Aunt Faith went from grumpy to openly hostile the deeper in love Mom fell with André.”

  Camry popped her head up. “André Renoir became your stepfather?”

  Luke nodded. “When I was thirteen. And he legally adopted me the day they got married.” He nudged her head to his chest so she’d quit looking at him. “I hadn’t minded André up until then, since he made Mom happy. But I didn’t see why I suddenly had to change my name, too, as well as let him have any say over my life.”

  She popped her head up again. “Was he mean to you?”

  “Oh no. André is a good man, and he was sincerely interested in me,” he said, pulling her back against him. “But for the first thirteen years of my life, I pretty much did what I wanted without receiving much flack. I’d lock myself in my room for days with my books and computer, and nobody bothered me. But after we moved in with André, the man kept dragging me outdoors, saying I needed to get the stink blown off me.”

  Luke laughed. “He tried to teach me to play baseball, but I kept striking out on purpose. So he took me hunting with him, and I made enough noise stomping through the woods to scare off all the game. But God bless the patient man, no matter how much I sabotaged his good intentions, he just kept trying . . . until the day I ran away from home.”

  “You ran away from home? How old were you?”

  “Fourteen. My mother and André told me I was going to have a baby sister.” He chuckled. “Even though I knew all about the birds and bees, I was horrified to suddenly realize they’d been having sex. I waited until they went to bed that night, then took off.”

  “Where’d you go?” she asked with a giggle.

  “I decided to go back and live with Gram and Aunt Faith, so I started walking to Vancouver, which was a little over a hundred miles away. But I didn’t care. I just wanted my old self-centered life back, grumpy aunt and all.”

  “And? Did they take you back?”

  “I didn’t make it ten miles. It was the dead of winter, and André found me half frozen to death, stubbornly trudging along the side of the road. He never said a word the entire ride back home. But when we drove into our dooryard, instead of letting me go inside and warm up, he dragged me out to the woodshed, and—”

  “He beat you?” she gasped as she straightened.

  Luke grinned at her fierce expression. “No. But it was the first time I’d ever seen him angry. He handed me a crosscut saw and axe, and told me to start working up next year’s firewood. And that while I did, I was to contemplate one simple question, and give him the answer when I was done.”

  “And that question was?”

  “He asked me the definition of love.”

  Camry’s eyes grew huge with anticipation. “And what did you tell him love was?”

  Luke snorted. “I was fourteen—what in hell did I know about love?”

  She scrambled off the couch and stood glaring at him. “But you had to have told him something! You obviously didn’t freeze to death in the woodshed.”

  Luke stood, then walked over and picked up the transmitter before looking at her again. “Oh, I came up with an answer that at least got me back in the house—though it didn’t get me out of working up eight cords of firewood. André told me what I’d come up with was only a start, but that he would know I had figured out the rest when I finally apologized to my mother.”

  “And did you?”

  He nodded. “When I was twenty.”

  “So, what’s the definition of love?” she asked, her expression eager again.

  Luke eyed her speculatively, wondering how far he could push her. “If you let me stay, I’ll tell you on the drive to Pine Creek.”

  She actually stomped her foot in frustration, then immediately grabbed her leg and hopped back to the couch. “Now look what you made me do,” she muttered, lifting her foot onto the coffee table as she glared up at him. “That’s blackmail.”

  “You can thank your mother for teaching me that one.” He sat down on the table, tossed the transmitter on her lap, and set her foot on his thigh so he could take off her sock and rub her ankle. “When I came out of the woodshed, I told André that love meant not hurting someone who loved me.”

  She leaned back and started toying with the transmitter. “That was a good answer for a fourteen-year-old kid.”

  “But incomplete, according to André.”

  “Why didn’t he just tell you the whole answer?”

  “Don’t think I didn’t ask him to. But he said it’s not something one person can explain to another; I had to feel love to know it.”

  She suddenly smiled. “Then you can’t tell me, either, which means you just gave up your chance to blackmail me into staying.”

  He arched a brow. “Or I just made you curious enough to let me stay.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “I told you that I apologized to my mother when I was twenty. Aren’t you even a little bit curious as to why then?”

  She looked down at the transmitter, shrugging indifferently. “Maybe.”

  But Luke knew she was dying to know—likely wondering if some girl had broken his heart. “Can I stay?” he asked softly.

  She looked up, the gleam of challenge in her eyes. “Only if you give me a hint as to what happened when you were twenty that led you to have your great epiphany.”

  Oh yeah, he had her now—he just had to reel her in. Luke stared off over her head as if considering her offer, then finally locked his gaze on hers. “I died.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Camry pulled out of the L.L.Bean parking lot in Freeport late Tuesday afternoon, her partner in crime sitting beside her, two dogs and all their paraphernalia in the rear seat, and the back of her SUV crammed full of cold-weather camping equipment and supplies.

  Luke immediately became engrossed in the new and supposedly improved GPS tracking device he’d just purchased, and Camry turned north onto Interstate 95 with a smile of anticipation. As much as she loved her doggie friends and tending bar at Dave’s, she realized there was nothing like a winter camping trip to blow off the cobwebs—and a dream guy who just happened to be in lust with her to add a bit of interest.

  Cam thought back to all the boyfriends she’d had over the years, and tried to decide if she had spent time with any of them that even came close to the weekend she’d just spent with Luke. The last three days had been amazingly intimate—which Cam found rather interesting, since she had always equated intimacy with lovemaking. But she’d shared her bed with Luke for three wonderfully celibate nights, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so soundly.

  Cam merged into traffic with a silent giggle, remembering what had happened Sunday morning. Since Fiona had blown his cover
, Lucian Renoir the physicist had suddenly emerged, and Luke had risen long before sunrise, dug out his laptop, and started crunching numbers. When she’d run into the living room in her pajamas, frantic that he had suddenly decided to ditch her, she’d found him writing on one of her walls.

  Apparently so engrossed in his work that he wasn’t even aware he was using her wall as a whiteboard, Luke had appeared confused when she’d shouted. He’d apologized profusely as he went to the kitchen to get a wet rag, but then he had shouted when he’d returned to find her overwriting one of his equations. They’d spent the rest of the day covering two more walls with equations as they retraced Podly’s solstice descent—a trajectory that defied every law of physics. And not only had Camry not bothered to change out of her pajamas, she had completely forgotten to be grumpy and miserable.

  She was still a bit shaken by how quickly Luke had figured out her little game of letting her boyfriends think they were having mind-blowing sex. Hell, she’d gotten so good at it, she had practically convinced herself that she was utterly, totally fulfilled.

  The men certainly had never complained.

  Except Luke: after only two days, he’d wanted to wring her neck. She still couldn’t believe he’d actually pulled out a condom, opened the damn thing, and then asked if she knew what it was. She should have been outraged, but instead she had found herself wondering what he planned to do about her . . . virginity. Would he continue their lusty little affair on her terms, or did he see her as a challenge now? Did he have hopes of taking things to the next level?

  She wasn’t worried he’d push her into going all the way; Luke didn’t seem to have a pushy bone in his body. Camry smiled at the road ahead. He certainly would try nudging her, though, because for all of his civilized trappings, he was still a perfectly functioning male.