The Charm Stone (10 page)

Josie laughed. Again she wished her father were here, but this time so that he could enjoy this adventure with her. In a place filled with colorful characters, Big Griff would feel right at home. Ghosts notwithstanding, she thought she could, too. Or would have if not for a growing sense of uneasiness. Actually, it was more like guilt.

She hadn't expected the island history to be such a sore point with the locals so many years later. She'd assumed they'd never even heard of the charm stone, much less that it had played such an important role. How did she proceed? Did she dare tell them she'd brought the stone back? She wanted to know more first, wanted to know if anyone else had ever claimed to see a ghost in Black's Tower. But what would they think of her when they found out? Would the warmth and generosity they'd extended vanish? After only two days, what these people thought or
how they felt shouldn't matter so much to her. But it did.

Maeve pushed the door to the pub and Josie was immediately enveloped in the warm, yeasty smell of the place and the boisterous argument going on among the four men inhabiting it.

“I tell you, the longboarders are destroying the sport. I'm with Tubin'Mike there. The lot should all be dragged out of the water!” Clud punctuated the statement by slamming his tankard on the counter.

“Och, yer a twit, ye old geez,” Gavin shot back. “Longboards are the heart of the sport, where it all began. To banish them is to banish a part o’ history. I suppose next ye'll be sayin’ they should burn all the balsam boards. Did ye no’ read what JaneFrom-DownUnder had to say on it? The lass is less than half yer age, yet she possesses a fair bit more wit than ye'll ever lay claim to.”

Roddy shook his shaggy white head and topped off the mugs as pleasantly as if they weren't arguing at the top of their lungs.

“No has bothered to ask me,” Dougal put in, “but I think perhaps there ought to be a place for both in the water. The real problem is the novices with no respect for the waves or those with more skill at riding them.”

“What did I tell you?” Maeve whispered. “Ever since Roddy hooked up to that Internet, these four think they know every last thing. Last month they were debating caribou migration in the Alaskan wilderness.” She sighed. “Wears a body out to listen to them. Me, I prefer the mainland papers and a good mystery novel.”

“The Internet?” Josie shook her head. Apparently some technology reached everywhere. She smiled, charmed by the four men and their newfound hobby. “I think they're cute.”

Maeve patted her on the arm. “Don't say I didna
warn you. And don't forget what I said about getting them to buy you an ale or two. Lord knows but you'll need them.”

Josie grinned as Maeve let herself out, then turned toward the bar. “Dougal has a point,” she offered.

The conversation ceased instantly as all four of them turned to face her. “Och, she's here!” Dougal exclaimed, raising his glass to her. “And obviously the one to put an end to yer idiotic claims.” He grinned and pulled out a stool for her, polished it with his sleeve and gestured grandly for her to have a seat. “Here ye go, lass, and allow me to buy you a pint.”

“Thank you, Dougal.” She turned to Roddy. “I'd love something to eat as well.”

He nodded and turned to Dougal. “Ye buying her lunch as well? From the looks of her, she's no fool. She'll let ye fill her belly, then shoot yer theories down with the last sip o’ her ale.” He slid her a glass and leaned on the bar with a warm smile. “Do I have the right of it, lass?”

“I can pay for my own lunch, thanks,” she said, then looked to the men seated next to her. “I can't be bought.” She grinned at Dougal. “But I'll thank you for that ale.”

Gavin, Clud, and Roddy all roared with laughter, and after several hearty slaps on Dougal's back, he laughed as well. They all raised their glasses to her. “To Josie.”

She tapped her glass to theirs and enjoyed her first sip of ale. “So, who are these surfing experts you guys are talking about?” Roddy slid her a plate filled with cheeses and crackers while he went about making her a sandwich and she happily settled in for the afternoon.

Several hours and definitely more ale than it was wise to consume at midday later, Josie had fallen in love with all four of them. Eccentric, boisterous, passionate, and, above all, dead set on being the last one standing, they'd all have made wonderful surfers. “You have that gung ho spirit it takes to face Mother Nature at her finest,” she told them.

“Well now,” Gavin said, “be careful, lass. We just might take ye up on that offer of yours.”

“Did I make an offer?”

Gavin eyed the other three. “I believe she said we'd make fine surfers, did she no’?” They all nodded and he turned back to her, his expression smug. “Then perhaps surfers we'll become. And who better to teach us, eh?”

Josie choked on a sip of ale. Her last sip, she swore, pushing the glass away. “I, um, uh—” She thought fast, then smiled as the obvious occurred to her. “Well, I'd be glad to—” She raised her hand when they cheered, wincing at the thought of their collective old bones shattering as Mother Nature tossed them mercilessly against the beach. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I said I would be,
but
—”

“There's always a but, wi’ women, isn't there?” said Clud, the group grump, she'd come to realize and liked him even more for it.

“With good reason,” she told him, then turned to face them all. “You don't have the proper equipment. The water is cold up here, you'd all need suits, gear, the works. I'm sorry, really. And you know, it's not the kind of sport to take up later in life, anyway.” She immediately realized she should have stopped at “I'm sorry.”

“Yer saying ye dinna think we can handle the waves, lass?” This came from Dougal and Roddy both.

“I'm just saying that your wives would likely string me up for risking your necks. But we already decided you didn't have the proper gear, so—”

“Roddy can order us some from the Internet,” Dougal said. “Can't ye, Roddy?”

Roddy nodded as Josie frantically shook her head. “No, no, you don't understand. This stuff doesn't come cheap.”

“You're no’ kidding,” Clud said. “We went to yer website. It's a crime the prices they charge for things these days. And the shipping.” He rolled his eyes and took another swig of ale.

“Yer designs were quite nice, though,” Gavin offered.

“My website? How did you even know I had one?”

“Maeve mentioned your last name. We did a search and up popped your name,” Roddy said. “You do nice work. Much better than some of that abstract-looking stuff.”

Josie sputtered between laughter and disbelief. “You guys are amazing.”

They all beamed. “That we are, lass,” Roddy said.

“Please, don't spend your life savings on gear, though. I'd never be able to live with myself.”

“Och, dinna listen to Clud's dramatics. We've got the coin, Josie.”

She eyed them all, in their worn clothing and boots, thinking of their beat-up bikes parked outside. But they each looked confident in Dougal's assessment. “We're talking hundreds, maybe thousands here,” she warned them, only exaggerating a little.

Dougal waved a dismissive hand. “Last year Gavin took up day trading,” he said calmly.

“Excuse me?”

“Aye, we thought he was off his rocker, too. But he did quite well for himself and the missus.” Dougal leaned in. “They went on a cruise.”

“So we asked him to invest for us, too,” Roddy put in. “I got an upgrade for the computer. Next I'm looking into a satellite dish.”

The men all sighed in joint lust at the very idea.

Josie wasn't sure whether to laugh herself sick or run screaming from the pub. Colorful characters indeed. “Okay. I give up. You win. You're grown men after all.” She downed the rest of her ale in one swallow, then eyed them balefully. “But don't come crying to me if you all end up dead on the beach.”

She left the pub to raucous cheers and the sound of a laptop being booted up. She thought about telling Maeve how she'd let her and all the island women down, but didn't have the heart. Instead she climbed on Gregor's bike, winced as she sat on the padded seat, and pushed off down the road.

She was halfway around the island-the long way-when she realized she never had asked them to tell her ghost stories.

T
he bolt of lightning lit up Gregor's entire loft, jarring Josie awake. A crack of thunder had her sitting instantly upright in bed. Rain lashed the small window and thrummed the roof slanting over her head. The storm. She'd forgotten all about Maeve's warning.

She pushed off her covers, then quickly yanked them back over her again. Damn, but it was cold. And she hadn't even made a fire, much less banked one. Another rafter-rattling crack shook the house. Surely this place had weathered worse.

She should start a fire in the woodstove, she thought, flinching when the next bolt hit. She loved watching storms come in off the water back home. This felt different, though, more visceral. Probably because she was in a strange place, she told herself, ignoring the fact that she'd slept through many a storm in many a country. She reached for her bedside lamp, but nothing happened when she tugged the little chain. “Figures.”

She'd feel better if she got up and did something. She could find a candle or something and lose herself in one of Gregor's books. A book and a snack. Suddenly she was ravenous. Wrapped in the blanket, she tiptoed over the ice-cold plank floor and fished
around in the dark for some socks. She ended up settling for shoving her bare feet into her sneakers.

She glanced out the front window as she climbed down the stairs, but couldn't see the tower. If it weren't for the lightning, she could have barely seen the window. She wondered how many such storms the tower had weathered, just what it had taken to push down the walls of the stronghold. How had Connal felt, watching his home literally fall down around him? She shivered and decided she didn't want to think about that. Fire and food. That was all she cared about.

She maneuvered through the living room, tugging the ends of the heavy blanket behind her, waiting for the next flash of lightning to light her path. She reached out to feel for a candle she recalled seeing on the mantel, knocking something to floor before she finally found it.

“Ooops,” she whispered. “Hope that wasn't anything important.” The next lightning flash revealed the box of matches. A dim yellow glow flickered to life and Josie sighed in relief. Somehow light always managed to banish the demons. “Or the ghosts,” she murmured, deliberately not looking toward the window.

She'd come home from the pub yesterday and gone straight inside. She'd sketched, she'd read, she'd made herself some dinner and tidied up. She'd done everything but go anywhere near the beach or the tower. But that hadn't stopped her from glancing at it every now and then. The tower had looked deserted, the windows dark even as the sun set. She didn't want to think about him now, up there in the middle of the torrent, doing whatever it was that-

“Oh no!” She'd been balancing the candle in one
hand and dragging the tail of her clutched blanket in the other, when it snagged on a tall lamp, pulling it over on her, knocking the candle from her hand, directly onto the blanket-which immediately caught fire.

Stay calm, stay calm,
she told herself. She shrugged out of the growing inferno and picked up the lamp, thinking she could snag the blanket with it and drag it outside before it caught on anything else. Her hands were shaking but the plan was working, or it was until she reached the end of the cord plugging the lamp into the wall. She ripped at it, but it must have been stuck on something. “Dammit!” She dropped the lamp and leaped around the edges of the burning blanket, intending to yank open the front door and shove the thing into the rain.

But just then the door flew open, crashing against the wall, almost sending her stumbling into the fire. Before a scream could work its way past her throat, big hands rouriily grabbed her, lifting her right out of her sneakers h and carried her outside into the wrath of the storm.

“Stay here,” a deep voice commanded.

The blanket landed in the mud about fifteen feet from where she stood, the fire guttering out almost instantly. Then he stalked back over to her. “What in the hell were ye doing in there?” he roared, his voice somehow even more riotous than the thunder.

Anger, embarrassment, along with a goodly amount of delayed reaction, spurted forth. “Roasting marshmallows.”

“What? The only thing ye were likely to roast was yer own hide. What were ye thinking, lass?” His long hair was a mass of thick, wet ropes that lashed his chiseled features, his eyes gleamed fiercely even in the black of the rain. “Do ye know what you risked? I've already lost one bride to disaster, I'll no’ lose another.”

She gaped at him. “I almost burned a house and myself down and all you can think about is your stupid fixation on Destiny?” Anger easily surpassed embarrassment and latent fear. She poked a finger at him. “I didn't need your help. I didn't ask for your help. I could have taken care of it myself. But most of all, what I do or don't do has nothing to do with you. If I want to jump off a cliff, you can't stop me.”

His jaw clenched. “Dinna test me, lassie.”

“Dinna test me either… whatever it is you call boys,” she finished on a less-than-authoritative note.

A jagged bolt of lightning lit up the sky, illuminating his face. In that split second she swore she saw his expression falter, a brief twitch curve his lips.

“Lads,” he said sternly, making her wonder if it had been a trick of the light.

She was still staring at him when the thunder literally rocked the ground at her feet. Connal's hand came up instantly to steady her. She tried to shrug it off, feeling silly for being so jumpy. Truth be told, he was making her more nervous than the storm was. But his grip only tightened as he stepped closer and tipped her face up to his.

Even as the storm raged about them, something in the air between them went strangely still as she stared at his shadowed face. All she could think about was the last time they had been this close. Part of her wanted to lean into him, into the shelter he provided. Another part of her wondered what he'd taste like in the rain. She almost pulled away then, shocked by just how much of a part of her responded to that idea. But he chose that moment to trace a blunt-tipped finger down the side of her face.