Tempting the Highlander (Pine Creek Highlanders #4)

Chapter Two

R obbie loosened his tie the moment he slid behind the steering wheel of his truck and finally released the breath he’d been holding for what seemed like the entire meeting with Judge Bailey. He started the engine, pulled out of the courthouse parking lot, and headed toward Pine Creek.

The meeting had gone well, for the most part. Martha Bailey had agreed to let Gunter stay with Robbie, as long as the young man didn’t get into any trouble more serious than detention at school. But one brawl, one incident that required the sheriff to be called, and Gunter was headed to jail—only this time, it would be the adult county lock-up for the eighteen-year-old.

That had been the better part of their meeting.

On the flip side, if Gunter involved any of the other boys in his indiscretion, then Rick and Peter and Cody might also be placed back into the system—which for them could well be the youth detention center, since all three boys had a history of running away from foster homes.

Robbie put on his sunglasses and sighed. At the urging of his father, he’d left a career in military special ops five years ago and come home to Pine Creek determined to make a difference on a more local level. It had taken him two years to buy up enough land to build a profitable logging operation and another two years to convince Maine’s juvenile courts that he could help hard-case kids.

Judge Bailey had been his greatest obstacle at first, only to become an even greater ally once she realized that Robbie had a gift for working with delinquents. Martha was good at her job because she liked kids, and she was determined that Robbie succeed where the system had failed.

She was also a self-admitted sucker for tall, handsome men in suits who weren’t afraid to stand up to her. She was happily married and nearly old enough to be his mother, but she flirted like a schoolgirl.

Robbie was not above flirting back if it helped achieve his goal. Which was why he had brought lunch from the local diner for their meeting, that they’d shared across Martha’s massive desk in her tiny office. Hell, he’d even buttered her roll for her in an attempt to butter her up, hoping she’d turn a blind eye to the fact that Gunter was still living under his roof.

So far, so good. Gunter could stay, and Robbie could continue to ease the young man into adulthood.

The two brothers, Rick and Peter, were slowly settling in, and Rick’s comment this morning that he didn’t want to leave was encouraging. Eventually Peter would get over his fear of all things mechanical and with the help of a tutor make it through high school.

Cody, however, required a firm nudge toward the sober side of life. Robbie just had to figure out how to make the kid care enough about himself to stop getting into trouble.

Four juvenile delinquents was his limit. There was room for more boys in his mother’s old home, but if he couldn’t keep a housekeeper more than a month, he was in danger of losing the ones he did have to food poisoning.

Libby, his stepmother since he was eight, and Gram Katie and his MacKeage aunts helped out by bringing over evening meals occasionally, which was about the only time he could count on all four boys to be on their best behavior. Food seemed important to the teenagers.

Well, second only to sex.

Robbie had dealt with more than a few giggling teenage girls since the boys had come to live with him, and he had quickly learned that keeping the two sexes apart was an exercise in futility.

He smiled as his truck crested the knoll above the sleepy town of Pine Creek. Snowmobile season was just about over, and the ice was beginning to rot on Pine Lake, effectively shedding itself of ice fishermen.

Spring was the do-nothing time of year in the northern Maine woods. Mud season was fast approaching and would bring the logging industry to an abrupt halt in a few weeks. His crew of twelve men—and a fortune in machinery—would sit idle until the forest thawed and then dried enough to be worked again. Most of his men already had vacations planned, and Robbie wanted to take his boys to Boston over the April school break.

Or he had hoped to, until Daar’s visit this morning.

Robbie passed Dolan’s Outfitter Store and turned onto the road leading to his parents’ Christmas tree farm. He scowled, thinking that of all the outrageous schemes Daar had come up with, this was the scariest. The priest was playing on Robbie’s only real fear—which Robbie had grown up knowing was his father’s greatest fear, as well as that of his Uncle Grey and the other MacKeage men.

The drùidh had brought ten Highland warriors forward in time thirty-five years ago, but only five of them remained. The other five, all MacBains, had perished in the first two years. Most had died chasing lightning storms in an attempt to get back to their original time.

Robbie was named after his great-uncle Robert MacBain, and it was the old warrior’s sword that he had learned to wield once he’d grown big enough to lift it. His father had taught Robbie the skills of a warrior from the time Robbie could sit a pony, while himself attempting to straddle the chasm between two very different worlds.

Robbie worshiped his father and was awed by his ability not only to survive such an unimaginable journey but to thrive and eventually find happiness. And Robbie adored his stepmother, Libby. She’d married his papa just before Robbie’s ninth birthday and had thoughtfully given him two sisters and a brother to torment.

His younger sister, Maggie MacBain—now Maggie Dyer—had just given birth to a baby girl, making Robbie an uncle and giving him one more soul to worry about. Not that he minded. Protecting his rapidly expanding family of MacBains and MacKeages, and now wayward boys, seemed to be a calling Robbie could neither dismiss nor resist.

Keeping Daar in line, however, was proving a challenge.

Robbie pulled into the driveway of his father’s farm, stopped the truck between the machine shed and the Christmas shop, and shut off the engine. He stared through the windshield at the endless rows of Christmas trees marching through patches of melting snow, then let his gaze travel across the gravel yard to the large, white clapboard house where he’d grown up.

What was he going to do about Daar? He could not, in good conscience, dismiss the old drùidh’s claim. Not at the risk of his family. But could he confide in his father? Ask his advice? Maybe even take him back in time to help get the book?

Nay. He could not put his father through such an ordeal again. And Libby would die from worry. And Greylen MacKeage would likely unleash his own fury on Daar, and just where would that leave Winter MacKeage?

The five Highland warriors ranged in age from fifty-eight to eighty-five years old. They deserved, and had earned, the right to a peaceful old age. It was up to him to keep them safe from Daar’s magic.

The passenger door opened, and his father slid into the seat beside him, filling the remaining space in the cab of the truck. “Ya’re wearing a suit and look like ya’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders,” he said softly. “Does this mean Gunter has to move out?”

Robbie smiled and shook his head. “No. He can stay as long as he behaves.” He turned to face his father more fully and stared into the mirror image of his own gray eyes. “Have you seen a strange woman around town, about five-six or five-seven, with shoulder-length brown hair and a soft white complexion?”

“You lose another housekeeper?” Michael asked, raising an inquiring brow.

Robbie’s smile widened. “No. Only some eggs. I found her raiding my henhouse this morning and chased her halfway up TarStone before I lost her.”

Michael’s other brow rose. “Ya lost her? In a foot race?”

“She was all legs,” Robbie defended. “Have you seen anyone new in town?”

“Nay,” Michael said, looking toward TarStone Mountain. “Ya say she was stealing eggs?” He looked back at Robbie, a frown creasing his weather-tanned brow. “It’s still below freezing at night. Surely she’s not camping out?”

Robbie shrugged. “She might be. This was the third raid this week.” He also let his gaze travel up the densely forested mountain and blew out a tired sigh. “I’ll have to go find her, I suppose.”

“I can help.”

“No, you can’t,” Robbie said with a chuckle. “Maggie wants that nursery finished before the kid outgrows her cradle.”

Michael scowled. “It would have been done before the babe was born if Libby and Kate and Maggie would only stop changing their minds. What does a wee bairn care about crown molding or the color of window trim?”

“What’s today’s color?”

“Either mauve or lilac.” He shrugged. “Not that I can tell the difference between them. But apparently my granddaughter will be scarred for life if she has to sleep in a room painted the wrong color.”

“You still can’t bring yourself to call the babe by name, can you?” Robbie said. “Aubrey is a lovely name.”

“It’s a man’s name,” Michael shot back. “And it’s English.”

“Russell Dyer is English.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Robbie patted his father on the shoulder. “Russell’s a good man, Papa,” he said as he opened his door and got out.

Michael also got out and gave Robbie a crooked smile over the hood of the truck. “I know,” he softly conceded. “Maggie chose well.”

Robbie snorted and turned toward the house. “No thanks to you. You’re damn lucky they didn’t elope.”

“I wasn’t against the marriage,” Michael defended as they walked to the house. “I was just trying to make them slow down. Maggie’s not even twenty-two yet, and she’s already married and has a bairn.”

Robbie stopped to look at his father. “And at what age did women marry in your old time?” he asked.

“Society has gained eight hundred years of wisdom since then. And twenty-year-olds are too young to map out the rest of their lives.”

Robbie scaled the porch stairs two at a time and opened the door for his father. “I seem to remember a story about an even younger man trying to run off with a lass from another clan,” he said gently. “Were you not so deeply in love with Maura MacKeage eight hundred years ago that nothing else mattered?”

Michael stopped in the doorway and looked Robbie square in the eye. “I was young and foolish and so full of myself that I started a war, blaming the MacKeages for Maura’s death instead of myself. And that,” he whispered, “is the arrogance and ignorance of youth.”

“Do you ever miss the old times, Papa? Have you ever wanted to return, if only for a little while?”

Michael stared at him in silence for several seconds. “I have had such thoughts,” he finally admitted, his voice thick. He slowly shook his head. “After your mother died, and before I met Libby, I started up the mountain more than once, with you in my arms, intending to make the old drùidh send us both back.”

Robbie went perfectly still. “What stopped you?”

“You,” Michael said, placing a steady, strong hand on Robbie’s shoulder. “I’d get halfway to Daar’s cottage, and you’d do something as simple as wave at a chipmunk, and I’d stare at you and think…I’d think…”

“What?” Robbie asked. “What stopped you?”

“Your mama,” Michael whispered, looking toward TarStone Mountain. “Mary would fill my head with memories of her. Of us together. And I knew I couldn’t do it,” he said, looking back at Robbie. “I could not take you away from your future.”

“Daar said your coming here was an accident.”

“Aye. If ya don’t believe in destiny, then an accident is as good an answer as any.”

“So you truly feel that your ending up here and falling in love with my mother was destiny?”

“Aye,” Michael said, nodding as he finally entered the house. He tossed his jacket over a chair at the table and led Robbie through the kitchen and into the library. “I have never kept anything from you,” he said as he went to the hearth and stirred the coals of the dying fire. He looked over his shoulder. “Ya know my history and that of the MacKeages and Father Daar. Ya understand the magic that brought us here even better than we do. You’re mindful of Winter MacKeage’s destiny as Daar’s heir, and ya proved yourself a true guardian at the tender age of eight.”

“When I carried Rose Dolan through the snowstorm.”

“Aye,” Michael said, turning to face him. “Ya knew even then, even before we did, that ya had a special calling.” He smiled. “Have ya forgiven me for asking ya to come home five years ago?”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Robbie said, grinning as he prepared to throw his father’s words back at him. “It was the arrogance and ignorance of a twenty-year-old that made me run off and join the army.”

Michael’s eyes danced. “Are ya sure it wasn’t Vicky Jones that sent ya running?”

Robbie shuddered. “That girl was downright scary,” he muttered. “She actually told me she’d been planning her wedding since she was ten.”

Michael turned serious. “Just as I think twenty is too young to get married, I’m thinking thirty is too old to still be single. Dammit, son, when was the last time you even went on a date?”

“I had a date a few weeks ago.”

Michael snorted. “Ya took Cody with ya.”

“And Peter nearly burned down the house while I was gone,” Robbie said with a chuckle. “Honest, Papa, I don’t enjoy living like a monk. It’s just that I don’t have time to date.”

“Because you’re too busy being a guardian to everyone.”

“But I’m so good at it.”

“Aye. Too good.” Michael turned and placed a log on the glowing coals before facing Robbie again. “But at what price, son? Ya cannot take care of others at the expense of yourself. It’s time ya married and had bairns of your own.”

Robbie walked to the hearth and took down Robert MacBain’s sword, grasping its familiar weight in his fist as he turned to his father. “Would you mind much if I took this home with me?”

Michael glared at him. “Ya might ignore my petitions for grandbabies, but ya cannot ignore your man’s needs. You’re afraid, son,” he said softly. “But your fear is misguided.”

Robbie rested the flat of the sword on his shoulder and raised a brow. “And what exactly am I afraid of?”

“Of letting a woman distract ya from your calling.”

Robbie chuckled and started out of the library. He stopped at the door and turned back to his father. “Didn’t we have this conversation twenty-two years ago, only wasn’t I the one trying to talk you into getting married? If I remember correctly, you said a man can’t suddenly decide to get married and simply pick the first available female; that he must find a woman to love first.”

“Isn’t it amazing how our words come back and bite us on the ass?” Michael whispered with a smile.

Robbie nodded. “Aye, Papa. Both our asses are sore.” He lifted the sword from his shoulder and touched it to his forehead in salute. “If such a woman even exists, who can love me despite my calling, I can only hope our paths cross while I’m still man enough to enjoy her.”

Michael waved him away with a snort. “Go find your egg thief before she has to spend another night on the mountain. And don’t let Peter anywhere near that sword,” he added, following Robbie through the kitchen. “The boy will likely skewer your new clothes dryer.”

Robbie descended the porch stairs and stopped in the driveway to look back at his father. “How did you know I had to buy a new dryer?”

“Daar was here this morning, looking for breakfast.”

“What else did he say?”

Michael gestured at the ancient weapon in Robbie’s left hand. “Only that ya might be by to pick up Robert’s sword.”

“And did he give you a reason for my wanting it?”

“Nay,” Michael said. “Is there a reason?”

Robbie shrugged. “Only that my palm itched to hold it again. Maybe later this week we can have a match?”

Michael nodded. “I’ll give ya a few days to practice first, before I wipe the ground with your arrogance.”

Robbie gave him a final salute and turned and walked to his truck, waving good-bye over his head as he quietly let out a frustrated sigh. If Daar didn’t quit his meddling, he was about to feel the business end of a dangerously sharp sword.

It was nearly five o’clock and just starting to get dark by the time Robbie pulled out of the logging yard behind the last load of saw logs, his stomach growling in anticipation of Gram Katie’s lasagna. He headed toward Pine Creek, then turned onto a less traveled shortcut home that would take him around the north side of TarStone Mountain.

Gunter had left nearly an hour ago, after putting in an impressively hard day of work, according to Harley, who’d been grateful for the young man’s help.

Robbie glanced out the truck window and decided he’d head up the mountain tonight to look for signs of his egg thief, rather than wait for her to come to him, figuring she wouldn’t be raiding his henhouse again after this morning’s chase.

Who the hell was she? The woman had no business camping out this time of year, if that’s what she was doing. And she certainly didn’t have to steal food. She only had to walk up to any house in town and knock on the door, and anyone would be more than willing to help her. Yes, she was quite a disturbing mystery.

“Well, speak of the devil,” Robbie whispered as he slammed on the brakes, bringing his truck to a halt in the middle of the narrow tote road.

The woman had just stepped out of the ditch not a hundred yards away. She stopped and stared at him for the merest of seconds, then bolted back into the woods.

“Oh, no you don’t.” Robbie scrambled out of the truck. “You’re not getting away this time.”

He ran up the road and jumped the ditch, pushing through the tangle of alders before breaking into the forest. He stopped only long enough to let his eyes adjust to the dimness and listened to the snapping of limbs off to his right.

“Hey, wait up! I just want to talk to you!” he shouted, moving through the old-growth forest in her direction.

He heard a loud crash, a muffled grunt, then more limbs snapping as she scrambled away. He quickened his pace, weaving around large trees, ducking under branches, while still trying to listen, being careful not to make any noise himself.

The sound of his idling truck came to him then, quickly followed by the realization that the lady was headed back through the alders to the road. He turned and pushed his way through the bushes, stepping into the ditch just in time to see her climbing into his truck.

“Dammit, no!” he shouted, running toward her. “Stop!”

The rear tires chittered on the loose gravel, spewing up rocks as his truck sped toward him. Robbie jumped back into the ditch with a curse and stood ankle deep in rotting snow and freezing mud, staring at the taillights of his truck. “You little witch,” he growled as she disappeared around a curve.

The silence of the forest settled around him, and Robbie stood rooted in place, amazed if not awed that she’d stolen his truck. He looked over at the broken alders she’d come through and saw a dark lump hanging in them. He sloshed out of the ditch, pulled the lump free, and realized that she must have gotten tangled in the bushes and been forced to sacrifice her backpack in order to escape.

“Well, my quick little cat,” he whispered, unzipping it and peering inside. “Maybe now I’ll find out who you are.”

He reached inside and pulled out a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a pint of jam, and a fistful of mittens.

Mittens?

Child-sized mittens. With the price tags still on them.

The lady has kids?

One pair of the mittens was barely the size of his palm.

She has little kids.

“Well, hell.” He dropped the food back into the pack, stuffed the mittens in his jacket pocket, and reached deeper into the pack. This time his fingers closed around a wallet. “Bingo,” he said, pulling it out. He tucked the pack under one arm and opened the wallet, but it was too dark to read the name on the license. He closed it back up and reached inside the pack again, this time pulling out three knit caps.

He stared at the caps and heaved a weary sigh. Damn. His mystery woman had just become a really big problem—times three. He shoved everything back into the pack, hooked it over his shoulder, jumped the ditch again, and started walking the two miles home.

And just what was he going to tell the boys when he showed up without his truck? Certainly not that he’d been outmaneuvered by a pint-sized thief twice in one day!

Twenty minutes later and less than half a mile from home, Robbie stopped at the sight of his truck sitting in the middle of the road ahead, the lights still on, the engine still running, and his little thief nowhere in sight.

So, the lady had a conscience. She hadn’t stolen his truck, only borrowed it long enough to put some distance between them. Just as she hadn’t really stolen his eggs but had bought them.

Robbie scanned both sides of the road as he approached the truck. He opened the driver’s door and set the backpack inside. He reached behind the seat, moved his sword out of the way, and grabbed the flashlight. He turned and aimed the light at the ditch, trailing the beam along the alders until he spotted where she’d continued her flight toward the mountain.

Who the hell is she?

Robbie tossed the flashlight onto the seat and climbed in, flicked on the overhead light, picked up the backpack, and pulled out the wallet.

“Catherine Daniels,” he read from the Arkansas license.

Arkansas? She was a long way from home. She was also five-seven, one hundred thirty pounds, with brown eyes and brown hair. She was twenty-nine years old, as of January fifth of this year, and an organ donor.

Robbie studied the picture on her license and couldn’t help but smile. Catherine Daniels was a pretty little thing, with huge doe eyes, a turned-up button nose, and a shy smile. Her hair was shorter in the photo than it was now, falling in wisps around her porcelain-skinned, china-doll face.

“Well, Catherine, what else can you tell me about yourself?” he asked, flipping through the wallet.

He found a somewhat battered photo of an obviously younger Catherine and two children. The boy standing beside her looked about three or four years old, and the baby on her lap couldn’t be much more than one. He turned the photo over and found a five-year-old date scrawled on the back, along with the names Nathan, age three, and Nora, age one.

Which made them eight and six now.

Robbie lifted his gaze to the dark mountain beside him. Dammit. Were all three of them out there? Defenseless? Cold? Hungry? They were definitely scared. At least Catherine Daniels was scared, considering how desperate she’d been to get away. But scared of what? Or was it of whom?

Robbie looked back at the photo. It was a studio setting, but someone had been carefully cut out of the family portrait. All that remained of the fourth person was a large, beefy hand sitting on Catherine Daniels’s right shoulder.

Robbie tucked the photo back behind the license, opened the money section, and counted two hundred and sixty-eight dollars. Not much money for being three thousand miles from home.

“Come on, Catherine, tell me more,” he whispered, picking up the backpack and pulling out the food and the caps. He held the pack to the light and spotted a bundle of papers in the bottom. He took them out, removed the rubber band holding them together, and shuffled through them.

He found Arkansas birth certificates for Nathan and Nora, divorce papers ending a six-year marriage to Ronald Daniels three years ago, and court papers giving Catherine full custody of her children. But it was the last paper that caught Robbie’s attention. It was a letter from the Arkansas Penitentiary System informing Catherine Daniels that her ex-husband was being paroled on January fourteenth, after serving three years of his five-year sentence.

The letter was dated January fifth. Quite a birthday present Catherine had received this year. It didn’t say what crime Ronald Daniels had been incarcerated for, only that it was the parole board’s opinion he was ready to reenter society.

Robbie let his gaze travel toward TarStone. Did Catherine not agree with the board’s findings? Was that why she was here, hiding on his mountain, avoiding contact with people? But why Maine? And why his mountain, of all places? The weather alone was enough to cope with, especially with two young children. Children without mittens and caps—and supper.

Maybe they were only passing through. Or maybe Catherine had family up this way or was trying to get to Canada.

Dammit. The more he learned about her, the more of a mystery she became.

Robbie folded the papers and placed them back in the pack, along with the food and mittens and wallet, then put the truck in gear and started for home with a new sense of urgency.

He hadn’t traveled a hundred yards when his truck phone rang. “MacBain,” he said.

“Robbie, this is Kate. Where are you?”

“About two minutes away. Did the hoodlums leave me any lasagna?”

“There’s plenty. Ah…you need to go to town and pick up Cody at the health clinic. He’s okay,” she rushed to add. “He just needs a ride home.”

Robbie sighed. “What happened?”

“Sheriff Beal called half an hour ago. It seems one of the boys Cody was with got hurt. But he’s going to be okay, too.”

“Hurt doing what?” Robbie asked, accelerating past the turn to his house and continuing on to town.

Kate made a frustrated sound. “I don’t know exactly. The sheriff said something about a potato gun, John Mead’s skidder, and a chase through the woods. The boy who got hurt ran into a tree and broke his nose.”

Robbie let up on the accelerator, letting the truck ease back to the speed limit. This wasn’t a crisis, only a bunch of bored high-school brats shooting potatoes at logging machinery.

“Are Gunter and Peter and Rick home?” he asked.

“I’ve got them doing dishes as we speak,” Kate said, a smile in her voice. “Robbie, what’s a potato gun?”

“It’s a homemade cannon fashioned from a length of plastic pipe that you shoot potatoes out of.”

“A cannon?” Kate repeated. “But what makes it…were the boys playing with gunpowder?” she asked in outrage.

“No. Hair spray is usually the propellent of choice.”

“Hair spray!”

“It’s a neat invention, Kate,” Robbie assured her, “that’s relatively harmless and not at all accurate. I doubt the boys did much damage to Mead’s equipment, other than make a mess.”

“Sheriff Beal didn’t sound so amused,” she shot back. “And he’s not releasing them until their parents come get them. Robbie, don’t you dare let him take Cody away from us!”

Robbie smiled, picturing Kate with her hackles up. Libby’s eighty-one-year-old mom was more protective of the boys than he was. Maybe he should let her go rescue Cody from Beal.

“I won’t let anyone take Cody, I promise. You just make sure to save me some lasagna.”

“I’ve saved enough for both of you,” she told him. “Ah…Robbie? I called your truck phone earlier, and a woman answered.”

Catherine Daniels had answered his phone? “What did she say?”

“She told me you were unavailable at the moment and to try calling back in half an hour. Who is she?”

“Er…just someone I’m doing business with. I’m at the clinic, Kate. Thanks for bringing over supper. You don’t have to wait for us. This might take a while.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Don’t you dare do any cleaning,” he warned, knowing Kate only too well. “That’s the boys’ responsibility.”

“Too late,” she said with a laugh. “I did the bathrooms while the lasagna was reheating.”

“Kate,” Robbie growled.

“And if shooting a potato cannon is so harmless,” she said, cutting him off, “you go easy on Cody. Try to remember that you were sixteen once.”

“Ah, Kate,” Robbie said with a laugh. “I was never sixteen. Good-bye. And thanks,” he softly added, hitting the end button on the phone and snapping it back in its cradle. He got out and stood beside the truck, looking first at the lighted windows of the clinic and then over at the looming shadow of TarStone Mountain.

He blew out a tired sigh.

There were days when he felt he was being pulled in a dozen different directions, when he thought the whole world might fall apart if he blinked. And days when he feared he couldn’t live up to his calling.

And then there were days—like today—when he didn’t even come close.