Page 58 of Beloved Enemy
“That’s not good enough.”
His responding, irritated glare could have sliced through stone, so sharp was his returned annoyance.
“Nae guid enough for...what?”
“To make me want to stay.”
Though his eyes narrowed dangerously, his expression did not intensify. Instead, he studied her critically, his piercing hazel eyes boring into her soul.
Charlotte held her breath.
“Ye do though,” he accused at length, his voice gentled. “Want to stay, that is.”
“I don’t though,” she insisted, and forced herself to admit the rest, “not with or for someone who is indifferent.” Her brow knitted again and she pointed at him with some frustration. “And FYI, you can’t say in one breath that just because I like your kiss, you have some rights and in the next breath say that a kiss shouldn’t advise that you care whether I stay or go.” Her next look was quite smug, for having called him out on his BS.
He clenched his jaw so hard a muscle ticked in his cheek, while another vein throbbed in his neck. “Ye have nae been taken back to your time,” he ground out. “It dinna seem ye will be, nae today at any rate. We are returning to Kingswood now, and I dinna mind tossing ye over my shoulder if need be—”
“If you think for one minute that you can—” Charlotte began, fisting her hands in front of her for how arrogant and pig-headed he was.
“And,” he continued, his deep voice overriding hers, “ye are—I am...” he paused and clamped his mouth shut, shaking his head as if to talk himself out of speaking whatever he’d been about to say. In the next second, he conceded tightly, reluctantly, his lips barely moving and while he looked off to her left, not directly at her, “I am nae indifferent.”
The air rushed out of her with a wispy sound. Her wrinkled brow relaxed, and her fingers unfurled.
“Oh.”
Reid did not allow time for it to sink in, not even a moment. “Can we get on, then?”
Charlotte nodded absently. And Reid took her hand again, escorting her down the mountain.
She couldn’t help it. She grinned like an idiot at his broad, beautiful back. She paid no attention to the ground beneath her feet, her head and heart in the clouds.
The future was overrated, she promptly decided, willingly giving up any hope of returning there today. She was, she decided then and there, exactly where she was supposed to be. With Reid Nicholson in the fourteenth century.
When they’d descended more than halfway, a low rumble began to ripple through the air, a sound that crawled under Charlotte's skin. Reid felt it too, pausing to tilt his head toward the noise, his expression darkening.
Charlotte scanned the forested mountain, eyes darting to the way the wind whipped through the trees, rattling the branches like a warning. Her stomach dropped, a wave of déjà vu washing over her, reminding her of the last time she was on this mountain when everything changed.
“No,” she groaned helplessly, her heart sinking. “This is bullshit. Notnow.”
It wasn’t fair! Reid had just admitted he wasn’t indifferent to her, had kissed her like she meant something to him, had made her head spin with the force of it and now—now?—she was about to be yanked back to the future, ripped away from him.
Reid’s grip tightened on her hand, his fingers strong as he pulled her forward, the tension in his body fierce. “We have to get down fast, lass,” he urged, his voice laced with urgency. “Run, Charlotte. Run hard!”
And then, as they ran, the noise grew louder, clearer. Relief flooded her so swiftly she almost stumbled. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t some force trying to pull her back to the future. It was the heavy pounding of hooves, an approaching army, a sound she knew all too well.
Her relief felt absurd and was short-lived, as the weight of what that meant settled in. An army of riders could bring so much more danger.
It seemed they spilled out of the trees, she and Reid, into that clearing at the base of Ben Nevis where two units of Reid’s army waited, dancing around restlessly on their horses. Their eyes snapped toward Reid and Charlotte as they emerged, but the rumbling of hooves in the distance soon drew their attention back to the oncoming threat.
Reid’s gaze narrowed as he studied the force approaching from a distant line of trees across a broad meadow.
“I canna make out their banner,” Tavish called out from the loosely clustered Nicholsons.
They were still too far to make out clearly, but the sheer size of the force sent a chill through Charlotte’s spine.
“They're nae Highlanders,” Reid muttered, scanning the unknown riders with a calculating intensity. “Their gear is different. They’re too organized.”
Tavish rode up beside Reid, his horse pawing the ground nervously. His sharp gaze passed unkindly over Charlotte. “There’s too many of them to take on here, even with every man we’ve got.”
