“You have to trust me on this. I know what I’m talking about.” Ellie leaned over Caden’s shoulder, watching as he worked to repair the piece of equipment lying in front of him. “We just need to walk the animals through the copper sulfate mixture. It honestly wouldn’t be that hard to do.”
Why couldn’t she just shut up? Every time she’d seen Caden for the last few days, she’d babbled on like this, like some kind of deranged magpie. But she couldn’t seem to stop, even though she knew he had no faith in her idea of how to treat the foot rot.
She couldn’t seem to make herself move away from him, either.
“Aye, so you’ve told me, lass. Several times.” Caden spoke patiently, not looking up from his task, not even when her hair fell across her shoulder and dangled down onto his.
She should really straighten up and back off. Just move away from the man.
But no.
“What could it hurt to at least try? We’d just need to get the rock and make the solution and then walk the animals through it.”
She could only babble on and move closer. Close enough she could feel the heat from his back on her legs. Close enough to admire the way his auburn hair just brushed the top of his shoulders, soft curls caressing his strong neck. Close enough she could almost count the individual gold flecks in his deep brown eyes when he turned his face up to her.
“So you’ve told me many a time now.” He lifted the tool he was working on. “Do you want to do this repair yerself? Because I canna finish with yer hanging over me like a bird of prey.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry. I was just trying to…” She let the explanation die away as she straightened and he returned to his task.
It was the babbling. If she could just manage to shut her mouth for one minute she wouldn’t be so annoying and perhaps she’d be able to convince him. But it was so hard. If he would only believe her. Instead he greeted her with silence.
So she babbled, because the silences were too uncomfortable to bear.
For in the silence, in the moments she didn’t fill with inane chatter, her thoughts drifted back to the day they’d gone out to check on the sheep. To that rock overhang with the storm raging outside and his lips warm against hers, his arms holding her tightly, his hands…
“Are you no listening at all, woman?”
Startled from her thoughts, Ellie jumped and stepped away, her foot landing on the tools Caden had neatly stacked on the floor. The metal under her slipper rolled and her feet flew out from under her, pitching her backward. Before she could hit the ground, Caden was there, arms outstretched for her to fall into.
Or rather onto.
He’d twisted around to grab her, pulling her forward onto him. When she landed, it was on his solid body instead of the hard ground.
The oof sound underneath her sent her scrambling to get to her feet but to no avail. His arms held her securely atop him, face to face, staring into the depths of those eyes.
Brown like warm molasses. Sprinkled with gold.
She stilled and placed her forearms on his chest to balance herself as she pushed up to give herself some distance. That close she couldn’t get her voice to work, couldn’t even think.
“Are you unhurt?” The words rumbled in his chest, vibrating against her body.
“I’m okay. Just embarrassed. Again.” She shook her head, hating the heat that flooded her face. “I swear, Caden. It feels like I’ve saved up every stupid, klutzy thing I could possibly ever do just so I could repeatedly make a fool of myself in front of you.”
He grinned at her and the breath caught in her lungs.
“You do seem to have a talent for the blunder.” His hands slid from her waist up the sides of her back. “But I dinna think you a fool, Elliedenton. Completely immodest and inappropriate in every way for a lady, but no a fool.”
She could hardly deny those charges, straddled across his body with her dress bunched up to her thighs. But she didn’t have to listen to them.
Instead she lowered her face to his and kissed that wonderful, firm mouth. Feathered the tip of her tongue over his lips until they parted. Sucked his full lower lip into her mouth.
He rolled, and she found herself under him, his body snuggly fit to hers as he took charge of the kiss she had begun.
One hand cradled her head as he left her mouth and trailed the fire of his lips down her neck onto her shoulder, nudging the gathers of her shift out of his way as he went.
His finger traced the neckline of her garment, followed by his tongue, pushing the material lower until his hot breath caressed her breast.
When his hand covered that same breast, she lifted her hips, locking her legs behind his back.
This felt so right.
The fire consumed him as it did each time he was close to her.
Ellie’s skin tasted like honey and he hungered for her as a starving man for crumbs.
The breast under his fingers molded to his hand as if it had been made for him. He ran his thumb over the nipple still hidden under her shift, emboldened when he felt it harden under his touch.
He grasped the strings that held the shift in place and pulled, loosening her neckline, granting him the access he wanted.
Her little moans drove him wild.
He pushed the cloth from her breast and froze at what greeted him.
A deep, dark red rose adorned her breast.
Her Faerie mark.
The Fae. She’d been sent by the Fae. Sent through time to find her man. His brother. She belonged to his brother.
He looked to Ellie’s face to find her staring at him, her eyes the dark inviting green of the deep forest.
Her hands fluttered up and her thumbs brushed against his cheeks. “How can this be possible? It can’t be you I was sent here to…”
“No!”
It had come out so much more harshly than he’d intended. The hurt and shock on her face cut him to the quick. “No,” he said more gently, pulling her shift back up to hide the beauty he’d exposed. It couldn’t be him. He’d had his one chance at love. And learned his lesson painfully well. Love was not for him.
From the time he was a child he’d known Alycie Maxwell was to be his wife. Both his mother and hers, Grizel Maxwell, had approved the marriage, encouraged it for as long as he could remember. He’d taken for granted their lives together without ever a single thought to the girl herself.
Had he loved her?
He had no idea what love was. All he knew was that he’d been unable to hold her, unable to forge a bond such as he’d seen between his parents. Though he’d always prided himself on his ability to understand those around him, he’d been oblivious to Alycie’s true desires.
In her desperation to be rid of him, she had betrayed his family. He’d driven her to it.
And since then, following his heart had brought nothing but ill to those dear to him. So much for the value of his love.
Dedication and duty—those he understood. Loyalty. Sacrifice. Responsibility. All were the tenets he held dear. The ones to which he’d devoted his life.
But love? That word was not part of his destiny in any sense other than his love for Dun Ard, his family, his people. Beyond that, it was nothing to him. A useless emotion meant for others, not him.
Besides, those dear to him were all better off when he kept his mind to business and his emotions tightly reined. When he didn’t, when he allowed his emotions to lead him, it caused only grief.
Hadn’t he been the one who had insisted Drew come along that day they’d faced off against the Fae warriors and their men? It was his fault Drew had been injured, that he carried the pain and scars on his leg.
When Colin had come home from battle, hadn’t he been the one who had insisted Drew continue to practice in the lists with Colin?
It was his fault Colin’s sword had left that horrible scar down Drew’s chest, stealing whatever confidence Drew had left. His fault Colin bore the guilt for the accident.
His fault Colin had gone off to fight in every battle he could find, that his youngest brother considered himself unfit for anything but death and destruction. The instant Colin’s sword had sliced down Drew’s chest, Caden had seen it in his eyes.
He’d stolen Colin’s honor.
And now he thought to ruin the woman who had been sent for Colin? The one woman who might restore to his brother what he had taken away?
“No,” he repeated as he pushed himself away from her. “I’m no the one, lass. I had my chance with a woman I loved and she rejected me. I’ll no put anyone through that ever again.” Not him, not his family.
How like the Fae to send so great a gift for his brother with such potential for pain attached.
What was he to do? He couldn’t seem to keep his hands off this woman. This woman the Faeries had destined for his brother.
He turned his back and started for the door of the workshop.
“In the future, you’re no to come to me unaccompanied, do you ken? I’ll no be left alone with you again.”
That should solve the problem. He wouldn’t allow himself the opportunity to be tempted.
He strode from the work shed across the bailey toward the keep, only now noticing the activity there.
Riders!
He picked up his pace, fighting not to break into a run.
How could he have missed the call of the guards?
Foolish question. He knew exactly how he’d missed the cry of “Riders at the gate!”
His steps slowed as he recognized the men who even now dismounted.
Steafan had returned with his mother. He had brought Grizel Maxwell to Dun Ard to await word of her son’s fate.
But who was the woman at Grizel’s side? The one who even now dropped the hood of her cloak, looked up and caught his gaze.
“Holy Mother of God.”
Alycie Maxwell had returned to Dun Ard.
What an idiot!
Ellie slowly got to her feet and walked to the door of the work shed, using a hand against the doorframe to steady her balance. Somehow her legs felt too weak to hold her up properly.
She’d thrown herself at the guy. She’d done everything but rip his clothes off, and given a few more minutes, she might have done that, too. Right out in public where God and everybody could just walk in the door and catch them.
She watched him stride away, and when he halted halfway across the courtyard, straightening his back as if he felt her presence, she quickly ducked behind the doorway.
Never, never had she embarrassed herself so badly.
She waited a couple more minutes before bolting out the opening of the little work shed and around the back, headed for the garden behind the keep. There she should be able to find some peace and quiet.
She hadn’t made it through the gate before her hopes were crushed.
You upset. What Big One do?
Missy and Baby trailed silently behind her. Baby’s neck hair bristled as he swung his big head back and forth between her and the direction from which they’d come.
“Not now, guys. I need some alone time.” She spoke aloud as much to calm herself as to answer Missy.
We keep Big One away.
Ellie snorted her disbelief, not caring about the unladylike sound. As if Caden would be coming anywhere near her ever again.
“Big One didn’t do anything. It was me. I screwed up big-time.”
Ellie had reached the center of the garden, where a lovely bench stood under what would be a wonderfully shady tree not long from now. She sat down and dropped her head into her hands.
What on earth had possessed her? As if it wasn’t bad enough that he already didn’t trust what she told him about treating the sheep, now she’d gone and completely ruined whatever credibility she might have had. Whatever would have made her think Caden had any interest in her?
Well, of course he had an interest. That much was pretty darn clear. Any guy would be interested in a woman who threw herself at him. Human nature didn’t change just because you were thrown off a few centuries.
But she could have sworn she felt more than just a physical attraction when she was with him. A connection.
“I’m a total freakin’ idiot,” she muttered. That didn’t begin to cover it.
As if ignoring her continued nagging to try her sheep solution hadn’t been clue enough what he thought of her, he certainly hadn’t minced words this time. He’d told her exactly what he thought of her, of how inappropriate her behavior was. He’d had enough. He didn’t want to be around her anymore. He’d made that clear.
And to top it all off, apparently he still mooned over some woman who’d dumped him. The perfect woman who obviously hadn’t had any problems with being immodest or acting inappropriately.
“She may be all that, but she certainly wasn’t very smart,” Ellie confided to the dogs as she sat up straight. “Can you imagine anyone turning down a guy like him? I mean, how perfect could she be if she didn’t even have the good sense to hang on to a guy like that?”
Both animals stared at her, eyes wide and unblinking.
“I could compete with her. If I wanted to,” Ellie mumbled, scrubbing her face with her hands.
But Big One’s angry.
There was that minor detail. Caden was angry. And she’d made a complete and total fool of herself.
The embarrassment she’d held at bay flooded back. How was she ever going to show her face in front of that man again? She just wanted to curl up in a ball. Wanted to escape. Wanted to turn back time and have another chance at the last hour of her life.
“But those damn Faerie things wouldn’t do that, would they? Oh no, they’ll dump me here, hundreds of years out of my element. And then I’m totally on my own without a single do-over in sight.”
You would do different? Don’t think so. Missy’s words echoed through her mind as both dogs continued to stare.
And there was the frustration of this whole mess.
The damn dog was right. She wouldn’t do anything differently. If she were thrown back into the same spot, her body straddled over Caden MacAlister’s, she’d react exactly the same way. And she couldn’t even come up with a good reason why other than it just felt right.
He was an overbearing, stubborn, controlling sheepherder but none of that seemed to matter one damn bit when she was around him.
“Well, crap.” She reached down and pulled the little dog to her, cuddling the creature in her lap. “You already know me too well, don’t you?”
“Who are you talking to?”
Ellie looked up in surprise at the words. Her new little friend, Anna, stood only a few feet down the path from her.
“Thanks for the warning, guys,” she muttered before smiling her welcome at the child. “Only myself, Anna. Just hiding out here talking to myself.”
“I come to hide here, too. Do you mind if I sit with you?”
Ellie patted the bench beside her in invitation. “And what are you hiding from?”
The child shook her mass of red curls, rolling her eyes as she did so. “Cook’s in a fair frightful mood. Says the family is in for it now and she’s no happy about it in the least. And when Bridey MacInnis is no happy, the whole of the kitchen suffers, believe me.”
“What’s happened?”
Though she asked calmly, her stomach churned with nerves. She would absolutely die of embarrassment if anyone knew how she’d behaved. Caden had been awfully upset with her, but surely he wouldn’t go say anything.
“Guests have arrived, and one of them”—the girl lowered her voice and looked around conspiratorially—“is the lady who was to have married Master Caden all those years ago. Cook is fit to be tied that the woman would show her face here even if her brother is missing with Master Colin.”
The woman Caden still loved was here? Now? How horrible was that. If he were the one, her only way home, how was she supposed to find out with the woman of his dreams showing up?
The little dog in Ellie’s lap growled. Challenge her. It’s your pack now.
Ellie scratched at Missy’s head absently.
Maybe the dog had a good idea.