Charming The Highlander

“You have horses?” Grace asked, getting excited, remembering Ian’s claim that his horse weighed more than a thousand pounds. They must be draft animals. “For sleigh rides?”

“They are not plow horses!” Morgan all but shouted, getting red in the face again. “What is it with you people around here? You think just because they’re big, they must pull?”

“Well, what else would a ski lodge want with horses?” she asked, wondering at his reaction.

“They’re noble beasts, and they’re pets now,” he told her, picking up the cradle and walking out the door.

Morgan was like the Maine weather; wait five minutes, and he changed. He was either scolding her or winking at her, and she still didn’t know which one amused her more. Grace chuckled out loud as she walked into her room but sobered the second she was out of sight of the men.

Whew. Her insides were still shaking from Grey’s not-so-subtle display of alpha-male possession. And the sad part was, Jonathan didn’t seem to realize just how close he’d come to being flattened. It was as if all of Jonathan’s manly instincts had gotten swallowed up by the sophisticated civilization he’d been living in all his life.

Somewhere along the line, Jonathan’s male traits had been tamed, if not completely repressed, by society. How else could two men—Jonathan and Grey—be so different, being about the same age, living on the same planet, but becoming such contradictions to each other?

Jonathan had been only worried about her safety.

Grey had turned lethally dangerous at the thought of men wanting to kidnap her.

Which was why Grace’s own instincts told her that Gu Bràth was a much better choice than Virginia right now. Grey would protect her and Baby with his life if need be. And what woman wouldn’t want that kind of commitment from the man she loved?

It was exactly how things should be when two people intended to spend the rest of their lives together.

Chapter Sixteen

Daar paced the length of the north tower of Gu Bràth, stopping to look toward where TarStone Mountain stood behind low-cast, drizzle-soaked clouds. The rain would start again soon; he could all but smell it coming. This storm, it seemed, was not through raising its havoc yet.

He was on vigil again, trying to read the energy coming from the mountain tonight in waves, first with white potent authority, then with black, menacing acrimony. He could not figure out what it meant. He knew only that the two souls now loving and arguing and feeling their way cautiously toward each other were in the path of what was humming through the forest.

Daar sighed and returned to his pacing, the thump of his cane adding to the sounds of a forest straining under the weight of building ice. He had been wracking his tired old brain since he’d met her, trying to discover who Grace’s guardian had been for the first thirty years of her life. Grey would be taking over that task now, but somebody had had that charge before him.

Daar suspected it was Mary. And he also suspected that even though dead, she had not yet relinquished her duty to Grey.

Grey had already appointed himself Grace’s guardian. After he’d dropped Grace and Baby and that Stanhope guy off at Gu Bràth, the warrior had pulled Daar aside for a few words, just before he’d left for MacBain’s Christmas tree farm. Grey had quietly but firmly warned Daar to stay away from Grace Sutter.

Daar had been amused by Grey’s sudden forthrightness. It confirmed what he’d always suspected: Greylen MacKeage was aware that the priest he’d been supporting these last four years was also the person responsible for the storm that had carried him forward in time.

Well, Grey’s intelligence was never in question. But gaining the warrior’s trust would be near impossible now that Grey felt protective of Grace.

Not that Grey ever did trust him, Daar thought with a self-pitying sigh. Wasn’t that the very reason he lived in a cabin two miles away instead of at Gu Bràth? The warrior wished to keep Daar close in order to keep an eye on him, but he had no intention of living under the same roof with someone he suspected had caused such a great upset to the natural world.

Daar knew MacBain was suspicious of him also. That was the reason the young warrior had taken his men to Nova Scotia just nine months after arriving in the twenty-first century. But when all his men had died, MacBain had found himself drawn to Pine Creek. Though he didn’t visit his old priest and mentor and only nodded his head whenever Daar met him in town, Michael was at least attempting to walk the precarious line between the two distinct worlds of his life.

Daar was actually proud of Michael and had been mightily happy when MacBain had taken up with Mary Sutter—and mightily disappointed to learn she had died.

And Daar couldn’t figure out why that was. Why did Mary have to die at such a trying time in Grace’s life?

Could it be that Mary Sutter wasn’t a wizard at all but merely possessed the soul of a guardian? It wasn’t unheard of for angels to walk this earth for only a short time, to look after a charge and then suddenly disappear as mysteriously as they’d arrived.

But Grace herself, it seemed, was not willing to let her sister’s spirit completely depart. The poor grieving woman had been clinging to Mary’s ashes in an Oreo cookie tin. Grace carried that tin of ashes wherever she went. Daar had seen her place Mary on the mantel in the living room downstairs just this afternoon.

It was past time he had a little talk with Grace Sutter. More worried about the menace clouding the air tonight than Grey’s warning to stay away from Grace, Daar turned back toward the stairs that led down the north tower.

He took one last look at the stormy, unsettled sky and headed to the warm fire below. He was confident that the warrior would meet whatever challenge the stormy sky hinted at. After all, that’s why Daar had searched through all of time to find such a match for the woman who would have seven daughters.

Tomorrow, Greylen MacKeage would come face to face with his destiny—and then have to prove he was worthy of it.

Grace had not been successful in her plan to speak with Father Daar. She’d tried to talk with him twice, and each time he said he hadn’t the time. He was in the middle of a novena. She’d actually gone to the dictionary to look that up. And what she found was that a novena lasted nine days.

Which left her with Baby and the MacKeages. And

Jonathan. And the damn ski lift that she still wasn’t sure she wouldn’t blow up.

She didn’t even have any of them at the moment, except Baby, and he was busy sleeping the sleep of the i

Grace had caused a terrible upset in the MacKeage house by demanding they help Michael if they wanted her to help them. Ian had given her a black look when she and Baby had walked in three hours ago, and he had ignored Jonathan altogether.

And with Ian sulking in the ski lift shed, Grace couldn’t work on the lift until Grey returned. Not for all the sun in Florida would she face that angry old man alone.

Jonathan was in the dining room, back on his computer, probably trying to figure out what this little mess was going to cost him if they didn’t successfully retrieve Podly’s data. Grace couldn’t care less at the moment, and that lack of emotion toward something she’d worked so hard for surprised her. Several of the data collectors on Podly were hers. It was her chance to prove what she’d been saying all along, that ion propulsion was viable and at a reasonable cost.