It was an arch Mindy recognized, but one that appeared so different in the blackness of deep shadow and dancing medieval torchlight.
Bran of Barra looked even more medieval.
At least six feet four of pure Highland testosterone, he was simply overwhelming. His portrait’s twinkling blue eyes and roguish grin didn’t do him justice.
The dream image came close, but now . . . in a riled state, he was flat-out magnificent.
Mindy stared at him, mouth dry and knees knocking.
The words
dinnae ken
—and everything else he said in his rich, buttery-smooth burr—hung in the air between them. His voice was deep and real, almost tactile. It was a sensual touch sliding around her. The deliciously sexy Scottish burr mocked and taunted, making her pulse leap and igniting sparks of female awareness even as every living inch of her quivered and trembled with nerves.
She’d vowed to never again be moved by anything Scottish.
That she noticed his burr made her face flame and her head pound. Admitting that his rugged
I can toss you over my shoulder, carry you up the tower stairs, and ravish you
good looks were appealing was even more galling.
She’d been kilted and jilted once.
She wouldn’t be hoodwinked again. Most especially, she wouldn’t be fooled by a seven- hundred-years-dead Scotsman. Even if he did have a melt-her-panties burr, she was immune and would stay that way.
As if he knew, his eyes narrowed and—shades of
Twilight Zone
—his sword’s crystal pommel stone began to glimmer with a pulsing blue radiance.
“Damnation!” He clamped a hand over the gemstone, his scowl turning fierce. “Away with you, whoe’er you are! There are others about who’d do more than just glower if they chanced upon you!”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Mindy straightened, heat scalding her cheeks.
No Scotsman, alive, ghostly, or otherwise, was ever going to
do
her again.
“I’m Mindy Menlove”—she lifted her chin to shoot daggers at him—“and I’ve already met the others, so you can’t frighten me with them.”
“What others?” He flashed a glance at the door arch, his brows snapping together as he scanned the shadows. “Was Saor one of them?”
“Say who?” Mindy blinked. She started to tell him about the long gallery of ghosts, but before she could open her mouth, he was right in front of her. His big body blotted everything except his broad, tartan-draped chest and shoulders that were almost indecently muscled.
The hot-eyed look he gave her
was
indecent.
So much so that her breath caught and her knees almost buckled.
She bit her lip and tried to scoot away, but he caught her wrist and jerked her close against him. So close, she could feel the rough weave of his plaid, the rock-marble hardness of his chest, and—she hardly believed it, considering—the soft brush of his breath on her cheek. She could also smell him. The bracing scent of cold, fresh air flooded her senses. It was a heady, outdoorsy scent laced with just a dash of wool, woodsmoke, and pure unadulterated man.
Intoxicating, and unlike anything in a bottle.
In fact, she was sure men would pay any price if such a scent were on the market.
Too bad the scent belonged to a man who wasn’t a real, live man.
As if he sensed the thought, he circled his thumb across the sensitive skin of her inner wrist, his touch as real and warm as the living day. It also sent a rush of tingly shivers streaking up her arm.
Mindy’s heart galloped.
He grinned.
“You’re a ghost!” She tried to jerk free and couldn’t.
His grip was like iron.
His gaze heated again and he stepped back just enough to sweep her with the kind of look that would have made her go all soft and hot under other circumstances. It did make her feel as though she should cover herself. For one crazy moment, she feared she might even be naked. After all, if she was standing here conversing with a ghost, who knew what else was possible? But then his eyes glinted with some indefinable emotion and he released her. He stepped back only long enough to brace his hands on the table on either side of her, effectively caging her within his arms.
“Aye, I’m a ghost.” He sounded proud. “We’ve already discussed that. And it’s no’ me we’re discussing. Saor, and others here, would plunder your sweetness in a trice. They’re well- lusted, insatiable souls who’d waste no time showing you that lips as lush as yours are meant for kissing or that—”
“Kissing was the last thing the other ghosts wanted.” Mindy swallowed. He’d brought his face so close to hers that he could easily kiss her now if he wished to do so.
She feared he might.
He’d certainly meant to in her dream.
As for now . . .
She could see the rapid beat of his pulse at his throat. She also didn’t miss the slight jerking of muscle in his jaw or the wiry, copper-bright hairs plainly visible where his plaid dipped low across his powerful chest. The hairs glistened like gold in the torchlight.
Swallowing, she tore her gaze away, forcing her mind to the bandy-legged, bushy-browed gallery ghosts with their scowls and shouted threats.
“The other ghosts yelled at me.” She blurted the words, nerves making her voice rise. Chest hair was so her undoing. She took a deep breath, willing herself to think only of the crusty old ghosts. “They rushed forward to surround me, rattling their swords and—gah!”
She jumped, her eyes widening as an enormous gray beast streaked past them to pounce on the discarded beef rib. Clearly a dog—though much larger and more shaggy than any canine she’d ever seen—the animal hunkered down near the hearth fire to devour his bone.
He kept his gaze on them and as he did so, Mindy would’ve sworn he was grinning.
He was certainly in beef-rib-induced ecstasy.
“He’s Gibbie.” The sudden warmth in Bran of Barra’s voice startled her. Actually, it would’ve melted her if he hadn’t been, well, Bran of Barra.
Mindy frowned.
He was a Scottish MacNeil. And worst of all, he was a ghost. As was his dog, undoubtedly. Their relationship shouldn’t matter a fig to her. But the way they were looking at each other squeezed her heart.
“He’s yours?” She spoke the obvious. The dog’s enthusiastic tail swishes and the devotion in his eyes proved their bond.
“Gibbie’s been mine for over seven hundred years.” Bran kept his gaze on the dog as he spoke, his expression softening. “He was mine in life and then”—he paused to shake his head, as if at a wonder—“when I was no more, he was there to greet me, tail wagging and happy as you see him now. We’ve been together ever since.”
“So dogs do . . .” Mindy couldn’t finish.
She blinked instead, and then swallowed against the rising heat in her throat. She loved dogs and had always wanted one. But flying wasn’t conductive to having a four-legged friend. And Hunter wouldn’t allow dogs at the Folly, claiming that he was allergic to dander.
Bran of Barra looked as if he could get high on the smell of wet dog and laugh out loud at the sight of muddy paw tracks on a just swept and polished floor. Even if the rush-strewn floor they were presently standing on looked mired by worse muck than mere mud.
Staring at that floor now, and at the furry beast blissfully cracking his bone, was enough to bring Mindy’s world crashing down around her.
She might have been forced to accept ghosts, both see-through ones and this newest, muscle- ripped, and capable-of-grabbing-her-wrist-in-an-iron-lock-grip variety, but time slips or whatever altered the appearance of the kitchen was outside her belief system.
Time travel, sifting place, and whatnot belonged in novels. As did sexy Scottish ghosts and—it had to be said—their tongue-lolling, four-legged cohorts.
Mindy closed her eyes, sure she was losing it.
But when she looked again, nothing had changed. Bran of Barra was still crowding her space, trapping her against a kitchen table that, although of a similar size and sturdiness, was much less worn than the Folly’s antique, age-smoothed refectory table.
And Gibbie the ghost dog was still gnawing happily on his beef rib.
Mindy took a deep breath and released it slowly. “So dogs . . .” She tried again, only to have the words jam in her throat.
“Aye, they do . . . wait for us,” Bran of Barra confirmed, looking away from his dog to pierce her with another heated blue stare. “You can take a lesson from Gibbie. Something you’ll heed if you’re wise.”
“If I’m wise?” Mindy bristled.
His swift reversal back to towering menace banished any burgeoning sense of sympathy she might’ve felt upon his dog’s arrival. Especially with him clearly set to use the beast to frighten her.
“I think you’re mistaken,” she said, taking up a defiant stance.
She tossed back her hair, trying to pretend he wasn’t a ghostly Highlander, but the Texan who’d once planted himself on a first-class armrest and refused to budge from an overbooked flight.
The memory of security carrying him off the plane gave her courage.
“Some might say I’d be wiser”—she lifted her chin, using her coolest tone—“to stop talking to a ghost.”
“Aye, you would.” To her surprise, he grinned.
Stepping back at last, he flicked his fingers to produce another well-roasted, succulent beef rib. “Ho, Gibbie!” he called, holding out the tidbit. “Show the lass how ravenous you are.”
Gibbie leapt up and flew toward them, the gnawed bone forgotten. He slid to a skidding halt at Bran’s feet, his entire body quivering with excitement.
In a blink, he plopped onto his haunches and raised his paw, raking the air.
“That’s a good laddie.” Bran of Barra gave him the new beef rib, which, along with Gibbie, disappeared in a flash as the dog nipped the bone, streaked across the rushes, and then—Mindy’s jaw slipped—ran right through the solid stones of the kitchen wall.
Mindy’s cool demeanor vanished like a puff of smoke.
Even so, she held her ground.
“If you did that to prove he’s a ghost dog, you needn’t have bothered.” She hoped her voice didn’t sound as shaky as she felt. “I already believed you.”
“Ah . . .” Bran of Barra hooked his thumbs in his sword belt and rocked back on his heels. “But now you’ve seen how greedy MacNeil males are. How
ravenous
we can be when a tempting sweetmeat is dangled before us.”
“Meaning?” Mindy was sure she didn’t want to know.
He grinned and shrugged. But then he sent a pointed look at the door arch.
Mindy followed his gaze and understood at once. He didn’t mean what she could see in the archway—the inky shadows and a single, smoking wall torch—but the noises issuing from beyond the kitchen’s entry.
A low swell of raucous voices and other assorted uproar, sounds that she hadn’t noticed, rose from a near distance. But she heard now, her ears catching bursts of male and female laughter, the unmistakable
clink
of tankards, and the scrape of wooden bench legs on stone. It was the kind of mayhem one associated with medieval merrymaking.
And beneath it all—the realization struck terror in Mindy’s heart—came the ceaseless roar of the sea, the sound of waves crashing over rocks and receding.
Mindy’s blood chilled.
No one loved the ocean more than she did, but there wasn’t any pounding surf anywhere near Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Nor did the waves she heard sound like any she knew. The noise was real and even recognizable, but more distant than if she’d pressed her ear to a seashell.
It was as if she was listening over a space that couldn’t be measured in miles.
Like—Mindy swallowed—she was hearing through time.
A denial rose in her throat, but before she could form the words, a loud skirl of pipes and the scream of fiddles filled the chill, smoky air. Somewhere dogs barked and—she was sure—a woman screeched, then laughed. The sounds of vigorous dancing followed, stamping feet and lots of manly whoops.
Mindy began to tremble.
“Yon is no place for Americans.” Bran of Barra spoke the words close to her ear, the soft brush of his lips against her hair almost a kiss.
“Begone, Mindy Menlove, before one of my men decides to prove it to you.”
“You don’t understand.” She whipped around to argue, amazed her legs still held her. “I want nothing more than . . .”
The words died in her throat.
Bran of Barra was gone.
So were the floor rushes and the soot smears that had blackened the kitchen walls. Vanished, too, were the torches. And the only sound besides the patter of rain was the steady hum of the dishwasher.
That, and the racing of her heart.
A soft footfall behind her and—she started—the faintest rustle of wool.
“Remember Gibbie and his bone, lass.” The words hushed past her. “You’ve been warned.”
And she had.
Not that it mattered.
She was already up to her ears in paranormal madness and something told her ghost dogs, sounds of merrymaking, and waves that weren’t there were just the beginning.
As for Bran of Barra . . .
He didn’t fool her for an instant. It wasn’t his high-spirited friends and their carouse that she needed to worry about.
It was him.
Chapter 4
Bran of Barra stood before his kitchen cook fire and wondered how in the blazes an American named Mindy Menlove had found her way into his keep. He couldn’t shake the damnable feeling that her presence in his kitchens went beyond the sword’s magic that made her shimmer inside the Heartbreaker’s blue glow in his bailey and then—he shuddered—within his own bedchamber walls.
