Tempting the Highlander Read online

  “Say something,” Daar whispered.

  “Make it stop!”

  “I’ve tried!” the priest snapped back, thumping his cane on the floor again. “I nearly blew up the summit house trying, and I started a landslide down TarStone!”

  “That landslide was you?” Robbie whispered, his head filling with images of the destruction. “And the summit house fire last month? You started that?”

  Daar looked down at his cane, rubbing one of the weathered cherrywood burls with an age-bent hand. “I also caused the flood that took out the town bridge last week.” He lifted his chin. “I was trying to figure out a new spell to extend the old one.”

  Robbie ran an unsteady hand over his face. “Let me get this straight. You’ve known about this…this thirty-five-year time limit all along, and you’re just telling us now?”

  “Not us,” Daar said, his eyes widening in alarm. “Just you. Laird Greylen and the others can’t know about this.”

  “Why not? It’s their lives about to be destroyed.”

  “But we can stop it,” Daar said with an eager nod. “You’ll go back in time and get me a new book of spells, and then I’ll be able to extend the old spell to keep them here.”

  Still standing by the fridge, still reeling in shock, Robbie slowly shook his head. “Oh, no. I know all about your attempts to replace the book you blew up twenty years ago. As long as you don’t have those spells, we are all safe—fires and landslides and floods notwithstanding.”

  “But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. The five remaining Highlanders are not safe. Come the summer solstice, they’re headed back home.”

  “They are home!”

  “To their old home!” Daar shouted. He heaved a huge sigh. “Robbie,” he said softly, getting up and coming to stand in front of him. “I brought Greylen MacKeage here to father my heir. Ya know that already. But what nobody knows is that I only needed him here long enough to sire seven daughters and protect his youngest girl, Winter, until she’s old enough to begin training as my successor. For me to have cast a permanent spell, I would have had to make concessions.”

  “What kind of concessions?”

  Daar took a step back. “I would have had to live out the rest of my unnatural life in modern time.”

  Robbie stepped forward. “So, for your own selfishness, you chose to rip apart the lives of five men. Twice!”

  Daar raised his cane as a puny defense. “I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. And it was only supposed to be Greylen, not the others. They were an accident.”

  “Which makes me what? Another accident?”

  Daar frantically shook his head. “Nay. You are their salvation. You were born their guardian and have become a fine warrior, Robbie. And now it’s time to fulfill your destiny.”

  “By getting you a book of spells and restoring you to full power,” Robbie said, crossing his arms over his chest and settling his weight back on his hips. “How very convenient that my destiny perfectly matches your need.”

  Daar gasped, stepping back and bumping into the table. “Ya think I’m lying?” He pointed his cane at Robbie. “A pox on ya, MacBain! I’m a priest!”

  Robbie sprang from his negligent pose and advanced on the priest until that cane was touching his chest. He towered over the drùidh and gave him a look so threatening that Daar stumbled backward into his chair and sat down with a thud. “Don’t even attempt to curse me, old man,” Robbie whispered. “My guardianship over my two clans is protected by divine right.” He leaned even closer, glaring into Daar’s widened blue eyes. “You’ve been allowed to live here only because Winter MacKeage will need your help in the future. And until then, you will stay quietly up at your cabin and consider yourself lucky to be under the protection of a benevolent laird. Because,” he continued, pulling the cane from between them and tossing it onto the table, “I would not be as forgiving as Laird Greylen if you had interfered in my life the way you did his.”

  “It…everything worked out for him. He loves his wife and daughters and his new life here. All the Highlanders are happy.”

  Robbie grunted, straightening away from him. “Only because you can’t further interfere in their lives.”

  “I’m not completely powerless,” the drùidh said, defiantly lifting his chin now that there was some distance between them.

  “Aye. You can still start fires and floods and landslides.”

  “I can still travel through time,” Daar added, once again leaning forward. “And the planets will be lined up just right tomorrow eve.”

  Robbie closed his eyes and scrubbed his face with both hands before looking back at the tenacious old priest. He heaved a weary sigh. “There will be no time travel, drùidh. No spells and no book.”

  “Then in three months, there will be five fewer men living in Pine Creek,” Daar returned. “It’s going to happen, Robbie, whether ya like it or not. Unless,” he quickly added, “ya travel to thirteenth-century Scotland and get me a new book.”

  Robbie stared at him in silence. How many times had he been warned not to believe Daar? And how many tales had the old priest spun over the last five years, attempting to gain Robbie’s help in replacing his book of spells? But this was by far the most devious story to date. Daar knew Robbie would do anything to protect his family.

  “No,” Robbie growled.

  “Meet me on the summit of TarStone at sunset tomorrow,” Daar said, grabbing his cane and standing. “And bring yar sword.”

  “No.”

  “Ya might want to find the MacBain plaid your papa was wearing when he came here,” the priest continued, walking to the door. “Ya can’t wear clothes made of modern materials or take anything else with you that hadn’t been invented back then.”

  “No.”

  Daar stopped, his gaze lifted to the ceiling but focused inwardly in thought. “I should probably send ya back about ten years after the Highlanders disappeared.”

  “I’m not getting your book, old man.”

  Daar leveled his crystal-clear blue eyes on Robbie. “Ya have no choice,” he softly told him. “Not if ya want your family to stay intact. Tomorrow at sunset on the summit,” he said, turning and walking out the door.

  Robbie stood rooted in place for several seconds, then rushed out onto the porch. “Why me?” he asked the retreating priest. “Why not Greylen or my father or Morgan? They know that time, the ways of the people, and the terrain.”

  Daar stopped in the middle of the driveway and turned to face him. “Though still vital men, they’re too old, Robbie,” he said. “I’m needing a powerful warrior in his prime. Someone strong and cunning and capable, who can be lethal if need be.”

  “What about Callum’s son? Or one of Morgan’s boys?”

  Daar shook his head. “Their strengths run to business, not warring. MacBain raised you as a guardian. He understood your calling and prepared you well.” Daar shot him a crooked grin. “I’m thinking your short career as a modern soldier may also prove helpful, though you won’t be able to take any modern weapons with you.”

  “It’s a moot point, because I am not going.”

  “Then I suggest ya enjoy what little time ya have left with your papa and uncles,” Daar said, turning away and walking into the woods.

  Chapter Two

  Robbie loosened his tie the moment he slid behind the steering wheel of his truck and finally released the breath he’d been holding for what seemed like the entire meeting with Judge Bailey. He started the engine, pulled out of the courthouse parking lot, and headed toward Pine Creek.

  The meeting had gone well, for the most part. Martha Bailey had agreed to let Gunter stay with Robbie, as long as the young man didn’t get into any trouble more serious than detention at school. But one brawl, one incident that required the sheriff to be called, and Gunter was headed to jail—only this time, it would be the adult county lock-up for the eighteen-year-old.

  That had been the better part of their meeting.

  On th
e flip side, if Gunter involved any of the other boys in his indiscretion, then Rick and Peter and Cody might also be placed back into the system—which for them could well be the youth detention center, since all three boys had a history of running away from foster homes.

  Robbie put on his sunglasses and sighed. At the urging of his father, he’d left a career in military special ops five years ago and come home to Pine Creek determined to make a difference on a more local level. It had taken him two years to buy up enough land to build a profitable logging operation and another two years to convince Maine’s juvenile courts that he could help hard-case kids.

  Judge Bailey had been his greatest obstacle at first, only to become an even greater ally once she realized that Robbie had a gift for working with delinquents. Martha was good at her job because she liked kids, and she was determined that Robbie succeed where the system had failed.

  She was also a self-admitted sucker for tall, handsome men in suits who weren’t afraid to stand up to her. She was happily married and nearly old enough to be his mother, but she flirted like a schoolgirl.

  Robbie was not above flirting back if it helped achieve his goal. Which was why he had brought lunch from the local diner for their meeting, that they’d shared across Martha’s massive desk in her tiny office. Hell, he’d even buttered her roll for her in an attempt to butter her up, hoping she’d turn a blind eye to the fact that Gunter was still living under his roof.

  So far, so good. Gunter could stay, and Robbie could continue to ease the young man into adulthood.

  The two brothers, Rick and Peter, were slowly settling in, and Rick’s comment this morning that he didn’t want to leave was encouraging. Eventually Peter would get over his fear of all things mechanical and with the help of a tutor make it through high school.

  Cody, however, required a firm nudge toward the sober side of life. Robbie just had to figure out how to make the kid care enough about himself to stop getting into trouble.

  Four juvenile delinquents was his limit. There was room for more boys in his mother’s old home, but if he couldn’t keep a housekeeper more than a month, he was in danger of losing the ones he did have to food poisoning.

  Libby, his stepmother since he was eight, and Gram Katie and his MacKeage aunts helped out by bringing over evening meals occasionally, which was about the only time he could count on all four boys to be on their best behavior. Food seemed important to the teenagers.

  Well, second only to sex.

  Robbie had dealt with more than a few giggling teenage girls since the boys had come to live with him, and he had quickly learned that keeping the two sexes apart was an exercise in futility.

  He smiled as his truck crested the knoll above the sleepy town of Pine Creek. Snowmobile season was just about over, and the ice was beginning to rot on Pine Lake, effectively shedding itself of ice fishermen.

  Spring was the do-nothing time of year in the northern Maine woods. Mud season was fast approaching and would bring the logging industry to an abrupt halt in a few weeks. His crew of twelve men—and a fortune in machinery—would sit idle until the forest thawed and then dried enough to be worked again. Most of his men already had vacations planned, and Robbie wanted to take his boys to Boston over the April school break.

  Or he had hoped to, until Daar’s visit this morning.

  Robbie passed Dolan’s Outfitter Store and turned onto the road leading to his parents’ Christmas tree farm. He scowled, thinking that of all the outrageous schemes Daar had come up with, this was the scariest. The priest was playing on Robbie’s only real fear—which Robbie had grown up knowing was his father’s greatest fear, as well as that of his Uncle Grey and the other MacKeage men.

  The drùidh had brought ten Highland warriors forward in time thirty-five years ago, but only five of them remained. The other five, all MacBains, had perished in the first two years. Most had died chasing lightning storms in an attempt to get back to their original time.

  Robbie was named after his great-uncle Robert MacBain, and it was the old warrior’s sword that he had learned to wield once he’d grown big enough to lift it. His father had taught Robbie the skills of a warrior from the time Robbie could sit a pony, while himself attempting to straddle the chasm between two very different worlds.

  Robbie worshiped his father and was awed by his ability not only to survive such an unimaginable journey but to thrive and eventually find happiness. And Robbie adored his stepmother, Libby. She’d married his papa just before Robbie’s ninth birthday and had thoughtfully given him two sisters and a brother to torment.

  His younger sister, Maggie MacBain—now Maggie Dyer—had just given birth to a baby girl, making Robbie an uncle and giving him one more soul to worry about. Not that he minded. Protecting his rapidly expanding family of MacBains and MacKeages, and now wayward boys, seemed to be a calling Robbie could neither dismiss nor resist.

  Keeping Daar in line, however, was proving a challenge.

  Robbie pulled into the driveway of his father’s farm, stopped the truck between the machine shed and the Christmas shop, and shut off the engine. He stared through the windshield at the endless rows of Christmas trees marching through patches of melting snow, then let his gaze travel across the gravel yard to the large, white clapboard house where he’d grown up.

  What was he going to do about Daar? He could not, in good conscience, dismiss the old drùidh’s claim. Not at the risk of his family. But could he confide in his father? Ask his advice? Maybe even take him back in time to help get the book?

  Nay. He could not put his father through such an ordeal again. And Libby would die from worry. And Greylen MacKeage would likely unleash his own fury on Daar, and just where would that leave Winter MacKeage?

  The five Highland warriors ranged in age from fifty-eight to eighty-five years old. They deserved, and had earned, the right to a peaceful old age. It was up to him to keep them safe from Daar’s magic.

  The passenger door opened, and his father slid into the seat beside him, filling the remaining space in the cab of the truck. “Ya’re wearing a suit and look like ya’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders,” he said softly. “Does this mean Gunter has to move out?”

  Robbie smiled and shook his head. “No. He can stay as long as he behaves.” He turned to face his father more fully and stared into the mirror image of his own gray eyes. “Have you seen a strange woman around town, about five-six or five-seven, with shoulder-length brown hair and a soft white complexion?”

  “You lose another housekeeper?” Michael asked, raising an inquiring brow.

  Robbie’s smile widened. “No. Only some eggs. I found her raiding my henhouse this morning and chased her halfway up TarStone before I lost her.”

  Michael’s other brow rose. “Ya lost her? In a foot race?”

  “She was all legs,” Robbie defended. “Have you seen anyone new in town?”

  “Nay,” Michael said, looking toward TarStone Mountain. “Ya say she was stealing eggs?” He looked back at Robbie, a frown creasing his weather-tanned brow. “It’s still below freezing at night. Surely she’s not camping out?”

  Robbie shrugged. “She might be. This was the third raid this week.” He also let his gaze travel up the densely forested mountain and blew out a tired sigh. “I’ll have to go find her, I suppose.”

  “I can help.”

  “No, you can’t,” Robbie said with a chuckle. “Maggie wants that nursery finished before the kid outgrows her cradle.”

  Michael scowled. “It would have been done before the babe was born if Libby and Kate and Maggie would only stop changing their minds. What does a wee bairn care about crown molding or the color of window trim?”

  “What’s today’s color?”

  “Either mauve or lilac.” He shrugged. “Not that I can tell the difference between them. But apparently my granddaughter will be scarred for life if she has to sleep in a room painted the wrong color.”

  “You still can’t bring y
ourself to call the babe by name, can you?” Robbie said. “Aubrey is a lovely name.”

  “It’s a man’s name,” Michael shot back. “And it’s English.”

  “Russell Dyer is English.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  Robbie patted his father on the shoulder. “Russell’s a good man, Papa,” he said as he opened his door and got out.

  Michael also got out and gave Robbie a crooked smile over the hood of the truck. “I know,” he softly conceded. “Maggie chose well.”

  Robbie snorted and turned toward the house. “No thanks to you. You’re damn lucky they didn’t elope.”

  “I wasn’t against the marriage,” Michael defended as they walked to the house. “I was just trying to make them slow down. Maggie’s not even twenty-two yet, and she’s already married and has a bairn.”

  Robbie stopped to look at his father. “And at what age did women marry in your old time?” he asked.

  “Society has gained eight hundred years of wisdom since then. And twenty-year-olds are too young to map out the rest of their lives.”

  Robbie scaled the porch stairs two at a time and opened the door for his father. “I seem to remember a story about an even younger man trying to run off with a lass from another clan,” he said gently. “Were you not so deeply in love with Maura MacKeage eight hundred years ago that nothing else mattered?”

  Michael stopped in the doorway and looked Robbie square in the eye. “I was young and foolish and so full of myself that I started a war, blaming the MacKeages for Maura’s death instead of myself. And that,” he whispered, “is the arrogance and ignorance of youth.”

  “Do you ever miss the old times, Papa? Have you ever wanted to return, if only for a little while?”

  Michael stared at him in silence for several seconds. “I have had such thoughts,” he finally admitted, his voice thick. He slowly shook his head. “After your mother died, and before I met Libby, I started up the mountain more than once, with you in my arms, intending to make the old drùidh send us both back.”