“He doesn’t have to like it.” Elaine spoke as if the conversation included her. She wasn’t being left out of this. “The car is registered in my name. I want to make sure everything’s there.”
“You can do so once the car is within our gates and everything is secure. He’s your pack leader now, lass.” Guthrie acted as though she needed reminding.
“See you in a moment,” Cearnach said to his brother. The door shut, then Cearnach opened the curtains to her side of the bed and smiled down at her. He was all warmth and energy, and if not for the car business, she would have tugged him into bed again.
Frowning up at him, she let out her breath. “I won’t be coddled.”
“Or dictated to,” he said.
“Right.”
He touched her cheek with a gentle caress, eyeing the bruise that remained. “If you have your heart set on doing this, hurry and get dressed as Ian won’t wait for us once he’s decided to do something.”
She quickly climbed out of bed, then headed for the bathroom. “He really doesn’t expect a force of Kilpatricks and McKinleys to attack, does he?”
“As a battle-trained warrior and leader of men, he always prepares for the worst.”
She didn’t believe anyone would attack whoever retrieved the car. Not when the castle was so well defended. And not if Robert wanted to meet with her.
She quickly washed off in the shower, barely drying herself, then struggled to get into a pair of jeans and sweater, her skin still wet in places.
As if he knew her thoughts on the matter, Cearnach said, “We wouldn’t put it past them to offer a show of force. They will not like that they had to return your car here instead of you coming to them.”
She joined him in the bedroom and sat down, but before she could slip on a pair of boots, Cearnach leaned over and pulled one on for her. He wasn’t just doing so to help hurry her along. Smelling her scent, he was checking how she felt about this whole issue. He would recognize that she was both afraid and pissed.
She ruffled his hair with her hand. “I’m not worried.” She slipped her other boot on. Well, maybe a little worried. She was concerned for everyone’s safety, should her kin attack them. She was much more pissed, and she hoped that scent reigned over all else.
“You smell delicious,” he murmured, looking up at her as he crouched at her booted feet, his hands shifting to her knees, then sliding higher.
He pushed her knees apart, suggesting he wanted her again. Moving in between her legs, he cupped her face in his large hands and kissed her mouth tenderly and lovingly, his tongue darting into her mouth gently, and then hungrily as a groan escaped his lips. Liquid heat poured through every inch of her, making her instantly wet for him. He smiled, so wickedly sexy, and took another deep breath of her, his smile growing.
“You are so bad,” she said, shoving at his shoulders, but she didn’t budge him.
“What?” He feigned innocence as he rose and towered over her, pulling her to her feet.
“For making me want you so badly.”
He chuckled, grabbed her hand, and headed out the door.
His mother was on her way down the hall and quickly said, “I want to speak with Elaine.”
“Later, my lady mother.”
His mother furrowed her brows. “She can’t go out there. It’s too dangerous.”
“I will protect her.” He headed down the hall.
His mother snorted. He glanced over his shoulder at her.
“They’ll pull something. They’re pirates,” his mother warned.
“Aye, of that I’m well aware.”
When she and Cearnach left the keep and made their way across the inner bailey, she saw a small crowd of men and wolves gathered near the gates to the entrance of the bailey. She realized after they opened the wooden gates that the defenses protecting the front entrance included three portcullises with an area in between each other where invading armies could be scalded with boiling water or struck with arrows, reducing their chances of successfully entering the inner bailey. All of the portcullises were down.
She still thought that the pack’s extreme caution was unwarranted, though what did she know about Highland wolf fighting?
As soon as Ian and his brothers turned to see them approach, Ian gave her a bow of his head in greeting. Guthrie had his arms folded across his chest, his brow furrowed, and appeared very annoyed with her.
Duncan gave her a small smile.
Ian said to Cearnach, “You’ll stay with her?”
“Aye.”
So Cearnach would be forced to babysit her. “Cearnach can go.” She didn’t want him to feel obligated to stand beside her the whole time.
A few of the men chuckled. The wolves quit panting and swung their heads from looking at her to observing Ian.
“You’re my responsibility, Elaine, first and foremost.” Cearnach sounded proud of the fact.
Ian said to Duncan, “Ready?”
“Aye,” Duncan said and pulled out his sword.
“What if the men—saying that there are any out there, hiding, waiting—have guns?” Elaine whispered to Cearnach.
“Not sporting enough.” Cearnach folded his arms as he stood so close to her that his body was touching hers. She felt pleasure, warmth, and security in the intimate contact on this cold, windy, damp day.
Men lifted the first of the portcullises, which made a grinding sound all the way up.
Duncan and Ian headed toward the next one, six wolves walking beside them.
“Are the wolves still out there?” Elaine asked, her voice hushed. She hadn’t heard them in the middle of the night again.
“They might be. We don’t want to take any chances.”
The second portcullis whined as it was raised, and the men and wolves continued on their way.
Another dozen or so wolves, men, and Guthrie still stood protectively near Elaine.
The last of the portcullises was opened, and when Cearnach’s brothers and the wolves reached the final gate, Ian waited to give the order to open it.
He glanced up at the tower. Oran nodded that it was all clear. Ian said, “Open the gates.”
The gates creaked open as two men put their backs into moving them aside, the oak so heavy she imagined only muscled men could manage.
Then she saw her vehicle—undamaged. Thank God. Water droplets collected on its shiny silver surface, but the Mercedes looked the same as it had when she saw it last night; only in the daytime the scene appeared a lot less scary. A thick fog still clung to the trees surrounding the castle, and she couldn’t make out the long curving drive because of the heavy mist.
Tension was riding high as everyone in the inner bailey waited, barely breathing. She heard the swishing sound of a few swords being unsheathed to the left and right of her position as Ian and the other men and wolves headed beyond the gate and moved toward the car.
Every muscle in her body was straining with tension, and she could tell Cearnach’s were the same by the way he stiffened next to her. All eyes were on the men exposed beyond the castle walls. Several were standing on top of the wall walk, and she noticed then, they were equipped with bows and arrows. She felt she had suddenly become immersed in a Highland battle.
Ian approached the driver’s door of the vehicle, and she worried that her cousins might have planted a bomb inside. What if she had been the one to drive it into the inner bailey? They would know she wouldn’t. That one of the men would.
The wolves sniffed around the car, and she wondered if they could detect the smell of bomb-making material. Sure they could, as sensitive as their sense of smell was.
Duncan made a move to open the door. She held her breath.
He pulled the door ajar and the buzzer sounded, indicating that the keys were in the ignition. The car had been sitting in the drive all night with the keys in the ignition? Great. Someone could have stolen it. Then she rethought that scenario. The MacNeill men probably had been watching the vehicle from the wall walk all night long. If anyone had made a move to get near it, their archers could have prevented it.
Duncan jerked the passenger’s door open. Ian leaned inside. The trunk lid popped open.
Ian’s cousin Oran peered into the trunk, sword ready. “All clear,” he shouted.
So they thought her rental vehicle might be like the Trojan horse, bearing armed soldiers instead of gifts? Or in this case, her clothes and Cearnach’s?
She started to move forward now that the car was safe, but Cearnach seized her arm and glanced down at her, wearing a fearsome expression. “Wait.”
The single word was both a command and a plea. He wished to protect her above all else.
She nodded, acknowledging that he knew the Highlanders and their tactics better than she did. Ian got into the car with Duncan and they drove in through the gates.
Guthrie said to Cearnach, “We finally broke into the man’s computer at the keep that Elaine owns.”
Expectantly, Cearnach and Elaine looked at him, waiting to hear what he’d learned.
Guthrie frowned. “Nothing. He’s lived centuries like us undoubtedly. Yet there was nothing in the keep or on his computer to say a thing about him. As if the place was a model home. Clothes in the drawers, and necessities in other drawers, food in the kitchen. Nothing personal. Not one thing. No financial statements, bills, nothing.”
“Which means?” Cearnach asked.
“He knew we’d investigate the place. Maybe that Elaine would, and he didn’t want her to know anything about him.”
Without warning, wolves snarled and growled in the woods, and then attacked.
Cearnach shoved Elaine behind him as a pack of at least a couple of dozen wolves raced out of the woods flanking the drive to the castle. In the inner bailey, Ian and Duncan threw open the doors to the car and hopped out. Some of the wolves went after Ian and Duncan, none getting too close to the men’s swords, while the six MacNeill wolves were fighting with those of the McKinleys’. Another dozen or more McKinley wolves ran through the gate, targeting the rest of the men in the inner bailey.
