She turned and walked away. She didn’t dawdle, which he would have regretted at a different time. At the moment, he just wanted her safely away.
He could feel time nipping at his heels. Nay, not just that. He could feel that bloody time portal closing, and he had to get through it before it did. He didn’t like to think about what had happened in the past the first and only time he had purposely refused to step through the gate that opened for him.
At least he could think about it. The MacLeod clansman he later learned he could have saved if he’d been in the right place certainly couldn’t.
He ran back to his house, slammed his door shut, then bolted back to his bedroom to don his medieval gear. He could only hope, as he generally did, that no one was watching him. Restraints would be in his future otherwise, he was sure of it.
He pulled his sword out of the closet, made sure his house was put to bed as best it could be, then took a deep breath.
He opened the door and walked back into the past.
Chapter 7
Emmawalked along the village main street and wondered if the time had come for her to start looking under planters and around corners for leprechauns and wood sprites. There was something very strange going on in the surrounding environs, and it wasn’t limited to everyone driving on the wrong side of the road.
Her nose for that sort of thing was definitely giving her trouble, in spite of her demanding that it cease and desist. She blamed her childhood for her unwholesome skills. She might have been a regular kid by day, but by night, she had been a world-class snoop. Being able to scout out the terrain ahead of time, along with having an ear cocked for any plans and schemes that might have been brewing, had saved her endless amounts of grief with her parents and siblings.
That begged the question of why she hadn’t done a better job of taking note of all the red flags waving frantically when she’d first started dating Sheldon Cook, but that was probably something better left unexamined. She had plenty of mysteries demanding her attention at the moment without adding ruminations over her past decisions to the mix.
Take the day before, for instance. She’d spent the afternoon in James MacLeod’s little cottage, feeding her fire as she’d been taught earlier that morning and trying not to think about the inexplicably weird behavior of her extremely good-looking neighbor. Her efforts had been halfhearted at best, which had left her succumbing to the temptation to put on her deerstalker and examine the facts.
He had cooked her a fabulous breakfast, which had definitely gotten their relationship off on the right foot. He’d followed that up with a nonthreatening invitation to walk to his house, which had been equally pleasant. She’d almost begun to think that she could let her guard down a bit when he’d abruptly changed gears and practically shoved her off his porch. It was as if he’d suddenly discovered she carried the plague.
Crazy came in all varieties, apparently.
It was a pity, mostly because she’d hardly been able to look at that guy without having to remind herself to keep breathing. But she had turned over a new leaf on her way across that big, blue ocean, and that leaf-turning had as one of its components the solemn vow to avoid nuttiness in any and all varieties. Nutty but handsome was just not going to cut it.
Apparently sitting in a cottage with nothing to do with her hands besides wring them wasn’t going to cut it, either, which was why she’d decided it was time she pulled herself together and got down to business. She would find pencils and paper and at least start experimenting with design ideas. She would breathe in Scotland, set it down on paper as best she could, then hammer it into permanent metals when she had the chance. The very thought of that new direction and the opportunity to perhaps breathe life into a former business made her pulse race a bit with an enthusiasm she hadn’t felt in far too long.
She also had to admit, if she were going to be entirely honest, that she had come into town in search of cell phone reception, since it was something she definitely didn’t have at her house. It was important to have that sort of thing when one wanted to see if there might be any art supply stores in the area or find out where to get the best batch of fish and chips.
If one happened to type a neighbor’s name into a handy search engine to see what sorts of details could be unearthed about that neighbor, who could blame one?
That was, she had to admit, the very first thing she’d done once she’d parked in the first public parking lot she’d come to. She’d seen nothing about art supply stores, hadn’t really cared what she’d unearthed about local restaurants, and been somehow unsurprised to find that there was absolutely nothing about a Nathaniel MacLeod in Benmore, Scotland.
There was plenty, however, about a Nathaniel MacLeod in both London and Manhattan.
She would have considered that nothing more than someone having the same name as her neighbor if there hadn’t been a picture of her breakfast buddy in a suit. She’d scrolled through his details, frowned thoughtfully over the oddly familiar name of his grandfather’s company that he had apparently been a part of for several years, then killed the page before she discovered anything else. Snooping was useful, but sometimes that little warning voice that shoutedHere be dragonswas a voice best listened to right away.
She had put her phone in her pocket, then crawled out of her car and decided on Mrs. McCreedy’s store as a good first stop, mostly because she’d wanted junk food to distract her from things she didn’t want to think about. She’d found sugary things slathered in chocolate, but she’d also had a text show up as she’d been leaving the store.
Him you’re wanting to avoid is following your credit card tracks. Let me know when you want to go to Inverness to dump your rental.
She had read that text from Patrick MacLeod several times, but it still said the same thing. She was tempted to wonder how Patrick had learned what Sheldon was up to, but quickly decided maybe she just didn’t want to know. She’d had a sufficient eyeful of Uncle Bobby. For all she knew, that was just the beginning of the odd things about Patrick MacLeod’s friends.
She didn’t doubt that a person’s credit card trail could be readily traced, she just couldn’t believe that Sheldon had managed to do the same. He offended everyone he met and the only people who continued to talk to him after that offending were ones who couldn’t avoid it. If he’d gotten someone to help him, it had been because he’d paid them—
“Emma?”
She jumped. Her phone jumped as well, then decided to swan-dive onto the sidewalk. Facedown, of course. She looked over to find none other than Nathaniel MacLeod himself hopping out of his dusty SUV to come execute another rescue. He picked up her phone and turned it over. Emma looked at the shattered screen and was more relieved than she should have been that she hadn’t left a search for his possible criminalrecord open in her browser. It was bad enough that she hadn’t cleared that text from Patrick.
Nathaniel ran his finger over the screen, then went very still. He’d obviously read Patrick’s text, but since he didn’t know anything about her life, his careful expression was probably due to Patrick’s enigmatic language. She pulled the phone out of his hands and put on a smile.
“Just some residual stuff from home,” she said cheerfully. “No worries.”
He studied her for a moment or two. “You know,” he said, then he cleared his throat. “Sorry. Too much shouting recently.”
“Soccer fan?”
