Perfect Timing (3 page)

If anything on earth soothed Quincy, it was being in the arena-cum-stable at the break of dawn before any of his employees arrived to disturb the quiet. He loved the smells that were synonymous with horses—freshly turned straw, molasses-coated grain, hay waiting to be forked, and manure. The fabulous aroma of frying bacon from his forewoman Pauline’s upstairs viewing-room apartment added to the bouquet. Though Quincy no longer ate bacon, he still appreciated the scent.

As was his habit, he made his rounds, visiting every mare and stallion to make sure all was well before ending his tour at Beethoven’s stall. The stud was Quincy’s special baby, and for reasons he’d never clearly defined, he always lingered with him the longest, finding a sense of peace that seemed to elude him everywhere else. Beethoven, a gorgeous black, nickered in greeting and stepped over for his morning ration of petting. The horse was such a love bug that Quincy often joked that Beethoven would morph into a lapdog if he could. The huge beast laid his massive head on Quincy’s shoulder, chuffing and rubbing cheeks, a show of affection that always dislodged Quincy’s black Stetson. Prepared, Quincy caught the hat before it hit the ground.

“Hey, buddy,” he whispered around the logjam in his throat. “I hope your morning is off to a better start than mine.”

Beethoven grunted, a contented sound that told Quincy the horse was as happy as a mouse in a cheese factory. He smiled and scanned the stall, checking to make sure all was as it should be. His gaze slid over the far left corner and then jerked back to a lump of green that didn’t belong there. He stared for a moment at what appeared to be a woman asleep in the straw.
What the hell?
Surely it was only a trick of the light. His ranch was armed to the teeth with high-tech security, and that was especially true in the arena, with every door, window, skylight, and paddock gate wired to an alarm. If anyone entered without punching in the pass code, which was changed frequently, a siren went off loudly enough to burst eardrums. Quincy had heard nothing.

And yet—well, shit—there
was
a woman curled up in the corner. She wore a getup that reminded Quincy of something he might see at a Renaissance fair. Wrapped around her head was a thick multilayered band of antique linen that was then secured over the crown by a see-through scarf of the same color. The linen band appeared to be of high quality and looked to Quincy like the oil filter on his truck. The transparent scarf shimmered like spun gold and was somehow pleated at the crown and looped loosely beneath the woman’s chin. Her hair, a bright, fiery red, followed the slender bend of her back and was surely long enough to reach well below her knees when she was standing. Her silk gown, a deep green and floor-length, judging by the way the skirt billowed around her, sported voluminous sleeves and a plunging, square neckline, which revealed a modest white underdress laced to the waist.

As if she sensed his gaze on her, she jerked awake and, hampered by the long dress, struggled to her feet. To Quincy’s amazement, Beethoven merely whickered and circled away. Normally the stallion grew nervous when he was approached by anyone except Quincy.

“God’s teeth!” As round as dimes and as clear blue as a Caribbean lagoon on a hot summer day, her eyes flashed with irritation. “Ye scared the bee-Jesus out of me.”

Quincy recognized an Irish brogue when he heard one. His dad’s mother, Mariah Eileen O’Grady, had been born in the old country. But as Quincy recalled, she’d never said
bejesus
as two separate words or used the expression
God’s teeth
. “How did you get in here?” he demanded, doing his best not to notice those expressive eyes or the delicate perfection of her oval face. “The whole place is wired.”

Bewilderment creased her brow. She cast a wary glance around the stall. “Where might it be?”

“What?”

“The wire,” she expounded. “I see none.”

Quincy clenched his teeth. If not for the weird getup, she might have been quite a looker, with that bright red hair, creamy skin, and stunning blue eyes, but Quincy was in no mood to appreciate a woman’s feminine attributes. Well, scratch that. Truly beautiful women were difficult for any man to ignore, but he meant to give it his best shot.

“I asked you a question. Answer me.” The perimeters of Quincy’s ranch could be breached by deer or elk that sailed over the fences, but the warning alarms went off if the cameras detected large body masses that lingered near the property lines, the idea being that any human would take at least a few seconds to scale a five-foot barrier. Voice strained with anger, not to mention worry over his sister-in-law, he repeated the question. “How did you get in my arena?”

“Is that what ye call it, an arena?” Her frown deepened. She swatted at the straw on her wrinkled skirts. As she bent forward, Quincy’s gaze shot to the slender nip of her waist and the temptingly round flare of her hips. When he realized where he was staring, he forced himself to look up, only to find his attention riveted to her silk bodice, which showcased small but perfectly shaped breasts. “’Tis so different here.”

Losing patience, Quincy raised his voice. “I’ll ask you one more time before I call the police. How did you get in here?”

“The police? ’Tis a word I’ve never heard.”

Quincy had an unholy urge to vault over the stall gate and shake her until her teeth rattled. “Listen, lady, you’re in serious trouble. Committing a B and E is a felony offense in Oregon, with a sentence of five to twenty. Start talking, and fast, or you’ll be cooling your jets in a cell until you have gray hair.”

She paled and lifted her chin, which sported a deep cleft that mirrored the dimple that flashed in her right cheek when she spoke. “I do na understand all yer strange words. Me name is Ceara O’Ceallaigh. I seek audience with a man named Quincy O’Hourigan, sir. I shall speak with him, and only him. ’Tis na a tale for the ears of another.”

“You have the first name right, but my last name isn’t O’Hourigan.”

She winced, flapped her wrist, and muttered something in what sounded like Gaelic. Her quaint mannerisms drove home to Quincy that she was not only beautiful, but also as cute as a button. “Harrigan, I mean. ’Tis forgetful I am. Me whole long life, I’ve heard naught but the name O’Hourigan and learned of the change to Harrigan only a short while ago. When yer ancestors sailed to this land in the eighteen hundreds, they changed the family surname.” Her brilliant blue gaze sought his. “So ye are Sir Quincy?”

“No
sir
attached.”

Quincy pressed the phone icon on his cell. His favorites popped up on the screen, and he was about to tap 911 when she said, “Ye asked how I got in here. Me reply may ring strange to yer ears. ’Tis simply where I landed. I can tell ye no more. I prayed to the Blessed Ones to bring me to a place where I might encounter ye, and here I am.”

Quincy froze with his finger poised over the button he’d entered as a speed dial on his phone for 911. “You prayed to . . . Say what?”

She studied him as if he were an incredibly dense five-year-old. Damn, but those big blue eyes did pack a wallop. What man could look into them without struggling to break visual contact? “’Struth, sir. No lie has passed me lips. ’Tis where the Blessed Ones dropped me.” She trailed her gaze over his face. “I suspected you were Sir Quincy. You bear a striking resemblance to the man I saw in me mum’s crystal ball.”

Quincy cocked his head, certain that he must have misheard her. “Come again?”

“Please, sir, do not ask that of me. ’Twas a difficult journey, and I’ve no yearning to endure it twice.” She smiled slightly, and with the gentle curve of her lips, her entire face seemed to glow. “Traveling forward in time is taxing. Pray, hear me out. ’Tis good reason I have fer being here.”

Quincy stared hard at her clothing. It looked like the real thing, but he knew people created replicas of medieval garments all the time for Renaissance fairs.
Traveling forward in time?
She was a bona fide fruitcake. That was the only plausible explanation. He remembered the phone he held aloft in one hand. “How is your name spelled?” Both her first and last names sounded Greek to him.
Key-air-uh
. He’d never heard it. “Start with your first.” He doubted she would tell him the truth, but at least he’d have something to tell the cops.

“By
first
, I’m supposing ye mean me Christian name, Ceara? ’Tis spelled C-E-A-R-A. I am the elder daughter of the O’Ceallaigh, head of our chiefdom in County Clare.” She quickly told him how to spell her last name. “I have come forward from the year 1574 to save lives, specifically the lives of the first wives of all O’Hourigan males.” She flapped her wrist again. “Begging yer pardon, Harrigan males, I mean.”

That cinched it. She really
was
nuts. Even so, he couldn’t resist pointing out, “The Tudor era, when Ireland was under English rule, with Queen Elizabeth the First on the throne?”

Her chin shot up, and her cheeks flamed with indignation. “Me home lies in land beyond the Pale, where the
queen
and
her edicts are ignored. Me people have our own faith, and our own laws.”

Tiring quickly of this game, Quincy directed his gaze to the phone again. Once the cops collected her, they could get her to a facility where she could be evaluated and receive medication for whatever it was that ailed her. He didn’t care where they took her as long as it was off his ranch. He had enough on his mind without dealing with a delusional woman, no matter how pretty or entertaining she might be.

She reached up to remove the oil-filter contraption from her head. “I must appear odd to ye. Me mum made me a léine and trews so I would look more like the women of yer time, but I refused to wear such scandalous garments. They were indecent.”

Quincy wouldn’t have passed up an opportunity to see her in tight jeans and a knit top. He had a feeling all those layers she wore concealed a world-class figure. And why the hell was he thinking about
that
? The woman had forced her way into a high-security area, he had no idea what mischief she’d intended to perpetrate, and he needed to stay focused on getting her removed from the premises.

She swayed slightly, as if she were about to wobble off her feet, giving Quincy an inexplicable urge to scale the gate and catch her from falling. “Me apologies,” she said faintly. “The journey has drained me.” She sighed and passed a hand over her brow. “Please listen, Sir Quincy. Me energy is quickly flagging.” She tossed the headgear onto the straw and straightened her shoulders. “Me O’Ceallaigh ancestress, a woman of druid descent who lived in the fourteenth century, was humiliated beyond bearing when she was left at the altar by an O’Hourigan man, also of druid blood. Her revenge was to cast a curse upon yer entire family. The first wife of every O’Hourigan male will die from a blood sickness, hemorrhaging, or injury that causes her to bleed to death. It has long been a great sadness to me family, and after much deliberation, I volunteered to come forward to this century to end the wickedness fer all time. Me sister, only two and ten, is too young to marry in this era.”

She concluded her speech with a curtsy that revealed she was indeed weak at the knees. As she came erect, she added, “’Twas the only way to end this horrible curse. A virgin daughter of the O’Ceallaigh must wed an O’Hourigan.”

“You really are out of your mind.”

She tipped her head, an expression of puzzlement giving way to comprehension. “Am I, now? Do ye deny that yer mum hemorrhaged to death during childbirth? Or that now yer eldest brother’s wife is dying of a strange blood sickness?”

Quincy stifled a gasp, recovered, and snapped, “How the hell did you come by that information?” Probably obvious, he realized. Someone good with computers could learn almost anything on the Internet these days, and he couldn’t allow her winsome manner and lovely face to distract him from the facts. “Scratch the question. You’re clever. I’ll give you that.” Anger burned through Quincy. How dared she mention his mother’s death and then trump it by bringing up Loni’s leukemia? “Not clever enough, however. I’m finished with this little performance. I don’t know what your aim is, and I really don’t give a rat’s ass.”

“I learned all that I know by looking into me mum’s crystal ball.” She glanced at his phone. “What is in the wee box?”

Quincy huffed with laughter, but there was no humor in the sound. “It’s a phone, not a box, and it’s your one-way ticket to the clinker.”

“Only
you
can prevent yer brother’s wife from dying, sir. So far as me mum could decipher, ye are the last unmarried male in your family line. ’Tis up to
you
.”

If Quincy hadn’t been so upset, he might have found this incredible situation laughable, but he was in no frame of mind for jokes, no matter how creatively played. Over the years he had encountered more than a few strange individuals, but never on his ranch. He had no idea how she’d breached security, but in good time he’d find out. He would have a team on it within the hour to watch every second of camera footage. And whoever was responsible for the weakness in his security would answer to him.

Meanwhile, there was only one thing to do. He pressed the screen to call the police and then reported a B and E at his stables.

The woman didn’t seem unduly perturbed as he ended the call. Apparently she planned to carry through with this charade until uniformed officers forcibly removed her from Beethoven’s stall. Quincy had to admire her nerve.

To his surprise, Beethoven chuffed and walked over to nuzzle her shoulder. She spoke softly to the stallion and reached up to rub between his eyes, one of the horse’s favorite places to be scratched. She’d clearly been around equines.

“Ye truly believe I’m mad, do ye not?” She sent Quincy a knowing look. “I venture a guess that I would feel the same if I were not druid and aware that there are things in this world that defy explanation.” She turned from the stallion and arched a finely drawn brow. “Surely, being of druid descent yerself, ye’re aware of that as well, Sir Quincy.”

Now
he
was a druid? Quincy almost laughed. He’d read about druids, but he’d never believed they had magical powers. They’d merely been well-educated individuals who’d found it easy to hoodwink Irish and Scottish peasants into thinking they possessed abilities that normal human beings didn’t.