Finding Fraser (44 page)

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Gerald?”

I grinned at him. “Oh, just someone I met
who was looking for his own Scottish warrior.”

“Ah. Well, I’m sorry how that all turned
out,” he said, quietly. “Or rather, for how unhappy it made you. I didn’t want
to add to it.”

“I’m okay,” I said, lightly. And as I said
it, I knew it was true. “I have to go back to Chicago, but I think I really did
find what I was looking for here, after all.”

He leaned against the ancient stone. “And
ye’ll be back someday, aye?”

“I hope so.”

“I do, too.” He smiled at me then, and
brushed the sleeve of his coat. “Well, we’d best be off, before the Lothian and
Borders Police start combing the countryside for ye.”

“Just a minute,” I said, and in two strides
I was in front of him with his jacket lapels in my hands. I believe I actually
muffled his startled exclamation when the kiss began, but he got the idea
pretty quickly. When I pulled away from him so we could both catch our breath,
he clasped my hands in his.

“Emma Sheridan, I did not see that coming,”
he said, and his slow smile erased the worry he’d been wearing since we’d
climbed the hillside.

 
“I just wanted to see if it would be as
nice as the last one,” I said.

“And?”

I thought a minute. “Well, you do taste a
bit of Irn-Bru and—maybe peppermint? But it’s a surprisingly nice
combination at this hour of the morning.”

He kissed me again, then, perhaps to give me
the opportunity to solidify my opinion, and the chill of the morning suddenly
fell away. The eagle cried out in the distance once more, and a sliver of
yellow daylight shone down and touched the top of the sunstone.

“So, all this time, ye thought Rebecca was
my girlfriend?”

“Well, only since I determined you’re not
wearing a ring. Before that I thought she was your wife.”

He laughed a little, low in his throat. “No
wife,” he said. “No girlfriend, either. Not for a while, anyway.” He brushed my
hair away from my face, and tucked a loose strand behind my ear.

“I have read the book, y’know.”

“The book? OUTLANDER, you mean?”

He nodded. “Twice, in fact. And just to be
clear, I’m no Jamie Fraser.” He crinkled his eyes at me. “I’m not exactly a
virgin, for starters.”

I thought for a moment. “Well, as long as
you bear no resemblance to Black Jack Randall either, I think I can live with
that.”

He clapped a hand over his heart. “Ye wound
me, Emma. And I’ll have ye know, that man’s name is actually Jonathan.”

“It is indeed. Jonathan Wolverton Randall,
to be exact.”

I grinned up at him, and using the flat of
my hand, pushed him back against the mammoth stone. Holding him in place, I
leaned back and ran my other hand down the front of his coat. “So, you know
what She says about why women love men in kilts?”

“She?”

“Yes, She. With a capital ‘S’. As in
Herself. Your lovely friend the author.”

He smiled down at me. “Okay, I’ll bite. What
does She say?”

“She says it’s because we know in the back
of our minds that you can have us up against the nearest wall in under a
second.”

He grinned, and spun me around so the cold
stone pressed against my back. Undid the top button of my coat and kissed me
under the line of my jaw.

“I might have heard her tell that story,” he
said, his lips warm on the skin of my neck.

And it turned out—he had.

Much, much later, as we walked down the hill
from the circle, I decided that my blog audience would just have to do without
the full story of the discovery—at last—of my own
Craigh na Dun
.

Channeling Claire…

Somewhere in the Highlands of
Scotland

10:00 am, September 14

As this leg of my journey ends, I think
what I have taken most from this trip has been the importance of friends.

And perhaps the discovery that sometimes
Highland Warriors wield pens, not swords.

I may have begun this journey with the
sole objective of finding my own Fraser, but I am much happier that the person
I found, instead, was my own inner Claire.

I ‘ll be back soon…

- ES

Comments: 0

To:
 
[email protected]

From:
    
SophiaSheridan@angstandarg*t.com

September 14

Hi Emma,

It was with great relief we received your
email noting your arrival details. I’ve arranged to get the time off, so Paul
and I will be there to meet you.

By the way, I received the strangest
email from a friend who works at a publishing firm in New York. Apparently
they’d like to speak to you about a blog-to-book deal. I have no idea what that
means, but if it’s a chance to earn a few dollars, I hope you do the sensible
thing and take them up on it!

Sophia

Reporting
in to the police station at the Edinburgh airport was unnerving.
We pulled up to the terminal and Jack pointed to the small sign.

“It’s just over there. Don’t worry about a
thing. I just need to sort out my ticket, and then I’ll meet you on the other
side of the security gates.”

I got out of the car and walked around to
the driver’s side. Jack rolled down his window. “Listen—it may take them
a bit to run the paperwork. Hold on …”

He rustled around in his computer bag,
pulled out a book and handed it through the window. “Somethin’ to do while ye
wait,” he said.

“Thanks.”

I tucked it into my pack beside the copy of
OUTLANDER, but it didn’t really make me feel any better. The kiss he gave me
before I stepped inside the door marked with the stark POLICE sign helped quite
a bit more.

In the end, the visit to check in with
the police was entirely anti-climactic. After assigning me to a chair, they
left me sitting outside the office door for almost an hour before calling me
in. While I was waiting, I paid out one of my last pound coins to use the
airport wifi to make the blog post and read my email, but that only took a
moment or two. I was grateful for the copy of Jack’s book, as it at least gave
me something to think about other than my imminent arrest.

I skipped right through the entire first
couple of chapters and headed straight for what Mrs. McCarthy would call the
juicy bits. When the police did call me, I’m pretty sure they had to say my
name twice.

It was a good book.

Inside, I handed over my letter, which
they stamped with great formality, and tucked into my passport.

The policeman on duty shot me a quizzical
glance. “Yer not even a full month overstay, it says here,” he said, reading
off his screen.

“Yes—it was more of a mix-up than
anything. I don’t know why everyone got so upset.”

He shrugged, and then peered at his screen
before looking up at me.

“‘Pears you’ve got yerself an enemy, Miss.
Says here you were reported—by anonymous call. Full description of yeh,
too. It’s uncanny …”

“Anonymous call…” I repeated slowly.

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it, Miss.
They’ll not bother to flag this. It prolly won’t even show
up if you try to return to the UK.”

I thought of Sophia’s
note. “Oh, I’m coming back,” I said.
 

“Let’s get ye through to
yer plane, then, aye?”

He swung open the door
into the terminal, and I walked through.

After signing off with the police, I
hurried toward the security gates and spotted Jack almost immediately. He was still
on my side of the gates; craning to look through the crowds. My stomach clenched
a little at the sight of him, still wearing his kilt from the festivities at
the Games. I thought about our brief trip to the circle on the hillside, and
immediately felt my face suffuse with heat.

I hate being such an easy blusher.

As I walked up, he turned and caught sight
of me. His look of anxiety was swept away by a relieved smile. “Oh, thank god.
I thought I’d missed ye.”

“You could always have found me on the other
side of security. You know my gate, right?”

“That I do. Since it is mine, as well.”

It took me a minute to catch on. “You’ve
changed your flight?” I said, slowly.

“Indeed I have.” He stepped into line behind
me, and the guard waved us through to the scanning machine.

“What about New York? The tour?” I put my
backpack on the conveyor belt and automatically began unzipping it, when I
remembered I had no laptop to pull out.

Jack put his things on the conveyor belt
after mine and followed me up to the metal detector.

“Come through,” the woman said, so I did.

The machine lit up like a Christmas tree, so
they pulled out the scanning wand.

“I’ve made a slight change,” he called, as
he walked through in his stocking feet. Naturally, the lights did not blink
even once. He’d replaced his shoes and put away his computer by the time they’d
finished wanding and swabbing me for suspicious powders.

“I don’t know why they always pick me,” I
muttered, as we waited for my pack to be x-rayed. “I lead the most blameless
life ever.”

He grinned. “Perhaps ye always look guilty.
And besides, it’s the blameless ones who carry the deepest secrets, aye?”

That might well be true, I thought, as I
collected my pack and swung it up onto my shoulder. We turned down the long
hallway leading to the gates.

“So, didja have a chance to begin the book?”
he asked, with a certain casualness that rang utterly false.

“No— no, too busy dealing with the
cops…” I began, but I totally caved as his face crumpled in disappointment. “Of
course I read it. William’s love interest seemed—ah …”

“Human?” he asked, eagerly. “More
realistic?”

“Umm-hmm. And kinda—familiar.”

His face creased a little as he tried to
smother a smile. “Ah. You noticed, then.”

I opened my mouth to reply when a collection
of heated voices rose up behind us. As we turned to look, there was a sudden
explosion of activity at the very security station we had just come through.

Two guards—I couldn’t tell if they
were policemen or not, had come marching down the other wing of the airport,
escorting a handcuffed prisoner. One of the guards had his hand on the
prisoner’s head as they ducked backwards through the security line, when the
person shook free and ran right for us.

There was no time to react, apart from
registering that the person wore enormous, white plastic-framed sunglasses and
had long, flowing blonde hair.

“Susan?” I whispered, but not surprisingly,
she didn’t stop to respond.

It was a futile attempt, in the end, as she
only managed three or four strides before the guard tackled her to the ground,
essentially right at our feet.

“Brutality!” she screeched, before landing a
decent kick right under the guard’s kneecap with one five-inch platform shoe.
“I’m goin’ to sue you cocksuckers, one and all. See if I don’t! This is fuckin’
police brutality! Is this the way you treat all your visitors?”

Jack and I joined the throng of travelers
who were backing away as quickly as possible from the scene. By this time, a
second guard had arrived and was actually sitting right on top of Susan, trying
to avoid her flailing feet long enough to zap-strap them together. In the end,
the woman who had patted me down dropped her equipment and held Susan’s heels
together long enough for the guard to truss her up like a turkey.

As the final strap was tied, a large figure
pushed through the security line.

“I’m wi’ her,” he cried when the woman with
the wand tried to stand in his way. “They’re arrestin’ mah fiancée!”

“Hamish, Hamish—make them untie me,”
Susan screeched.

In the melee, several of her extensions had
come away and were wrapped around various body parts of the guards, who were by
this time struggling to get her upright. As both her hands and her feet were
tightly bound, it seemed unclear to me why they were doing so, since there was
no way she could walk on her own. But they pulled her to her feet, and Hamish
stood beside her, helplessly collecting knotted strands of blonde hair from off
the floor and the guard’s uniforms.

“Look,” Hamish said earnestly, peering down
into the very red face of one of the guards. “There mus’ be some mistake. We’re
gettin’ married. I cannae leave without her! They’ll no’ let me stay in
America!”

A line of police officers moved silently
through the security line behind Hamish.

“Sir, I reckon you’d better come with us.
This woman is Gail Lee Duncan, and she’s needed to assist our enquiries into a
series of thefts from Berwick to Thirsk.”

The crowd watched in silence as Hamish’s
face went a shade of deep scarlet that I recognized with a pang of dread.
 
“There mus’ be a mistake,” he repeated,
his hand closing to a fist. “This is no Gail Thingummy. This is mah Sunshine—mah
wife to be.”

He raised a hand to the guard and there was
a gentle sizzling sound for a moment before Hamish slid to the ground.

“Strap him up, too, Sammy,” said the police
officer, holstering his Taser as Hamish groaned and tried to sit up. “We’re
gonna need two gurneys for this lot.” He looked up at the crowd, still standing
in silence. “Now’t to see here, folks. Move along to your flights, now—move
along, tha’s right.”

“Holy smoke,” I said, and took a great gulp
of air.

I realized I’d been holding my breath
through the entire ordeal. Susan—I couldn’t bring myself to call her
Sunshine—and Hamish. Maybe there was trouble in paradise, after all.

“Hey, wasn’t that…?” began Jack, staring
after the police, but I pretended not to hear and hurried down the long airport
hallway.

At the gate, a couple of airport employees
were dismantling a Visit Scotland display. Several large posters—including
the one for the Nairn Games—lay partially furled on the ground beside a
large plastic claymore and a collection of gray Styrofoam stones. The workers
stood together beside the largest of the standing stones, having a heated
argument over which screwdriver they needed to finish the job.

Just then a group of perhaps eleven or
twelve dark-haired young women came milling through the door from the Customs
area. They giggled at the sight of the stone circle, and in the end, one of the
workmen took pictures for them as they all flashed a peace sign.

Every woman clutched a copy of OUTLANDER in
her hand.

Jack skirted the largest of the stones,
dropped his computer bag onto a chair, and turned to me, his expression puzzled.

“About that fella…” he began, when his mobile
phone rang, deep inside a coat pocket.

“Odd,” he said, fishing around for it.
“Who’s callin’ me at this hour?”

“Is it the police again?” I asked, feeling a
moment’s irrational panic.

“Nae, my guess is they’re busy enough with
that blonde woman for the moment,” he muttered, grabbing the phone at last.