The Highlander Next Door Read online

  “Word is Niall caught the guy beating Shep,” Hazel continued. “Only no one knows for sure, because he refuses to talk about it. Peg said Niall was living in Pine Creek with his cousin at the time when he just showed up one day with the thin, badly limping dog.”

  Well, that would explain his reaction when she’d threatened to spray Shep. Birch went back to searching for the bear spray her next-door nemesis had thrown into the night—likely wishing he could throw her instead. The conceited jerk—thinking she even noticed his hulking size and broad chest and sculpted muscles.

  She sure as heck never noticed his piercing green eyes.

  “You wouldn’t really have sprayed Shep, would you?” Hazel asked, awkwardly bending to move a fern out of the way.

  “Of course not. I was just trying to make a point.”

  “And what point would that be? That Niall better not mess with you any more than Shep better mess with Mimi?”

  “I was letting him know I’m not afraid of him or his stupid dog. And who does the guy think he is, anyway, lecturing me about going after any dog with a broom? Does he think I’m just going to stand back and watch Mimi get mauled again?”

  “I believe Niall was pointing out that you could have been mauled. It’s his nature to be protective.”

  “Why? Because he’s a cop?” Birch muttered, thinking the man’s nature ran more along the lines of being bossy. He was condescending, too, dismissing her concern for Noreen and apparently only enforcing the laws he wanted to.

  “No. Because he’s a highlander.”

  Birch stopped searching again. “A what?”

  “If you would get your nose out of those emotionally draining women’s fiction books long enough to read a good steamy romance, you’d recognize an authentic Scottish highlander when you saw one.”

  Birch kicked an ankle-twisting rock off the driveway into the woods. “Mon Dieu, Mama, you have to stop downloading those stupid novels off the Internet. And you need to stop flirting with Chief MacKeage.”

  “My word of honor,” Hazel said, obviously fighting a smile as she held up her hand in a Girl Guides of Canada salute. “I will not marry Niall.”

  “You couldn’t even if you wanted to, because they limit people in the States to four marriages,” Birch said, figuring she already was going to hell for all the lies she’d told her mother in the last two months, so what was one more?

  “Honestly?” Hazel said in surprise. She shrugged and resumed searching. “Then I guess that means there’s nothing to stop you from marrying Niall.”

  Birch silently groaned, knowing exactly where this conversation was going—again. “I’m really not in the mood to discuss my love life.”

  “What love life? Oh, here it is.” Her mom straightened and handed Birch the canister of bear spray, the flashlight once again revealing her smile. “Come on, admit it. You’re attracted to Niall.”

  “What on earth makes you say that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you haven’t said one civil word to the man since you discovered him living next door? So I can’t help but find myself agreeing with Queen Gertrude: ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’”

  “You’re actually quoting Shakespeare to me?”

  “William was the bard of love,” Hazel said with all the conviction of a dedicated theater junkie.

  “Gertrude wasn’t talking about love in that scene,” Birch countered. “She thought the woman in the play Hamlet had staged for his murderous stepfather was promising too much by saying she would never remarry if her husband died. So instead of taking shots at my love life, you might try quoting your beloved William to yourself.”

  That got Birch a laugh. “I should have known taking you to the Stratford Festival in Ontario every summer would come back and bite me on the butt.”

  “What I’m protesting is that Chief MacKeage refuses to take Noreen seriously.”

  Hazel rolled her eyes. “You know as well as I do that Noreen is not a battered woman. Personally, I think Logan is the one who should be seeking shelter here.”

  “He discharged a gun inside their house.”

  “I would have shot that stove, too, if I knew how to load a shotgun. I’m just surprised Logan had the strength, considering he still looks like a soft breeze could knock him over. Noreen nearly killed him trying to make her point.”

  “She did not undercook that chicken on purpose. The oven had a faulty thermostat and two of the burners had quit working. Logan wouldn’t have gotten sick if he simply would have bought a new stove in the first place.”

  Hazel blinked at her, clearly nonplussed. “Will you please tell me why you insist on believing Noreen?”

  “Because I have to believe every woman who comes to me saying she’s being abused. Don’t you understand, Mama?” Birch said gently. “It’s not my place to judge these women or decide if they are or are not in danger. My job is to give them a voice. I can only make sure they’re safe and empower them until they grow confident enough to empower themselves.”

  Birch squeaked in surprise when her mother suddenly threw her arms around her in a fierce hug. “Oh, bébé, you are so wise!” She leaned away to clasp Birch’s face, squishing her cheeks. “And I am so proud of you for championing women.”

  Birch gently wiggled free and bent to pick up the flashlight she’d dropped. “I’m just doing the job I was trained to do.” She straightened and shot her mother a crooked smile. “And that includes championing abused men.”

  The flashlight revealed a twinkle in Hazel’s eyes. “Including Niall MacKeage?”

  It was Birch’s turn to roll her eyes. “If someone’s going to be stupid enough to threaten a hulking brute who runs around with a gun strapped to his chest,” she said, shoving the spray in her pocket and heading down the driveway, “then I would take Chief MacKeage’s side.”

  Hazel fell into step beside her, grasped Birch’s hand, and playfully swung it between them. “Can you explain something to me? If you know Noreen is exaggerating this fight with her husband, why do you keep insisting Niall arrest Logan?”

  “Because I need him to take Noreen’s claim seriously, too. This time it might only be a lonely woman caught up in all the attention she’s getting, but next time it could be a life-and-death situation. I need to know I can count on the police.”

  Her mother pulled them to a stop. “At the risk of sticking my nose in your business, has it occurred to you to simply tell Niall that you know what’s going on, but that it’s important the two of you work as a team on these matters?”

  “He’s a cop, Mama. At best he would laugh in my face, and at worst he would arrest Noreen for making false charges against her husband.”

  “Oh, bébé,” Hazel said sadly. “Not all police chiefs are like your grand-père St. Germaine. In fact, very few are as coldhearted as Fredrick.” She nudged Birch’s shoulder. “However, I believe highlanders are attentive husbands and good lovers.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I’ve gathered as much from Peg. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the twins she’s carrying will make her sixth and seventh children.”

  Birch headed down the driveway again. “Duncan has them living halfway up the fiord where their home can only be reached by boat, and word is his cousin, Alec MacKeage, is building a house all the way at the north end of Bottomless. So what I’ve noticed is that highlanders apparently like to keep their wives isolated and pregnant.” She turned and walked backward, shining the flashlight at her mother’s feet to illuminate the uneven driveway. “I’ve also noticed that except for Vanetta and Rana, all the women on the Center’s committee are pregnant. And so is Macie, and now maybe Cassandra as well. Hasn’t anyone in Spellbound Falls heard of birth control?”

  Hazel stopped walking and clasped her chest. “Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there’s something in the
water around here and you also become pregnant?”

  Birch stumbled to a halt. “Are you nuts?”

  “Well, at the rate you’re going, I’ll be dead before you give me grandbabies.”

  “You only just turned fifty.”

  “There really could be something in the water if you believe the legend written on a plaque in the park,” Hazel went on excitedly. “It claims that any couple who kiss while standing in the mist rising from Spellbound Falls will fall deeply in love.”

  “When were you in the park?” Birch asked, trying not to sound alarmed that her mother had gone into town without her.

  “You remember. I took little Charlie and Ella for a walk there while you were talking to Peg and Olivia outside the Trading Post last week.”

  “Oh. Yes. That’s right.”

  Damn if her mother didn’t get that twinkle in her eyes again. “Maybe you and Niall could go sit in the park for your little talk about solving Noreen’s problem.”

  Having absolutely no idea how to respond, Birch silently turned and walked up the path to the back porch of the main house, making a mental note to drink only bottled water from now on.

  And never, ever, be in that park at the same time as Chief MacKeage.

  Chapter Two

  Niall sat in the moon-cast shadows of the Bottomless Mercantile and Trading Post with his ears tuned for any sound other than the muted roar of the falls several hundred yards away and wondered what made him think he had any business being the police chief of Spellbound Falls and Turtleback Station. Hell, forget he was a lawman; he didn’t have any business even being alive.

  But when Titus Oceanus shows up in twelfth-century Scotland looking for a husband for his daughter, only a suicidal idiot would refuse the powerful magic-maker’s personal invitation to come compete for her hand. Niall was just thankful his twenty-first-century cousin, Alec, had decided to eliminate the other five time-traveling suitors before helping Niall find sanctuary with two of their magical clansmen in Pine Creek. Not that he wouldn’t have manned up and married the beautiful and intelligent Princess Carolina if Alec hadn’t finally come to his senses. But in all honesty, Niall was more attracted to pint-sized spitfires than he was to leggy princesses who looked him nearly level in the eyes.

  Since about three weeks ago, however, he was finding himself attracted to one tiny redhead in particular—even if she did seem to have a chip on her shoulder when it came to males. But when he looked past her prickly behavior, Birch’s eyes reminded Niall of the heather growing wild all over his long-lost highlands. And though she might appear as delicate as a kitten, there was no mistaking the woman had a lion-sized attitude when it came to protecting her residents.

  Birch’s choice of professions did baffle him, though, making Niall wonder if she might have had some personal experience with abusive men. Why else, according to Duncan, would a woman spend eight years in university to get advanced degrees in social work, only to move to a small town in a whole different country? Birch had even dragged her mother into the wilderness with her, although both women’s wardrobes suggested they were city people.

  Niall released a silent sigh, just as baffled as to what he was doing here. Despite the responsibilities that came with having been laird of the MacKeages, he often found himself missing the simplicity of twelfth-century Scotland, when a man knew which side of right and wrong he stood on, how to serve his clan, and how to treat women and children. Nine hundred years ago, life was at worst an everyday struggle for survival and at best a testament to a person’s willingness to embrace that struggle.

  And if they were lucky, to actually find joy in it.

  Basically, he’d been born in a time when men were men and women loved them for it. But for the twenty months he’d been living in modern-day Maine, his everyday struggles had been those of displacement, frustration, and too often bewilderment—decidedly foreign notions for a warrior who had once owned his destiny.

  In his original time, for instance, if a woman found herself dealing with an abusive husband or father, she merely brought her complaint to her laird, and he would go pay the bastard a visit. Few men were foolish enough to anger their laird a second time, but if the abuse did happen again, punishment was swift, painful, and publicly humiliating. Despite having little say in matters back then, women were recognized as the very heart of a clan. Whether young or old or married or widowed, they were respected for their contributions, protected by all, and revered for their amazing strength of spirit.

  Which was why, when Birch had first come to him with Noreen’s claim two weeks ago, Niall had immediately paid Logan Kent a visit. What he’d found was a once-strong, wiry woodsman with joints stiffened from years of laboring in harsh weather, who now found himself with only a modest savings, a small monthly government check, and a powerful fear that he hadn’t planned well for old age. So as all once-strong, self-reliant men were prone to do when they felt an uncertain future pressing on their shoulders, Logan had turned tightfisted and grouchy. And like any roost-ruling woman who suddenly found herself with a husband constantly underfoot and sticking his nose in her business, Noreen had panicked.

  Nay, he couldn’t arrest a man for being scared.

  Niall looked at his watch and grinned in satisfaction. None of the buildings in town would be decorated with crudely spray-painted cartoons again anytime soon, he decided. But then, he didn’t suppose the small gang of vandals was in any hurry to continue their crime spree, since he was fairly certain one of the little hellions had pissed his pants two nights ago when he’d found himself being chased by a hulking brute with a badge and gun and a growling dog with equally lethal fangs.

  But upon realizing the culprits couldn’t be more than twelve years old, Niall hadn’t put much effort into the chase, figuring a good scare, as well as learning the new police chief wasn’t a nine-to-five lawman, would make them see the error of their young ways.

  Not that he had a jail to toss them into if he had decided to catch the little idiots, which was why the idea of public punishment was growing on him. That is, assuming the local grange ladies would let him erect something in their precious town park. But again according to Duncan—who had been reluctant to give his twelfth-century ancestor a gun and badge in the first place—the newly remodeled park highlighted by the sixty-foot waterfall that roared through the center of town was nothing short of sacred ground.

  In fact, Niall had been warned to keep an eye on the grange ladies in particular, several of whom were well into their eighties, as they had a tendency to drive as if they owned the road. And with the summer tourists starting to trickle into town, it was his job to stop vehicle-pedestrian collisions before they happened. He’d also been charged with keeping a small mob of zealots from clogging the road as they protested what they considered to be an evil, devil-worshipping cult that had a settlement halfway down the west side of Bottomless. He was also supposed to enforce the newly implemented speed limit in town, write up people who didn’t cross the road on the newly painted crosswalks, break up bar fights when they became too rowdy for Everest Thurber to handle, and in general keep the peace.

  Oh, and keep an eye on the shelter residents in exchange for living in the newly renovated bunkhouse rent-free.

  Aye, life may have taken its toll on a man nine hundred years ago, but there had been a hell of a lot fewer laws to deal with. Who in their right mind considered it a crime for a man to ask a bonnie young lass out to dinner? Something Niall had discovered last fall when Jack Stone had threatened to throw him in jail—which Pine Creek actually had—for stalking a minor. For the love of God; in his old time, lasses usually had a babe and another one on the way by the age of sixteen. And they preferred marrying a warrior in his prime who had already proven his cunning, rather than an untried youth who could leave them widowed the first time he went to battle. Marriage was about survival for women, and near as Niall could tell it stil
l took two people and a village to raise children.

  A concept that when voiced aloud in the presence of twenty-first-century women, he’d discovered quite by accident, wasn’t well received. That was why Laird Greylen MacKeage—who, ironically, had also been displaced from the twelfth century—had taken Niall on a camping trip last fall and quietly explained modern courtship. Grey had not, however, been able to explain modern women. Even being married to one for over forty years and having seven daughters, Grey had remarked with a shake of his head, had done nothing to help him understand what went on inside a modern woman’s mind.

  Not that either of them had understood women in their original century, they’d both admitted halfway through a bottle of Scotch, only that they had desired them.

  Niall took one last look around and stood up, then gave a single sharp whistle as he stepped onto the sidewalk and headed toward home, his mind wandering to the many things he did like about this century.

  He certainly liked modern forms of transportation. If it had an engine, he wanted to drive it—although he’d learned the hard way that the faster a vehicle went the more violent the crash. And he absolutely loved flying. His first experience soaring higher than birds had been at the mercy of Matt Gregor, his cousin Winter’s husband, in a tiny jet that actually traveled faster than the speed of sound.

  Matt also happened to be a powerful tenth-century drùidh who had come here hoping to trick Greylen’s youngest daughter into helping him kill his brother. But upon discovering she was a powerful drùidh herself, Winter had found a way to save Kenzie and mankind from the upset Matt had caused to the Continuum. The deeply-in-love wizards were expecting their third child in a couple of weeks, and the new Tree of Life species their combined powers had created would ensure mankind’s continuance for many more millennia.

  All with Titus Oceanus’s blessing, of course, since all the drùidhs scattered throughout the world answered to him. Or they did up until a month ago when Titus had turned his authority over to his son, Maximilian, thus making Nova Mare the new reigning seat of power. And now everyone was waiting to see what would happen to Atlantis, since the mystical island Titus had created to cultivate his Trees of Life—which kept mankind’s knowledge safe from the constantly warring gods—was no longer needed.