Highlander's Beloved 02 - A Highlander's Passion Read online

To Kenzie’s surprise, tears rolled down Effie’s cheeks. “What is it? Are ye in pain?”

  “No. I just loved that man so much. Damn him for going before me, for leaving me with nothing but an empty bed and a heart full of memories. I’ve dated a few guys, but for all my teasing, I’ve taken none to bed. I doubt anyone could measure up to my Morris. Lord, how I loved that man.” She reached for a tissue.

  “I understand. At least you have a passel of memories to cling to. Ones that make you laugh and cry.” If she left Mathe Bay before the wedding to protect Bryce and his family, she’d have only a few sweet remembrances to carry her through her empty life.

  Effie wrapped her cool hand around Kenzie’s. “What are you planning, Sparrow? I can read you pretty good, you know. Do you think going on the run will make Fauste hunt you down and leave Bryce and Colleen alone? That they’ll be safe? Don’t do it. You cannot hurt that wonderful man by deserting him. He won’t see it as you taking care of him. He’ll see it as out-and-out rejection.”

  She tilted her head and stared at Kenzie. “I don’t think he’d ever get over it. Your acceptance of his duality is more important to him than you can imagine. I’ve watched how he looks at you when he’s in bear mode.” She waved her open hand. “Not in a sexual way, but in an adoring way, like a dog does with its owner. He loves that you accept him for all that he is and he accepts you for all that you are, human and Wiccan. You two were meant for each other.”

  Kenzie’s chest tightened with both fear and longing. “I fear fer his and Colleen’s safety. Yet I love them so. My mind alternates from staying to leaving. Och, Effie, I’m so confused. When ye love someone as much as I do Bryce and little Colleen, how can ye deliberately put them in harm’s way?”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my short time here in Scotland, it’s that men do the protecting. The Highlands can be harsh, so the men have had to be harsher still to survive. They cherish their land, their children, and their women. Yes, there are a few assholes, and you found one in Duncan. But Bryce? Bryce has a deep need to take care of you and the kids. He’s a family man.”

  Kenzie stood and walked around Effie’s room, admiring her flowers. “We’ve been having sex.”

  “Well, I should hope so.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at Effie. “Unprotected sex.”

  “Then give up this crazy idea of leaving him. It’s lunacy. You say you love him.”

  “I do. More every day.” Leaving him and Colleen would tear her soul apart. She couldna do it. “Aunt Una is making me bridal outfit. She had a funny gleam in her eye. Claimed she’d gotten a vision of how it should look. I canna wait to see what she makes me. If ever there was a woman confused about what was the right thing to do, ʼtis me.” She lifted opened hands and let them fall. “I canna give him up, not now. Not after all the years I’ve loved him.”

  Tears pooled in her eyes so badly she could barely see Effie’s arms open wide fer her. She leaned over the old woman, who held her close, the smell of her baby talcum powder comforting.

  “You just cry and get that silly notion out of your pretty head. Especially since there’s Colleen to think about, too. That child needs you.”

  “I worry constantly about their safety, I get confused.”

  “Don’t leave Bryce, Sparrow. Not when he loves you as much as he does.” Effie patted her back. “I know you’re troubled about Fauste. Better to stand shoulder to shoulder with Bryce to fight the wizard, don’t you think? Won’t you be more powerful together?”

  She nodded, resolve slowly filling her. “Yes, two people combined would be stronger. I want to be Bryce’s wife so bad. I want to make him as happy as he’s made me these last few days.” She bit her lower lip and shyly made eye contact with Effie. “Do ye know they sell crotchless panties at Bridgette’s Bridal Boutique? Paisley told me.”

  Effie laughed. “I was with her when she bought them. She took every pair in the store in her size.”

  “Ye dinna think I’d be too forward…”

  “Hell, no. Buy all you can. If they have the edible kind, get those too. Give your man a real sugar rush.” She waggled her eyebrows.

  “I’d love to surprise him a time or two.”

  “Then do it! Now, let me make a few calls. We witches know how to do some wild and crazy things too. Once we put our heads together, we might devise a way to beat that evil wizard. In the locker over there is my purse. Get it for me. Is your phone charged if mine is dead?”

  “Yes. I charged it while I slept most of the day away.” She wiped the tears from her eyes, pulled Effie’s large purse from the locker, and set it on her bed. “Who do ye want to call?”

  “Our Wiccan sisters. We need a meeting. Here. Tomorrow if possible. Fauste is not invincible. There are ways to destroy him, but we have to decide if this is how we want to go. You know how we feel about harming no one. Still”—she shook her finger—“when they see he used a sword and sliced his own daughter’s throat with no compunction, I suspect they’ll be ready to band together for your good.” She pulled her phone from her purse and checked the battery. “Darn, it’s almost dead. There’s only enough power to make a call or two.”

  “Here’s mine.” Kenzie slipped her cell from her purse. “Let me see yers. Maybe my car charger will work on it.” She glanced at the connector on the iPhone. “Aye, I’ll hook it up and drive around for a bit.” She slipped it in her skirt pocket so she wouldna forget about charging it. “I promised Bryce some honey drops and I’ll hit the all-night pharmacy fer that vitamin E lotion Earnan recommended. It willna take long to recharge it enough fer ye to use. Meanwhile, use mine. Do ye need anything at the store?”

  “Lemon drops and fingernail polish remover and polish. Pink, of course.”

  “I’m getting ye red and orange.”

  “I’ll turn you into a goat.”

  Both of them were laughing when Kenzie exited the room.

  She hurried out to the parking lot, her heart lighter than it had been in days. At last, she was thinking clearly. The fact that she and Bryce accepted both sides of each other would be a strong base fer their marriage, a respect of their duality. She’d loved him too long to walk away from him now. Sweet joy defined her future. She was staying and marrying the man she loved. No running to keep him safe. He was a Scot. He could take care of himself and his family. Effie was right, leaving him would only be cruel. Better to stand by his side and work through problems together.

  The parking lot was still filled with cars and trucks. Thank goodness she’d parked her car under a security light; it would make finding it in the dark easier.

  This time of night, moths flew around the dusk-to-dawn bulb. She stuck the key into the lock and one of the moths flew around her head, transformed into Fauste, and shoved her against the car door.

  Chapter 20

  As terror commanded Kenzie’s nervous system, she acknowledged if shock had a face, its eyes were silver. If terror had a smell, it was sulfur. If astonishment had a voice, it was Eastern European with rolling r’s and a strong tinge of hate.

  “Are you surprised, Roza?” Fauste’s hands tightened on her forearms as he turned her and walked her backward to a silver Rolls-Royce. “Or shall I call you by that ridiculous Scottish name these barbarians have given you? ‘Kenzie,’ ” he spat.

  The man’s breath was foul, as if he’d eaten something still alive. She swallowed a couple times to force down the bile. “What do ye want from me?”

  He pressed the button on his key fob and the locks on the Rolls clicked open nearly silently. “Blood. I won’t need it right away. I have over a year and a half remaining on this pact.” He laughed, the stench from his mouth filling her nostrils and churning her stomach.

  “Oh, this is perfect timing, wouldn’t you say? I’ll get yours when I need it and, by then, the babe you carry will be born and through that god-awful crying stage. Then I’ll have years to train it so I can gain the third of my twenty-four-year pacts with the devi
l.”

  She searched his eyes fer some trace of truth. A bairn? Ridiculous. If she was carrying a child, how could he possibly know if she didna? At most she could be only a few days into her pregnancy. There was no way even he would have such awareness.

  He threw his head back and laughed. “You’re wondering how I could know when the egg and sperm have only met the last day or so. I do. Believe me. In fact, I can smell his sperm on you now. Oh, daughter. I’ve hit the jackpot with you.”

  If utter despair had a sound, it was her purse slapping the parking lot pavement when it slipped from her grasp. She couldna be carrying Bryce’s bairn. Not fer this demented heathen to get his wicked hands on. Life couldna be this cruel, could it?

  Fauste opened the door, shoved her in, and depressed the lock with his fob. She tried frantically to dig her fingers into the chrome hole housing the locking plunger in hopes of escaping. He jumped over the roof of the car and entered without opening the driver’s door. “Buckle up, daughter. I do love speed.” The car purred to life and raced from the hospital, from Mathe Bay, and from the man she loved.

  —

  A man could only glare at a closed door fer so long until his anger boiled over and burned a gigantic hole through the metal portal. Or so Bryce had figured. Where was she? How damn long could two women talk?

  Not that he minded one whit if they were having a good old-fashioned gossip fest. Nay, his anger stemmed from the inkling creeping up his spine that Kenzie had never gone to Effie’s room. In her confused state of mind, had she left Mathe Bay to keep him safe? Surely not. Especially after the slow intimate sweetness of their second round of lovemaking, when they had joined both bodies and souls, speaking a language of love told only in the beat of their hearts and understood only in their mingled breaths. He had never felt closer to another human being than during those tender moments—hospital alarms and buzzers be damned.

  Not long after Kenzie left, the medical team had come in and unhooked all the machines. Shortly after that, two nurses helped him out of bed to stand and, with their arms around his waist, assisted him in making his first few painful steps. The acute discomfort of each forward movement was welcomed, fer he was walking toward a lifetime of love and wonderment with his calico-eyed darling. He gladly stumbled toward their future.

  Slowly the door opened, and a platinum blonde head peered around the edge. “Oh, thank goodness you’re awake.” The familiar small woman strode in. Me God, it was Effie in a platinum wig and a pink fluffy robe. “Is Sparrow here?”

  He closed his eyes in resignation, his heart crumbling like dead leaves beneath the crunch of his boot. She’d left him. Told him she was going to see Effie and ran away instead. “No. I thought she was with ye.” He forced the words from a mouth gone dry with fear and a hopelessness so deep it nearly emptied him of life.

  “She was, and we had a lovely talk.” Effie collapsed into the chair next to his bed, her hand to her chest until she regained her breath. “Sparrow told me she was going to the all-night pharmacy to get you some honey drops, so I asked her to pick me up a couple things too. But that was hours ago. I sneaked out of my room and came up here, figuring she was so eager to get back to you, she’d forgotten my lemon drops and fingernail polish.”

  Hope blossomed. “That’s right, she had promised she’d get me some honey drops.” The pained constriction in his chest relaxed fer a minute, then seized him again. “How long ago did she leave?” He glanced at his watch.

  “It was nearing nine thirty.” Her lips pursed. “I’m getting a bad feeling. Call Ronan and your cousin, the one who’s the police detective. Maybe her car broke down and she needs help.”

  Bloody hell, she left almost three hours ago. “She’d have her cell.”

  Effie’s trembling hands extended Kenzie’s purple phone. “We traded. My battery was very low and she was going to charge it on her car charger. I needed to make some calls, which is why she gave me hers to use. There’s a good chance she couldn’t reach anyone if she needed to.”

  His heart sank. “Maybe she doesna want to talk to any of us. Maybe she’s left Mathe Bay so Fauste stays away.” He couldna forget how haunted she’d looked fer a while soon after she’d arrived. How he’d had to seduce her. Tell her over and over how much he needed her. Learning about her true heritage and being attacked by her da had her in a fragile mental state. She wasna speaking or thinking clearly unless she was in his arms.

  Effie shook her head. “No.” The unwavering conviction in her voice caused his gaze to snap to hers. “We talked about her desire to keep you and Colleen safe. I told her you would never get over her leaving. That you’d always look on it as a cruel betrayal.” She patted his arm. “Hon, I held her while she cried for you. My Sparrow loves you with such a deep adoration, much like I loved my Morris. She promised me she’d decided to stay and face Fauste shoulder to shoulder with you. Call your policeman cousin. Ask him to hunt for her car. Don’t you understand my fears? Fauste may have gotten her.”

  Bryce made a beckoning motion with his hand and she gave him the phone. He thumbed in a number.

  “Yeah, Kenzie.” Kendric’s voice was gravelly with sleep. “Something wrong with Bryce?”

  “This is Bryce. I’m afraid something’s happened to Kenzie. She left the hospital over three hours ago to go to the all-night pharmacy. We havena heard from her since.” Bryce brought Kendric up to speed on Kenzie’s last known whereabouts and the reason she’d traded cell phones with Effie. “Bloody hell, man, she’s disappeared.” He gave Kendric Kenzie’s car description.

  “On me way. I’ll start at the hospital parking lot. Call Ronan and tell him to go to the pharmacy. We’ll be in touch on our cells. Calm down. I’ll find her. One way or another.”

  Bryce called Ronan, who promised to head off right away. Now he didna know whether to stare at the door, his watch, or the cell phone. He should be out there hunting fer his beloved. Damn his leg. Damn Fauste. Damn it all to hell.

  Effie stood to pace the room. “She’s like another granddaughter to me. I can’t help but feel something terrible has happened.”

  Old insecurities surfaced. He’d sensed Kenzie’s resolve to run to protect him. “If she’s left me, ’twill be one of the most devastating things of me life.”

  “Would a woman who planned on running speak of her wedding dress? No. We’d talked through those fears she had. She was even planning on buying crotchless panties for your honeymoon. No.” She crossed her arms. “Something else happened. I feel it.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Kenzie’s phone chirped, and Bryce could barely unclamp his hands from the death grip he had on it to swipe his thumb across the screen. “Did ye find her, Kendric?” He didna mean to yell, but she was his and here he lay, helpless in a damn hospital bed when he should be out there leading the search. If he shifted he could smell her, for he kent her smell. Aye, he kent it well.

  “Nay. Yer not going to like this.”

  “Oh hell.” Bryce reached fer the comfort of Effie’s hand.

  “Her car’s in the parking lot of the hospital. The keys are hanging in the lock.”

  Cold fear seeped from the pores of his skin, soaking him like sweat on a hot summer day. What in God’s name had happened to her? “Sweet Jesus.” He repeated the news to Effie, and her hand flew to her mouth.

  “Her purse was on the ground just a few feet from her car. I emptied the contents and looked them over. There’s no phone. Didna ye say she’d swapped phones with Effie?”

  “Aye.” His gaze took in the old woman. “Are ye sure Kenzie has yer phone? It wasna in her purse. Kendric found it near her car.”

  “She’d slipped it in the skirt pocket of her sundress.”

  He relayed the information to Kendric.

  “What’s Effie’s number, Bryce? Maybe there will be enough signal I can locate where she’s been taken. We got some updated phone GPS equipment just this week. I’ve been eager to give it a try. Sorry, man, that sounded bloody crass.�
�

  Bryce shook so badly, he fumbled the phone handing it to Effie. “Give Kendric your phone number. He’ll use the department’s new tracking signal gear to see if he can locate her.”

  While Effie gave her number to Kendric, Bryce started to shake with an uncontrollable tremor that had him nearly hopping on the bed like a fish out of water. Maybe it was his body coming off the morphine drip they’d removed a few hours ago—or maybe it was sheer fear he’d never see his beloved again.

  “Young man, I want you to listen to every word I’m saying, for it is the God’s truth.” Effie stood and drew up her less than five feet of height until she looked as tall as Creighton. She seemed ready to give Kendric pure hell. “I know who has her. Do I have your attention?

  “Years ago, when Kenzie was small, her father started dabbling in the black arts, black witchcraft. We don’t have time for me to explain how I know this, just believe what I’m telling you.” Effie started pacing the room and waving an arm. “Ronan will back up my words. Her father made a pact with the devil, a type of blood oath that gives him twenty-four years of invincibility. He can do anything, Kendric. Take on any form. Walk through walls, if he wants. He’s as evil as evil can be. His time is running out; that’s why he’s captured her. He needs his daughter’s blood for a transfusion so he can make a second twenty-four-year pact with the devil. He’s one dangerous son of a bitch.”

  Effie’s back-and-forth striding and the force of her words gave Bryce something to focus on besides himself. “Give me the phone. Let me talk to Kendric a minute.” Cell phone in hand, he sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed his injured thigh, his legs dangling. “Are ye planning on taking Ronan when ye go hunting fer my fiancée?”

  “Aye, he’s just pulling beside Kenzie’s car now.”

  “Good. Come and get me. I’m going along.” If he had to stay in this tiny room one more minute, not kenning what was happening to his Kenzie, he’d go mad.

  “Are ye fukin’ crazy, man? Ye just had surgery on yer leg.”