Love Came Just in Time (20 page)

The next thing he knew, Megan was wielding a fire extinguisher. When the dust settled, there were no flames, and hardly any smoke. And no serviceable motor.

“Hell,” Gideon said.

Megan looked up at him. “Do these kinds of things happen to you normally, or are you just having an off week?”

“The elements are combining against me.”

“Maybe somebody's trying to tell you something.”

“Go on holiday?”

“That'd be my guess.”

Gideon looked at her and considered. His car was ruined. He'd already tried the inn phone that morning and found it unresponsive. There he was, loitering in backwoods Scotland with no computer, no modem, and no cell phone.

And Megan McKinnon.

“Ah
ha
,” he said, feeling the force of the moment reverberate through him.

What could it hurt to take a day or two and put work aside? It wasn't as if he could do much about it anyway, short of walking to the village and hiring a car. It would just be time wasted. Stephen might not be interested in the company, but Adam MacClure was. He could hold down the fort for a day or so.

Besides, Christmas was right around the corner. People all over the world were contemplating holidays with their families. There was food to be prepared, gifts to be wrapped, carols to be sung. He hadn't done any of that in years. Christmas had always seemed a perfect time to catch up on things at the office. Stephen had always thrown a lord-of-the-manor type of affair, doing his damndest to revive old customs. Gideon had thought it politic to just stay in London and not spoil Stephen's party.

But now he was, for all intents and purposes, prisoner on the Scottish border with only time on his hands and Megan McKinnon to admire.

Damn, but the holidays were shaping up brilliantly.

“I think,” he said, reaching out and relieving Megan of the fire extinguisher, “that a holiday is just the thing for me.”

She blinked. “You do?”

He shrugged and smiled. “I hear they're quite therapeutic. Perhaps you'd care to show me how they're done?”

He watched her look at him, and then her eyes narrowed. “Why?” she demanded. “So you can sneak in some fixing?”

Gideon shook his head. “I was wrong to even bring it up. I apologize.”

“Well,” she said, looking quite off balance. Gideon suspected she'd been bracing herself to really let him have it.

“Well,” she repeated, “I just don't need to be fixed.”

“No, you don't.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “What's the deal with your new angle here?”

“No angle. No agenda. I've just come to realize rather suddenly that I'm the one who needs some fixing. I work too much.”

She reached up and felt his forehead. “You're a little warm. Maybe you caught a bug from being out in the rain.”

Gideon took her hand and pulled her back into the house. He'd caught a malady and it had red hair and green eyes. He set the fire extinguisher down and shut the front door.

“I'm officially on holiday. What should we do first? Decorate the place?” He looked about the entryway. “We could investigate the nooks and crannies of the inn, or learn how to cook. Sing a carol or two in front of the fire.” The more he thought about it, the more appealing it sounded. Perhaps he would stretch his holiday into three days instead of two. After all, Christmas was in three days and he certainly wouldn't get any work done then. “Read Dickens before the fire,” he said, his head filling with ideas. “That Ghost of Christmas Past is one of my all time favorite characters. Why, I'm starting to think this will be brilliant,” he said, beaming down at her.

“Can't.”

He blinked. “I beg your pardon.”

She smiled up at him. “I have to work. See ya.”

And she turned and walked back to the stairs.

“Work?” he asked, aghast. “
Now
?”

She looked over her shoulder. “I'm here to work, Gideon. Remember? My brother's castle? I have to go take a look at it.”

“But, surely that can wait . . .”

“Nope, I've got to get right on it.”

“But—”

She waved at him over her shoulder as she mounted the steps. Gideon stared after her in shock.

“But it's Christmas!” he called after her.

She didn't stop.

Well, this just wouldn't do. Gideon watched her disappear upstairs and frowned. He tapped his foot impatiently, which generally provided him with stunning solutions. All it did now was make him dizzy. He shook his head. How could she be so consumed with work this close to Christmas?

“Work can wait,” he said, trying the words out on his tongue. They felt, surprisingly enough, quite good.

“It isn't everything,” he added.

That felt even better.

“Why, holidays are a
good
thing,” he said, with enthusiasm.

It occurred to him, suddenly, that he was possibly responsible for Megan's desire to work through the holidays. Good heavens, had he been the one to drive her to this madness?

Well, he would rectify that. He had just recently seen the light and burned with the enthusiasm of the freshly converted. Holidays were good for a body. Too much work was hazardous to one's health.

And he would know.

MEGAN TUGGED ON her leather jacket and shoved her feet back into her still-damp boots. It was raining outside anyway and she would get soaked within minutes, but it didn't matter. She had work to do. A little rain wasn't going to stop her because she'd be damned before she would fail at this job. She would show them all that she could follow through, do what she said she would, make things happen. Her family would finally think she was a success.

As would Gideon.

Not that she cared what he thought. No sir.

She stepped out into the hallway and shut the door firmly. No time like the present to start down the road to success. She put her shoulders back and marched smartly down the hallway.

“Damn the gel if she hasn't ruined him for decent labor.”

Megan froze. Then she put her fingers in her ears and gave them a good wiggling. Surely there was no one else in the hallway. She was just hearing things.

“She may as well have gelded the poor lad!”

Megan whirled around. She would have squeaked, but she had no breath for it.

There, standing not fifteen feet from her was a man. A big man. A man wearing a sword. In fact, he looked to be wearing chain mail too, what she could see of it under his folded arms and knightly overcoat-like tunic. He might have looked like something out of an historical wax museum collection if it hadn't been for the disapproving look he was giving her.

Megan gulped. “Help,” she whispered.

“Doin' a full day's work's no sin,” the man grumbled.

“Help,” Megan squeaked. “Help, help!”

“You're fillin' me boy's head with womanly notions!” the man exclaimed. He unfolded his arms and shook his finger at her. “I'd take it more kindly if you'd stop with it!”

“Gideon, help!” Megan screamed, backing up rapidly.

“Megan, good heavens!” Gideon called from a distance.

Megan heard him thumping up the stairs behind her, but she didn't dare take her eyes off the knight to look at him. She backed up into him and pointed down the hallway.

“Look,” she whispered.

“Look at what?”

“There's someone in the hallway. Look, down there!”

“I can't see a thing,” Gideon said.

“He's standing right there!”

“Who?”

Megan spun around, grabbed him by the tunic front and shook him. “There's a man at the end of the hallway wearing chain mail and a sword, you idiot!” she said. “Open your eyes and look!”

Gideon put his hands on her shoulders to steady himself. “Megan, you're thinking too much about work—”

“See?” the man behind her complained. “Look at what you've done to him, gel!”

Megan pointed back behind her. “He's talking to me. There at the end of the hall.”

Gideon put his arms around her. “Now, Megan—”

“Don't you ‘Now, Megan' me,” she warned. “Mrs. Pruitt said there were ghosts and I'm telling you there's one standing at the end of the hallway!”

Gideon gave her a squeeze. “If it will make you feel any better, I'll go have a look.”

Megan looked over her shoulder and squeaked at the new addition to the troops.

“Damn ye, Fulbert, dinnae scare me wee granddaughter like that!” a red-haired man in a kilt exclaimed in tones of thunder.

“I was only tellin' her—”

“I heard what ye said—”

“Wait,” Megan said frantically as Gideon tried to move past her. “Now there are two of them!”

Gideon frowned at her. “I think you've been working too hard.” He sidestepped her and started down the hallway.

Megan watched in horror as the kilted one drew a sword and waved it menacingly at the first.

“They're going to kill each other!” She leaped toward Gideon. “Duck,” she said, jerking on his arm. “You're going to get your head chopped off!”

Gideon pushed her gently back into the doorway of his bedroom. “Megan,” he said calmly, “there's nothing in the hallway. I'm going to go have a look in your room. You stay here until I get back.”

Megan watched him turn and walk straight into the path of a swinging sword.

“Oh my gosh!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands over her eyes so she wouldn't have to watch him be decapitated.

“Megan?”

Megan paused, then peeked at him from between her fingers.

Gideon was standing in the middle of the hallway, unhurt. But the two swordsmen were going at each other with murder in their eyes, neatly fighting right around him.

“Don't you see them?” Megan asked incredulously.

“See who?”

“Those two men fighting? Right in front of your nose, Gideon!”

Gideon put out his hand, waved it up and down, side to side, then shook his head.

“Nothing.”

Megan rolled her eyes. “I can hear them calling each other names.” She paused. “And not very nice names, either.”

“
Enough !
” a voice roared from her left.

Megan fell back against the door with a gasp. A man strode angrily up the stairs. He was wearing a kilt as well, along with a very long broadsword. His cap was tilted at a jaunty angle; the feather flapped madly as he leaped up the remaining steps. He advanced on the two fighters.

“By the saints, you lads are trying the limits of my patience today! You, Fulbert, leave young Megan be. She has enough to think on without you tormenting her.”

“But look what she's done to me nevvy—”

“She's done nothing that didn't need doing. Now, be off with you!”

The first man shoved his sword back into its scabbard, threw Megan a disgruntled look, then vanished.

“And you, Hugh,” the one seemingly in charge scolded. “I'm ashamed of you! Brawling in the passageway thusly!”

The red-haired one ducked his head. “I was just defendin' me wee one's honor.”

“Well, I can't say as how I blame you,” the other said, with a nod, “but it isn't seemly to hack at the blighter in front of her.”

“Aye, Ambrose. Ye're right, of course.”

“Then off with you, Hugh.”

The other put away his sword, then vanished.

Then Megan watched in astonishment as the commanding one turned and made her a deep bow.

“My deepest apologies for the disturbance, granddaughter. Please carry on with your day.”

And then he walked through Gideon and disappeared into the closet at the end of the hallway.

Megan bolted after him and jerked open the closet door, fully expecting to see someone hiding inside. Instead she came face-to-face with stacks of bed linens. She clutched the door frame and came to a quick conclusion.

“I'm losing it,” she announced.

“I think I agree,” Gideon said, coming up behind her. “You need a holiday.”

“What I need is some fresh air.” She turned, pushed past him, and walked down the passageway. “Maybe I should go get some work done. That would probably snap me right back into reality.”

“I've been a bad influence on you,” Gideon said, trailing after her.

“No, I think you've been just the opposite,” Megan said, thumping down the stairs. She reached the entryway well ahead of him and strode to the front door purposefully. A nice walk to the castle would be just the thing to clear her head of the surreal experience she had just had.

She opened the door and peeked out—into a hurricane.

“It's just a little rain,” she said. She turned the collar up on her coat and steeled herself for the worst.

A large hand caught the door before she could open it any further.

“Megan, it's raining too hard to go out.”

“I don't care,” she said, putting her shoulders back. “I have work to do.”

Gideon eased her back from the door and shut it. He turned her around and looked down at her gravely.

“There's more to life than work,” he said.

“But,” she said, gesturing toward the door, “I need to look at the castle—”

“It's been there for centuries. It will be there for another day or two.”

She looked up at him with a scowl. “Why the sudden change of heart?”