My Highland Bride (35 page)

New in Flirt is
Just a Little Kiss,
the next novel of Renita Pizzitola’s Crush series. Felicity knows that “Summer Boys” are only good for one thing. But what if hooking up with the right guy could lead to a fresh start?

There you have it—until next month, when September is the month to fall in love all over again, with Loveswept.

Happy Romance!

Gina Wachtel

Associate Publisher

Read on for an excerpt from

My Tempting Highlander

by Maeve Greyson

Available from Loveswept

Chapter 1

“Leave off, Graham. I didna ask yer opinion. The last time ye nettled me into seekin’ a wife from among the Sinclair women…” Ronan Sutherland shook his head and didna bother finishing that sentence. Instead, he ground his teeth at the unpleasant memory. What an ill-fated venture that had been, and Graham damn well knew the truth of it.

“That wasna m’fault.” Twin curlicues of faint white smoke spiraled up from each of Graham’s glistening nostrils. “Ye ken verra well the severity of the head cold I suffered that season. ’Tis damn nigh impossible to achieve true clarity within a dragon mist vision when one’s head is befuddled by snot while trapped in that accursed form.”

A dragon with a head cold. Ronan snorted at the memory, his huffing breath misting in the cold morning air. Dragon by day. Man by night. Aye and for certain, Graham the man had been uncharacteristically ill that spring. Therefore, Graham the dragon hadna faired so well either. His fiery sneezes had nearly decimated the southern tower and half the skirting wall surrounding Draegonmare fortress.

They’d finally been forced to relocate the ailing dragon. They’d moved him to the stretch of caves running the length of the western shoreline of the loch. The loch that formed the center of this mist-shrouded land that had been hidden from prying eyes for centuries by a witch’s curse. Raw stone and the deep trench of icy loch water were among the few elements able to survive Graham’s uncontrolled blasts.

“And ye fail to remember,” Graham continued in a wounded tone. “I ne’er told ye to choose the one ye called Mistress Kenna. Ye can thank the fickleness of yer own second sight for that wee mess ye got yerself into. Ye wouldna listen. Ye were stubborn as a lad, and ye’ve no’ changed a whit o’er the past three centuries. But now we both ken the correct path. ’Tis been confirmed by the old Sinclair woman herself. Hell’s fire, man. Her invitation was more a summons than a request. I dinna ken why yer no’ willin’ t’take it so we can both be rid of this wretched existence.”

Ronan palmed the partially carved knot of pine in one hand until it rolled to the perfect angle. Steadying his blade with the ball of his thumb, he peeled away another thin sliver of the pale fragrant wood. He was in no mood to revisit the subject of choosing another wife for what seemed like the hundredth time. Graham had worn that discussion ragged.

The only way he’d briefly silenced the nattering bastard was when he’d threatened Graham with a century of solitude by telling the dragon he was going to travel to Ireland to escape his incessant caterwauling. Ronan knew this was the only effective threat for Graham. After all, the curse also bound Graham to the sea. The only way the dragon could venture farther than the mists surrounding the lands of Draegonmare was to access the sea through the ancient tunnels hidden in the depths of Loch Ness.

Once past the protective barrier of the mists, Graham had to remain in the briny water—whether in human shape or dragon form. ’Twas nay a problem during the daylight whilst he was the beast, but ’twas damned uncomfortable in the chill of the night as the man.

The great sulking beast had promptly clamped his scaly jaws shut and submerged into the darkest depths of the waters. He’d risen only when the setting of the sun returned him to human form. Then Graham the man, horse trainer to Ronan’s father and lifelong mentor to Ronan, had stomped up and down the rocky strand beside the lapping water, silent as a church mouse and sullen as a jilted maid.

The curse bound Graham to Ronan, but an even stronger connection joined the two. The men had formed a precious brotherhood after surviving so many centuries together. By the witch’s words, Graham was the only human privy to Ronan’s beginnings, allowed to witness the birth of the cursed child—the child born as a wolf cub to the king’s leman after she had been cursed into the form of a wolf. The dragon Graham guarded the wolf and her pup by day, as did the man Graham watch over them at night. When the stirrings of manhood and the need to mate forced Ronan into human form, it was Graham who taught him the ways of man.

Ronan had enjoyed that rare bit of peace from Graham’s insistent nagging. But then the summons from MacKenna keep had stirred Graham’s kettle of chaos back to bubbling. The MacKenna emblem, alongside another sigil Ronan didna recognize, sealed the yellowed parchment square with two blood red circles of wax. As soon as he’d opened the message and read the single line, Ronan knew the owner of the second mark: Mother Sinclair—matriarch and unrelenting force of the time-traveling women who’d united with Clan MacKenna. Her words still sent an ominous shiver up his spine and stood his hackles on end.

“It is time.”

Three simple words, but Ronan had known their meaning immediately: If he wished to finally break the curse, ’twas time to return to MacKenna keep.

Ronan rolled the tension from his shoulders and turned his attention back to his carving. He wasna ready to battle the ancient witch’s damning powers again. Thrice, he’d attempted to break the curse. Three times, he’d lost. He needed distance from it. He needed peace. After all, since the curse rendered him immortal, ’twas nay as though he risked running out of time.

Perhaps if the quest were ignored for a bit, Graham’s attention might be swayed from the matter entirely. Winter would be full upon them soon; ’twas no time to consider travel. Ronan affectionately clapped a hand on Graham’s cold scaly side. “Mayhap when spring warms the land, I’ll consider a visit to MacKenna keep.” Ronan meandered closer to the mouth of the cave, lightly running his hand along the rough ridges of Graham’s back. “And I ken yer no’ to blame for m’poor choices of the past. But I weary of the hunt for a proper lady to free us from this fate.”

Ronan propped against a stone ledge and smiled down at the carved dragon in his hands. “Perhaps yer breath is the only element capable of adding a bit of warmth to this hidden part of the Highlands. Perhaps ’tis better for us to move forward and embrace this existence we already have and know.”

“I would be finished with this damnedable curse. I would be finished with this existence.” Graham grunted and grumbled through a jaw-cracking yawn as he resettled his wings, then flopped his scaled length along the edge of the stone ledge. His massive girth squirmed down into the debris littering the wide limestone shelf jutting out from the cave. Twin clouds of smoke huffed from each nostril as he propped his multihorned muzzle atop his claws. “Thanks to yer father’s witch of a wife, yer cursed to spend eternity seeking a healer for yer sorrows and I’m cursed to walk along beside ye like some scaly, oversized pet during the day and yer damned footman by night.” Graham licked out his forked tongue, snapping at a cloud of buzzing midges circling too close to his snout. “I hope that woman’s roasting in the hottest corner of hell for coming up with this ridiculous form of a winged lizard that most dinna believe exists.”

Ronan chuckled as he held the bit of carved wood up to the magnificently hideous beast lounging beside him and compared them. Graham must have ingested too much char this morning. Whene’er his friend overfed on the favorite fish of his human form, Graham waxed particularly morose and even more whiny than usual. “Aye, m’friend. We’re a pathetic pair, are we not?”

Ronan ran his knife tip along the curve of the miniature wooden dragon curled in his hand, and his blade slowed as he added another row of points to the tiny ridged back. “A healer for his sorrows.” Why would Graham phrase it so?

The memory of Mother Sinclair’s shared vision of her granddaughter residing in the future flickered across his mind. A beguiling smile and gold-green eyes flashing with…what? Ronan closed his eyes and concentrated on the image Mother Sinclair had conjured atop the reflecting pool. The lass was fair to look upon for sure, but there was more to her than mere physical beauty. Her reflection pulsed with an unexplainable energy. An energy that beckoned him, filling him with an anxious aching need to capture it. But what if he did and she was nay the one? Then what?

Ronan shifted uneasily atop the shelf of stone and relocated to a chunk of wood upended into a makeshift stool. He closed his eyes. Mother Sinclair had sworn she had the answer he sought. His salvation was no’ to be found in Kenna after all but rather in one of her other granddaughters. A younger one. A twin gifted with a healing touch. Mother Sinclair assured him that this particular time-traveling Sinclair lass held the key to unlocking the prison of his curse.

Ronan counted backward. The young woman should be nearly twenty-one summers of age by now. Mother Sinclair had said it would be so. Mairi. Aye, that was her name. The Lady Mairi Caledonia Sinclair.

But what if Mother Sinclair was wrong?

Ronan leaned forward and thought harder. Mother Sinclair had spoken at length about the youngest twin granddaughters of her brood, the last two sisters yet to join the family at MacKenna keep.

Ronan involuntarily shuddered as he pondered all the women he’d met at castle MacKenna during his last fateful visit. Mother Nia Sinclair, the fearless grandmother of the Sinclair lasses, had made it quite clear that neither of her absent, youngest granddaughters were of an age to be wooed at that time.

Ronan snorted and shook his head as he smoothed the blade around the muscular curve of the wooden dragon’s hind leg. If he remembered correctly, Mother Sinclair’s exact words were that the youngest of the four sisters were strictly off limits and she would physically alter any man thinking otherwise into a hobbled gelding. That brutally clear announcement ’twas but another reason he’d erred in his choice of which Sinclair woman to take to wife.

But now another conversation from those forgotten memories pushed to the forefront of his mind. Mother Sinclair had revealed that she knew his personal history. She had sworn she knew his true lineage, knew the details of his damnedable curse. Ronan squirmed atop the hard cold block of wood and stared down at the scuffed toes of his black boots. How could it be? The cryptic old woman had also told him in veiled murky words that he was meant for one of her granddaughters, but she had failed to mention which damn one.

“Stop mucking up yer future by wallowing too long in yer past. Ye always did o’erthink things. No good will e’er come from reliving what ye canna change. Ye should ha’ learned that lesson well enough by now.” Graham raised his glistening black head until the twisted horns sprouting in front of his armored earflaps nearly bumped the roof of the cave. The dragon’s great glowing eyes narrowed into piercing slits that shifted into an even darker glare when Ronan failed to respond.

With a disgruntled huff, Graham stiffly rose from the ledge, stretching and bowing his spiked back like a gigantic house cat rising from its nap beside the hearth. He swung his steaming muzzle to within inches of Ronan’s nose. “Dinna ignore m’words, Ronan. I am nay one of yer gathered orphans awestruck by yer bloodline. I’m nay afraid t’tell ye what ye need to hear. Ye should ken that well enough by now.”

“Ahh, m’friend. Have ye ne’er heard that if ye fail to remember yer past, yer doomed to repeat yer mistakes?” Ronan pushed Graham aside and edged closer to the mouth of the cave. He held the finished carving up to the weak sunlight flooding across the entrance. The finished carving was a mirror image of Graham, down to the mail-like scales shining across his sides. Would that he could shape his life as easily as he shaped wood into whate’er he envisioned.

A pang of sadness twitched through his core as he closed both hands around the carving. He could ne’er forget the past and all his mistakes. Among his greatest regrets were the two painfully short-lived marriages preceding the debacle at Clan MacKenna. Lady Kenna Sinclair of MacKenna keep wasna the only wrong path his intuition and quest for freedom had tricked him into following. His other marriages had abruptly ended when each wife in turn had done her best to gift him with an heir. Each had died, and so had each of his infant sons.