Claimed by a Laird (4 page)

As her fingers wrapped around the phone, he whispered from
the side of his mouth, “What the hell do you think you are doing?”

She jumped, her nose bumping his back. “My back hurts,” she
mumbled, quickly removing her phone from her bag and securing it within the
folds of her skirt.

He grunted and shifted to allow her only about an extra inch
of space in which to move.

Several moments passed before she was able to boost her
confidence enough to attempt her escape. Without looking at her phone, she
swiped the screen to unlock it, pressed the “call” button and dialed 9-9-9, the
equivalent of her own country’s 9-1-1. With her thumb hovering over the button
to change it to speaker phone as soon as someone picked up, she lifted the
phone slightly and peered down at it from the corner of her eye.

Searching for service…

Anna’s brows knitted together in confusion and she pressed
the “cancel” button. The screen did not change. She’d had no problems reaching
a cell tower all week. Now she couldn’t even get the phone to register the time
or date let alone make an emergency call.

She took a deep, silent breath to calm her racing thoughts.
Just what the hell was going on here? No cell phone service and a rebuilt
castle? Impossible.

After what seemed like an eternity, the man relaxed and
stepped away from her. She slipped her cell phone back into her bag, her
stomach twisting in knots.

“It is safe now,” he whispered. “We will stay here until
nightfall and then make our escape.”

Anna slid down the wall in defeat and sat upon the cold
stone floor, ignoring the pain in her shoulders. Her face fell into her hands
as she struggled to remain calm. What she had seen outside the door was nothing
short of real. If she were dreaming, then this man next to her wouldn’t be
drawing her in with his warmth, away from the sharp, cold stones at her back.
Her shoulders wouldn’t hurt and her cell phone would work. Dreams were
convoluted, full of symbolism and absurdity, and this seemed real. Too real.

“You are trembling like a leaf. Are you all right, lass?”
the man asked in a low tone as he sat beside her.

“No, I don’t think I am.” She shook her head, silently
attempting to reconcile the kindness and concern her captor showed with the
fact he had threatened to slit her throat just minutes ago. “I’m not supposed
to be here,” she insisted, more to herself than to him.

He caressed her arm with the back of his hand, sending
pleasant tremors down her spine. “You did the right thing by assisting me. I
promise to keep the Graham from harming you.”

“Who is this Graham?” she whispered in frustration, fighting
the tears stinging her eyes. “All I know is I was on a nice little tour of some
castle ruins and now I’m stuck in a smelly room above a dungeon with a man
threatening to kill me.”

Hysteria bubbled up within her as the tour guide’s story
filtered back into her consciousness, eliciting a gasp from her mouth. Wait.
When did the tour guide say the castle fell into disrepair?

When?

No, there was simply no way. It was not a sane question and
there had to be some way to prove it. People simply did not travel through
time.

She grabbed the man’s thigh, breathing deeply as she turned
toward him. He would know something about what had happened. If he lied, then
she’d know. After all, she had a lot of experience in detecting deception.
Hospital patients were often notorious liars.

“Who are you?” she warily asked. “What’s your name?”

“I am Galen, Laird of the MacAirths of Glenverlochy,” he
replied, laying his hand upon hers.

Panicked at the lack of deception in his voice, she searched
his face. He stared back at her with open curiosity and she shuddered, unable
to find even the slightest thread of deceit.

“I was taken prisoner unjustly by the Graham laird when—”

“It was your brother, Geoffrey.” The logical part of her
brain threw alternative suggestions about what she had seen outside the door.
As soon as she stopped struggling for some other wild explanation, however, the
puzzle pieces fell into place. “You are here because of him. And I…”

I am Anna Campbell.

Nausea swept over her and she inhaled erratically, her
breaths coming almost one on top of another. How? How could this have happened?

She grasped the pendant. It had threatened to overheat like
a machine spinning out of control not long after her thoughts had turned to her
thirteenth-century namesake. Anna had been thinking of how much she would like
to experience the same sort of love and passion as this other Anna Campbell had
with the imprisoned MacAirth laird.

Who just so happened to be holding
her
hand at this
very moment.

“Lass, what is wrong?”

Her heart pounded and she gasped for air, shaking her head
at the impossibility of it all.

He roughly grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
“Anna, look at me!” he ordered. “You must get a hold of yourself!”

She closed her eyes and several moments of silence passed as
she concentrated on slowing her breathing before she hyperventilated or, worse,
blacked out. When she finally opened her eyes, she avoided his face and stared
past Galen’s shoulder into the dying light of the small room. It was just
coincidence, wasn’t it? Certainly her mind was just playing tricks on her and
she wasn’t actually sitting there with a deranged, albeit hot stranger. She
couldn’t possibly have been hurtled nearly eight hundred years into the past.

Could she?

The warmth of Galen’s body pressed against hers drew her back
to him again and she lifted her gaze.

His brow wrinkled in confusion and he stared at her for
several moments. “So, you are aware of the circumstances of my imprisonment.”

“I am,” she whispered with a slow, careful nod, uncertain if
she should trust this man with her ludicrous suspicions of how she had arrived
here. “I just heard the story from a tour guide.”

“I do not understand.”

She took a deep breath, praying she wouldn’t regret telling
him the truth. “Where I come from this castle is in ruins. Aside from a few
walls, this dungeon is the only thing still intact.”

“But it is not in ruins, lass,” he patiently replied. “You
saw it for yourself.”

Her shoulders slumped. It all sounded quite ridiculous when
actually spoken out loud, but she had little choice other than to continue.
“They’re in ruins in my time. The year 2013.” Her stomach churned nervously. “I
honestly don’t know how I got here.”

Anna’s free hand wrapped around the pendant once more. She
fought the urge to shake her head in denial, not wanting to look as crazy as
she must have sounded.

He gave her hand a demanding squeeze. “Give me the truth,”
he ordered with a mixture of exasperation and amusement. “You are acting
honorably in assisting my escape. I care not to whom you might belong so long as
you do not attempt to betray me.”

Not entirely certain what he meant by those words, she
concentrated instead on what she could possibly say or do to prove she wasn’t
insane.

The British currency in her wallet sprang to mind. She
turned toward her purse and quickly dug through it. Eventually, she pulled out
a one pound coin and a ten pound note from the Bank of Scotland and dropped the
wallet back into her bag. “Here,” she said, handing the currency to him.

As he tilted the money toward the light, Anna pointed at the
date stamped on the coin to the right of Queen Elizabeth II’s head. “There. Do
you see that?”

“Two, zero, zero, eight.” His eyes darted around the coin
and then to the ten pound note. “Who the hell is this fool?”

Anna placed one hand on his forearm to steady herself as she
leaned in for a closer look. Not recognizing the man with his obviously
eighteenth-century powdered wig, she shrugged and struggled to keep her focus
on proving her claims, and not on the rock-hard muscles twitching beneath her
fingertips.

“And this woman?” Galen asked, waving the coin at her.

“That’s the Queen of England in my time.”

Much to Anna’s confusion, the man proceeded to bite the
coin. Speechless, she widened her eyes.

“Typical English,” he snorted. “You have been taken, lass.
This is not real silver.” He wiped the coin on his shirt and handed it to her.

She sighed in exasperation. “Silver isn’t commonly used for
coins where I’m from. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is the date.”

His eyes shifted back and forth from the coin in her hand to
the bank note in his. “Two, zero, zero, eight is the date?”

“Yes, that’s the date this coin was made. And here is the
date this was printed.” She pointed to the center of the bank note.

“Two, zero, one, zero,” he read with a shake of his head.
“And what does this say?” He pointed to the large words at the top of the note.

“Bank of Scotland,” she slowly replied. “You can’t read
that?”

“I don’t read English, woman,” he grumbled, shoving the bank
note at her. “Perhaps you can tell me what a ‘bank’ is and why the hell this is
in English if it clearly says Scotland.”

His surly attitude and what little she did know of
Scotland’s history with England made her uneasy about supplying him with too
much information. Considering there was no one around who would be able to
contradict her, she didn’t think lying to soften the truth was such a bad idea.
“English is widely spoken because of England’s efforts to colonize other parts
of the world, which is why I am from a place across the ocean.”

“Good Lord, woman, don’t tell me England will take over the
whole world!”

She laughed and patted his arm reassuringly. “No, there was
a revolt and England lost control over its colonies. Many people immigrated
there through the years, not just the English.”

“And what are you? Are you English? You speak strangely.”

As he turned those piercing gray orbs to her face, her
breath caught in her throat. This guy was simply too hot for her own good. “Um,
no, my parents were Scottish.”

His continued stare and silence unnerved her and she leaned
back to put some distance between them. She laughed apprehensively. “But none
of that is possible, right? People don’t simply travel back in time eight
hundred years, do they?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I do not know, lass. It is
the truth I would not have entertained such fantastic notions had you not
appeared to me in my dreams.”

Anna’s blood turned to ice. “I what?”

He reached for her pendant, capturing it between his thumb
and forefinger, his knuckles brushing against the tops of her breasts. “Ever
since I was thrown down there, I have had dreams of you aiding my escape. Your
red hair glowed almost like a halo, just like it did when you finally appeared
in the flesh.”

She shivered, partially in disbelief and partly in arousal.
“Are you sure it was me?”

“It is hard to forget the face of such a pretty lass,” he
whispered.

The heat from his touch burned across her chest, causing her
stomach to tingle. She couldn’t help but imagine his roughened hand flattened
against her skin as she traced his bottom lip with her tongue. A jolt of
electricity shot through the junction between her thighs, drawing her abruptly
out of her musings.

Galen’s brow knitted in concentration as he stared at the
pendant and then lifted his gaze to hers. His knuckles grazed her breasts again
as he released his hold on her necklace. His eyes darkened as they dropped to
her cleavage and he shifted his weight, pressing his hard, muscular thigh into
hers.

Anna swallowed hard, her head swimming with erotic visions
she had no business entertaining. What the hell was wrong with her? The man had
threatened to kill her and yet she thought of him as nothing more than walking
sex. It really had been too long.

Anxious to avoid his intense stare and the growing heat
between her legs, she softly asked, “Why were you thrown down there? I mean,
what does this Graham guy have against you?”

He pulled his hand away, lightly skipping the backs of his
fingers down her thigh as he cast his eyes toward the opposite wall. “It was
most likely because my life could fetch a much more handsome ransom than my
brother’s. Other than that, the man is cousin to the Campbell of Maree laird.”

Anna held her breath at the sour note in his voice as she
resisted the urge to melt against him. Hadn’t Neil Campbell mentioned that he
worked at Maree Castle?

“What’s wrong with the Campbells?” she quietly asked,
attempting a nonchalant tone.

“Their laird killed my father in battle about twelve years
ago.”

The blood drained from her face and she was grateful that he
didn’t turn to look at her. She pulled her purse protectively against her hip.
With her last name printed in bold letters upon her driver’s license and credit
cards, the last thing she needed was the man with the blade finding out she, too,
bore the name Campbell.

“And they subjugated themselves to the Gowrie,” he added
with a slight growl.

Icy fingers of apprehension wrapped around Anna’s heart.
James’ last name had been Gowrie. Dear Lord, could things get any worse? Not
only was her mother a Graham and her father a Campbell, but she had been
married to a Gowrie.

Galen turned his gaze to hers, searching her face. She held
her breath as his gray eyes blackened for a fleeting moment before the tension
left his face and he leaned the back of his head against the stone wall.

Several minutes passed as they sat motionless. Thoughts of
home and her past whirled around her weary mind, battling the heat of the man
next to her for attention.

“So, tell me, lass, to what family do you belong? You had
mentioned your father was Scottish.”

“None really.” She gulped silently. “My father abandoned my
mother and me when I was a baby. My mother went crazy with grief and I
practically raised myself. I work as a nurse now.”