Gibbie appeared in the kitchen doorway then and slunk over to him, whining. Mindy started forward, her own fear forgotten on seeing the dog’s distress.
If Gibbie was worried, then something was seriously wrong.
But Bran straightened and staggered backward, warding her off with an outstretched hand. “It’s no good, sweetness. You’ll only make it worse if you come to me.”
“But—” Mindy kept going anyway.
“I mean it, lass.” He shook his head, holding out both arms now.
His sword hilt had stopped sparking.
“It’ll ne’er work.” Sweat stood on his brow and he lowered his hands, clenching them. “I thought I had the strength to ignore it. To kiss you, satisfy the need blazing between us, and then . . .”
He shoved a hand through his hair, shook his head. “I see now that—”
“Is that sword evil?” Mindy glanced at it, remembering Jock’s words at the Hebridean House. “Did it warn you not to touch me? Is that why—”
“Och, nae, the Heartbreaker isn’t evil.” To her surprise, he laughed. “And it
wants
me to touch you. That’s why it sparked. And why”—he clicked his fingers at his dog, nodding once when Gibbie leaned into him—“the damned thing sent tongues of fire slicing into my side.”
Mindy could feel her jaw slipping. “I don’t understand—”
“It’s quite simple.” He looked right at her. “The sword’s telling me we’re destined to be mated.”
“Mated?”
The old- fashioned word sent a thrill jolting through her.
“Aye, mated.” He sounded anything but pleased. “And”—he looked ready to curse again—“considering I’m a ghost, my honor won’t let me agree.”
“But why me?”
He rubbed his brow. “Aside from the obvious”—his gaze went hot again, flicking her length—“considering the sword’s power, I suspect it feels we’re well suited. I’m no easy man, see you.” A reluctant smile tugged at his lips. “My pride in Barra is great. Seven hundred years strong, and with each century, my love for this wee bit isle hasn’t let much room in my heart for a woman.”
“Then why is there—”
“Room for you?” He looked at her, awareness crackling between them. “Some might say there’s never been a woman able to share my love for Barra. The women here”—he glanced at the little window, the misty gray sky, so brooding even at this early hour—“love the land as I do, but they know nothing else.
“You do.” He strode forward then and grabbed her wrist, pulling her to him. “You, above all others, can best appreciate why to call these wild, rugged isles home means no’ just to dwell here but to
live
.”
He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “That, Mindy-lass, will be why the Heartbreaker knows you are the one for me.”
On the words, he vanished, taking his blue-sparking sword and his dog with him. And leaving behind a horrible, aching void worse than anything Mindy had ever known.
But it was an emptiness she wasn’t going to accept.
Not now that he’d kissed her so passionately. And taught her the meaning of crazy- mad, earth-shattering sex without even touching a finger to her! And especially not after the things he’d just said to her.
Mindy’s heart began a slow, hard thumping and the most wondrous warmth spread through her, making her feel almost as if she were glowing inside.
She agreed with his sword. They were destined to be together. And—she was sure—if such a thing was even halfway possible, Scotland was the place where it could happen. She needed only to figure out the logistics.
And she would.
It was just a matter of time.
Chapter
12
Bran of Barra spun and tumbled through the thick gray mist of the Twilight World of the Great Beyond, sifting himself as fast as he could back to his beloved tower. Unfortunately, his fury slowed his passage through the dark place, which took severe umbrage to any souls daring to taint the fog-shrouded quiet with bursts of agitation.
Catching himself now, he set his jaw, trying to blank his expression. But it was too late. Already the whirling mists were darkening and jagged bolts of lightning ripped past him, bent on punishment. Some came so close he was sure they’d scorch his plaid or singe his beard.
Everywhere thunder boomed. Each deafening clap rolled over him like an angry, sulfurous wave, hurting his ears and echoing deep into the roiling black mist he couldn’t sift through fast enough.
He should have known better.
Others had complained—and warned—about the like. Telling tales of how the vast and empty resting place for the damned switched in an instant from an innocuous swirl of billowy gray mist to a hellish nightmare of icy, angriest black, each dark cloud shot through with punishing jolts of lightning and earsplitting thunder.
“Lucifer’s knees!” He clenched his fists, the infernal din rattling his teeth.
Just barely, he dodged a particularly wicked jolt of lightning, aimed—he shuddered—at a most sensitive part of his body.
Some of his dearest friends had been speared by such bolts, though, they insisted bravely, the pain was swift and vanished as quickly. Namely, once the victim released whatever foul mood or un-good thought had sullied his mind.
The Twilight World of the Great Beyond didn’t tolerate annoyance.
A
quirk
that had never before concerned Bran because he’d always sifted through in high fettle.
This passage was different.
He wasn’t in good spirits.
And at the moment, he deserved his foul humor.
But just when he was about to treat himself to an almighty scowl—jabbing, sulfur- stinking lightning bolts and thunder cracks, be damned—he landed with a great
whoosh
at his desired destination: his own opulent, well-appointed bedchamber on his precious Isle of Barra.
Regrettably, the room appeared occupied.
“I didn’t think you’d ever return.” Serafina stretched voluptuously in his bed, her dark, heavily kohled eyes a touch resentful.
Bran knuckled his own eyes, sure he was imagining her.
But the Saracen beauty
was
there.
Sitting up against the four-poster’s lavish bolsters, she toyed with the edge of a richly embroidered sheet drawn coyly to her breasts.
It was clear that those breasts, like the woman herself, waited naked beneath the bedcovers.
“Serafina!” There’d been a time Bran would’ve flashed a grin and tossed off his plaid. Now he glowered. “What are you doing here?”
She ignored his glare and licked a finger, trailing its wet tip slowly down her throat.
“I’ve been lonely.” Her voice was a smoky purr, as seductive and languorous as the way she stretched her arms over her head, letting the bedsheet slip down to reveal the ripe swells of her bosom.
A sensuous smile curved one corner of her mouth as she arched her back in a deliberate move to best display her lush, well- rounded breasts. Her large, dark-tipped nipples were drawn tight and thrusting in Bran’s direction.
He stared, blood roaring in his ears.
But it was fury, not passion, that set his pulse racing.
“Since when do you have time to be lonely?” He crossed his arms, staying where he was. “There are scores of men in the hall below, each one surely eager to—”
“They’re all fussing and stalking about.” She threw back the sheets and slipped from the bed, standing before him in all her bare-skinned glory. Her shining black hair fell in a glossy skein to her hips and, Bran noted with annoyance, she’d adorned her navel with a ruby.
“Your friends in the great hall have forgotten I exist,” she complained, pouting prettily. “I could dance naked on the high table and they wouldn’t notice.”
“I doubt that.” Bran strode across the bedchamber and opened the door, indicating she should leave. “I suggest you perform again. They’re sure to be appreciative.”
“They’ve turned into eunuchs!” She tossed back her hair, sending a waft of her musky perfume beneath his nose. But she made no move to go. “I could offer them the pleasure of the gods and they’d still not quicken with interest. They’ve all got their backs up about the noise and—”
“What noise?”
“If you’d been here, you might have noticed.” She cast him a sulky look, her red lips clamping tight.
“Aye, well, I haven’t been here, so tell me.” Bran snatched a plaid off a peg on the wall and swirled it around her nakedness.
Her eyes flashed hotly, but she hitched the plaid in place, knotting it deftly at one shoulder. “Everyone says it’s the moderns. They’re—”
“Moderns?”
Bran felt the floor dip under his feet. “There aren’t any such folk in my tower.”
“Perhaps not before you took yourself off, but they’re here now.” She looked pleased to impart such information. “There are scores and scores of them, stomping about the islet and making a racket all the living day. Hammering, sawing, digging, and”—she put back her shoulders, spite in her eye—“if some are to be believed, even tromping through your hall!”
“That cannae be.” Bran shook his head.
“Oh, no?” Serafina put a hand on her shapely hip. “I do not lie.”
“But . . .” Bran puzzled, squeezed the bridge of his nose.
A sick feeling spread through his gut. There
were
moderns running all over his islet. Like as not, they were also fussing about in the present-day equivalent of his tower. Leastways, he imagined they would be once it stood again. That was their purpose, after all. And last he’d looked, they were making excellent progress.
He’d been quite thrilled.
He’d just never dreamed their goings-on would disturb his own.
“You can ask Saor if you don’t believe me.” Serafina swept past him out the door. “He’s been up on the battlements these last days, watching it all unfold.”
The words spoken, she flashed him another look of pique and then flounced away, disappearing into the shadows of the stair tower.
Bran charged across the room the instant she vanished, unlatching and throwing back the shutters of the tall, arch-topped window beside his bed. He leaned out, bracing himself for whatever he’d see, but all that greeted him was a gust of cold, damp air and the sound of the waves crashing onto the rocks below his tower. The tides were running fast and a sickle moon edged the horizon with silver.
It’d stopped raining and a wash of brilliant stars lit the heavens.
Bran felt a fool.
The night sea, he knew, looked the same in all centuries.
And if a certain American he never should have kissed hadn’t turned his wits to mush, he’d have remembered that the windows of his bedchamber looked out onto open water.
Up on the battlements, with Saor, was where he needed to be.
His friend could fill him in on what had happened in his absence. Although he doubted even Saor would have satisfying answers. He, too, was a ghost, after all. And, like Bran, Saor enjoyed their raucous existence. Neither one of them had ever bothered to think too strenuously on the ins and outs of ghostdom.
They just enjoyed existing.
As did every one of Bran’s friends who were now, according to Serafina, prowling about the great hall, their usual nightly merrymaking disrupted and disturbed because Mindy Menlove was restoring MacNeil’s Tower.
Eager to get to the bottom of it, Bran hurried from his room and raced up the stairs to the battlements, taking the steps two at a time. He flung open the parapet door, bursting out onto the wall walk in the same moment Saor was ducking his head to step into the stair tower.
“Damnation!” Bran leapt aside, just avoiding a collision.
Saor jumped back, laughing. “Welcome back, you scoundrel!” He set his hands on his hips, flicking Bran up and down with an amused gaze. “You don’t look any worse for the wear, having succumbed to an American’s charms!”
“I haven’t succumbed to anyone,” Bran lied, hoping the bright starlight didn’t show his flush.
“But you
did
seduce her?” Saor’s smile flashed white.
“I—” Bran shoved a hand through his hair, stopping just before agitation had him roar that not only had he kissed Mindy; she’d enjoyed an earthshaking release while grinding herself on his thigh.
There were some things a man kept to himself.
Her passion had branded him.
And the memory was his alone.
So he assumed his most chiefly stance and fixed his friend with a stern eye. “How I appear and what I’ve done is my own concern and no one else’s. I’d rather hear why you don’t look as if the end of the world has come to our fine, fourteenth-century Barra? A certain Saracen beauty claimed as much when I found her in my bedchamber!”
“Ah, well . . .” Saor went to stand by the parapet wall, bracing his hands on the stone. “There has been quite a stir; ’tis true.”
“The moderns and their restoration work?” Bran raised one eyebrow, waiting.
But before Saor could reply, the clatter of claws on stone interrupted them and Gibbie appeared in the tower doorway. Head down and tail wagging, he trotted over to join them. He sniffed along the base of the walling and then dropped onto his haunches beside Bran.
“So you’ve seen them?” Saor spoke as soon as Gibbie settled.
“To be sure, I’ve seen them.” Bran flicked his wrist to produce a meaty bone for his dog, and after giving it to him, he shot Saor an annoyed look.
“A man named Jock MacGugan, a fisher by trade, has rallied the men of Barra.” Bran glanced at Saor, but when he only nodded, Bran went on. “They must have been working for a good while or at incredible speed. Last I saw, the seaward walls and the tower stood to a goodly height.
