Except Baby.
Grace angrily wiped away her tears, unfastened her seat belt, and started to get out of the truck. Only the door wouldn’t budge. She peered out the window to find that the snowbank had trapped her inside, so she rolled down the window, crawled out of the truck, and waded onto the road.
She bent at the waist and looked under the bumper. The frame of the truck was perched high and dry on the snowbank, the front tires suspended in the air and the back tires sunk in a hole the spinning tires had burned in the ice.
Grace straightened and looked in both directions. She had just turned down the road to the Christmas tree farm, but she was still closer to the ski resort than to the Bigelows’. But was she willing to hike back to the resort and ask for the MacKeages’s help?
Grace snorted to herself. Not after storming out and slamming the door on their collective rage. She pivoted on her heel and started walking to the Bigelow Christmas farm.
She fell twice and nearly pulled a back muscle trying to stay upright on the slippery road. It took her nearly an hour to travel about two miles, and in that time Grace wondered what she could do to get her life back under control. How could she have gone from an intelligent, dedicated scientist with a sharply focused future to a love-sick, addlebrained puddle of mush in only four days?
When she walked into the Bigelows’ yard, Grace was able to answer her own question. She stopped in the middle of the driveway and stared at Michael MacBain chopping wood as if the demons of hell possessed his body.
Michael. Baby. And Mary.
Grace’s heart dropped to her knees. Michael’s pain, his anger, his very obvious hurt, emanated toward her in nearly palpable waves. She had lost her sister and been given a nephew to love; Michael had nothing but emptiness.
He turned suddenly to face her, the axe hanging loosely in his large hand at his side. Grace continued into the yard, and Michael walked up to meet her.
His eyes roamed over her body, his expression concerned. “Where’s your truck?” he asked, darting a look behind her as if he expected it to be following her. He reached out and took hold of her arm. “Were you in an accident? Are ya hurt?”
Grace shrugged. “I just slid off the road,” she told him, and smiled to assure him that she was okay. “But the truck is stuck in a snowbank. I need help to pull it out.”
Michael let the axe fall to the ground and put both hands on her shoulders, giving her another, more critical inspection, as if he didn’t believe she was okay. He turned, took her by the hand, and began leading her toward the house.
“Come inside and get warm,” he said before she could protest. “Tell me where the truck is, and I’ll go get it.”
Grace planted her feet to stop them both but skidded a good three yards on the ice before Michael realized she wasn’t following meekly. He turned and frowned at her.
Grace smiled back. “I want to go with you,” she told him. “It’s a two-person job, and I don’t want John to know about the accident. He’ll feel obliged to help, and he might fall and break a hip or something.”
“I’ll just tow the truck back,” Michael countered, tugging on her sleeve to urge her toward the house.
Grace wiggled her arm free of his grasp and shook her head. “No. I want to go with you.”
Michael gave her a good glare before he blew out a resigned sigh. “Okay. But you’re sitting in the truck and staying out of my way,” he said, leading her toward the barn where she could see his truck was parked.
As concessions went, he could have been more gracious, but Grace decided to believe his dictate was from concern for her welfare, not from condescension. She was just thankful he hadn’t gotten stubborn himself and that she was able to go with him.
Now was her chance to get to know the man her sister loved.
Grace climbed into the passenger seat of the shiny new truck, folded her hands on her lap, and thought of how to broach the subject of time travel to a person who claimed he had firsthand knowledge of the phenomenon.
“You’ve been crying,” Michael said as soon as he climbed in beside her.
“Not from the accident,” she assured him as they backed out of the barn.
He stopped the truck and looked at her. “MacKeage made ya cry?” he asked in a growl.
This time Grace’s smile was sad. “Not directly. I made myself cry.” She brushed the hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “I’m tired, I think. A lot’s happened in the last week. The last six weeks,”
she softly amended.
“I’ve heard new mothers get weepy sometimes,” he said gently, finally heading the truck out the driveway.
“Yeah. I’ve heard that, too. Michael, why did you tell my sister you traveled through time?” Grace asked, deciding that she really was too tired to beat around the bush.
Silence answered her. Grace turned in her seat to face the man who was such a contradiction to her perception of sanity. He acted more normal than most males she’d met, yet he didn’t rush to deny her accusation.
She studied his profile. Michael was a large man, handsome in a rugged sort of way, and as solid-looking as the mountains surrounding Pine Creek. His usually weather-tanned complexion had paled suddenly, except for the flag of red on the cheekbone facing her. Small beads of sweat still lingered near his hairline from his wood-chopping frenzy, his jaw was clenched, and his knuckles gripping the steering wheel were white with tension.
“I want you to talk to me, Michael. I want to understand.”
He looked at her, his eyes two swirling pools of deep, molten gray. “Why? What’s the point?” he asked softly. “Mary’s dead, lass. It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing does.”
“That’s not true, Michael,” Grace whispered. “You’re the man my sister loved. For all but the lack of a ceremony, you and I are related now. And it was Mary’s dying wish that we become friends.”
He looked back at the road, silent again. Grace decided to approach the problem more directly. “Mary told me that you didn’t travel through time alone. That some of your…clansmen came with you. Is that true?”
His complexion darkened, and he nodded curtly. Well, he wasn’t talking, but he was responding.
“Where are they now?”
“Dead.”
“How…how did they die, Michael?”
“In lightning storms, mostly.”
“Is that how you got here? In a storm?”
He nodded again, then brought the truck to a stop. Before Grace realized they’d arrived at her pickup, Michael was out the door and headed to her truck.
With a curse of frustration, Grace climbed out and followed him. Talking to Michael was like pulling teeth. She caught up with him just as he knelt down to look at the underside of her truck.
Grace got down on her own knees and looked at him instead. “Is that what killed your friends?” she asked. “The storm that brought you here?”
He turned only his head to look at her, staring for an overlong minute before he stood up, grabbed her by the shoulders, and lifted her to her own feet in front of him. And it was a good thing he kept holding onto her, because his glare would have knocked her over.
“We will talk about this now, Grace, on the condition that ya never bring it up again.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “And I’ll have yar promise that ya won’t tell anyone else this story.”
Grace could only nod mutely. Michael released her, sighed deep from his chest, and ran a hand through his damp, dark brown hair. He paced several steps away, pivoted, and paced back toward her, stopping only a few feet away.
“Four years ago my men and I were in the middle of a battle when a great storm suddenly swept over our heads,” he softly began, not looking at her but staring into the woods, obviously picturing the scene in his mind’s eye.