There must be a show at the museum, and these are the volunteers… or some festival in town for Scottish Heritage… or I’m dying, and this is my brain trying to protect me by hallucinating.
The latter seemed the most likely, her heart missing a few beats as she thought of all the things she still had to do. And Emily… This would crush her.
To come back from a solo writing trip to find out her best friend had died trying to inadvertently help with her research? No, that wasn’t a road one could come back from.
“Where’s the museum?” she tried again, adjusting her glasses. “Where are the kids? Did they get out safely? Where’s the tapestry? I was stuck under it.”
The men continued to glare at her, eyes glinting, surprisingly realistic swords gripped in their scarred hands.
“Hello? Anyone home?” She puffed out an exasperated breath… and began to circle the drain of her mental spiral.
Was it her breath at all if this was a hallucination? Was her brain just trying to keep the physical things credible while also landing her smack in the middle of someone else’s Highlander fantasy? Or was her brain just using her last memories to throw together whatever it could in her final moments, too damaged by a falling ceiling to let her actual life flash before her eyes?
“Ye daenae look like a goatherd, lass,” one of them finally spoke, “and I daenae ken aught about a tapestry.”
Another curled his lip. “If ye’re tryin’ to act crazed to escape punishment, ye should ken that the Hawk doesnae take kindly to people sneakin’ into his castle or tryin’ to trick him.”
That damned name again.
“The Hawk?” she whispered, more to herself than to the hallucinations who didn’t seem to know what to make of her. “No, don’t tell me. I already know this. I don’t need you regurgitating what the art teacher told me.”
“Did ye say ye were French?” one of the men asked, his eyes narrowing.
“No, I asked if you thought I was speaking French, since you don’t seem to understand a word that I’m saying, and I don’t have a clue why I’m here, or where ‘here’ even is, in the metaphysical sense,” she rambled, her stress levels soaring to untold peaks. “Am I in my frontal lobe? Am I in a dream? Who knows. I’d need a doctor for that, and it’s because of a doctor that I’m probably lying unconscious in that back room, buried under a tapestry and a few tons of stone.”
Another of the men raised an eyebrow. “Ye daenae ken where ye are?”
“She’s just sayin’ that,” another interjected. “Another part of her trick. Daenae be fooled.”
“Well, my brain is doing a great job with the five of you,” she said, laughing stiffly. “And no, I don’t know where ‘this’ is. But the real me is probably dying, and I’d imagine I have the kind of head injury that a person doesn’t walk away from. Since I haven’t had a very fun life, my brain is giving me this to fill in the blanks of the last moments of my life, so… there’s that to think about.”
A bearded, gruff man sniffed and raised his sword. “Aye, I’d wager they’re the last moments of yer life. Ye must ken what the Hawk does to intruders, or ye wouldnae be actin’ all mad now that ye’ve been caught.”
“Caught? I walked up to the damn gates myself.” Nancy laughed, feeling about as delirious as it probably took to have some full-blown hallucinations of a museum brought to life. “If the Hawk is here, then go fetch him, because I’ve got some questions. I mean, he’s the actual reason I’m in this mess, so?—”
“Were ye lookin’ for me, lass?” a deep, husky voice growled behind her.
Slowly, wondering what on earth her mangled brain was up to now, she turned… and came face to face with a giant. Or rather, face to chest with the tallest, hottest, most rugged hallucination her mind had ever conjured.
Not bad for a dying wish…
If it wasn’t for the sword in his hand, she might have reached out to touch him, to see how real he felt.
CHAPTER 3
As the lass’shead lifted to meet his gaze, she became the most beautiful, peculiar statue. Frozen in place, her dark blue eyes unblinking behind the most unusual pair of spectacles he had ever seen, her chestnut hair pulled back like she was about to go to war, though unbraided. It reminded him of a horse’s tail.
He glanced back at Jack, who had slipped around to the other side of the gates with him, and gave him a look that said,This is it? A lass?
She really was a beauty; there was no denying that. A feline nose and rosy, plump cheeks, accentuated by sharp cheekbones, a sun-browned complexion with a dusting of freckles that drew his eye, and a defined jaw that gave the impression of someone regal. And her lips…
How are they so red?
He’d never seen a mouth that color in his life, the shape of them so full and curved and inviting, as if made to entice.
Her blue eyes, the shade of a loch in winter, narrowed ever so slightly as if to say,Daenae look so hard. And certainly daenae look at me lips.The rest of her expression, however, remained blank, completely frozen in terror. Which, in fairness to her, was justified.
“Ye didnae answer me question, lass,” he said, remembering himself. “Were ye? Lookin’ for me? Ye wanted me fetched, so here I am.”
