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“No, he is just trying to win you back. I saw evil in him, Mom.”
Hunter never intruded on their conversations about her father. He was strong, he was there for her and he listened to her rant about her father. He never agreed or disagreed, but now he cleared his throat and said, “I think yer mother is in the right of it, lass.”
She loved his voice, the sound of his Scottish burr weaving its delectable way through her mind, making her stop and look into his blue eyes.
That day, yer father was the devil I believed him to be.” He inclined his head, “Sorry I am to say that to ye, but, I saw that in him. But something changed. He followed us to the chamber yer mother was in and when he saw me pick her up, when he realized, another man was cooming to her rescue, he broke…wide open, and I think, some of yer light swept into him.”
She looked at Hunter as she clasped and unclasped her hands, “He is dark. How can he ever regain what he was?”
Hunter grabbed her hands and held them hidden in his as he kissed her fingers, “He is the father that loved and raised ye. He is the father that stood with ye for twenty-one years. Aye, he made a terrible mistake, he went into another world and came out thinking off balance, but he loves ye…and doona say ye doona love him,” Hunter said softly.
She turned to her mother who closed her eyes and said, “Exerilla, you don’t have to make any final decisions. Do you? Take it, little by little and we’ll see what comes.”
“How can you forgive him, after he left you lying there, knowing you were in pain?” Exerilla was incredulous.
“He did what he could. Once I crossed the wards, there was nothing he could do until I left the property. Dark as he was, he shouldn’t have cared, but he did. He enacted a spell to ease my pain.”
“That’s not enough! He should have taken you off the grounds, he should have…” Exerilla cried and she withdrew her hands from Hunter and shook her fist in the air.
Hunter and her mother went and hugged her and her mother whispered, “Let’s see what time brings us.”
After that, the summer days passed ideally at her mother’s home. Hunter had thought of everything. He had returned to the past to visit with Sir Jacob and tell him he had decided to make an honest man of himself and marry the lass of his dreams.
Hunter had already gone to Mary, and explained Exerilla’s disappearance, saying she came to him for help when David had accosted her in the woods. He told Mary that she was safely residing with relatives of his, but that he planned to marry her and return to MacTorry Castle in Scotland.
Mary was thrilled for them, and made him promise that he would ask Exerilla to write.
After relaying all this to Exerilla, she looked at him with open admiration and said, “I am impressed. I was wondering just how to handle the situation with Sir Jacob and the Horwich’s’. What a very good story teller you are. I shall have to watch out for you.” She wagged a finger and laughed.
The next time Hunter left her, he said it was to visit with his brother at MacTorry where he was keeping everything in readiness for them, hoping they would visit soon.
“What does that mean? We will visit with him in the past? But he is immortal and then one day, well, we will all be in the same era?”
“As to that, he can come forward whenever he likes. I left him to his own devices, but we’ll see him often, here and there. I want to take ye there soon, Exerilla and make love to ye in m’bedroom in m’castle, and I want it to be in the time that we met? Would ye do that for me?”
“You bet I will,” she answered and hugged him fiercely, looked up and saw her father standing there, and stiffened.
“I beg your pardon, X, seeing you together reminds me of what I tried to rob you of…happiness. I understand why you can’t forgive me, I cannot forgive myself.”
Exerilla’s heart was larger than her anger, so much larger. She ran to her father then and some of the feelings she had for him returned as she buried her face in his chest.
The end of August quickly approached, and it was time for her to go find an apartment near Columbia as classes would be starting.
Hunter grinned like a boy, “No need, to look for an apartment. I canna abide the places ye said were in yer price range. I have found a place a little more in keeping with what I am used to.”
“Snob.” She laughed and shook her head but he had her hand and was already pulling her through the magical portal and into the penthouse he had bought for them and furnished for her comfort.
She stood looking around in astonishment and pleasure and he beamed with pride. “Do ye like it, lass?”
“Oh yes, I like it.”
“When ye want,” he took out a credit card and handed it to her. “Ye can go off and buy the little things a lady likes and make it more yer own.”
She threw her arms around him.
The rest of the year sped by, and their wedding was a fairytale.
Her father wore a gray silk tuxedo, saying he just couldn’t wear white not yet. Exerilla had invited him to walk her down the aisle to her waiting Lord MacTorry.
