Perfect Timing 2: Highland Fling

  HIGHLAND FLING

  Jennifer LaBrecque

  

  To Dr. David K. Monson, surgeon extraordinaire.

  Thank you for “rescuing” my leg and giving it a happy ever after.

  You’re my hero.

  1

  KATE TRACED THE PUCKERED, rough edge of the scar that ran from his side across the smooth satin of his back. He was warm and—

  “Dr. Wexford, could you take a look at Mr. Chesney’s x-ray before you leave?”

  —he was a figment of her imagination. The intern’s question jerked her back to the present. It was a good thing her shift was ending, if she was daydreaming by the coffee machine again. She was officially off-duty, but she could spare the time to check an x-ray. Not only did she love what she did, it was off-duty dedication that had earned her the position of assistant head of ER at Atlanta’s prestigious Walker Medical Center.

  “Absolutely.” Kate drained the rest of her double latte with the espresso shot, took the film and held it up to the fluorescent light. She shook her head. Work in a city ER was neither boring nor predictable. “Did Mr. Chesney give you any indication he has a small rodent in his rectal area?”

  Dave Reddick, straight out of med school, nearly choked. “No, doctor, he didn’t.”

  “My guess is a female hamster, three to four months old. I think Dyer’s on the surgical rotation. See when he wants to schedule Mr. Chesney to retrieve his friend.”

  Kate handed the x-ray back to the fresh-faced Reddick and headed for the door.

  “Uh, Dr. Wexford?”

  She stopped and turned. “Yes?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “The pointy nose and long tail was a dead giveaway.”

  “Uh, no ma’am. I meant how’d you know it was a female, three to four months old?”

  “Oh that.” Kate shrugged and smiled at the earnest resident. “I made that part up.”

  Reddick’s mouth dropped open and then he recovered and offered a stilted laugh. “Right.”

  “But he does need to have it surgically removed so get him scheduled.” She walked out of the break-room and ducked into the staff bathroom.

  Good. It was empty. She checked her watch. Forty-five minutes. She could still make it before the museum closed, even though she’d sworn she wasn’t going back again. She shrugged out of her white coat and hung it in the locker, knowing it was inevitable.

  Tonight was the last night. After tonight it was a moot point. But all day she’d felt this odd compulsion, almost, as silly as it sounded, a calling to see him one more time. No. It was beyond silly. Kate had always prided herself on her practical, pragmatic nature. She didn’t do things like show up again and again to moon over a man in a portrait. But tonight was the last night. What harm could come of one more foolish trip?

  She dragged a brush through her short hair. Hmm. Time to schedule a touch-up. She had major root action going on. She dug around in her purse and pulled out her lipstick.

  The door behind her opened and two women strolled in. Oh, great. Dr. Torri Campbell, the Bitch from Hell and her underling who reminded Kate of Nurse Ratchett.

  Kate ignored the two women and leaned into the mirror to smooth on her lipstick.

  “Hot date tonight, Dr. Wexford?” Torri arched one perfect blond brow, her green catlike eyes alight with malice.

  Kate and Torri had pulled ER rotations at the same hospital out of med school and then later found themselves at Walker Medical Center vying for the same position. They’d never particularly hit it off, but once Kate had been named assistant head of ER, Torri had all but declared war.

  “Yes, I do have a hot date waiting, Dr. Campbell. Thanks for asking.”

  Torri, a tall statuesque blonde who used a Palm Pilot to juggle her numerous dates and men, knew good and well Kate Wexford didn’t have a date. Why break a six-month dry spell?

  “New man in your life? How in the world did I miss that?” If a person could expire from sheer bitchiness, Torri would’ve been six feet under long ago.

  Kate, her wicked sense of humor fully engaged, decided in for a penny, in for a pound. She imbued her shrug with just the right amount of insouciance to pique the other woman’s curiosity. “Just someone who’s been in town a few weeks. He travels often and he’s leaving again tomorrow.” The truth was getting more and more elastic, but the stretch was worth the look on Torri’s perfect features.

  “Ooh.” Torri slanted her a look rife with speculation. “Where’s he from?”

  “He’s a world traveler, but he’s originally from Scotland.” Okay, so there was a good chance she’d burn in hell for this, but it was just too much fun.

  “Well, aren’t you the secretive one. How’d you meet him?”

  “A mutual friend introduced us.”

  “Blind date?” Torri eyed Kate, who was fully two inches shorter and twenty pounds heavier, as if the guy would have to be blind to continue going out with her. At least Kate didn’t target married men. She’d spotted Torri and one very married surgeon lip-locking in the parking garage last week. Not that she was in the market for either, but Kate would take a blind date over a married man any day.

  “Something like that.” She shrugged into her coat. It was ridiculous that one look could negate all her achievements and reduce her once again to the short, overweight girl who’d made the grades but not the social calendar. “Got to run. I don’t want to keep him waiting.” She slung her purse over one shoulder and headed toward the door.

  “Hold on.” Torri reached into her locker, pulled out a handful of condoms and stuffed them into Kate’s purse. “Friends don’t let friends head into the weekend unprotected.”

  She and her underling exchanged a glance that clearly stated Torri was hot, Kate was not and that she’d need a handful of condoms was a stretch. An even bigger stretch was that she and Torri were friends.

  “Thanks.” Kate opened the door.

  “Sure. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” Torri offered a brittle laugh. “And that leaves it wide open.”

  Maybe it was the end of a grueling twelve-hour shift, maybe it was the caffeine surge from the espresso, or maybe it was because she was no longer a sixteen year old wallflower suffering from the digs the “popular” girls had thrown at her, but she gave in to the impulse she’d squelched more than once.

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll stick with unmarried men.” She smiled and let the door close behind her.

  God that felt good. She bypassed the parking garage. Friday rush hour was still alive and near gridlock even at this late hour. Atlanta was a great city, but the traffic was abysmal. She could hoof it or forget about making it there before it closed.

  She was only slightly winded twenty minutes later when she mounted the leaf-strewn marble steps and flashed her membership card at the blazer-clad attendant.

  “You know we close in fifteen minutes,” she said.

  “Yes. Thanks.”

  She hurried along the winding, stairless ramp that lead to the different levels of the museum, too impatient to wait on the ridiculously slow elevator. Besides, she could use the exercise. With its switchback ramp, the building reminded her of a giant chambered nautilus.

  Her heart thudded and it was more than the exertion of the climb. She felt as nervous as if she were meeting a real date.

  Here it was. Third floor, one left turn and she was at the special traveling exhibit, Sex through the Ages. Virtually deserted. Only one couple, holding hands and talking in low tones, wandered in the opposite direction.

  Excitement hummed through her like a low current of energy. It had been this way since the first time she’d stepped into the room a month ago.
It had been a Friday night, much like this evening, but instead of closing in fifteen minutes, the museum had been open late. It had been one of the Friday Evenings of Jazz the museum hosted to launch a new exhibit. A jazz quartet had played in the open rotunda and a cash bar served martinis.

  Half a martini into the evening, she’d wandered through the display of dildos throughout history and another display covering the transition of tempting undergarments through the ages. Kate wasn’t sure the thong counted as real progress.

  She’d just wandered out of that room and into another, not certain of the theme there, a saxophone’s husky notes floating through the night air around her. And that’s when she’d first felt it. A raw sexual energy had pulsed deep inside, a need that blossomed in her womb and radiated through her.

  The scent of a man, unfettered by any of the myriad male colognes on the market, but with just a hint of something indefinable, had teased her nose and a purely instinctual response had quivered through her. She’d felt his breath feather over her skin, felt his heat near her, felt his lust and his hunger.

  She’d never felt such energy from anyone else. And never been quite so aroused without a look or a touch.

  She’d turned, fully expecting to find a man right behind her. There’d been no one. Instead, there’d only been a painting. The painting. Mounted on the wall behind her.

  She’d felt the same energy, an answering hum deep within her every time she’d visited the exhibit, which had been often. It was crazy. She wasn’t just a woman in charge of her own life, she was the assistant head of one of the busiest ER’s in the city. But it was as if her will had been sublimated and she couldn’t resist coming—even when she tried to stay away.

  And it was the same now as it had been then, when she’d first seen him.

  “Now that’s a man,” Kate Wexford sighed at the rendering of the rugged Scotsman towering over the ancient bed. A wicked scar, the one she’d daydreamed of earlier, bisected the sleek muscles in his bare back. With arms like small saplings, he eased his kilt, a red and blue plaid, down his hips, one knee braced on the bed’s platform, his legs thick and strong. Wild hair as dark as a starless night curled past the width of his massive shoulders. Not for the first time, she speculated that all parts were probably equally large.

  In the background of the picture, a fire burned in the stone wall, burnishing his body with a golden glow, casting the woman on the bed in shadow, only her foot visible.

  Kate berated herself for the heat that flooded her. What was wrong with her that she had the hots for a freaking picture? But it had beckoned her and brought her back with growing frequency. The man in the picture had increasingly intruded on her thoughts and even interrupted her focus at work. Kate knew she could be single-minded and determined, but she’d never been obsessive. But, clearly, that had changed with this picture, this man.

  But not after tonight. The exhibit ended today. Tomorrow it would travel to another city. Irrationally, a deep mourning of bidding a lover farewell gripped her. Heat and yearning and no small measure of resentment flowed through her. She was being ridiculous and even more pathetic than Torri Campbell made her out to be—lusting after some dead guy in a painting who most likely had never been a real person anyway. And logical, sensible Kate didn’t do ridiculous or romantic.

  That was more in keeping with her former college roomie, Jordan. Jordan, now back in grad school, lost herself for days in times long past and ancient cultures.

  “It seems you’ve taken a liking to the MacTavish,” a voice behind her said.

  Kate started and turned, annoyed at the interruption. She relaxed. It was only the older man she’d seen on several occasions. With his gray hair, kind blue eyes and frayed vest, he reminded her of an old-fashioned conductor who’d collected countless tickets for innumerable journeys. Nonetheless, he’d startled her.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m the exhibit caretaker.” He nodded toward the starkly sensual portrait. “You come often. You seem to have taken a liking to the MacTavish.”

  Busted. And although it was embarrassing the number of times she’d visited this portrait, she could hardly deny it when the old man had clearly noted her obsession.

  She flushed at being caught out and nodded. So, her man had a name. Her curiosity outweighed her embarrassment. “Yes, I’m fairly taken with…what did you call him, the MacTavish? So, he’s real? Or, I mean, he was?”

  The old man studied the portrait as if viewing an old friend. “Darach MacTavish. Once head of the clan MacTavish. One of the finest men to walk Scottish soil.”

  Kate drew a deep breath, her heart pounding. He was real. Well, he had been real.

  “Who painted the picture?” She’d often wondered.

  “The artist is unknown.”

  “Who’s the woman in the portrait?” Talk about total irrationality to resent the woman in the picture.

  “That’s unknown as well. I do know Darach MacTavish died shortly after the picture was painted.”

  His words knifed through her soul. What was wrong with her? She dealt with life and death on a daily basis and while she wasn’t inured, she handled it.

  Kate persevered, driven by the knowledge that after tonight this man who’d so captured her imagination would be forever gone from her world. “What happened? How’d he die?”

  “The Battle of Culloden.”

  Kate looked at him blankly. The man in the painting might have captured her imagination and awakened a fierce lust, but she was a doctor, not a historian. Science, not history, had always been her thing. “Never heard of it.”

  “A group of Scotsmen known as Jacobites wanted to restore Bonnie Prince Charles to the English throne. It was a doomed endeavor from the beginning. Darach MacTavish died on the battlefield at Drumossie Moor, later known as Culloden, in the spring of 1745. Even if he hadn’t, the British would’ve killed him afterwards.”

  Kate gasped and braced her hand against the wall as a physical pain wracked her body. “What about his wife? His children?”

  “No wife. No children. The MacTavish died without any heirs.”

  “So he died alone.” Unbidden, the thought came to her that if she died tonight, now, she too would die alone, much as the man depicted before her. With both of her parents dead and no time for a boyfriend or husband or even girlfriends with her schedule, who would miss her?

  The old man shook his head, his eyes looking beyond her and the present, into the past. “He didn’t die alone. His clansmen died along with him on that bloody field. Them that didn’t die along with him were hunted down by the British. And that was the end of the clan MacTavish.” He shook his head. “Actually, that day marked the end of the Highland clans.”

  It was her turn to shake her head. His story, in addition to eating up her last few minutes, had irrationally devastated her. “It seems such a waste. But I don’t suppose any of us can avoid our destinies.” It sounded better than life’s a bitch and then you die. This obsession she’d developed couldn’t be mentally healthy. It was just as well the exhibit would leave Atlanta after tonight.

  The old man’s enigmatic smile vaguely unsettled her. “Destiny’s an interesting concept. Did you know Albert Einstein was fully convinced time was yet another frontier to be explored?”

  “I think I’ve read that before. But I don’t believe it’s possible.” She started as the lights in the main section of the building dimmed, reducing the room to shadows.

  “It’s time for you to go, Miss.”

  Intellectually, she knew her time was up. The logical part of her wanted to turn and leave. The new, unfamiliar part of her awakened by the portrait balked at leaving just yet. “I know the museum’s closed, but do you think you could give me another minute?”

  His look apologized. “It’s time for you to go now. Do you have everything you need?”

  His words penetrated her heavy heart with their peculiarity. “Everything I need?”

  “Are your affairs in
order?”

  The old man took her by the arm, but then rather than turning toward the door, he propelled her closer to the picture. She was too surprised to protest or pull away when he gave her a shove. Instead of banging into the wall, she felt herself spinning, faster and faster. Dizzy. Disoriented. Unable to…get…her…bearings. Dark…closing…in….

  2

  KATE SHOOK HER HEAD to clear it. At least the spinning had stopped. She opened her eyes, and immediately closed them again.

  What the hell…?

  “Well, lass, mayhap you shoulda asked before you showed up naked in my bed. I wouldn’t complain, except you are a stranger. I well nigh ken everyone in these hills.”

  Her fantasy man’s voice was even deeper and richer than she’d imagined with a thick Scottish burr. Under normal circumstances she’d find the voice, along with the rest of him, very sexy…but there was nothing normal about finding yourself naked on a bed with a very large stranger looming over you.

  Her brain raced as she opened her eyes and scanned her surroundings. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to replicate the exact setting of the painting, even down to the fire crackling beyond the stone hearth. She looked for any hidden cameras on the set. She wasn’t sure how they’d done it. How had they gotten her out of her clothes? This had to be some over-the-top reality show set or she was an unwitting participant in an elaborate hoax.

  Kate possessed a sense of humor. She appreciated a good joke, but naked? How had they gotten her here? One minute she’d been standing in the museum looking at the picture and talking to the caretaker. The next minute, he shoved her, she blacked out, and came to in the picture…and naked as a newborn at that. She was more annoyed than frightened. “This isn’t funny. If you don’t put an end to this immediately, I might have to sue someone’s ass off.”

  She scrambled for something to cover herself. Her clothes had vanished, but her purse still hung from her shoulder. Regardless of how sexy Tall, Dark and Yummy came across, he needed to know she meant business. She shifted the purse to her front, trying to shield herself.