“I’ve always been alone—in the way you mean.” She shrugged as she hugged the puppy now sleeping against her chest and kept her gaze trained on the ground. “I’m pretty much used to it.”
“Ye can change it.” He eased a step closer, keeping his voice gentle and low. “Give me a chance, Mairi. All I ask is that ye give me a chance.” After another step, he wrapped the plaid better around her shoulders. “Ye felt the connection when first we met. Do ye not wish it to be so—wish it to become stronger?” He held his breath as she looked up at him, studying him as though trying to see inside his soul.
“You felt it too?”
“Aye, lass. I felt it.” He eased her back into his embrace, grateful to his core when she didn’t pull away. “And I swear to ye, I will not be letting ye go.”
She shivered and glanced up at him, then gently turned herself out of his arms. “We need to get home.” With a pitiful sniff, she cast one last forlorn look around the drenched chilly landscape. “I hope wherever my dog is . . . I hope he’s not suffering.” A heavy sigh escaped her as she turned and headed toward the road. “We need to get home,” she repeated. “Come on. We’ll get everyone dried out and fed.”
Ronan slowly blew out the breath he held. It was not exactly the response he had hoped for but it was a start.
CHAPTER8
Mairi stole a glance at Ronan sitting at the kitchen table. He was scowling down into a ceramic mug clutched against his chest, tamping down bits of dried dog food into puppy-sized pieces with the thick handle of a wooden spoon. One painstaking nugget at a time, he added more kibble to the mash of meaty canned dog food in the bottom of the cup and crushed it.
He was so…different.The carefully erected wall she kept around her heart weakened with every crunch of the spoon handle. His kiss had already done major damage to that wall—shaking it down to its foundation. Mairi brushed her fingertips across her mouth. She had never been kissed like that before. It had felt like . . . like what? She pressed her lips together hard with the memory. A claiming.That’s exactly what the kiss had transmitted. Ronan had laid claim to her and that kiss was the first of his markers.
His wet shirt clung to his broad shoulders that shimmered dark and powerful in the black silk stretched taut across his chest. They were both still soaked to the bone and cold as hell, but he hadn’t even blinked when she said the puppy had to be dried out and fed before they tended to themselves. He’d definitely gained major points for that one and demolished a few more bricks in the wall around her heart. The piercing shriek of the teakettle interrupted the tallying of Ronan’s infiltrate-her-heart score.
He stood so fast that the kitchen chair tipped backward and rattled to the floor. In one smooth motion, he slid a dagger free of his boot and stepped in front of Mairi. “What demon wails so?” He stared at the sputtering teakettle as though expecting it to unleash a monster at any minute.
She tucked the towel-wrapped puppy closer and pushed her way around him. “It’s the steam whistling out of the kettle. It lets you know when the water’s ready.”
Was he serious? She glanced back at him as she scooped up the hot pad, wrapped it around the black handle of the kettle, and moved it to a back burner. She flicked the knob and the blue flames disappeared. When she turned with the kettle in one hand, she nearly dropped it. Ronan was staring at the kettle and stove as though she had just performed the greatest trick on earth.
“Ye control the flame too.”
“Have you never seen a gas cooktop before?” Mairi poured a bit of the steaming water into a shallow bowl. How could a chieftain of a clan be unfamiliar with something as simple as a gas stove? The most likely answer nudged at the back of her mind then sank like a weight to the pit of her stomach.
She returned the kettle to the stove and ignored the worrisome voice whispering what she didn’t want to acknowledge. Ronan was from the past. She shook away the thought. He couldn’t be from the past. Unless. She paused as the sacred creed of the time runners clicked through her mind.
Bloodline holds the gift to dance across the ages.
From mother to daughter the gift shall pass.
The eldest daughter of each generation shall control the most power.
A loyal familiar, a guardian, shall join the eldest daughter at birth.
Males shall only travel the web when chosen or sent forth by a runner.
A male chosen or sent forth by a runner. Mairi studied Ronan closely. Eliza couldn’t have pulled him from the past, but Granny, Trulie, or Kenna damn sure could have sent him forward to twenty-first-century Edinburgh.
He cleared his throat as he straightened and slid the dagger back inside his boot. “There is not a such stove in the kitchens of Draegonmare.” He fidgeted beside the chair as though angry with himself for his reaction.
“Is that the name of your keep?” She would give him the benefit of the doubt. For now.At least until he either confirmed or condemned her suspicions. She stole another glance at him. Maybe she was being too lenient. Right now, he looked guilty as hell.
“Aye. Draegonmare is my keep.”
She took the cup of crushed kibble and mashed dog food from him and added it to the shallow saucer of warm water. She stirred it with one finger until the gruel warmed and blended, then lowered the puppy to the table where he promptly splatted both front paws into the middle of the mushy pile of dog food, buried his nose in it, and started gobbling. When she looked up, Ronan was staring at her with a pained expression. “Are you all right?”
“Aye.” He quickly nodded as he appeared to force himself to stand in a more relaxed form of readiness. With his legs widespread, his chest thrust out and the muscles of his arms bulging, he clasped his hands behind his back. The man looked about as relaxed as a caged panther.
An impatient yip followed by a warning clatter pulled Mairi’s attention back to the puppy currently bouncing the now empty saucer across the table with stiff-legged bounces against the plate’s rim. She scooped the dog up and fluffed her fingers through his much drier fur. “No. You’ve had enough for now. You can have more later.”
Wiping the pup’s soggy feet with a towel, she kept it cradled in the crook of her arm as she retrieved two more cups from the hooks underneath the cabinet. She glanced across the room at Ronan. Time for tea and interrogation. “How about some nice hot tea while you tell me about your keep?”
He snorted as he righted the kitchen chair he’d knocked over during the attack of the screaming tea kettle and plopped down into it.
