Mystical Warrior (9 page)

Kenzie squatted down in front of him. “I’m asking as a friend, Trace, that ye please let Fiona stay,” he said quietly.

Trace lifted his head to look the highlander in the eyes. “I came within one blow of killing a man the last time I got between a woman and her demons, and now she’s dead, the guy who killed her is serving five years for manslaughter, and I got kicked out of the military.” He dropped his head back into his hands. “As much as I’d like to help you, I’ve got my own demons to fight.”

“What stopped you from killing him?”

He looked up again. “Only the knowledge that I was as much to blame for her death as he was.”

“It’s been my experience that intelligent men learn from their mistakes, my friend, and I have every reason to believe you won’t make that particular mistake again.”

“Oh, I won’t. I have no intention of ever getting involved with another woman.”

Kenzie chuckled at that and lifted Trace with him as he stood up. “No offense, Huntsman,” he said, hefting him over his shoulder. “But with your stones—even shriveled as they are from the cold—I can’t quite see you becoming a monk.”

“Lovely, Gregor,” Trace muttered, gritting his teeth at being carried like a stinking sack of grain. “How friggin’
nice
of you to notice.”

“G
o ahead, Peeps,” Trace drawled, shifting the ice pack on his knee. “You keep right on talking about me as if I’m not here, and I’ll continue telling your husband all about your more colorful teenage antics.”

Maddy turned away from Fiona and Gabriella to glare at him, her nose wrinkled against the eau de skunk still oozing from every pore on his body. “Don’t you believe one of his stories, William. I was a saint compared to Midnight Bay’s infamous hell-raising Huntsman.” She moved her gaze around the room. “Jeesh, Trace, would it kill you to pick up a dust rag once in a while? Everything in this place looks like it was here when you bought the house, including the dirt.”

“That’s because it was.”

Maddy looked around again in surprise. “All this stuff is old man Peterson’s junk?” Her eyes turned sad. “Do you own anything?” she whispered.

“I own my boat, my truck, and a falling-down house that sits on twelve acres of oceanfront property. But if you don’t slap a bandage on my knee so I can go fishing tomorrow, I won’t be able to pay the taxes on any of them.”

“Sorry, big man, you’re laid up for at least a week. If you push that knee, you might end up needing surgery, and that’ll put you out of commission for over a month.”

Trace closed his eyes on a stifled groan.

He’d lost the battle with Kenzie. Not only was Fiona still there but she was in his living room, receiving instructions from his cousin—who was a
geriatric
nurse—on how to take care of him for the next few days. It was the least Fiona could do, Kenzie had said right after he’d called Maddy, for not immediately putting the skunks in a dark corner of the barn as he’d instructed.

God only knew where the little pissants were now; probably hiding under the porch recharging their stink guns for another shot at him.

He still couldn’t feel his face, his constantly weeping eyes were so bloodshot that everything appeared red, and half a bottle of Scotch hadn’t done a damn thing to kill the foul taste in his mouth except make him just drunk enough not to care that he smelled like a skunk.

“If ye want, I can go out fishing with Rick tomorrow,” William offered.

“And I’ll come back in the morning,” Gabriella interjected, “and help Fiona … um … straighten things up here.”

Wonderful. Then he’d have
two
women messing with his stuff.

Trace gave the young girl a drunken smile. “That’s very kind of you, Gabriella, but I rather like my things just as
they are.” He looked at William. “And no offense, Killkenny, but I still haven’t recovered from the last time I took you out fishing.”

William gave him a pained look but then suddenly grinned. “Not a problem; Rick can run the winch this time, and I will drive the boat.”

“No!” Maddy yelped, drowning out Trace’s muttered curse, both of them horrified at the thought of William getting behind the wheel of his boat, considering the Irishman couldn’t keep his
truck
off the shoulder of the road. That’s why William was still riding his motorcycle long after everyone else had put theirs away for the season, as he claimed straddling a bike was just like riding a horse. And drivers and pedestrians—and mailboxes—everywhere thanked God that Killkenny didn’t mind the cold.

“I mean, really, William,” Maddy said more softly, smiling at her husband. “Rick is more than capable of pulling Trace’s weight for the next few days.”

Feeling his burning eyelids growing heavy, Trace sighed in defeat. Maybe he’d just stay drunk for the next few days. That way, he wouldn’t care if they all climbed onto his boat and sailed away—just as long as he wasn’t on it with them.

He finally found relief from the fumes by falling asleep to the rhythmic chatter of everyone planning his week without him, likely right down to which one of them got to organize his sock drawer.

When Trace woke up to sunlight hitting his face and found himself in his bed, although he had no recollection of how he’d gotten there, he snapped his eyes shut again with an agonized groan.

Christ, he stank.

His head felt like someone was striking it with a sledgehammer, and he hoped like hell that was a bandage on his knee and not fluid making it so swollen he couldn’t even bend it. His eyes were still running and apparently had been all night, judging by the crust around them, and when he opened them again, everything was still blurry.

He was tempted to just roll over and go back to sleep, but somewhere in the foggy regions of his throbbing mind, he remembered hearing Maddy say something to Fiona about rubbing his knee with horse liniment.

He sat up with another groan. No way was he letting that walking disaster anywhere near him; if she wasn’t tripping over her own two feet, she was setting booby traps for
him
to trip over.

How in hell had she gotten that heavy compressor up on that barrel? And for chrissakes, why? The damn thing had wheels on it, so why hadn’t she simply wheeled it under the workbench? What, was he going to find his microwave on top of the fridge when he hobbled into the kitchen this morning? And the TV sitting on a footstool next to the fireplace—would he find it on top of the china cabinet he was using to hold his rifles?

Trace threw off the blankets to take a look at his knee and saw that he was wearing pajamas.

Only he was pretty sure he didn’t own pajamas.

And he sure as hell wouldn’t own any with Big Bird and Elmo on them.

He pulled the shirt away from his body and found a cardboard note tied to one of the buttons. He rubbed his blurry eyes, trying to focus on the words.
You’re getting
your Christmas present early, cousin,
he read,
so you won’t give Fiona nightmares.

He tore the card off with a snort. Just as soon as he could walk again, he was shaving Maddy bald.

Where in hell had she found adult-sized
Sesame Street
pajamas?

Trace suddenly stilled at the sound of his porch door squeaking open. He lay back with a muttered curse when he heard Misneach race into the kitchen, and pulled the blankets up over his head. But when that only imprisoned him in fumes, he tucked the blankets under his chin and pretended to be asleep.

He heard his bedroom door squeak open and cracked his eyes just enough to see Fiona’s head appear, her own eyes huge with a bit of curiosity and a whole lot of caution and her nose wrinkled against the smell. Trace gave a soft snore, but instead of that getting her to leave as he hoped, she crept up to the foot of his bed.

Misneach was far less shy. The pup ran past her and jumped up onto the bed with an excited yelp, making Trace bolt upright when the dog nearly unmanned him.

God save him from women and puppies.

“Misneach, no!” Fiona cried, scrambling after her pet.

Seeing the train wreck heading his way, Trace shoved the sneezing pup off the bed in order to catch Fiona when she tripped on some of his clothes on the floor, and deftly guided her past his groin by spinning her around and laying her down beside him.

The woman gave a startled gasp that ended when she went perfectly still, and Trace realized she was holding her breath—and probably not because he stank.

He tossed back the covers and swung his pajama-clad legs over the side of the bed, stifling a groan when his right knee protested the movement. “Here’s an idea; why don’t you go into the kitchen and … cook something while I get dressed? And then while I’m eating, you can hunt through the closets for a pair of crutches I’m pretty sure old man Peterson owned. Then I’ll go to work, and you can …” He waved at the air, keeping his back to her. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe you could ride your elephant into town and buy yourself a new coat or something.”

“Madeline said you can’t go to work for a week,” she whispered, still lying on the bed, still holding herself perfectly still.

Trace gave a snort. “The last time I listened to Peeps, I spent two nights in the county jail.” He started unbuttoning his pajama top, figuring that stripping it off might get her to leave. “You could try looking in the closet in the mudroom for those crutches. I remember seeing them, I’m just not sure where.” He shrugged the shirt off and let it fall onto the bed behind him. “Or they could be hanging in the shed,” he added, just as the bed dipped and he heard her gasp.

Oh, Christ.
He’d forgotten. This time,
he
went perfectly still at the feel of her fingers moving over the maze of scars that ran from his shoulders down to his waist.

“What happened?” she whispered.

He stood up to get away from her feathery touch, pulling on the pajama top as he gritted his teeth and limped to the door. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I saw those crutches in the shed,” he said, hobbling down the hall to the bathroom.

He shut the door softly behind him, then lowered himself onto the hamper and stared at the floor. Goddamn it, if Gregor thought he was bluffing about torching his own
house, the highlander obviously didn’t know shit about fighting real demons.

Fiona was so mad at herself she could just spit. How could she have been so insensitive as to ask him about his scars, much less be so rude as to touch them, too? It was obvious that Trace was self-conscious about them, even if he had tried to appear otherwise. She didn’t know what sort of weapon made such terrible scars, but she did wonder how any man could survive that kind of horrible injury.

She should apologize to him for being so insensitive.

Or maybe she should start by apologizing for his getting sprayed by the skunks.

And for his knee injury, and for her being responsible for his not being able to earn the money it was apparent he desperately needed.

Fiona stopped scrubbing the counter and threw the dishrag into the now spotless sink filled with hot, soapy water. No, she should probably start by apologizing for cleaning his barn and cutting the weeds out of his driveway and
then
move on to her other transgressions.

Kenzie had explained to her yesterday, while Trace had been soaking in the tub, that even though he knew she had meant well, men did not care to have a woman point out their shortcomings by doing their chores for them. Men—and, apparently, Trace Huntsman in particular, Kenzie had explained—didn’t like feeling indebted to anyone, especially a woman.

Her brother had then gone on to point out that a man’s possessions were always off-limits. She’d had no business rearranging Trace’s tools, much less borrowing them
without asking his permission first. And if she’d been working so hard because she wanted Trace to like her, Kenzie had said, she was going about it all wrong. Sharing her eggs was neighborly, but taking over his home was a wife’s privilege, not a tenant’s.

Fiona looked around the dirty, disorderly, completely dysfunctional kitchen and gave a disheartened sigh at the realization that she was doing it again.

But she simply couldn’t stand to see anyone living like this.

And really, she didn’t care if Trace liked her; she was only protecting herself. As it was now, she wouldn’t be able to stop picturing him lying in his bed, his clothes smelling of fish and thrown onto the floor, gobs of cobwebs hanging from his ceilings, and dust an inch thick covering his furniture.

She’d noticed that the rifles in the china cabinet didn’t have any dust on them. And even though his truck wasn’t pretty to look at, its engine sounded like a purring kitten.

So what made a man particular about some things but not about others?

And really, did she even care?

Well … maybe she cared a little bit, because she’d noticed that Trace seemed to be working equally hard to make sure that
she
liked
him
.

She just didn’t know why.

Unless it was because of his friendship with her brother.