Charming The Highlander

Now was her chance to get to know the man her sister loved.

Grace climbed into the passenger seat of the shiny new truck, folded her hands on her lap, and thought of how to broach the subject of time travel to a person who claimed he had firsthand knowledge of the phenomenon.

“You’ve been crying,” Michael said as soon as he climbed in beside her.

“Not from the accident,” she assured him as they backed out of the barn.

He stopped the truck and looked at her. “MacKeage made ya cry?” he asked in a growl.

This time Grace’s smile was sad. “Not directly. I made myself cry.” She brushed the hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “I’m tired, I think. A lot’s happened in the last week. The last six weeks,”

she softly amended.

“I’ve heard new mothers get weepy sometimes,” he said gently, finally heading the truck out the driveway.

“Yeah. I’ve heard that, too. Michael, why did you tell my sister you traveled through time?” Grace asked, deciding that she really was too tired to beat around the bush.

Silence answered her. Grace turned in her seat to face the man who was such a contradiction to her perception of sanity. He acted more normal than most males she’d met, yet he didn’t rush to deny her accusation.

She studied his profile. Michael was a large man, handsome in a rugged sort of way, and as solid-looking as the mountains surrounding Pine Creek. His usually weather-ta

“I want you to talk to me, Michael. I want to understand.”

He looked at her, his eyes two swirling pools of deep, molten gray. “Why? What’s the point?” he asked softly. “Mary’s dead, lass. It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing does.”

“That’s not true, Michael,” Grace whispered. “You’re the man my sister loved. For all but the lack of a ceremony, you and I are related now. And it was Mary’s dying wish that we become friends.”

He looked back at the road, silent again. Grace decided to approach the problem more directly. “Mary told me that you didn’t travel through time alone. That some of your…clansmen came with you. Is that true?”

His complexion darkened, and he nodded curtly. Well, he wasn’t talking, but he was responding.

“Where are they now?”

“Dead.”

“How…how did they die, Michael?”

“In lightning storms, mostly.”

“Is that how you got here? In a storm?”

He nodded again, then brought the truck to a stop. Before Grace realized they’d arrived at her pickup, Michael was out the door and headed to her truck.

With a curse of frustration, Grace climbed out and followed him. Talking to Michael was like pulling teeth. She caught up with him just as he knelt down to look at the underside of her truck.

Grace got down on her own knees and looked at him instead. “Is that what killed your friends?” she asked. “The storm that brought you here?”

He turned only his head to look at her, staring for an overlong minute before he stood up, grabbed her by the shoulders, and lifted her to her own feet in front of him. And it was a good thing he kept holding onto her, because his glare would have knocked her over.

“We will talk about this now, Grace, on the condition that ya never bring it up again.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “And I’ll have yar promise that ya won’t tell anyone else this story.”

Grace could only nod mutely. Michael released her, sighed deep from his chest, and ran a hand through his damp, dark brown hair. He paced several steps away, pivoted, and paced back toward her, stopping only a few feet away.

“Four years ago my men and I were in the middle of a battle when a great storm suddenly swept over our heads,” he softly began, not looking at her but staring into the woods, obviously picturing the scene in his mind’s eye.

“I looked up and saw a man standing on the bluff. He was holding a staff as thick as my arm and longer than I am tall. It glowed like a shaft of lightning in his hand.”

He looked at Grace, his eyes large but his pupils narrowed to pinpricks. Sweat had broken out on his brow again.

“The man suddenly threw the stick, and it bounced off a rock and then began floating over the glea

Facing her but with his vision turned inward again, Michael slowly shook his head. “As God is my witness, I can’t describe what happened next. Light so bright it was blinding consumed us. I could hear the shouts of my men over the howl of the wind. My horse reared in terror, and I was thrown, but my body never reached the ground. It was as if the wind carried me, lifting me further into the sky.”

“A tornado, Michael?” Grace whispered, drawing his full attention. “You were caught in a tornado?”

He slowly shook his head. “Nay, lass. This was an u

He stopped speaking, staring at the ground, slowly shaking his head back and forth.

“As if what, Michael? What did you feel?”

He looked back at her. “As if I ceased to exist. For one suspended moment, I was not me.” He held his hands up, looking at them. “I had no body. I remember thinking I am here, but I had nothing to show of myself. There was just me…my mind…and the accursed light.”

Grace fought to keep her frown to herself as her own mind frantically worked to understand what had happened. Had Michael been struck by lightning? Had he lived through a near-death experience?

“What happened then?” she asked. “You’re obviously here right now. How did you get here?”

“I simply existed again. The light disappeared as suddenly as it appeared, and I was lying on the ground, along with nine other men and our horses.”

“Nine men? But Mary said only five men were with you.”

Michael averted his gaze. “Others were caught in the storm with us.”

“Others? The men you were fighting when the storm came? Where are they now?”

His glare returned as he stared directly at her. “I have a wish they’re rotting in hell,” he growled, suddenly pivoting on his heel and heading back to his own truck.

Grace started after him, only to have to grab the tailgate of her truck to keep from falling. The rain had started again and was making the ice as slippery as buttered Teflon. Michael returned carrying a tow strap, which he looped over the trailer ball on the rear bumper of her truck.

“Drive my truck up here and point the back toward yours,” he instructed.

Grace took the tow strap off her bumper and tossed it on the ground. “Just as soon as we’re done with our discussion,” she told him. “I promised not to speak of this again, so, by God, we’re going to speak of it now. Where did you wake up after the storm?”

Eyes narrowed against the rain, he stared at her in fuming silence. Grace didn’t care if they both drowned, she wasn’t leaving until he gave her the whole story.

“Did these other men experience the same thing you did?” she asked. “Did they all see this bright light?”

“Yes.”

“And everybody lived? Including the horses?”

“Yes.”

“If you were in Scotland—what was it—eight hundred years ago when the storm came, where did you wake up?”

“In Scotland. In the same glea

“Different how?”

“There were buildings there that hadn’t been there before,” he said. “And roads, covered with hardened black tar. And automobiles and large trucks. We were nearly killed by the speeding demons.”

It was Grace’s turn to shake her head, and she couldn’t seem to stop. Michael’s story seemed outlandish and would make sense to her only if she believed in time travel.