And with that little morsel dropped on his poor heart, she gave him a quick hug, smiled, and walked away.
Oliver exchanged a slight nod with Bobby after Sunny had been carefully tucked back into the car, then picked up the shopping bag and made his way back into the house. He wasn’t going to credit that doorway with any sort of magical properties and he absolutely refused to pay any attention to the fact that there was obviously something inside the house that was ferociously setting off his allergies. He dragged his sleeve across his eyes, indulged in a few foul words to bring balance back to his world, and wondered if there was a section in that damned book that would require him to distract himself from too many uncomfortable emotions by eating a hearty breakfast every day.
He shut the door behind himself, locked it out of habit, then indulged in a more thorough investigation of Moraig’s magical little cottage. The great room and sleeping nook he’d already looked over, so he opened the lone door to be found inside and discovered an absurdly luxurious loo with a walk-in closet attached. He realized there were things there with his name on them: modern clothes, thankfully, mostly in black and in whathe could only assume were styles for the well-dressed lad off on a discreet holiday. Also Emily’s doing, no doubt.
He walked back out into the great room and decided there was no time like the present to see if they were planning on starving him to simplify his dietary tasks.
The modest fridge was stocked with green things he would have wagered a week of yoga classes had been provided by Sunny, along with heartier fare he suspected perhaps Jamie had insisted he be allowed to eat.
He had hardly managed to liberate a handful of cold chips from someone’s leftovers cunningly hidden behind a cluster of carrots and shove them into his mouth before there came a banging on his front door. Well, Moraig MacLeod’s front door. At the moment, he wondered why Jamie hadn’t turned the place into a holiday let, but perhaps that was something he could suggest later. He opened the door, fully expecting to find Bobby having returned to drop off leopard-print yoga gear after all.
Instead, he found Patrick MacLeod, medieval clansman, dressed to impress.
Oliver considered the man’s gear—saffron shirt, plaid belted tidily around his waist, dirks down the sides of his boots and sword strapped to his back—and decided a distraction might be his only hope.
“Breakfast?” Oliver offered.
“Already had it,” Patrick said. “’Tis the most important meal of the day.”
Oliver agreed, though he couldn’t deny his eating schedule was sometimes as erratic as his sleeping one.
“I thought a hunt might suit,” Patrick said with a yawn, as if he could scarce muster up the enthusiasm for the idea.
“Brilliant,” Oliver said. If it got him out of the house, he was all for it. “Is this on my list?”
“Nay, ‘tis an extra-curricular activity out of the goodness of my heart.”
Hard to argue with that. “Do I get any points for surviving the exercise?”
Patrick only smiled briefly—and a little evilly, it had to be said, so perhaps the current offering wasn’t anything to be put in that damned book he wished he could pitch. Unfortunately, he suspected one of those kitty bookmarks might actually be a bell which was no doubt designed to alert any watchers in the woods if he accidentally hurled it as far away from himself as possible.
Possibly.
He turned back to the disaster at hand. “What are we hunting?”
“Whom.”
Even better. “Whomare we hunting?”
“I,” Patrick said pleasantly.
“You?”
He nodded. “Iam hunting.”
Oliver felt the first frission of unease slide down his spine. “And whom, if I’m allowed to ask, are you hunting?”
Patrick smiled. “You.”
Oliver swallowed past the hunk of fried potato that had inconveniently lodged itself in his throat, something that took more effort than he enjoyed. “And what,” he managed, “will you do if you find me?”
Patrick shrugged. “Let’s just say if I find you, no one else ever will.”
“You’re having me on—”
“I’ll give you to the count of one hundred.”
Oliver could count that far in a handful of languages thanks to very boring thugs over the years who had left him with plenty of time to listen to courses on tape. He could ask for the loo in thirty countries plus find fish and chips almost anywhere, but all he had time for at present was to swear in his favorite languagewhich was his own and wonder if Patrick MacLeod had a sense of humor.
