Chapter 1
Inheriting a Scottish castle high on rugged cliffs overlooking the North Sea might have been appealing, if not for Grant MacQuarrie, the man managing it. Unfortunately, Colleen Playfair couldn’t just fire him. Not when he had taken the reins to care for the property, following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. She planned to go easy on him, but as she drove from the airport in Edinburgh to meet up with him in the Highlands, she dreaded the confrontation.
Just from the brief talk she’d had with Grant over the phone—in which he had grunted more than he’d spoken—she assumed the terms of her inheritance had pissed him off royally. Colleen tried to see it from his viewpoint: having the absentee landowner pop in to tell him what to do when he had been there day in and day out. And she was a woman and American.
She tapped her thumbs on the steering wheel as she considered the countryside. The ancient stone walls had meandered across the land for centuries, dividing it, and the sheep dotted the bright green grasses covering the hills. Like a pastoral scene of ancient times.
She loved everything she’d seen so far: the people, the old buildings, the vast uncluttered landscape now before her, the rivers and streams and trees. She would love it here, if Grant didn’t give her too much grief.
She sighed.
The terms of her inheritance weren’t her doing. One of the biggest problems she foresaw was that she didn’t know when she’d have a chance to run as a wolf. As a royal, she had very few human roots, which meant she could choose when she shifted—as opposed to the more newly turned, whose wolfish drive was dictated by the moon. But she would have to run and she was already feeling the need, the tingling urge to stretch her…wolf legs.
According to her father, Grant and his staff were human. She would have to get used to the layout of the land to learn where and when she could safely run.
She could just imagine someone seeing her as a wolf, alerting the rest, and starting a massive wolf hunt. Or worse, someone witnessing and then reporting her shifting. Then she’d have to change not only the person who had witnessed her shifting, but everyone else at the castle as well. Her whole visit could be a disaster of epic proportions.
But she wasn’t giving up her castle for anything or anyone.
***
Grant MacQuarrie swore he would rather fight a clan war, battling in the glen like they had done in earlier times, than have to deal with this.
For seven centuries, courtesy of lupus garou genetics and their ability to live long lives, he and his ancestors had administered Farraige Castle for the Playfair family. The family included a John Playfair, a noteworthy Scottish mathematician, geologist, and physicist, and his younger brother, who was a famous architect with a son even more famous. Colleen’s direct ancestor, the youngest of the Playfair brothers, was the inventor of statistical graphs.
Then there was Colleen’s own father, Theodore Playfair, whose mother, Neda, owned Farraige Castle. He had fought with his mother and left, mating an American and inheriting Farraige Castle upon his mother’s death. But he had left the management in the MacQuarries’ capable hands and returned to Maryland. Thank…the heavens. The man had been a thorn in Grant and his brothers’ arses for as long as Grant could remember.
Now Theodore’s daughter was arriving to take over.
Grant folded his arms as he stood on the castle walk towering over the stone drive that led into the inner bailey. Glad to see that his friend Ian MacNeill and fifteen of his pack members had arrived to help him out today, Grant smiled.
His triplet brothers, Enrick and Lachlan, joined him as they watched the men gathering in the inner bailey. Everyone was dressed in kilts and no shirts. Grant had figured they would look even more fearsome that way when the lass arrived. Their muscled shoulders and torsos were oiled, their skin glistening—making them appear as though they’d been fighting for some time previously. Their swords and dirks were at the ready as they waited for word to start, joking and laughing with each other in the meantime.
Grant and his clan had no trouble overseeing the estates and would continue to do so, just the way they had been. Some slip of an American girl had inherited the castle and properties, and she would arrive to tell him how to run things. For a year and a day as part of the legal terms of her inheritance. Just like her father before her.
Two years earlier, they’d had to deal with her resentful father, which had been a trial in and of itself. Theodore had dictated new terms, ordering Grant and his people to change a lot of their procedures. Implementing the changes had caused a lot of strife, so Grant and his clan had gone back to the old ways of doing things once the tyrant left. Grant hoped the daughter would not be as difficult to deal with.
One hand resting on the hilt of his sword, Enrick, the middle triplet, shook his head, his tawny blond hair tousled by the wind as he stared down at the gathered men. “Seems you’re going to a lot of trouble to make the lass think we’re warlike barbarians in an attempt to scare her away. Or make her think she has no say in what we do.”
“I’m hoping this will be enough,” Grant said, giving Lachlan a scowl as his youngest brother—by fifteen minutes—grinned, his dark brown hair curlier than Grant’s and Enrick’s, his eyes the darkest brown of the three. He was also the most lighthearted, not as serious as the rest of them. Except in battle.
“So, if Lady Colleen Playfair doesn’t turn around and run out of here shaking to the tips of her toes, what will you do then?” Enrick asked, casting a look in the direction of the long, winding drive that led up to the open gate.
“Have you not heard?” Lachlan raised his brows. “Grant has given her the White Room.”
Enrick looked from the men in the bailey to Grant. “Nay, you did not.”
Grant let out his breath. “You know the trouble the MacNeill brothers faced when American she-wolves invaded their castle, aye?” He looked back at the MacNeill men, waved at Ian, and headed to the tower stairs to join the men below. “Besides,” he said, clomping down the centuries-old stone steps, “she won’t last that long. Once she sees all those sharp swords and dirks, and all that fighting and mayhem, she’ll turn around and leave, realizing she really didn’t want to stay here after all. I’ve made reservations for her at a nice bed and breakfast two hours from here.”
“Surely not for a year.” Enrick snorted.