And then she saw him.
Him.
She froze in place and gaped, because she couldn’t do anything else. That couldn’t possibly be Nathaniel, surely, but it couldn’t have looked any more like him if ithadbeen him. The only difference between that man standing there and the guy who had been standing on her porch not half an hour ago was that the guy in front of her was dressed in medieval gear, his hair was hanging around his face, and he had a sword in his hands.
He swung his sword suddenly, right at her, and she ducked out of instinct. That was bad enough, but feeling something fall against her back was far worse.
That something was a man.
The Nathaniel who couldn’t possibly be her neighbor pulled her away before the attacker she hadn’t seen coming crushed her under his falling self. She clapped her hand over her mouth when she realized her attacker was falling because he was dead. Her rescuer, whoever he was, pulled her behind him, fought off another guy with a sword and very bad teeth, then took her by the hand and ran with her. She didn’t argue. She couldn’t argue. She was too busy trying to keep from completely losing it.
He pulled her back to a halt at the edge of the forest. The mist obscured her sight of what she knew should have been a faint track leading to her safe and cozy cottage. She couldn’t see it very well at all—
“Go haime, gel.”
She would have told him she couldn’t, but he gave her a fairly healthy shove in the right direction. She stumbled forward, tripped, then went down on her hands and knees. She didn’t stop to assess the damage; she simply heaved herself to her feet and fled.
She ran until she left the mist behind and she was somehowstanding on her own front porch. She knew it was her front porch because the house looked the same and those were the lights she’d left on spilling out of her windows.
But she was alone.
Oh, and she was also apparently losing her mind.
She dropped her keys a handful of times before she managed to get the right one in the lock and open her door. She realized she was hyperventilating only after she’d gotten herself inside her cottage and locked the door shut behind her. She pushed a chair in front of the doorknob, made sure she had her phone, then rechecked all the windows. Everything was locked up, but she still couldn’t catch her breath.
She was too panicked to even cry.
She ran to the bathroom and locked herself inside there as well. She looked at herself in the mirror and decided it was best to ignore the smudge on her shoulder. It was mud, not drying blood, and she was going to lose it if she didn’t get hold of herself very soon.
She stripped and stood in the shower until she simply couldn’t stand any longer, then she put herself into her pajamas and considered going to bed.
She was fairly sure she would never sleep again.
Just what in the hell was going on?
She took refuge in her kitchen and wondered if she had the presence of mind to even make tea. A knock at her door startled her so badly, she shrieked. She grabbed a knife out of a kitchen drawer, took a deep breath, then fumbled with the chair wedged against the doorknob. It took a moment or two before she could bring herself to open the door, but she managed it.
Patrick MacLeod stood there. He looked at her, looked at the knife in her hands, then held up his hands slowly.
“Friend, not foe,” he said.
The knife fell from her fingers, but Patrick had the quickest hands she had ever seen. He caught it before it landed point-down on the top of her foot. He straightened, then held it out to her haft-first.
“I’ll make tea,” he said simply.
She let out a breath that didn’t feel at all steady, then attempted a smile. “Sorry. Long day.”
He said something in return, but she didn’t catch what itwas. She was too busy looking at him and seeing something... well, there was something about him that was different. He looked so much like Nathaniel that they easily could have been brothers, but that wasn’t it. There was something about him that seemed a bit raw somehow and that wasn’t just his rugged Highlander persona.
If she hadn’t known better, she would have said that he absolutely would have been comfortable in that little battle scene she’d just imagined.
But that was impossible.
She had a very active imagination, that was it. Her imagination had years ago sent her in the direction of art and kept her from becoming a corporate attorney. It would, she was sure, provide a decent living when she took that imagination and used it to fashion wearable pieces of art that reflected sea and sky and heather on the hills—
“Emma, are you unwell?”
Was she unwell? She scoffed at the very idea. She wasn’t unwell, she was...
