Page 1 of Laird Of Her Heart

CHAPTER ONE

“What are you staring at?”

Maggie Spencer snapped the book shut and glared at her cousin. “Nothing.” How could she admit she’d been mooning over a man who’d been dead 700 years?

But seriously, he was hot. At least the sketch of him was. It had captured his bulging muscles, his piercing eyes and the ferocious beauty of his features. Something in his expression—the intensity of it, perhaps—utterly captivated her attention. He was exactly what she thought, imagined, dreamed a hot highlander of old would be.

Even his name was fascinating. Dominic. Dominic Dundragon, infamous Laird of the Macintosh Clan of Dar. It broke her heart that, at the age of 27, he’d been betrayed by a kinsman and killed in the Urquhart Ambush—a brutal slaughter of Chattan Lairds instigated by a rival clan. But again, it was a pointless grief. Even if he had lived to be a hundred, he’d still be dead now. Would have been dead for centuries.

Jenny tipped her head to the side to read the cover of Maggie’s book and she grimaced. “That one again?”

Maggie sniffed and leaned back in her lawn chair. It was a lovely day in Seattle, a rare opportunity to soak up the sun and read. “It’s a good book.”

“It’s a boring book.”

“History is not boring. Besides, this is our family history. You should find it fascinating.” Maggie did. “These are the events, the peoples that made us what we are.”

“Ug. Dusty details. Wars. Famines. Plagues.”

“Romances. Adventures.” Handsome heroes. Could she not see it? The feud between the Camerons and the Macintoshes itself was fascinating reading. “Besides, Grandma wrote it. The least you could do is pretend to be interested. For her sake.”

“That’s not fair.”

Maggie winced at the wounded thread in Jenny’s tone. She hadn’t meant to be hurtful. She traced the old binding with idle fingers. “Do you think she’s okay?”

Jenny shrugged. “She wanted to go. She seems happy there.” It was never easy, locking someone you loved away in a nursing home. Although, to be fair, Grandma wasn’t locked away. She was probably playing BINGO with her minions. And winning. If not that, rumbling around town in the VRV van on one of the many tours the activity director dreamed up. Or eating pie. Valhalla Retirement Village, apparently, had excellent pie. And Grandma did love her pie.

Still, it had been hard moving her out of this rambling house she’d called home for over sixty years, into a tiny room in the nominal care wing of an assisted living community. “It’s weird being here without her.”

All Maggie’s memories of this place included Grandma and Grandpa and cousins and Christmases. But Grandma had wanted them to stay. Insisted they keep the house. As though she couldn’t bear the thought of strangers sitting on this patio, or cooking in her kitchen.

“It is weird.” Jenny sighed. “But she seems happy.”

Maggie nibbled on her lip. “I’m worried about her.” Over there, in a strange place. Isolated. All alone.

“She seems happy.” Yes, Jenny was the Redundancy Queen of Redundancy.

“But she’s started giving her stuff away.” Maggie fingered the locket at her neck.

“She could hardly keep it all. Her room is…smallish.”

“You know what I mean.” Maggie lifted a shoulder. “When elderly people start cleaning house…”

“She’s not going to die. Not for decades. She’s strong as a horse. She’ll probably outlive us all.”

“I know. But I worry.” They drifted into silence then, both wreathed in their own thoughts—of Grandma, of Grandpa who’d passed last winter, of the big house on the hill where they’d just taken up residence. Though Grandma has asked them to live here, it still felt like an infiltration, an invasion. This was and always would be Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

When it all became too maudlin, Maggie sighed and gestured to Jenny’s book. “So, what are you reading?”

Jenny shot a dismissive look at Maggie’s History of the Macintosh Clan of Dar. “Something interesting.”

“What is it?”

“Jacobs’ treatise on his theories of space-time.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. She turned her attention to the vista below, the sparkling waters of the Puget Sound beyond the rolling hills of the family estate. The sky was blue, the breeze gentle. She tried to focus on how pleasant it was. Because, yeah, she knew what was coming.

“Now this is fascinating.”