“The falls,” Cearnach said, raising his brows, as if he knew just where this was leading. “About dinner, now that Guthrie is finished with his assigned task… and since you gave him the order initially about fixing—”
“Aye, well, seeing as the three of you have nothing better to do, make it a family affair.” Ian smiled a wee bit and then he guided Julia toward the entryway, dogs in tow.
His brothers spoke in Gaelic to one another. “They’ll never make it back here in time for dinner,” Duncan said lightly. “It won’t matter how badly we cook.”
“She’ll be staying the night and be here for breakfast,” Cearnach warned. “If Cook isn’t here before then, and I doubt she will be, we’ll have the daunting task before us once again.”
Guthrie had the last word before Ian and Julia were outside. “He doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into.”
Chapter 9
Guthrie’s comment about Julia warned Ian that something about her would surprise him. He was already thinking along those lines anyway, but now his curiosity was elevated another notch. Usually, he was cautious, but Julia made him want to take risks he normally wouldn’t take. Maybe that was because she had been running through his woods as a wolf, very risky business, and he wanted to prove to her he was just as daring.
Life had grown dull of late. The same sword-fighting routines with his people. The same visits to the local tavern, to the Highland games, to his usual fishing haunts. No more wars or clan fights or political intrigue that involved his people. Aye, life had become dull. Until Silverman stole their investments and a red female walked into his life.
As soon as they were beyond the castle walls and walking through the woods in the dark, although with their wolves’ vision they could still see well enough, Ian slipped his arm around Julia’s to offer support and to judge if she faltered because of her ankle. He surmised she was not the kind of woman who would give up on an adventure, even if it killed her. Maybe because she’d been running around his lands after being injured earlier and, before that, had been fleeing from what she thought had been a pursuer.
The dogs stayed nearby, exploring, sniffing the ground, and looking for rabbits, but they didn’t stray far.
“Why did you and Maria rush off after the accident? I called out to you to see if you were all right,” he said, wanting to know if she had really been scared of them and intending to make amends.
“We thought whoever hit our car might have done so on purpose.”
Ian pulled Julia to a stop. “Say again?” He’d assumed they had just thought he and Duncan were bad news, maybe drunken, but he’d never considered that the other vehicle might have hit them on purpose.
“Maria told me that because of choosing your castle over any others, a man with a Scottish brogue called her and said she’d live to regret it as soon as she arrived here. I assumed it was an idle threat. But she thought the tires were shot out. I believed they just blew when the tires hit the rocks. It makes the same noise. I know, because it happened to me once.”
Ian began walking again, more slowly this time. “I thought I smelled the faint odor of gun smoke.”
“Oh.” She looked a little pale.
“Did you?”
“Not where we were when the car hit the stone wall. We didn’t go back up to the road.”
Ian nodded, figuring that if they had come up to the road, he and Duncan would have run into the lasses. “So you thought Duncan and I were after you in a bad way?”
“Yes. At least Maria did.”
Pondering the way she said the words, Ian didn’t respond for several minutes. Was she a better judge of character? Or something else? “But you didn’t worry about us?”
“I… well, you had called out to us, and I thought you truly wanted to help. I mean, your…” She looked up at him. First, her gaze latched onto his, and then she looked at his mouth. “Your voice sounded so…” She cleared her throat.
“So?”
She gave a wee shrug, looking away, her face blushing with color.
“So?” he asked again, wanting to know what she’d thought of his voice that made the color blossom on her cheeks and extend down her throat. Were her breasts blushing as well?
“Nice,” she said.
Nice. But he didn’t think that’s the word she would have described his voice. Not the way she’d acted so embarrassed.
“Then again, I didn’t really think anyone had hit us on purpose, either. A gray wolf ran in front of the car, and Maria slammed on her brakes. Right after that, the vehicle hit us. It was foggy and the guy was traveling faster than we were. I figured he knew the lay of the land so he was familiar with the roads, much more so than we were.”
What she said all sounded reasonable, except for the one thing she’d mentioned. The wolf. “A wolf?” he asked testily.
“I thought it might have been a…” She hesitated to say and then rubbed her arms. “I thought I saw him earlier, running parallel to the road.” She took a deep breath. “Maria tends to watch movies where everyone’s in on some kind of a conspiracy, so she thought the wolf was in league with the other driver.”
Ian wrapped his arm around Julia’s shoulders and pulled her close. “You’re shivering, lass.” He worried she was scared that someone might come after her again. But he didn’t like the notion someone had threatened Maria and then the car accident had occurred. That he’d smelled gunfire. And then there was the wolf. A gray wolf. Not one of his own. A trespasser. What if Maria’s assumption had been right? What if the wolf had been in league with the driver of the vehicle? What if they had been part of Basil Sutherland’s clan?
“It’s a little chilly out tonight,” Julia said.
“Do you want to go back?” He hoped not. In fact, he realized how much he was enjoying a walk in the woods with her—away from his brothers, his cousins, and the rest of the pack, away from her girlfriend Maria, even. And not just that they were alone. He enjoyed being with her when he hadn’t been with a woman on a quiet hike on his beloved land ever.
“No. If I keep walking, I’ll warm up,” she assured him, and snuggled a little closer.
He smiled, tightened his hand around her shoulder, and gave a light squeeze. Warming her up was just the notion he had in mind. But still, the idea that someone wished the women harm preyed on his thoughts. “Has Maria had any other calls?”
“No. Although her phone was lost in the car fire.”
“I’ll have my brothers check into it when we return. Were you included in the threat?”
Ian’s hand rubbed Julia’s shoulder, the heat of his body pressing closer to her side. She knew he was just trying to keep her warm, but he felt good, protective, perfect for the hero in her story, but more than that. He was causing her hormones to tumble wildly into uncharted dimensions. She didn’t want to think about the man who had called Maria or his threats. Just about what Ian was doing to her, triggering her sexual drive. “Yes, after a fact.”
His dark brows knit together. “After a fact?”
She shrugged, trying to concentrate on his fingers tightening on her shoulder in a shielding way, not wanting to discuss this since she didn’t have firsthand knowledge. “He mentioned me as an afterthought.” She wasn’t about to tell Ian the guy had warned her away from the laird, that he acted as though they had known each other personally, or anything about the ex-boyfriend. Although lupus garous could have human sexual partners, that didn’t mean another wolf wanted to hear about it.
Ian pondered her response for a while, his hand gliding over her shoulder and down her arm in such an affectionate manner that she felt she could melt into the pine needles blanketing the ground, pulling him with her and stripping him of his clothes so she could see the muscles she’d had a glimpse of earlier in the pub when he was soaked to the skin. And run her hand over them, memorizing the hot feel of his skin, the—
“Does Maria have any idea who the disgruntled Scot might have been?”
Here Julia was thinking about sex, and Ian was just concerned about the call Maria had gotten. Julia sighed and snuggled deeper against Ian’s hard body. “No.”
His arm tightened around her shoulder, and her heartbeat sped up. She hated that she could see anything romantic coming from him touching her. He was a Scottish laird, and she was an American nobody. He was a gray, and she was a red. He probably knew Gaelic, Scottish, and English, maybe other languages, and she knew American English and that was it.
And why she was even thinking about anything like that, she hadn’t a clue. He was not interested in her! Except to keep her warm because she was shivering. For heaven sakes! As for the threats to Maria and her, he was laird here and probably didn’t like anyone with the production being threatened because he was making money off it.
Yet she reminded herself that the way he was making her feel with his touching her was perfect for her story. The Scottish laird was now warming up to taking her as his bride, although he’d mentioned a handfasting, instead of an actual marriage, to get to know her for a year. Like an engagement period with sex. If she produced an heir, he’d marry her. If she didn’t in a year and a day, they could call it quits.
She harrumphed.
“Hmm?” Ian said, quietly walking beside her, his hand caressing her shoulder and alternately squeezing her against him from time to time.
Her face heating, she glanced up at him, not having thought he would hear her. He was looking ahead, the dogs having disappeared for a few minutes, now returning again, making sure Ian was still with them, and then loping off.
She might as well get in a little research while she was at it. “So about the custom of handfasting, do you still do that?”
His face darkened a little, and for a few minutes he didn’t say anything. She wondered what would cause him to be annoyed about the topic. Then he finally said, “Sort of a trial marriage. The Scottish Marriage Act did away with recognizing handfasting in 1939. But then in 1977, the Marriage Act allowed for handfasting again, but now it’s legalized.”