She got out of her car, ran up the steps, and banged on the front door. It was answered fairly quickly, all things considered, and a man stood there who she didn’t know. He looked quite a bit like Jamie, though, so she supposed he was a relative. Ian MacLeod, perhaps.
“I need to see Jamie.”
The man lifted an eyebrow. “And who are you, lass?”
“I know who she is,” Jamie said, coming to stand next to the man. “Mistress Emma, this is my cousin, Ian. Ian, Mistress Emma is here, I suspect, to kill me.”
Emma glared at him. She hoped that might earn her a few points as well as give her courage, because that man there was intimidating as hell. She looked at Ian MacLeod and nodded shortly.
“I am,” she said crisply. “You’d best move.”
Ian looked at her thoughtfully. “Bare hands or steel?”
“Bare hands,” she said without hesitation.
“Pat,” he called over his shoulder. “Have a live one for you here.”
She threw herself at Jamie. She supposed, in hindsight, that it hadn’t been very well thought-out, but she was furious and he was definitely deserving of her ire. The thing was, she’d forgotten that he was a medieval sort of guy with a powerful instinct for self-preservation. She stopped her hands just short of his neck because she would have run into a pair of daggers.
Well, she wouldn’t have really, because she would have landed face-first on his floor and missed that steel entirely, as he had stepped back before she could get to him and Ian MacLeod had caught her as she fell. Ian set her very carefully back on her feet, then very deliberately took his hands off her and stepped back a pace. She looked at Jamie, then at Ian, then she did the most sensible thing she’d done all morning.
She pulled herself up by her bootstraps and got hold of herself.
“Well,” Ian said, sounding nonplussed. “I thought a batch of tears was coming our way.”
“By the saints, move,” Patrick MacLeod said, shoving his cousin aside. “Emma is not a weeper.” He looked at his brother. “Put up your steel, you fool.”
Jamie looked rather horrified. “I have never in my life drawn a blade against a woman.”
“I’m terrifying,” Emma croaked.
Patrick smiled. “That you are, lass.”
Jamie tossed his knives to Ian, then held out his hand to her. “I don’t apologize often—”
“Ever,” Patrick said dryly.
Jamie glared at his brother, then took her hand. “You startled me.”
“I’m angry,” she said. She shook his hand because she was certainly happy to move right past their recent encounter, then she wrapped her arms around herself not because she needed the comfort, but because she was freezing. “I know what you told him. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I got caught behind your sofa when you two were talking.”
“I know.”
She wasn’t at all surprised. “And yet you said nothing.”
“Why?” Jamie asked with a shrug. “I knew you knew I knew—” He paused, frowned, then shrugged again. “I thought it best we keep it between ourselves lest we influence Nathaniel unduly. There are things going on in that forest that I’ve never seen before and I offered the best advice I could.”
“I didn’t like your advice.”
Ian let out a low whistle and leaned his shoulder against Patrick. “Well, sheissomething, isn’t she?”
She didn’t feel like something; she felt cold and tired and not at all happy with the turn of events.
“I imagine you didn’t, lass,” Jamie said. “Why don’t you take your ire out on my brother here, or my cousin. I’d like to see what you can do.”
She blinked. “Why?”
He blew out his breath. “How are you going to go get that poor fool if you can’t protect yourself?”
