Anita Clenney: Awaken the Highland Warrior

“No. Lie down.” He slumped lower, his chin bumping the top of her head.

Bree grabbed the arm he’d slung around her shoulders to keep him from sliding to the floor and debated where to put him. The house had eight bedrooms, but only one assembled bed and a single set of sheets. She hadn’t replaced the ones she’d tossed out when she moved in. Living in a dead person’s house hadn’t bothered her, nor had sleeping in a dead person’s bed. Sleeping on a dead person’s sheets—even Grandma Emily’s—that, Bree couldn’t handle.

And here she was with a man she’d pulled out of a crypt draped around her like a shawl. Her mother was right, Bree had missed normal by light years.

She guided him to her bedroom, thankful it was on the first floor and that her mother lived half a dozen states away. She nudged on the light switch with her nose, dragged him across her hand-loomed rug, and dropped him onto the bed. “What’s your name?”

“Faelan,” he said and fell backwards like a downed tree.

Faelan? Unusual name. Bree shook his arm. “What happened to the treasure in the chest?”

His eyelids fluttered. “Not… treasure… chest.”

“Not a treasure chest? What do you mean?”

If the box wasn’t a treasure chest and it wasn’t a casket, what was it?

Chapter 2

Far across the ocean, a woman woke, breathless and sweating. It wasn’t one of those annoying, erotic, Duncan dreams. She pushed aside the long strands of red hair plastered to her forehead and lay still in the darkness, seeking the source of her dread. Her hand touched the metal growing warm at her neck, and she allowed her mind to drift, searching for somewhere to anchor. Blurred pictures flashed in her head, a dark-haired woman and a handsome man, then four more.

A round object came into focus, and she bolted upright, her nails digging into the bed.

The key.

For more than a century they’d searched for it, bled for it. Died for it.

The lost key.

***

“What do you mean it’s not a treasure chest?” Bree had a treasure map and her great-great-grandmother Isabel’s journal to prove it. She shook Faelan’s shoulder and lightly slapped his face. He didn’t move. Was he dead? She checked his heartbeat. It was a little fast, and his skin felt too warm. Should she take him to the hospital? Awkwardly she searched the sporran, but he had no wallet, no ID, only her disk, a strip of leather, and a smooth white stone. Who was he?

She replaced the items and studied him. He lay crossways on her bed, arms at his sides. A red and black kilt was belted at his waist, where the dagger still hung. His shirt was white, or had been at one time. It was smeared with mud, as were the beige socks—kilt hose—folded below his knees. She had to admit the costume looked authentic, except for the boots. They looked like something from the Civil War. Her specialty.

But it wasn’t his clothing that drew her. It was his face, strong jaw, straight nose, dark hair hanging to his shoulders, and most puzzling, his eyes. They had been uncannily familiar, but uncanny was her norm. Even as a child, when other girls were talking about schoolboys and planning sleepovers, she’d been dreaming of… whatever it was. She couldn’t put a name to it, although she often felt it had a face. A face! The painting.

Bree ran to the library, crossing the freshly sanded floor to the Davenport desk she’d pushed against the wall. Opening a drawer, she took out a small portrait she’d put there for safekeeping until she finished the room. The Highland warrior in the picture could have been Faelan’s twin, from the kilt and white shirt to the broadsword at his thigh.

She’d found the painting in an antique store while visiting her grandmother a couple of years ago. There was no signature, only a smudge at the bottom like a four leaf clover. Bree couldn’t have left the painting any more than she could’ve left a child, and it embarrassed her to think how much time she’d spent staring at it, like a young girl daydreaming over her first crush.

That was before Russell blew back into her life like Prince Charming incarnate. He hated the painting the minute he saw it. She should have taken it as an omen, but what man wouldn’t feel inadequate compared to a warrior like the one in her portrait?

Bree carried the painting back to her bedroom, where Faelan still slept. Her Highland warrior. He isn’t yours , she scoffed. But he belonged to someone. Maybe someone’s husband or lover. Someone’s son. Side by side, his resemblance to the painting was shocking. Could it be one of his ancestors? There were Scots in the area, and Faelan’s voice did have that sexy lilt, almost a brogue, although his name sounded Irish. The painting was obviously old. Bree knew old. She’d spent her life pursuing it, analyzing it. Old documents, old relics, old books.

No, it was too far-fetched, even for her, to think he could be related to the warrior in her painting. Stick any dark-haired man in Highland clothing, and he would probably look the same. Bree slid the portrait inside a drawer by the bed and ran a fingertip over Faelan’s arm. Whoever he was, he was stunning. She pulled her hand back with a sigh. No matter how rotten her love life was or how much he looked like her Highlander, she wouldn’t sink to caressing an unconscious man, especially a thief. For a moment she debated whether to get him out of his clothes, since the covers were getting damp, but he had a feral look about him that made her suspect he wouldn’t appreciate waking to find he’d been stripped. She could at least remove his muddy boots. Muddy? She looked at the footprints tracked across her wide-planked floor and handmade rug. Where did the mud come from?

She needed answers. He’d need food. If the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, maybe the path to his trust was there too, but for now, she didn’t want any more mud on her quilt or her favorite rug. She knelt at his feet and tugged on one boot, then removed the other, taking great care not to use her vantage point to see what he did or didn’t wear under his kilt.

After she gathered a first-aid kit, thermometer, damp washcloth, and towel from the bathroom, she left it by the bed and went to the kitchen for soup, bottled water, and an ice pack for his head. She started from the kitchen, when a crash sounded from her bedroom. Gripping the tray, she ran down the hall, coming to a halt in the doorway.

He was naked, sprawled face down on the bed, as bare as the day he was born. The lamp was overturned, his clothes piled on the floor next to his dagger and boots. He’d tried to turn the covers back, but now they were trapped underneath him. Bree set the tray on the table beside the bed.

He wasn’t the first naked man she’d seen, but he might as well have been. Taut skin covered muscle so defined it made her want to weep at the raw beauty. Several faint lines ran across his back and shoulders and a couple along the side of his hip. Scars.

Bree gave one lingering look from thick, dark hair to sexy feet, then averted her gaze and poked his shoulder with her fingertip. “Faelan, wake up.”

He didn’t move. She took one more look, leaned down, and shook him again.

He grunted and flipped over, pulling her flat against him. He rolled again, and the air whooshed from her lungs as he slammed her into the mattress, his forearm braced against her windpipe. “Druan,” he said, looking through her, “stop the war.”

She lay still, trying not to panic. “Faelan. Let me go,” she wheezed. When he didn’t, she tried to put her knee into his groin, but with her legs pinned under his it proved as ineffective as it had in the crypt. He groaned and moved his arm from her throat. She was so busy sucking in air she didn’t notice his fingers threading through her hair until she calmed enough to realize he was still on top of her, stomach to stomach, where her shirt had ridden up. Her legs, bared by shorts, were tangled with his. His skin felt hotter. He had a fever. And that wasn’t his dagger rubbing against her thigh.