Page 11 of A Hellion for the Highland Hawk
You’re such a loser, Nancy. You’ll regret getting all flustered over a hallucination when you wake up.
“Listen, lass, whatever differences me wife and I had are in the past,” he growled. “Ye daenae speak of the dead like that. Ye daenae speak of me daughter’s maither like that. Am I understood?”
Clearly, she’d said the wrong thing. Clearly, her brain was improvising, changing the story the art teacher had told her. The best thing she could do was play along with whatever timeline of events this version of the Hawkthoughthad happened, if only to avoid feeling any pain that her synapses were still capable of firing up.
“I’m sorry,” she said, lowering her gaze. “I… mistook you for someone else.”
The Hawk pushed off the wall. “Aye, well, I wouldnae advise ye to do that again.”
“No, of course not.” She drew in a shaky breath, her heart fluttering with an anxiety she hadn’t felt in years. “Could I… um… ask what the date is? I’m still dizzy from my… uh… travels, so everything is kind of muddled up here.”
She tapped the side of her temple and gave a tight smile.
The Hawk stayed where he was, standing in front of her. “It’s the year of our Lord, 1710. The tenth day of May.”
“Pardon?” Her eyes widened. “May the 10th, 1710?”
He nodded. “Aye.”
“Oh… oh, no.” Her heart rate quickened, her hand resting on her chest in a futile attempt to stop it from beating so hard. “Oh… oh, that’s not good.”
The ghost of a smirk lifted his lips. “Why? Are ye late somewhere?”
A sharp pain poked at the center of her forehead, a dull ache thudding behind her eyeballs, forcing her to close them.
Evidently, this was her brain trying to tell her that this wasn’t real, so why was her body responding as if it was? Why was her heart pounding with anxiety, the back of her neck prickling in a cold sweat, her blood rushing in her ears?
It’s just a panic attack. It has nothing to do with this. It’ll pass.
But the feeling didn’t, her hands suddenly shaky, her legs bouncing up and down.
“No, I’m not late anywhere,” she rasped. “I just… I just need to leave, now.”
“So soon?” he said in that low, sarcastic tone that, ordinarily, would’ve sparked a desire to banter back. “Have ye nae been satisfied with our hospitality so far?”
She managed to crack her eyes open enough to shoot him what she hoped was a withering look, and instead found herself distracted by his cocky stance and that extraordinary body of his, his muscles bulging where his arms crossed over his chest, the cords of his neck standing out as he tilted his head and looked at her.
The kind of body and good looks that gave a man every reason to be cocky. If he also had a sense of humor, then he was, without a shadow of a doubt, a figment of her imagination.
No man had it all. She didn’t appreciate the artistic license her mind was taking with him. Unless the point was to never want to leave the dream? Why be afraid of dying or spending forever in a coma if the dream or the afterlife was this delicious?
“Oh, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this wild ride in fantasyland,” she replied, matching his sarcastic tone, “and this isquitethe finest dungeon I’ve ever had the pleasure of being in, but I’m afraid staying here doesn’t work for me anymore. I got here by accident, and I must return home as soon as possible.”
His arms relaxed, his gaze a little less predatory in its assessment of her. “Aye, I agree, but what ye’re nae tellin’ me is where yer home is and how ye ended up here.”
“I told you, I am from America!” she huffed, her anxiety rising. “And… I don’t know how I got here. It wasn’t a ship. It wasn’t a plane. It?—”
“What’s that?” He took a half step closer, his eyes staring at a place that prompted her to cross her legs.
“I beg your pardon?”
He nodded downward. “That thing stickin’ out of yer trews.”
“My what?”
He muttered something indecipherable as he reached down a hand. Nancy braced herself, wondering if this was the moment where her dream tried to reel her back in to the fantasy, but then she heard the softclackof him tapping something.
She glanced down and saw the edge of her phone sticking out of her pants pocket.
