Chisholm Brothers 03 Night Watch Page 2

  Then the invite had come to be onThe Dave Stevens Show . Oh, wow, she remembered thinking, to be flown to the big city and be on national television? Well, her world just couldn’t get any bigger.

  Ha.

  If she’d only known then what was about to happen, she’d have stayed in Mason and kept her day job. She’d have clung to her normal, middle-class, Midwestern lifestyle with everything she had. But no. Hot, edgy, controversial talk show host Dave Stevens had seen the local St. Louis spot and picked up a copy of her book. Hosting the first daytime show geared toward men, Dave had intended to use his ratings-grabbing, confrontational format to needle her about the value, or lack thereof, of sappy romance fiction. He would drill her on why women fell for such delusional claptrap, after which they’d give the men in their lives a hard time for not measuring up to the book’s fantasy hero.

  Only instead, when he’d read the book in preparation for the show, he’d shocked himself by liking it, and had ended up doing a twist on his own format by making himself the butt of his own confrontational style, putting Bree in the interviewer’s seat—and grabbing the highest ratings ever for a daytime talk show. He’d ended the show by daring his male viewers to pick up the book and read it with a significant other.

  “Guys, if you want to understand what women want—and trust me, if you want to get any on a regular basis, you do!—read this book. It’s like an instruction manual for clueless men.”

  She couldn’t have devised a more brilliant marketing campaign if she’d thought it up herself. Her publisher was over the moon, her agent immediately began to field offers. In less than one week, all hell had broken loose.Summer Lake sold faster than they could print and ship it out. It topped every best-seller list and stayed there. Going from the summer’s must-read beach book, to everybody’s book club pick for the fall, to the must-have stocking stuffer for the holidays. You weren’t considered cool and in the know if you couldn’t debate in detail which of the three lead heroines you most identified with, or which of the three heroes you’d most like to sleep with. By spring, she’d been the subject of one of David Letterman’s Top Ten lists, made the cover ofPeople magazine—not once, but twice. She’d attended actual film openings in Hollywood and London, wearing clothes by designers she’d only read about, and had her book fought over in a much-publicized battle by two major studios for film rights, which had eventually gone for over seven figures, with all six lead roles claimed by the hottest reigning box office stars.

  But no—for some silly reason, Bree had stupidly never foreseen that particular, mind-blowing, once-in-a-lifetime, winning-lottery-ticket-like future, and so she had only written a single, stand-alone novel, with no obvious follow-up spin-off. Whathad she been thinking?

  And so the inevitable had happened. As the first anniversary of the book’s release loomed, the paperback version hit the stands and renewed the buzz all over again. Everyone had been asking when the next book was coming out, but now the questions were impatient, edged with concern that maybe her success had all been a fluke.Well, of course it had been a fluke, she’d wanted to shout. So, at first she’d laughingly told interviewers that she hadn’t exactly had much time to write lately, thinking it was nice that they were at least interested enough to ask. And, at first, they’d laughed along with her, all the while gushing over her overnight success story.

  But now her diehard fans had turned into an unruly mob, with the press fueling the flames every chance they got, all demanding to know when—or if—she’d deliver the goods again. As if it were a given that she had a litany of blockbusters floating around in her brain, just waiting for the chance to get jotted down. Journalists began to speculate, quite nastily at times, that she would flame out as a one-hit wonder. Bree Sullivan Backlash erupted. As if she’d asked for the fame and the fortune in the first place! And now, by not feeding the hungry hordes, it was as if she was intentionally not making good on that unspoken promise.

  She’d been hounded to the point of going into seclusion to avoid the inevitable cross-examination. So her publisher had happily taken up where the media had left off. After all, she had signed a deal for two books—which had thrilled her to no end at the time—and, dollar signs floating in their eyes, they would love to know when she planned on getting that next one turned in. Everyone wanted to cash in while she was still hot, everybody wanted a piece of her. None of this was exactly conducive to her creative process, which had abandoned her completely somewhere right around that St. Louis talk show a million years ago.

  She fought to keep the car on the road after swerving to miss the sheep that had suddenly appeared in her headlights. But there was no saving it. The back end of her car slid from the road, slinging gravel and mud everywhere before plunging into a water-filled gully, which surged the back end up onto a low stone wall…and shoved the front end nose-down in the rushing water.

  It all happened so fast. It was so dark, the wind so strong, the rain so heavy, that the whole event was a veritable blur to Bree. She’d been fighting unfamiliar terrain, the sudden loss of light, the ratcheting winds and pelting rain on one mountain curve after another. She hadn’t even been aware she’d descended into a valley, so snake-like was the track road she was on, until the strobe-light effect of the harrowingly powerful, ground-shaking lightning strikes had illuminated a stretch of fenced-off fields…and what looked like a rapidly swelling stream. She’d made it across the single-lane bridge, but then had been plunged back into the worst of the storm.

  Shoulders hunched, heart in her throat, neck long since gone completely stiff, it was almost a relief to have the battle finally over, even if it meant losing. Because, hey, by dying, she’d rob them all of the chance to continue the endless, nauseating speculation about what, where, and, most importantly,when , her next effort would finally appear. And it served the double bonus of saving her the global-scale humiliation and embarrassment of proving the gleeful naysayers right. Six months of staring at her laptop screen had produced exactly nothing. Nothing worth publishing, anyway. If only this particular solution didn’t, by necessity, include the actual death part, she might have signed up right then and there.

  Instead, she fought back, grappling with the wheel and stick shift, but a sudden overdose of adrenaline combined with bone-deep fatigue and abject terror served to rob her of whatever driving skills she’d managed to amass since going AWOL before dawn this morning and running away from her life. It had been hard enough in calmer conditions to sit on the right side of the car, keeping track of the brake, gas, and clutch pedals, using the regular arrangement of feet while shifting gears with her left hand…and combining all that with driving on the wrong side of the road.

  She heard someone scream as the car screeched along the stone wall, yanking the back end up and sending her slamming forward as the nose end of the car was sucked immediately into the rushing gully waters. Only then did she realize, as the echoes reverberated through the interior of the car after the motor instantly cut out, that it had been her.

  “S—seat belt,” she stammered, her body beginning to tremble as the enormity of the situation began to really hit her. She immediately grabbed at the straps and began yanking, before finally getting a slight grip on herself and her rising hysteria. “Latch, unlatch it.” Hoping the rational sound of her voice would calm her down, she tried to take a few deep breaths, but immediately began almost convulsively gulping air, as if her body thought the car was already filling with water and drowning was imminent. The belt mercifully popped free, which had the unfortunate result of plunging her chest-first into the steering wheel due to the steep forward pitch of the car.

  She glanced wildly around the passenger seat of the rented car for her purse, her computer bag, as if those things really mattered at a time like this. Like she had anything on the computer worth saving, anyway. But they had been thrown to the floor on the passenger side, out of reach, the steep pitch sending them halfway up under the dash. The tiny two-seater had little room fo
r maneuvering in general, but at its current angle, she had none at all. She felt the panic rise again as she tried the door handle and found it wouldn’t budge. Electric locks. The windows were electric, too. With the motor dead and flooded, nothing worked.

  “I was only kidding!” she shouted. “I don’t want to die, dammit.”

  She was wrestling around in her seat, trying to push herself back with her legs so she could angle toward the door, try and see if there was any manual way to pop the locks.Why-oh-why had she let her British editor talk her into renting such a teeny beast of a car? She wasn’t the hot rod type. Hell, she wasn’t the type to jet set over to Britain and take up residence in a four-hundred-year-old manor house, either, the guest of a baron no less, in an offer of solitude to write her book.

  Yeah. That hadn’t worked out too well. Baron Farthingham had let it slip that she was staying with him. At a grande ball, no less. By dawn the gates and walls surrounding the place had been besieged by press and fans alike. When she hadn’t appeared to talk to them, the tabloids had taken up the gauntlet. And the Brits thought Americans were rude. She’d been shocked at some of the headlines:

  BITCHY BREE BAGS A BARON!

  ALL PLAY AND NO WORK EQUALS NOBOOK FOR LOYAL FANS.

  DIVA SULLIVAN TOO BUSY TO CARE?

  She could only imagine what they’d say now. Maybe she wouldn’t be quite having the last laugh after all. “It sure doesn’t feel too funny at the moment,” she said between gritted teeth as she tried and failed to pry up the little nub of a lock on the door.

  A sudden pounding on the passenger window made her scream. And there was nothing ambiguous about who had made the sound this time. Someone was out there, in the storm-ravaged gloom.

  A rescue!Oh, thank God.

  Except, she was out in the middle-of-nowhere Scotland. Which pretty much described the highlands, as far as she could tell. Before the storm she hadn’t seen so much as a red phone booth for hours. Who in the world would happen to see her car go in a ditch way the hell out here?

  She looked at the window as her rescuer peered inside…and got her answer. A deranged lunatic.

  She choked on a terrified scream as her throat completely closed over. Staring in at her was what appeared to be a very naked man, with long, wet hair plastered to his head and face in stringy ropes. A naked man with a very determined look on his face as he banged repeatedly, almost violently on the passenger window, shouting something unintelligible at her.

  Death by drowning suddenly looked preferable.

  Chapter 3

  “Release the locks!” Tristan shouted again. One of the rear tires had ridden up onto the low stone wall, tilting the car at an odd angle, and burying the front end of the tiny sports car into the storm-filled gully. But with the force of the water pushing at the side of the car, it could go at any second, and when and if it did, it would likely turn over. And right onto him. The driver’s side was propped up too high and too close to the wall for him to fight his way to that side, which left him here, dangerously downstream. And there she sat, like a fish in an empty bowl, waiting for it to fill up. Idiot woman would like as get them both drowned before he could get her out of there.

  He tried the door, but it was still locked, so he banged on the passenger window again, motioning to the top of her windshield. “Unlock the top!” Between the wind and the raging rain, not to mention the windows being up and sealed tight, maybe she wasn’t hearing him. But she was sure as hell staring at him. Why in bloody hell wouldn’t she just put the damn top down and climb out?

  It occurred to him that she might be hurt. For all he could see in the dark, the car hadn’t sustained any heavy damage. The side closest to the wall was probably scraped up, given the screeching noise he’d heard, but it wasn’t bashed in. It appeared as if she’d just lost control at the bend of the road and ended up sideways up the other side of the gully. Maybe she had knocked herself a bit senseless during the spin-about. What other reason would there be for just sitting there? She had no seat belt on, so maybe she’d hit her head on the steering wheel or side window. Of course, the fact that she had the little convertible roadster out in a storm, racing along single-track highland roads, didn’t speak well for her being all that safety-minded in the first place.

  She jumped suddenly and looked down, then began squirming in her seat. He couldn’t see into the gloomy interior of the car well enough to know for sure, but he’d bet the water had just found its way in. She looked back at him, then down at her feet, then back at him, clearly panicked if the terror etched on her face was any indication. She seemed to be wriggling about enough to indicate she wasn’t too severely injured. Surely she could get the damn top unlocked. If she’d been worried about what the rain might do to the exposed leather seats, the water coming in through the bottom of the car should erase that concern.

  Again he pointed to where the windshield and canvas met and shouted, “Pop the locks!” He made flicking motions with his fingers, putting them right next to the glass in hopes she could see clearly what it was he meant for her to do. He was hip-deep, freezing cold water rushing around him, literally freezing his balls off, and the adrenaline punch that had sent him racing out here in nothing more than a damp towel knotted around his hips was beginning to level off to the point that he was well and truly feeling the effects of it. He was starting to tremble from the exposure, and his hands rattled a little against the windshield.

  Lightning strikes continued to rain down at alarmingly close range, with the accompanying thunder reverberating through the ground moments later. And he was rapidly losing patience with his rescuee. If her antics were any indication, the water level in the car was rising rapidly. There was only one thing to do. He waded back through the gully, slipping in the mud and muck several times before getting back up onto the bank, losing his towel completely as he scraped his way to a stand. He didn’t bother trying to get it back—there was no time. It was risky leaving her as it was, even if only for the minute it would take to get to the house and back. But he didn’t see where he had much choice. He could hardly break into the car bare-handed.

  He raced bare-assed back up the lane to the croft and let himself into the mud room, never more appropriately named as he was covered in it, and snatched his wet pants off the floor.

  Jinty, excited by his sudden reappearance, barked in excitement, dancing around his legs.

  “Aye, girl, aye, a bit of excitement out there.” He gave her head a quick scrub, then grimaced at the muck he’d matted in her fur. He tried to pull on the pants, but they were so wet and his body so muddy he didn’t have time for that battle. “Bollocks.” He unclipped his knife from his pants before tossing them back to the floor, then grabbed his boxers instead and yanked them on, shivering as the wet material clung to even wetter skin. He’d catch his death saving her from her own. Idiot woman. Jinty raced to the door ahead of him.

  “No’ this time, sweet. I’ll be back in a flash.” And with that he took off around the croft and back down the lane. If she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—save herself, he had no choice but to do it for her.

  Bree slumped down in her seat and let out a long, shaky breath when the lunatic banging on her window suddenly ran off into the night. Where the hell had she landed that naked men ran around in the middle of a storm? She immediately regrouped. She had no idea if he was going to come back, but she knew she had to get the hell out of this car. When he’d shown up, any thoughts of rescue had quickly fled with one look at him. He was clearly deranged. She’d thought maybe she’d be safer in the car than out. Her heart had about stopped when he’d tried the door, then banged on the window.

  Then the water had come rushing in over her feet. Drown in her car…or escape into the clutches of a madman. Honestly, it was like a bad suspense novel. Who’d believe this? The storm and high winds raged on unabated, as did the lightning and the thunder. Even having nowhere to run, and a possible raving lunatic on the loose, staying inside the stranded car was n
o longer an option as the water level was rapidly rising.

  “Calm down, take deep breaths. And think, dammit. Think.” But all she could picture was the wild man outside her car, banging on her window and making obscene hand gestures. He’d kept stabbing his finger at her and shouting something she couldn’t hear. She turned the key in the ignition to trigger the battery, hoping to get the windows to roll down, but nothing.

  She pounded her fists on the steering wheel, frustrated, scared out of her mind, beyond fatigued. Not just from the storm, but from…well, her entire life. She let her head fall back. “Think, Bree. There’s got to be a way out of this.” She didn’t have anything heavy enough to break the window with…except maybe her laptop. The water crept higher—it was up to seat level now, and she tried to pull her legs up, but she was trapped in the deep bucket seat with the steering wheel, stick shift, and door keeping her penned in. Why-oh-why had she listened to Dana and rented a damn convertible hot rod?