To Love a Highland Dragon (6 page)

Feeling dazed, half-drunk on lust, Maggie picked up her purse, looked around for her medical bag, and then remembered it was in the trunk of her car. “I really do need to leave. Are you staying here or coming with me?”

He thought for a moment. “Staying. I believe I shall bathe and await your return.”

Sudden joy bloomed inside her, so poignant it almost hurt. He’d be here when she got back. She’d been afraid he’d want to take off.
Watch it, Maggie
.
Nothing can come of this beyond maybe the greatest sex I’ve had in my life.

Why not?
Talk to Grannie. See what she has to say.

“Lass?” Lachlan looked at her with a quizzical expression, almost as if he could read her mind.

Well, maybe he can. He’s a centuries-old magician of some sort.
“Nothing. It’s nothing. I shouldn’t be gone much more than a couple of hours.”

“Excellent. I will warm the bed for you, once I am clean.”

“No. You will not. This couch,” she pointed, “makes into a bed. You’ll sleep there.”

A knowing smile flitted across his face. “Ye are no maid, yet ye act like one. We will discuss the topic further upon your return.”

She started to ask how he could know she wasn’t a virgin but clamped her teeth together to keep the words from escaping. Discussing sex with Lachlan would just make her hotter and, damn him, he probably knew it. “Look,” she managed. “If you do decide to go out for a walk or something, leave me a note. There’s paper and pens in the desk just over there.”

He was by her side so quickly, she didn’t see how he could have managed it. He closed his arms around her and slanted his mouth down over hers. That delicious scent surrounded her as he plumbed her mouth with his tongue. His hands trailed down her back and cupped her ass firmly; his erect cock jumped against her belly. She’d just lifted her arms to hug him back when he let go and took a step back.

Lachlan grinned mischievously. “Aye, lass. Ye’re needing to be bedded, and by a fellow who knows his way about a bedchamber. ’Tis little enough I can do to repay you for your kindnesses to me. We shall pick up where we left off when ye return.”

“Oh, we shall, shall we?” she muttered, too tongue-tied to come up with a snappy rejoinder. She stumbled out the door on unsteady feet and then turned back. “Lock it after me. You turn this—”

“Things havena changed so much. I will figure it out. Go.” He made shooing motions with his tapering fingers. “The sooner ye leave, the sooner ye shall return.”

“Holy shit.” She clapped a hand to her forehead. “I can’t go like this.” She hastened back inside, almost ran to her bedroom, and locked the door. Once there, she shucked her cut-off shorts, shirt and halter top, trading them for teal scrubs and a long white coat emblazoned with Margaret Hibbins, M.D. on the left breast pocket. She looked at her feet, decided her sandals would do, and prepared herself to run the gauntlet past Lachlan. Part of her hoped for another kiss—
Oh, let’s get real, I’d love to rip that kilt off him and…

Stop it. I need to leave. He’ll still be here when I get back.
She aimed for a casual saunter down the hall and through her living room.

He eyed her appraisingly from the couch as she walked past him. “Fascinating. Do the lassies never wear skirts these days?” He laughed, the sound low and musical. “I liked your other garb far better.”

She snorted. “I’ll just bet you did. It was comfortable but not very professional.” Not understanding what got into her, she blew him a kiss and escaped out the door.

With the taste of him still in her mouth and the scent of him in her nostrils, Maggie blundered down the steps and out of the building to her car. For a moment, she wanted to rush back, to make certain nothing evil befell him, and then she came to her senses. Whoever Lachlan Moncrieffe was, he’d been taking care of himself for centuries. If the evil he’d faced over three hundred years before was still after him, there’d be precious little she could do to fight against it.

She slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Talking to her grandmother suddenly felt more important than just about anything else. She grappled for her cell phone, intent on activating its Bluetooth connection but then stopped. There were better ways to talk with her grandmother. More private ones.

“Grandma. I need you.”
Maggie waited. Sometimes it took a while for telepathic communication to work, particularly with the Atlantic Ocean in between. If the two of them hadn’t been linked by blood, she doubted they’d be able to converse at all so far away.

She was nearly at the hospital, when,
“Yes, child, I see some of what is troubling you,”
sounded in her mind.

“Tell me about the man,”
Maggie demanded without preamble.

“He is old, and his magic is strong.”

“Do you know what kind of magician he is?”

A hesitation and then,
“Yes.”
The single word held a universe of meaning.

Maggie waited, but her paternal grandmother, Mary Elma Hibbins, remained silent. Maggie could picture the older woman, with her ageless face and waist-length black hair pulled into its usual braid. That hair had a few strands of silver, but not many. Right now, her grandmother’s finely arched brows were probably drawn together and her dark brown eyes pinched with worry.

Maggie pulled into the hospital’s lot and parked in the physicians’ parking area. She started to tell her grandmother they’d have to save the rest of this conversation for another day, when Mary Elma said,
“I will be on the first plane I can. I’ll text you so you know when my flight arrives in Glasgow.”

“What? Why?”
Alarm sluiced through Maggie. It wasn’t that her grandmother never traveled, quite the contrary, but to embark on an impromptu trip that would land her by Maggie’s side meant she was worried. Scratch worried; her grandmother must be frantic. Maggie’s heartbeat sounded loud in her ears. Something had frightened Mary Elma—badly—and her grandmother didn’t scare easily.

“I’ll answer your questions once I get there, child. Do not let the man leave your side. Be extremely careful. I see darkness around him. He is in mortal peril, yet you can help. He is…one of a special breed. I’d thought them all long since dead. That he still lives is, perhaps important, in ways I have yet to discover. I must confer with the Coven Council.”

Mary Elma’s voice faded. Without being told, Maggie knew her grandmother had severed the connection. “What the fuck?” she muttered as she got out of her car, went round to the trunk, and hefted her medical bag. For the first time, she wished she’d shown more interest when her grandmother and aunts had tried to teach her about her witch heritage.

Her parents had died when she was only six, fighting a rival coven over rights to a special, arcane magic that slowed the aging process radically. At the time, no one had explained much of anything to her because she was too young to understand, which left her free to form her own conclusions. When she’d begun to menstruate, the coven women had taken her under their wing—and been shocked she had absolutely no interest in her magical heritage. The way Maggie saw things, magic had killed both her parents and robbed her of being raised by them. She wanted nothing to do with such a lethal, unpredictable entity.

Despite many lectures from various relatives, she’d never changed her mind. It wasn’t accidental she’d chosen a career path in science. At the time, she’d thought medicine was about as far away from witchcraft as anything could be. Maggie winced. She could still see the shrewd smile on her grandmother’s face when she’d pointed out that some of the most famous witches of all had been healers.

Maggie punched in a code and pushed through the hospital’s back door into the emergency room. A brisk head shake, and she forced herself to focus on the reason she was here, not ghosts from her distant past. The sting of antiseptic overpowered Lachlan’s scent. She hadn’t realized it still lingered around her. White walls and linoleum floors whizzed past as she jogged to the nurses’ station.

Before she could open her mouth to say a word, Chris loped over to her, hospital gown flapping. “And ye finally got here, eh. What did I interrupt? Some hot little love fest?”

Maggie couldn’t stop the heat that raced from her chest to her face. “Where I was is no business of yours,” she said brusquely. “Why aren’t you in your room?”

“Because I want to leave.” His tone switched from aggressive to plaintive. “They said ye’re the only one who can spring me.”

“That’s true.”

“Well, it’s not fair.” He pouted. “They give shrinks too damn much power.”

“That may be. How about if you lead me back to your room, and you can tell me what happened.”

Bright blue eyes snapped dangerously. He shoved a hank of red hair shot with gray out of his eyes. At over six feet, Chris’ muscled frame was intimidating. As a younger man, he’d probably been attractive. At fifty, his face was deeply lined; broken blood vessels suggested a too-intimate relationship with alcohol. “Aye, ye’re wanting to follow me back to my room. Sounds like sexual harassment to me.”

Maggie shrugged. “If you’d be more comfortable, we can talk in the patient lounge.” She glanced meaningfully at him. “You need your clothes for that.”

“That’s just it. They took them away.”

Of course they did.
She made her tone soft and non-confrontational. “It’s your call, Chris. What do you want to do? The sooner we talk, the sooner I can make a decision about where you need to be right now.”

He grabbed her arm. “Home,” he screeched. “I need to be home, you goddamnned—”

“That will be enough. Take your hand off me.” Maggie squared her shoulders and met Chris’ gaze. If she let him bully her, she’d be dead in the water. Out of the corners of her eyes, she saw orderlies and nurses race toward them. In moments, they had Chris well in hand.

“Are you all right, Doctor?” Berta hustled to her side, gray hair escaping its pins. Green eyes were screwed up in concern. Her ample curves strained against the fabric of her white uniform.

“Yes, yes. I’m fine. Let’s get him back to his room. Physical restraints until I can talk with him, then chemical ones until we get him past this current break.”

An hour later, Maggie rounded up her purse and medical bag. It had taken far longer than she’d anticipated to deal with Chris, who’d taken a mixture of prescription drugs, followed by a healthy jot of whiskey, and become hostile and belligerent when his sister interrupted his drinking. Good thing she’d happened along. If Chris had continued to drink, he’d probably be dead, what with all the other drugs he had on board.

Maggie sighed. She’d signed orders to keep him in-house until he stabilized. After that, he really needed a board-and-care placement to make certain he took medications for his bipolar disorder and stayed away from other mind-altering substances. She pursed her lips and strode down the corridor, heading for the parking lot. What were the odds of Chris being even marginally compliant? Less than fifty-fifty, for sure. While he may have dulled his mental processes from years of boozing, he was far from stupid. The drugs she prescribed made him feel like crap, while the ones he procured on the street amped his mania.

“Why didn’t I go into ophthalmology or dermatology—or even plastic surgery?” she muttered and got into her car. Maggie started for home, remembered clothes for Lachlan, and navigated to a shopping center where the stores stayed open late.

By the time she left a menswear shop laden with bags, Maggie felt much better. The shopkeeper had been a hoot as Maggie described Lachlan’s build. “Och, aye, lassie,” she’d crowed, “and ’tis a fair brawny lad ye’re shopping for. With those broad shoulders and long legs, how’s the rest of him equipped, eh?”

Maybe to defuse the tension from her truncated conversation with her grandmother and the drama at the hospital, Maggie had laughed so hard with the shopkeeper tears rolled down her face. She’d just dumped Lachlan’s jeans, sweaters, and jacket in the backseat of her car when her phone trilled its text tone.

Grannie!
Maggie dug the phone out of her bag. Sure enough, it was indeed a text from Mary Elma informing her she’d be arriving day after tomorrow at six in the morning. Maggie’s nostrils quivered with annoyance. Why the hell did all trans-Atlantic flights to Glasgow have to show up at some ungodly hour?

Maggie drove automatically as she mentally rearranged her schedule so she could meet her grandmother’s flight.
Maybe I’ll bring Lachlan with me. Sounds as if the two of them will be kindred spirits…
Still running on autopilot, she pulled into the parking lot adjacent to her house and glanced up at her apartment. Days were long in June, yet it seemed odd he hadn’t turned on any of the lights. Her flat didn’t have all that many windows and tended to feel dark and shut-in once light faded from the day.

Perhaps he doesn’t understand how the switches work.

Balancing her purse and purchases, she locked her medical bag in her car, and trudged up the steps to her flat. Maggie knocked softly, expecting Lachlan to open the door. He didn’t. Her heart suddenly beat much too fast; her throat felt thick. She pushed her fragile magic outward. It didn’t tell her a thing.
Big surprise. I never embraced it, so why should it help me now?

Maggie set the bags down in the carpeted hall and fished her key out of her purse with none-too-steady hands. She twisted it in the lock and pushed the door open. Knowledge struck her like a blow to the gut. Lachlan wasn’t there; she didn’t bother calling his name. Her flat felt empty without him in it. He had a vibrant energy, almost like a force field, and it was definitely absent.

Don’t panic. Maybe he left me a note like I told him.

Sure. That’s probably it. He got restless. Went out to stretch his legs.

Oh, bullshit. Who am I kidding here?

She kicked the bags of clothes inside, pulled the door shut, and flipped on a light. Sure enough, a single sheet of paper sat atop her desk. She dropped her purse onto a chair and hurried over to it. In strong script, with many flourishes, he’d written an almost indecipherable note. After trying to figure out what was, in essence, an archaic form of English, she finally grabbed another piece of paper and wrote out the parts she knew. At length, she thought she had the gist of things.