Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (76 page)

Morgan shook her head, intrigued.

Alasdair sighed and tapped his finger on the
table. “I have told you well enough of his vision for Scotland and
his meeting with John Comyn. After that day, all looked dark for
Robert the Bruce. His allies had turned against him, he had been
driven from his own lands, the king put a high price upon his very
head, the taint of sin clung to his hide. He took exile in the
islands not far from my home and made an abode of a cave beside the
ocean, convinced he was naught but a failure.

“
And while he sat there,
lost in his own despair, he noted a spider spinning a web. The
spider meant to attach its web to a point on the wall far out of
range, but it swung valiantly toward its goal. Once it swung and
missed. Again, it mustered resource, swung, and missed. Undeterred,
the tiny creature attempted a third time and failed.

“
As Robert the Bruce
watched, the spider attempted thrice more, failing each time but
still going back to battle, despite its inadequacies.

“
And on the seventh
attempt, the spider was victorious. It had only to believe it could
be done to make it so, and thus it did. And Robert the Bruce took
this lesson to his very heart. He left the cave of his exile. He
summoned what men he could. He came to Lewis, told this tale, and I
joined his ranks. And since that day, he has pressed on toward
victory. Naught can stand long in his path.

“
A man has but to believe a
thing to do it,” Alasdair repeated heavily. “And I believe in what
I pledge to you, my lady. You fear all men are like this cur who
treated you poorly – I say nay. Further I say, I shall prove it to
you. I am a man of honor and a man of my word and before we part
ways, you too shall know the truth of it.”

He stared into Morgan’s eyes and she
couldn’t look away.

Because she believed him.

Then Alasdair’s lips twisted in frustration.
“Robert the Bruce trusted me with his troops, men who now are
without my leadership. ’Twas at his dictate that I led the attack
on Edinburgh keep.”

He braced his hands on the small table and
leaned toward Morgan. “My lady, you have snatched me away from the
very moment of victory. The only thing I ask of you, in exchange
for my keeping my pledge to you, is that you return me to my own
domain that my son can hold his head high.”

And that was the crux of it. Morgan suddenly
remembered one pesky detail about Alasdair that she didn’t know how
to fix.

“
But, Alasdair, I told you
already. You’ve traveled through time. I don’t know how to send you
back! I don’t know how you got here, even, and I’m really not
Morgaine le Fee…”

“
Lies!” Alasdair roared as
he sprang to his feet. “I grant you a tale from my heart and you
have naught for me but lies! Why? Why do you deny who you are? What
would you have me to do to win your will in this?”

His blue eyes blazed. “If you will not do
this for me, why will you not aid my son?” Anguish was etched on
his features. “My gran is elderly, she will pass, and he will be
left alone. How can you compel me to abandon my son?”

Morgan felt more helpless than she ever had
in her life. “Alasdair, I can’t fix this…”

“
I care naught for your
lies!” he cried, then charged out of the room.

“
Don’t go! Come back!”
Morgan ran to the door.

Sharing the tale of Fenella had obviously
opened old wounds, but she couldn’t let him just go. They had to
figure out how to send him back to the past – and only he knew how
he had gotten here in the first place.

Alasdair hesitated and looked back at Morgan
with frustration. Slowly, the anger filtered out of his eyes and
his voice deepened. “You know well enough that I cannot risk
straying far from your side,” he confessed heavily. “I will be
back, my lady.”

And Morgan knew it would be so.

“
I will keep my pledge to
you. I will yet try to win your favor.” Alasdair pushed one hand
through his hair and sighed. “Indeed, I can do naught
else.”

Before Morgan could respond, he was
gone.

Morgan was very tempted to run after
Alasdair, but she returned to the room they had shared instead. She
had to respect his desire to be alone. She could understand the
need, even if the room seemed much emptier without him there.
Morgan closed the door and leaned back against it, thinking about
everything he had told her.

Clearly, Alasdair loved Fenella to
distraction. And he was fiercely determined to do what was right
for his son. Morgan could only admire the kind of man she was
beginning to see Alasdair to be.

He was as different from Matt as oil was
from water.

Morgan had been wrong.

She wandered back across the room, absently
smoothing the bed. Alasdair would be back, once his temper cooled,
Morgan knew it. His word was his bond.

She kind of liked that – but Morgan refused
to think any further along those lines. She couldn’t figure out how
to send him back in time without knowing how he’d gotten here in
the first place, which meant she’d just have to wait for him to
return.

Morgan opened her sketchbook on the cleared
table and studied the drawings she had made. The sunlight flickered
across the top page, making Thomas Rhymer seem to come to life. She
remembered the tale of Tam Lin and her smile turned
bittersweet.

It was awful, really. Alasdair thought he
was trapped like Tam Lin in the realm of Faerie, except Alasdair’s
one true love couldn’t help him return home. Morgan sharpened a
pencil, turned to a fresh page and began to draw the anguish of the
lovers’ separation that she had glimpsed in the highlander’s
eyes.

*

As much as Blake didn’t want to leave the
cozy haven of Room 11, his stomach was starting to argue the point.
He didn’t even know what time it was, but the sunlight had come and
gone, and the room was getting darker. Justine poked him with one
toe after their umpteenth round, just as Blake was thinking his
blood sugar might be nonexistent.

“
I want french fries,” she
said, her tone making it all too clear who was going to bring them
to the room.

“
What do you take me for?”
Blake retorted in mock indignation. “Some kind of
lackey?”

Justine grinned. “A boy toy.” She looked him
over, the way a starving dog eyes a bone, then slowly licked her
lips.

“
Too much saturated fat,”
Blake managed to say, mostly because he didn’t want to leave just
as things were getting interesting.

Again.

Justine’s lips curved. “What can I say?
You’ve stripped away every last one of my inhibitions.”

Blake frowned, pretending to be stern. “But
they’re really fattening.” He patted his flat stomach. “I have to
keep lean and mean.”

Justine smiled the slow sensuous smile that
drove him crazy. She dropped her voice to a purr and walked her
fingers up his chest. “Then we’ll just have to think of a way to
burn off all those extra calories.”

Blake was suddenly quite sure he could go
one more round before they ate. Justine must have read his mind,
because she laughed, then dove beneath the covers.

She tickled his ribs, experience guiding her
to the most sensitive spot. Blake hooted; he squirmed; he threw off
his glasses and resorted to finding his wife by touch.

A good fifteen minutes later, they ended up
in a tangle of sheets on the floor, breathless with laughter.
Justine plopped Blake’s glasses back on his nose and he grinned at
how uncharacteristically disheveled she looked.

“
I’m starving,” she
complained, a twinkle dancing in her eyes.

“
Sheesh! Women and their
one track minds.”

Justine laughed. “Oh, yeah, you’ve been a
real mine of options this afternoon.”

“
I thought I’d done quite
well.”

Their gazes locked and held, the temperature
in the room nudging up a few degrees. Justine crawled toward Blake
on all fours, a knowing smile curving her lips.

“
You do know that this kind
of service will have to be considered in your tip,” she murmured
provocatively.

They both looked at Blake’s lap
simultaneously. “Not on you life!” He cupped his hands protectively
over himself and they both burst into laughter.

“
That’s not what I meant,”
Justine protested, but Blake made a show of jumping to his feet and
covering himself from prying eyes. He finished dressing while his
wife returned to bed and lounged there, then bent to kiss her
nose.

“
Try to get out of bed for
dinner,” he coaxed.

She feigned a pout. “I’ll have to, if you
won’t get back in.”

Blake grimaced theatrically. “You’ll get
salt on the sheets.”

“
You said you’d never throw
me out of bed for eating crackers.”

“
But you want french fries.
Changes everything.” Blake winked then headed for the
door.

“
Don’t forget the brown
vinegar!”

“
You’re kidding? That malt
stuff?”

“
I’m starting to like it,”
Justine insisted, then raised a brow and did a very bad Mae West
impression. “Don’t you want to please me, honey?”

Blake rolled his eyes. “You do need food.
I’ll be back in a jiff.” He bounded out the door, the
quintessential man on a mission.

And in a hurry to fulfill it.

*

Unfortunately, the cook in the restaurant
wasn’t so easy to convince. He wore a white T-shirt and sported a
day’s growth of beard. The way the cigarette dangled jauntily from
the corner of his lip made him look as though he belonged in the
galley of an oil tanker instead of a quaint inn in the Scottish
highlands.

Maybe he didn’t have quite the same
motivation as Blake did.

“
Now, you see, I don’t heat
up the fryer for a good hour. Makes no sense to waste the power
before there’s lots of orders coming in.”

“
But my wife wants french
fries!”

The burly cook rolled his eyes. “American,
are you?” he asked, the words more a statement than a question. He
rolled his eyes again and strolled away, as though that explained
everything.

Blake appealed to the matronly waitress with
the unlikely bright orange hair. “Don’t Scotsmen get hungry in the
late afternoon?”

“
Of course they do, love,
but it’s teatime. What you’re wanting is tea and scones, a wee meat
patty, maybe a sausage roll. That will set you straight until
dinner.”

“
But she wants french
fries.”

The waitress looked sympathetic, but a stern
glance from the cook had her shaking her head. “This isn’t no
Mcdonald’s, you know,” the cook said testily and slammed the over
door behind a tray of meat pies.

The waitress clucked her tongue. “There’s no
reasoning with him when he’s in a mood, don’t you know,” she
counseled in a low voice. “Highland temper, where would we be
without it?”

“
I heard that, Gladys!” the
cook bellowed.

Blake leaned on the counter and tried for
his persuasive best. He wasn’t going back upstairs without
Justine’s fries. “Look, my wife really wants french fries. I’ll
give you twenty pounds to heat the fryer up early.”

The pair exchanged a look. “American, all
right,” the cook declared sagely, then turned away.

The waitress patted Blake’s arm. “Look,
love, he’s gone and dug in his heels. Why don’t I make your wife a
nice cup of tea?”

But Blake wasn’t interested in tea because
Justine wasn’t interested in tea. He flung out his hands and said
the first thing that came to mind.

“
But she’s pregnant! And
there’s no reasoning with her. She wants something and I’m supposed
to just get it. Pickles in the middle of the night, french fries in
the afternoon. It’s making me nuts, but she has to eat something
for the baby, and what am I going to do when all she wants is
french fries?”

“
Pregnant?” echoed the
waitress.

“
Pregnant?” The cook
pivoted the face Blake with surprising grace, his cigarette
dangling at an angle that was far from jaunty. “Why didn’t you just
say so, man? There’s no reasoning with a woman during her
time!”

And he flicked the red switch on the deep
fryer to On.

“
He’s seven bairns of his
own,” the waitress confided in an undertone as the cook set to
cutting potatoes. “And not a one of them over ten years old. This
be a man who knows pregnant women.”

Blake didn’t ask how many women had
contributed to that impressive pool of children. He shoved his
hands into his pockets, feeling like an idiot for telling such a
lie, yet perversely proud of himself for coming up with something
that had worked.

“
It’ll be a while, love.
Why don’t you sit and have a pint?”

Blake turned back to the nearly vacant
restaurant that doubled as a pub – or vice versa – and for the
first time noticed Alasdair. The highlander was sitting alone in
the far corner, pushing a glass of water across the tabletop.

“
Hey, Alasdair!” Blake
waved as he crossed the room, not waiting for an invitation before
he pulled out a chair. “How’s it going?” He noticed belatedly that
the other man looked morose. “What’s the matter? Morgan kick you
out?”

Alasdair glared across the table. “What do
you know of this Matthew James Reilly?” he demanded grimly.

Blake barely kept his mouth from falling
open. “She told you about him?” Alasdair nodded and Blake whistled
through his teeth. “Wow. She never talks about him at all. Hey, you
want a ‘wee dram’? Just us guys?”