Highlander in Her Dreams Page 3

  That it was his hall couldn’t be questioned.

  She’d bet her plane ticket back to Newark that a more lairdly man had never walked the earth. Nor a sexier one. A towering raven-haired giant, he was clad in rough-looking tartan and calfskin, and hung about with gleaming mail and bold Celtic jewelry. Power and sheer male animal magnetism rolled off him, stealing her breath and weakening her knees.

  Making her question her sanity.

  Perhaps someone on the bus tour had slipped something into her tepid breakfast tea.

  Something that would make her hallucinate.

  Imagine the hunky Highlander who couldn’t really be there.

  Just as she couldn’t really be hearing the sounds of medieval merrymaking.

  Feasting noises, she was sure. The same raucous male laughter and bursts of trumpet fanfares and song she’d heard earlier, the collective din of a celebrating throng—not that she cared.

  A marching brass band could stomp past and blast her right off the cliff-top. As long as he stood glaring up at her, the world as Kira Bedwell had known and loved it ceased to exist.

  And he was glaring.

  Every gorgeous muscle-ripped inch of him.

  He locked gazes with her, glowering at her as only a fierce, hot-eyed, broadsword-packing Highlander could do. A truth she hadn’t known until this very moment, but one she would take with her to her grave.

  If she lived that long.

  The too-dishy-to-be-real Highlander might have a patent on sex appeal, but he was also armed to the teeth. A huge two-handed sword hung from a wide leather shoulder belt slung across his chest, and a glittering array of other equally wicked-looking medieval weapons peeked at her from beneath his voluminous tartan plaid. Not that he needed such a display of steel. O-o-oh, no. Such a man probably uprooted trees with one hand for exercise.

  Big trees.

  And at the moment, she felt incredibly treelike.

  She swallowed hard, pressing her fingers more firmly against the stone edges of the door arch. Any further movement wasn’t an option. Her legs had gone all rubbery, and even if she could have taken a step backward, away from the opening, she just knew he would charge up the stairs if she did.

  Stairs that no longer looked worn and crumbling but new and unlittered, wholly free of fallen rubble and earth or the thick weeds that had clogged the top of the stairwell mere moments before.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. “This can’t be happening,” she gasped, jerking her hands off the now-smooth edges of the door arch.

  “Nay, it canna be,” the Highlander agreed, his voice a deep velvety burr as he angled his head at her, his gaze narrowing suspiciously. “Though I would know why it is!”

  The words held a bold challenge, the suspicion in his eyes changing swiftly to something else.

  Something darkly seductive and dangerous.

  “Och, aye, I would hear the why of it.” He tossed back his hair, the look he was giving her almost a physical touch. “Nor am I one to no’ welcome a comely lass into my hall—howe’er strange her raiments.”

  “Raiments?” Kira blinked.

  “Your hose, sweetness.” His gaze dropped to her legs, lingering there just long enough to make her squirm. “I’ve ne’er seen the like on a woman. No’ that I’m complaining.”

  Kira swallowed. “Y-you can’t be…anything. You’re not even there.”

  “Ho! So you say?” He looked down at his plaid, flicking its edge. “If my plaid’s real, than I vow I am, too. Nay, lass, ’tis you who canna be here.”

  “You’re a ghost.”

  He laughed. “Since I haven’t died yet, that’s no’ possible.”

  “I was told anything is possible in Scotland and now I believe it!” Kira stared at him. “Whatever you are.”

  He flashed a roguish grin and started forward, mounting the tight, winding steps with long, easy strides. “’Tis laird of this keep I am.” His deep burr filled the stairwell, rich, sonorous, and real as the chill bumps on her arms. “I’m also a man—as I can prove if you wish!”

  Reaching her, he seized her shoulders, his grip strong and firm, warm even through the thickness of her jacket. He stepped close, so near that the hilt of his sword pressed into her hip. “Now, lass,” he said, his gaze scorching her, “tell me. Do I feel like a ghost?”

  Kira sucked in a breath. “No, but—”

  “Exactly.” His mouth curved with a triumphant smile. “’Tis you who is out of place, no’ me. Though I vow you dinna feel like a ghost either.”

  Then his smile went wicked, his eyes darkening as he pulled her tighter against him, lowering his head as if to give her a hard, bruising kiss. Instead, his lips only brushed hers lightly, just barely touching her before he disappeared into darkness.

  Kira screamed, but only the wind and the crashing sea answered her.

  That, and the stairwell’s emptiness. The same total blackness, icy cold and dank-smelling, that she’d been staring into all along.

  Her imagination had run away with her. There could be no other explanation. She’d wished for a Highlander with a wolfish smile and a honeyed tongue, and so she’d conjured him.

  Simple as that.

  She would just lean against the ruined wall of the drum-tower and wait until her knees stopped knocking before she gathered her untouched lunch packet and returned to the road to wait for the tour bus. It wasn’t until she was halfway there that she realized she’d picked up more than her picnic goods.

  Her heart still beating wildly, she looked at her left hand, slowly uncurling her fingers to reveal the squarish clump of granite she must’ve grabbed when she’d held so tight to the crumbling edges of the stairwell’s door arch.

  She frowned.

  The stone seemed to stare at her in mute reproach, but rather than taking it back, she hurried on, clutching the stone like a precious treasure.

  And to her it was.

  A memento of her Highlander.

  With a sigh, she paused a few feet from the road, looking back over her shoulder at the ruins. The sun had burst through the clouds, burning off the mist and gilding the tumbled walls with the bright blue and gold of the late-spring afternoon. Even the wind was lessening and the dark, jagged cliffs of Wrath Isle no longer looked quite so menacing.

  The ruined castle no longer a home to ghosts.

  An empty shell was all it was, she made herself believe, choosing as well to ignore the thickness in her throat and the stinging heat jabbing the backs of her eyes.

  Whoever or whatever he’d been, her hunky Highlander couldn’t have been real.

  Never in all her dreams.

  Chapter 1

  Aldan, Pennsylvania

  A Pleasant and Respectable Delaware County Borough Twelve Years Later…

  Kira Bedwell had a dirty little secret.

  A towering plaid-hung secret, masterful and passionate, impossibly addictive.

  Maddening, too, for he came to her only in her dreams.

  Deliciously heated dreams that called to her now, teasing the edges of her sleep and flooding her with tingling, languorous warmth until she began to stretch and roll beneath the bedcovers. She reached for an extra pillow, hugging it close as the walls of her apartment’s tiny bedroom shimmered and shimmied, taking on a silvery translucence. As always, her pulse leapt at the transformation, the rippling luminescence giving her a view of the cliffs and the sea, a sheep-grazed hill and tumbled, mist-clad ruins.

  Ancient ruins, well loved and remembered.

  Kira sighed, her heart catching. She bit her lip and splayed her fingers across the cool linen of her bed-sheets. She could imagine him so well, her darkly seductive Highlander. If she concentrated, she could almost see him in the shadows, waiting. Mist swirled around his tall, strapping form, a strong wind tearing at his plaid and whipping his raven hair. His hot gaze would make her burn, the raw sensuality streaming off him flowing over her like pure, molten lust, rousing her.

  He’d s
tep closer then, a slow smile curving his lips, the sheer eroticism of him and his own insatiable need almost letting her forget she’d fallen asleep in her clothes.

  Again.

  The third night in a week, if she wished to keep note, which she didn’t. Once was more than enough and three times bordered on seriously bothersome.

  If she weren’t mistaken, this time she’d even kept on her shoes!

  She frowned and flipped onto her side. Yearning still swept her, but she cracked an eye, her dreamspun ardor vanishing as she peered into the darkness.

  Her silent bedroom stared back at her, cramped, cluttered, and shabby chic. Pathetically empty of hot-eyed Scotsmen. But the pale glimmer of a new moon fell across the little polished brass carriage clock on her bedside table, the piece’s stark black hands showing the hour as three a.m. Give or take ten minutes.

  She blew out a frustrated breath. Like so many of her carefully accumulated treasures, the antique clock wasn’t perfect, keeping time to its own rhythm. Sometimes accurate, sometimes ahead or behind, and every so often not at all.

  Like her dreams.

  They, too, couldn’t be forced.

  Aidan MacDonald, medieval clan chieftain extraordinaire, slipped into her fantasies only when it suited him.

  Or so Kira thought.

  Just as she assumed her bold dream lover could only be the MacDonalds’ legendary leader. After her one trip to Scotland years ago, she’d spent months researching Clan Donald and Castle Wrath, finally determining Aidan as her Highlander.

  The tantalizingly gorgeous Celtic he-god she’d glimpsed so briefly.

  And never forgotten.

  A man of any less mythic status couldn’t possibly invade her sleep and ravish her with such wild, heart-pounding sex. Just the imagined scent of him made her dizzy with longing. Remembering the cool silk of his glossy, shoulder-length hair, or the hardness of his muscles, was enough to make her breath quicken. Thinking about his kisses, the skillful glide of his hands on her body, did things to her she never would have believed possible.

  Watching him stride toward her, his sword hung low on his hip and a predatory gleam in his eye, positively melted her.

  He was the essence of her deepest, darkest fantasies.

  Her secret lover, he’d ruined her for all others.

  Kira sighed, her fingers curling into the bedcovers. Warmth pulsed through her just thinking about him. More than just a fantasy lover, he had influenced her life in ways she’d never have believed possible. He’d initiated her into her special gift of far-seeing, the ability to catch a visual or mental image of the distant past. An inherited talent kept secret in her family and one she hadn’t been aware of at all until the day she’d hoped to picnic at Castle Wrath and had peered down a ruined stairwell, looking straight into Aidan’s torchlit hall and his dark, smoldering stare.

  Kira shivered. She wanted that stare on her now.

  Ached to see him.

  Instead, nothing stirred except a chill wind whistling around her old brick apartment house. The faint tap-tap of tree branches against her window. All was still and quiet. Through a chink in the curtains she could see that the sky was low with clouds, the night cold and damp.

  She stared out the window and sighed. Any other time she would have smiled. She liked cold and damp. Throw in a handful of mist and a bit of soft, thin rain and her imagination could transport her to Scotland.

  That other world where she longed to be, not here listening to the night wind sighing around Aldan, Pennsylvania’s seen-better-days Castle Apartments, but hearing Hebridean gales blowing in from the sea. Long Atlantic breakers crashing on jagged black rocks.

  Rugged cliffs and slate-colored seas, the tingle of salt mist damping her cheeks.

  That was what she wanted.

  Needed.

  Unfortunately, on her budget, the closest she could hope to get to Scotland was dusting the framed tea towel of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile that hung above her sagging sofa. Frustration welling, she twisted onto her side and pulled a pillow over her head. Truth was, she cherished that tea towel. Like the small tartan-covered armchair beside her bed, she’d found the tea towel at a garage sale. Along with the worthless wooden frame she’d used to mount it.

  A thin purse sparked creativity.

  And penning supposedly true tales of the strange and inexplicable for Destiny Magazine, a popular monthly focused on all things supernatural, didn’t generate enough income for luxuries.

  Even if some of her stories were fact.

  Like her most recent. The reason she’d barricaded herself inside her postage-stamp-sized apartment and wasn’t answering her phone or e-mail.

  Kira groaned and knocked the pillow aside. Impossible, how a mere week could turn someone’s life upside down. One excited phone call to Destiny from a group of wannabe archaeologists, and there she was, using her far-seeing ability to help them locate the remains of a Viking longboat resting proudly at the bottom of a river-bisected Cape Cod lake, her discovery proving beyond a doubt that Norsemen were the first to land on the New World’s shores. Overnight, she’d become everyone’s most celebrated darling.

  Or their worst nightmare.

  Depending on whether one favored horn-helmeted sea marauders or the tried and true. Either way, even if Destiny raised her salary to match her sudden and unwanted notoriety, the proponents of a certain Mediterranean mariner weren’t too keen to see their hero’s glory dinted.

  A shudder rippled down Kira’s spine and she clutched the covers tighter. She’d lost track of how many historical societies wanted her head, each one raking her over the coals for her blasphemy.

  Christopher Columbus may have died centuries ago, but his spirit was alive and well in America.

  His fans active.

  Out there, and sharpening their claws.

  She frowned. No, a raise wasn’t going to help her. The means to purchase an air ticket meant tiddly-squat if she ended up tarred and feathered before she could ever reach the airport.

  Not to mention a Glasgow-bound plane.

  Judging by the hate mail she’d been receiving, such a mob might even seize and burn her passport. Already, she’d found two nails thrust into her car tires, and some exceptionally witty soul who clearly lived in her apartment building had smeared some kind of unidentifiable goo on her doorknob. Icky, foul-smelling goo. Kira swiped an annoying strand of hair off her forehead. At least fretting about such nonsense took her mind off him.

  The gorgeous, incredible-in-bed medieval Highlander she shouldn’t be fantasizing about when she was in a pickle.

  She sighed and shut her eyes, doing her best to forget him. The alpha Gael who not only could melt her with one heated, sensuous glance but knew better than any real man how to ignite her passion.

  A fool’s passion, imagined and unreal, regardless of how exquisite.

  She pressed a hand to her forehead and massaged her temples. The broadcast reporters and television cameras camped in the Castle Apartments parking lot were real and she’d had enough of them. As the daughter of a ceramic tile salesman and a high school art teacher, she wasn’t used to the limelight.

  Nor did she like it.

  Especially when they all seemed determined to make sport of her.

  “Sleep.” She breathed the word like a mantra, repeating it in her mind as she rubbed two fingers between her brows. A good eight hours of oblivion was what she needed.

  Maybe then she’d wake refreshed, the snarl of television crews and other suchlike long-noses gone from outside her apartment’s ground-floor windows, the world a new and bright place, free of problems and cares.

  Yes, she decided, settling an arm over her head, sleep was just what she needed.

  Lass…your raiments.

  Deep and rich, the mellifluous words seduced the darkness, pure Highland and buttery smooth. Familiar in ways that slid right through her sleep to curl low in her belly, warming and melting her. Making her tingle and sizzle in all the right plac
es.

  Aidan MacDonald’s sinfully sexy burr could do that.

  That, and many other things.

  All delicious.

  Her eyes snapped open. He stood in the dim moonlight near her window, his hands on his hips and his head angled as he looked at her. All male dominance and breathtakingly handsome, he caught and held her gaze, the heat of his own already stroking her, making her burn.

  “The raiments,” he said again, stepping closer. “Have done with them.”

  Kira’s breath caught. Her heart leapt. Somewhere in the distance a siren wailed. Not that she cared. Her body refused to move. She could only stare, desire and need streaking through her, embarrassment flaming the back of her neck, scalding her cheeks.

  He wanted her naked, as was his wont.

  But unless she was mistaken, getting that way might dampen his ardor.

  She was wearing her comfy granny-style panties. High-waisted, white cotton, and boring. Equally bad, she had on her favorite oversized training suit. The baggy one with the little tear in the knee.

  She swallowed. “I wasn’t expecting you tonight…It’s been a while.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve had matters to see to,” he said, flicking a speck of lint off his plaid. “That doesn’t mean I haven’t hungered for you. I have, and my need is great.”

  “I missed you, too,” she stalled, trying to calculate how quickly she could rid herself of her less-than-flattering clothes and assume a seductive pose.

  In dreams, anything should be possible, but her limbs remained stubbornly frozen, her fumbling fingers impossibly clumsy.

  He started toward her, his own hands already unbuckling his sword belt. His eyes narrowing, he paused just long enough to set aside his great brand and whip off his plaid. Then, as was the way with sexual fantasies, he flashed a smile and was naked, without even having to stoop to yank off his rough-leathered brogues.