Lord of the Highlands (2 page)

Exhilaration and fear both spiked in Will’s veins. It was a heady feeling, looking down from the saddle, watching Jamie’s face pale, that mouth sputtering, for once speechless.

His response, when it came, was deathly quiet. “Horse
man
? You’re a boy. A
baby
. Not a horse
man
.”

Jamie’s hand was swift, darting at the pony’s rump like the lash of a whip.

Will didn’t have a moment to contemplate the jostle of the saddle beneath him before his mount took off with a start, tearing through the stable like a rabid animal.

Jamie’s laughter and the startled whinnies of the other horses flashed like a thunderclap, then were gone as Will’s pony burst out, taking the pasture at a full gallop.

“Whoaa.” His voice was unsteady. Will tugged at the reins, his breath loud in his ears.

“Ho . . .” He pitched his voice low, trying to soothe the animal.

“Ho,” he tried again, and this time he gently snugged his legs tightly around the pony’s belly to settle him. The animal answered with an outraged shriek. It was a hideous sound, a demon sound, not a noise a creature should make at all. The pony squealed again, a possessed thing, baring his teeth, rearing up and down, and up and down, hooves skittering madly at the air.

Will held tight. Leaning forward, he twined his small fingers in the pony’s mane.

He began to slide.

He wound his hands more tightly into the coarse hair. Dirt and leather oil had darkened his nails into black half-moons, and his fingertips began to go blue.

He couldn’t hold on. He needed to let go.

Will released one foot and was ready to leap off, when he realized his left side was caught. His foot had slipped all the way through the stirrup. He wriggled madly, terrified now. The heel of his boot caught.

He’d have to ride it out.

Swinging his free leg back over, he found the right stirrup. Again the pony took off like a bullet.

He saw the rise in the ground before him and tried once more pulling on the reins. Will leaned back hard now, using the whole of his small body to coax the animal to slow, to stop.

The pony shrieked again, and Will’s skin crawled. He realized it was his shifting weight that caused the pony’s cries. What had Jamie done? He remembered his brother jostling the saddle just before the pony went mad.

Carefully, he reached back. His hand fumbled along the hard stretch of leather while his eyes remained pinned on the hill before him.

The small scree-covered slope grew closer by the second. Before, it was an innocent thing, and now it loomed, threatening.

Will’s fingers gingerly probed along the back of the saddle, down to the pony’s coat, now slicked warm and wet with sweat. He pulled his hand back. A thin smear of blood stained his fingertips brownish red.

It would be the last rational thought Will had for some time.

His pony reached the rise. He reeled away in last-minute panic to careen along the base of the hill. But not before the hooves on his right side hit gravel, slid. Still galloping, the beast faltered.

Will wriggled, his terror at fever pitch, trying desperately to dislodge his trapped left foot.

The pony fell, rolling onto his right side. Will heard the sound of his leg being crushed. An all-consuming pain blanketed him. Smashed him.

He felt his left calf bone snap, his foot finally loose.

In an unnatural, awkward movement, the pony heaved back up and charged away.

Leaving Will lying there. Broken. On his seventh birthday.

Chapter 1

“Jerk!” Felicity slammed her sangria onto the table, sending her bangles clattering to her wrists. “Evil, nasty, two- timing jerk.”

“I warned you about Scorpios,” her Aunt Livia said. “They’ll sweet talk you, then turn around and
sting
.” She pulled an orange slice from her glass and snapped a bite from it to underscore her point.

“Do you realize he actually called himself a
feminist
?”

“No!” Livia grimaced. “Put a man in a protest march and all of a sudden he’s freaking Gandhi.” Her aunt nodded sagely, tucking her long, unnaturally red hair back behind her ears. “I met the same in my day. Trust me, sweetheart, I’m much happier living in my little cottage all by my lonesome.”

“But, Livvie . . .” Felicity deflated. “I love your place, but I’m sorry, I just can’t give it all up and live in a canyon somewhere with a bunch of coyotes.”

“I’ve only had trouble with the one coyote, and my little cottage was good enough for you when you came to live there as a child.”

Felicity picked a big, green olive from her plate, taking a moment to think. The last thing she wanted to do was inadvertently offend her aunt. Livia had taken her in when Felicity’s parents died in a car accident, and her aunt’s eccentric lifestyle had been what pulled young Felicity through her grief.

“I’m sorry, Livvie. Your place was,
is
wonderful, but I’m not eight anymore.”

“Would that you were.” Livia looked around the tapas joint. It was in San Francisco’s Mission District, and it was packed with the gamut of city dwellers: the pierced and the straitlaced, nonnative speakers mingling with middle America. “I do without you for a whole year so you can see the world, and then you move all the way out here. I hate having to come all this way just to see you.”

“I was only in Central America, it was only nine months, and it was your idea, as I recall. Anyway, your trips to San Francisco would go much faster if you flew instead of insisting on the bus.”

Livia ignored the jibe. “I see why the city beckons, sweetheart, but I wish you were back where you belong.”

“I belong
here
,” Felicity said. “And it’s not as though you’re living on holy ground. I mean, come on, Livvie, you’re in LA.”

“
Outside
Los Angeles, dear.” She eyed the table full of tiny plates thoughtfully, and speared a bit of quiche with her fork. “Did you do that online dating thing you were telling me about?”

“The one in the TV commercials?” Felicity shrugged. “Yeah, I did it.”

“I wish you would stay away from that Internet stuff. I told you, Tarot is better for this sort of thing than that w-w-w business. Who knows what kind of characters—”

“Everyone is screened.” Felicity smiled patiently. “It’s scientific. There’s a formula. Fill out a questionnaire and they match you to your ‘Perfect Mate.’
Find your true love with Formu-LOVE
!” she added brightly.

“Mm-hm.” Her aunt sipped her drink, looking skeptical. “You should use the cards like I taught you. And don’t forget the candle. The candle is the key. You need to find yourself someone better than that . . . that guitar-strumming . . . person.”

“I thought you liked those crunchy hippie-dude types.”

“I used to. But times have changed.” Livia gazed at her a moment, her eyes softening. “Honey, I’ve just seen one too many of those
types
screw my little niece over.”

A shocked laugh burst from Felicity, and she raised her nearly empty glass in a toast. “To hypocrites. Good-bye to the lot of them.”

“Hear, hear,” Livia said. “You need yourself a real man.”

“Yeah! A real man . . .” Felicity nodded enthusiastically, refilling her glass. “Someone who pulls grandmothers from burning buildings.”

Her aunt let out a tipsy giggle. “That’s the ticket, honey.”

“Who’d jump into icy water to save a stranger. A big Viking of a man. Who’d fight to protect
me
. Who does things like . . .” Felicity thought for a moment, then slamming her hands onto the table, announced, “Fish.”

“You want your man to fish?” Her aunt’s exuberance momentarily waned.

“Yeah.” Felicity shrugged. “I want a man’s man, but I don’t think I’m ready for any hunters yet.”

“Ha!” Livia’s shriek drew a few pairs of eyes to their table. Ignoring them, she declared, “Then here’s to fishing.”

They both tossed back the rest of their sangria.

“Ugh.” Felicity grabbed the table edge to steady herself. “We should get the bill and go.” Scowling, she reached across the table to pluck the last mushroom cap from its puddle of oil. Her stomach roiled in preparation. She always forgot what a bad idea tapas were. Sangria flowing from long-spouted jugs, with only some garlic prawns and bits of quiche to absorb it all.

She gestured to the waitress, then put a hand to her head. She lived only a short walk down Valencia Street, but she’d rather wobble home before all that cheap wine hit her any harder. And she still needed to make up a bed for her aunt. “Do you want the futon or the mattress?”

“Futon’s fine, honey.”

Felicity reached for her bag, but her aunt stopped her with an exaggerated frown, tossing a couple of twenties on the table before she had the chance to. “But first I’d like to walk off my sangria.” Livia glanced at her oversized men’s watch. “There’s just too much to see for me to be going to bed this early.”

Felicity stood abruptly. Normally she’d put up more of a fight, but the sangria had begun to burble in her belly. “You sure?” She pulled on her brown suede jacket and tugged the long length of her blonde hair free.

“Absolutely. I may be long of tooth, dear, but I’m not dead yet.” Livia shooed her toward the door. “Go, go. You’re looking green around the gills, as your lovely mother would’ve said. Go get some rest.”

Felicity pulled her into a quick hug.
Mom.
Livvie’s sister.

She swallowed back a pang of grief. Though it was still sharp, the passing years had dimmed her memories. Now the occasional washes of melancholy were less about her mom and dad in any specific way, and came more from the vague sense of what she’d been missing.

She made it home to find a letter waiting for her. She’d almost walked right past it. It must’ve been delivered to the wrong mailbox, and someone had slipped it under her apartment door.

Felicity picked it up and frowned. It was from Formu-LOVE. Scrunching her brows, she focused on the pink and purple envelope.
Based on Scientific Research! Find your true love with Formu-LOVE!

She’d been waiting for it, and now that it was here, she was afraid to open the thing.

Felicity had answered pages and pages of questions, covering everything from “Ketchup or mustard?” to her thoughts on religion, birth, and death.

Could this be it?
Would there be a name and a little mug shot of her “perfect mate” inside?

Her hands trembled as she tore it open. She looked at the front and back of the single sheet, then peeked in the envelope to make sure she’d gotten everything out. Shouldn’t there be more?

It was just a form letter, with her online nickname and pertinent details filled in with an elaborate, loopy font.

“The least they can do for my two hundred bucks is send me a real letter,” she muttered.

She stopped reading, crumpled the paper, and flung it across the room, where it fell short of its mark. She stared angrily at the trashcan, a grimace holding back her tears.

Staggering to the couch, Felicity curled into a fetal position. “Unmatchable.”

She bit her knuckle. What if she was?

She didn’t want to end up alone like her Aunt Livia. Felicity adored the woman, but she just wasn’t a nomad like her aunt. Traveling had been exciting, but now she was ready to nest, to build a life. Find that one true someone she knew her father had been for her mother.

“Alright, Liv.” She popped back up, striding to the cabinet where she kept her Tarot cards. “You win.” She lit her candle and flicked off the lamp.

She plopped onto the rug, spilling the deck out before her. It had been a gift from her aunt, not long after her parents had died. Felicity had felt guilty when she’d first contemplated those intricate and old-fashioned images. The brightly colored Hanged Man and the ominous Devil seemed like such transgressions.

But they never failed to pull her in, the cards alternately majestic, ominous, triumphant. Each suggesting a mysterious and unexpected tale, where a smiling countenance could bode ill and a dying man meant rebirth.

Felicity spread them out wide before her, rummaging them under her palms in a sloppy shuffle. They were reassuringly cool and waxy under her fingers.

“Where’s the one man who’s right for me?”

She gathered the cards back into a stack and did one more quick shuffle for good measure.

No, she wasn’t without a match. There was one man in the universe just for her. She shut her eyes and tried to visualize him. “Where is my great big Viking of a man?”

The candle flickered, and a shiver crawled up her skin. Taking a deep breath, she gave a shake to her sangria- fogged head. It was only the candlelight, she told herself.

Still, Felicity grew somber. Alone with the cards in the darkness, it was impossible to avoid the sense that she was tapping into some great, unknown energy.

She slowly began to deal out six cards. It was an arrangement her aunt called The Great House. A simple spread, but powerful.

Taking a deep breath, she whispered, “Show me where you are.”

She put her fingers on the first card, what her aunt called the Querent. It was
her
card, the one that represented Felicity’s situation. She rubbed it between her fingers before turning it. “I need you,” she whispered again. “How do I find you?”

The crisp flip of the card resonated in the silence of her apartment.

She drew in her breath. The Chariot. “Cool,” she said quietly. She loved this card. A conquering hero, bearing a spear, in armor decorated with stars and moons, riding in a chariot drawn by sphinxes. In the dim light, he seemed to be riding straight for her.