The Charm Stone Page 8

  “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.

  Chapter 7

  The 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 sil
ly 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.

  “Are ye alright then?” he asked, his tone gruff, yet oddly gentle. “Did ye burn yourself?” He reached for one hand, then the other, and turned them over so the rain washed over her palms.

  Fine, she wanted to say. I'm fine. But his touch caused a ripple of awareness so intense that it drenched her senses much like the rain had drenched her skin. What was it about him that made her so hyperaware? She could only answer him with a brief shake of her head.

  He ran his hands up her arms, then skimmed back the hair that was plastered to her head and face and cupped her face again as he peered down into her eyes. “I didna mean to roar at ye. When I saw the fire flicker behind yer windowpane…” He paused, then let out a shuddering sigh. “Ye took a lifetime off of me, lass, that ye did.” Then, surprisingly, he grinned, the slash of white illuminated brightly, as lightning streaked through the sky above. “If I'd had a lifetime to give, that is.”

  Josie stood there, trembling, overwhelmed. By the storm, the fire… by him. She was suddenly quite aware that she wore next to nothing… but despite being chilled to the bone, the shivers racing uncontrollably through her had nothing to do with the storm. Her nipples peaked, her knees wavered, her thighs clenched. Hyperaware, she'd thought. Yes. Hypersensitive as well. It made no sense, especially considering the circumstances, how she could only think of wanting his hands on her.

  Staring at the rain-lashed man standing before her, she knew the line between reality and fantasy had permanently blurred. And she wasn't so sure she cared any longer.

  His grin faded as she continued to stand there and stare at him. “Och, but I must have ashes for brains.” He slid off his cloak and slung it around her, which only plastered the soaking-wet nightshirt she wore to her already freezing-cold skin.

  That shock of reality jarred her from whatever spell he'd cast, but before she could regain even a shred of control over the situation-much less her-self-she found herself airborne and being held against his chest.

  A small squeak of surprise was all she managed before he had her bundled tightly, like a child. Only there was nothing childlike about the sensations rocking through her.

  “Come. You must get warm and dry.”

  She knew she was beyond help when his edict only elicited visions of him stripping the damp nightshirt off her body… in front of a roaring fire.

  Through the haze of desire, it took a few moments before she realized he wasn't heading back to Gregor's.

  “Wait. What…where,” she spluttered. Not exactly the commanding tone she'd hoped for, but then she hadn't exactly been too worried about being in charge a moment ago when she was thigh deep in fantasyland.

  It wasn't until he crossed the road and started down to the beach that she began to struggle. “Wait a minute,” she shouted over the roar of the wind. “You're not taking me out there through that.” She didn't need moonlight to know the surf was roiling. She could hear it.

  “I thought you enjoyed daring the seas,” Connal said, not breaking stride despite her squirming.

  “Calculated daring, yes. Suicide, no. Can we please go back to Gregor's?”

  He didn't so much as pause. They crossed the beach.

  She should have never let him mesmerize her like that. What was wrong with her anyway? “Put me down!”

  But it was as if he didn't hear her. Infuriated, she tried to pound on his chest, but her hands were all tangled in his cloak. How had she thought him remotely sexy? He was a pigheaded, stubborn, arrogant… Scot.

  The roar of the waves was almost deafening. The causeway over to the tower had to be at least chest deep. And surging. “You don't have to worry about risking your life, you know!” She wrestled an arm free and grabbed at his hair, digging her fingers in and pulling until finally, mercifully, he stopped.

  Of course, he was swearing and shouting at her now, but he'd stopped and that was all she cared about.

  “I'll get you to safety, now stop yer panickin’!”

  Rain poured down her face and she blinked furiously against it. “What, you're going to blink us up to the tower or something?”

  “Blink?”

  “Whatever the hell you call it when you vanish into thin air. That trick.”

  “It's no’ a trick. But I canna whisk you off that way, if that's what yer asking.”

  “Please put me down.”

  “I'll no let any harm come to ye. What do ye take me for?”

  Thunder rocked and lightning split the sky. Shaking from cold and… and everything, Josie peered up at Connal and said, “A dead guy?”

  His laughter filled the air between them, and just for a moment, the storm didn't exist. An instant later she was bundled tightly against him, her mouth muffled against his chest as he continued on down the beach.

  So, yes, she'd reluctantly been forced to believe in ghosts. She'd also been forced to admit she was seriously sexually attracted to one ghost in particular. But lust didn't equal trust.

  Josie did her best to hold her breath as she prepared herself for the impact of the cold water. Her lungs began to burn, her spine stiff to the point of aching… but the surf never surged up to claim them. She wriggled again, doing her best despite the fact that she had no arms to maneuver with.

  “Hold still,” he commanded, then swore under his breath as he banged into something. “Yer no’ making this any easier for either of us. Now be still, damn ye. We're almost there.”

  Almost there? How could that be?

  And then suddenly the roar of wind and surf ceased. She thought her ears had popped, the change was so abrupt. And the rain. She couldn't feel it pelting the cloak and her bare feet that were sticking out from beneath the hem. She was about to start struggling again when he relaxed his hold on her. He didn't put her down, but she was able to shrug her arms free and shove the cloak off her head and shoulders.

  Not that it helped matters any. It was pitch-black. So much so, she couldn't see his face, which couldn't have been more than a few inches from her own.

  “I have to set you on your feet. Stay where I set ye, so ye don't hurt yourself, ken?”

  She was just grateful enough to feel the firm-and more importantly dry-ground beneath her toes not to argue. “Yeah, yeah, I ken.”

  There was a scraping sound, then a yellow glow erupted in front of her, making her squint and block the light with her hand.

  The glow dimmed almost instantly and she realized he'd lit an old oil lantern. Still, she had to blink a couple times before her surroundings came into view. Not that she could really see much of them. Most of her surroundings at the moment were Connal.

  “You're hovering,” she said, ruthlessly tamping down the libido that seemed to have a mind of its own. “Where are we?” She tried to lean around him and see. The walls on either side of them were made of stone, the floor beneath her feet was dirt or hard-packed sand, she couldn't tell. The ceiling wasn't much higher than she was tall, in fact Connal had to hunch over. “Is this a tunnel?”

  He smiled. “Ye dinna think any Scot worth his plaid would build a place out in the water without an alternative means of access, do ye?”

  She didn't answer him. Instead she turned around to look to see where they'd come from, but there was only a stone wall. She waited for the frisson of fear, the commonsense reaction that came when a woman realized she was trapped. Trapped with a man she didn't know, couldn't
trust.

  But the fear didn't come. She tried to peer past him, but whatever lay beyond the few feet of path she could see was quickly enveloped in darkness. “This leads to the tower, then?”

  “Aye. The castle actually. Black Angus didna construct this. He hadna the means. But it was his idea. It was several generations later before the task was accomplished. It actually leads to the castle proper, but there is another corridor that leads to the tower.” He turned and held the lantern out in front of him. “I havena had cause to use this in some time. But it's held up for all the years before me, so it should be passable.”

  Okay, so she had a jitter or two left in her. “When, exactly, was the last time you used it?”

  “Not too far back. Right before the turn of the century.”

  “Which century would that be?” she heard herself ask.

  “Eighteenth, I believe?”

  Okay then. Why do I keep asking these things?

  Better to just get on with it. She tugged the cloak around her and scooped up the part that dragged the ground. “Lead on.”

  He looked a bit wary of her easy acquiescence, but he nodded in approval. “I can carry ye, if ye like.”

  “I can manage,” she said, moving in front of him and starting slowly down the passage.

  “Oh, I've no doubt of that,” he said, moving in behind her. “But you'll forgive me if I dinna ask ye to tend to the fire later.”

  The grin quirked her lips before she could stop it; she was just glad he hadn't seen it. She needed to find some control here. Connal getting all cute and charming wasn't going to help. She kept moving, not daring to look back at him, but she could feel him treading heavily behind her. One foot in front of the other, she schooled herself. Don't think about what lies ahead.

  And definitely don't think about what will happen when he gets you alone in that tower.

  Chapter 8

  It was foolish really. To be concerned about bringing her to his less than lavishly appointed chambers. Not that he had any need for mortal comforts himself… although he found solace in them anyway. Something about maintaining a sense of familiarity, he supposed.