HIGHLANDER: The Highlander’s Surrender Bride (Scottish Alpha Male Pregnancy Romance) (40 page)

Chapter 1

It was the gentle lapping of the waves that woke her.

The smell of salt in her nostrils and the taste of the sea in her mouth roused her from an unwilling sleep.  The water was warm, its soothing touch was comfortable as the tide frothed and bubbled over her skin as the waves crashed on her large body.  Her fingers reflexively dug into the soft and moist sand, the granules lodging themselves underneath her fingernails.  She blinked her eyes and the sea stung at them, blurring her vision.  Reflexively she tried to wipe the smarting sensation from her eyes as another wave rolled up over her…

Water! I’m in the fucking water!

Panic surged into her and she yelped, flipping over onto her back as she turned outwards and looking back at the water.  The sea was just behind her as another wave began to roll in towards her on the beach, like some dark hooded figure rushing towards her and ready to claim her with icy fingers.

Like a scrambling crab she backed up away from the water and deeper onto the sandy shore until the sand became dry and coarse beneath her hands and feet.  All the while she kept her eyes on the water, watchful for any signs of danger that swam in the murky green waters of the rolling tide.  She crawled as far as she could until she felt her thick back encounter a rocky cliff that would permit her to go no further.

Even so, she still tried to clamber away, but to no avail.  The fear that pumped in her heart demanded that she get further away from the water… as far as she could.  The fear sounded firmly inside of her like a church bell until eventually some small portion of her mind convinced her that even being this far from the shore, she was safe.  No need for fear.

Her breathing came in shallow gasps and though the salt of the sea still stung at her eyes and nose she couldn’t take her attention away from the sea that was no more than thirty feet away from where she now sat.  Her eyes, though blurred, combed the water for signs of threatening movement. 

As she sat and watched, she saw none.  Unable to allay her fear she looked to her left and to her right, wary for signs of any other danger… or other people.

All she saw was deserted beach, populated by no one but her and the occasional jagged rocks that sat on the sand but all were too small for anyone – or anything – to hide behind.  She gave one final look at the ocean that fronted her and saw nothing but calm waves and gently rolling waves upon the sand; a picture of paradise.

“Shit!” she whispered to herself, closing her eyes.  “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” She tried to bring back her memories.  How had she gotten here?  Where the hell was
here
? “Get it together,” she instructed herself.  She took a calming breath, trying to put it all together.  A swirl of images came back to her mind.

She recalled the boat.  She had been sightseeing… the passengers… she’d had a drink, something strong with flavors she’d never had before.  They were watching dolphins… people were laughing and taking pictures.  Someone gasped… there were strange shapes in the water… blood… the dolphins disappeared.  The boat suddenly rocked so violently… people started screaming… she spilled her drink on herself… People were suddenly being dragged off the boat by… by… claws?  Or were they teeth?  She remembered seeing strange shapes that looked like they were something from her nightmares.  People were pulled off the boat, screaming for God and Jesus, some of them just screaming… and then the boat rocked sideways and she fell over… She had hit the water, hard.  There was no hope of getting back on board… the water all around her was turning red with slaughter… shapes thrashing in the water… some of them the shapes of people… and other she couldn’t identify.  All she remembered doing was swimming… as hard and as fast as she could… praying that she could escape the terror…

It wasn’t much, but it was all she could remember.  It had happened so fast it was like seeing a car drive by at a hundred miles an hour and expecting to remember what color the driver’s eyes were.  It was a blur, the memories distorted by fatigue, drink, and fear… absolute fear.

She opened her eyes.  The waves before her were still calm.  There was no sign of claws, teeth, or gore in the waters before her.  Though her legs trembled lightly she pushed herself onto her feet. 

She looked herself over.  One of her sandals was missing, her skin was pruned from being in the water so long, her hair was a thick mess of wet tendrils, her thick body felt weary, but otherwise she appeared to be unharmed.

She looked up and down the beach again and saw no sign of any other survivors.  The other passengers…?

No one but her had survived, it seemed. 
Survived what?
She thought, her body lightly trembling. 
What the fuck happened?
  She couldn’t find the words to describe what she had seen.  Part of her wanted to believe that it hadn’t happened at all.  Maybe it hadn’t?  Maybe she had just had too much to drink?  The Gulf was famous for mixing ingredients into their drinks that the uninitiated sometimes had bad reactions to.  Maybe that had something to do with it? 

The idea held an odd sort of appeal to it. 

She felt herself calm at the thought of it.
It’s alright,
she told herself. 
It’s alright.  You had too much to drink… you got a little wild… it wasn’t real.

She was prepared to accept that idea eagerly until she attempted to straighten her clothing, though it was soaked with the tide.  The brief calm she’d had vanished when she saw slashes in her clothing that looked like they could only have been made by hand-sized claws.

Her body trembled at the sight and she leaned against the rocky ledge to steady herself.  She closed her eyes and fought the urge to vomit. 
It’s okay… it’s okay… I was soaking in the ocean when I woke up… my clothes were just torn… monsters aren’t real… they’re not real…

She stood in the shade of the cliff for several more minutes attempting to convince herself of the truth before she finally found the fortitude to stand straight on her feet.  Despite the fear that iced its way up her spine she kept her back to the water and set off down the beach, all the while muttering a simple mantra.

“There’s no such thing as monsters… there’s no such thing as monsters… there’s no such thing as monsters…”

Chapter 2

She walked along the beach for what felt like hours and miles, though it couldn’t have been more than a single hour and maybe three quarters of a mile before she found a sign of hope.

The beach that she had found herself on was empty of any signs of civilization; not even an empty beer bottle littered the perfect beach.  The sea was to one side, the high cliffs on the other.  And as she walked the cliff began to roll, coming lower and lower to the beach until she saw that it was populated by trees and brush, shrubs that were tropical in nature.  The sounds of animals, monkeys and birds, she was guessing filled the jungle beyond.

And in the midst of that greenery, she found a path.  It was not a stone path, nor was it the kind of path marked by guide ropes or metal handrails.  It was little more than heavily trodden sand.  But her hopes lifted when she saw the unmistakable sign of footprints in the loose granules, the imprints of heavy boots and tennis shoes both told her that people lived here.

“Thank Christ!” she gasped as she started for the path.  She followed it as it wound its way through the brush, like a great snake carving its way through the jungle floor.  She didn’t care where it led, only that it would take her away from the ocean and towards someone that could help to convince her that what she’d seen yesterday had only been in her mind.

As she moved on, that thought became more and more likely.  Perhaps it was just some alcohol-induced fantasy that she had had.  Perhaps the cruise ship she’d been on had put in?  That was possible, there were to be several stops along the way, she remembered seeing it on her itinerary.  Maybe they had just stopped over on one of those ports and she’d taken in too much of the local hooch and passed out on the beach?  That idea too held merit, but the rents in her clothing convinced her that she would need someone else to tell her that she’d been imagining things. 

She followed the sandy path until it led her to the crest of a hill.  Partly out of breath she surveyed the area around her.  It was not the tallest hill that she was standing on, she noted.  There were others, three of them, and each a good way off.  But she could tell right off that she was on an island.  It was lush, filled with green, there were bright flowers that waved gently in a tropical breeze in the treetops and flocks of birds took to the air here and there before returning and settling back down in another tree.

Did I wander too far from the ship?
  She looked around.  She could see water at her back and to her left and right, but on the far side of the hills she could not see anything.  Perhaps the ship was docked there? 
I must have been wasted if I wandered this far
, she thought reassuringly. 

Her eyes brightened when they fell upon something nestled in the lowlands of the island.  Sitting there, like a frame of yellow stone in a sea of emerald green, was a building.  It was tall, almost like a castle, and a flag fluttered from in the middle of its wide court yard.  And she could see the shapes of people moving in and about it.

A tourist spot!

Ignoring the rocks and sand under her one bare foot she rushed down the path that she was certain would lead her to that place.  And she felt comfort that she would soon discover that everything she had seen –
thought
she had seen – was nothing more than some exotic fruit that had been in her drink, playing tricks on her.

The path stretched on for several hundred more yards before it led her to a wide gate in a tall stone wall.  It looked like some kind of an old fortress, she thought.  She remembered reading that these islands here in the Gulf were filled with old Spanish forts from the days of piracy on the high seas and when the Spanish Main was a constantly shifting battleground between the superpowers of Europe at the time. 

She was relieved as she walked, hearing the sound of drums and flutes playing from somewhere in the compound.  Her relief intensified when she saw a woman, dressed like a maid, pushing a broom around the stone floor of the compound and gently swaying her hips to the melody.

“Excuse me,” she said, approaching the woman.

The maid turned to look at her and the woman’s eyes widened with surprise.  Maybe it was simply at the sight of the unkempt woman before her, but that the maid was shocked was clear.

“Hello, I’m Tristina Howe… I’m with the Gulf Paradise Cruise… uh… this is going to sound strange, but I lost my way.  Can you tell me where I am?”

The maid’s eyes remained wide but she regarded her with a careful eye.  It was a few moments before the woman spoke.  “How did you come here?”  The woman spoke with an accent, her words fractured English and tinted with something that was almost Spanish. 

Tristina lightly chuckled, “Uh… I’m not entirely sure.  I woke up on the beach, you see… and… I remember having a pretty stiff drink… I think I wandered here.  I need to get back to the boat.  Is it docked somewhere?  Can you point the way for me?”

The maid’s look of incredulity kept firm and she held up a hand as if stopping her from moving at all.  “Wait here… I will be back.”  With that, the maid dropped her brook with a loud thump upon the stone floor and quickly scurried off as if there was a fire somewhere that needed to be put out.

“Sure…” she said, watching the maid go.

She looked around.  The place looked old, certainly, but it wasn’t filled with tourists as she had thought it would be.  It seemed almost deserted… almost.  She saw more people walking along the parapets of the walls… more cleaning staff it looked like.  There were men and women both who pushed more brooms or carried bottles filled with cleaning chemicals as they polished statues that sat on pedestals or on the old cannons that lined the battlements of the walls.

None of them seemed to pay her any regard. 
They’ve seen one tourist, they’ve seen them all.
  She saw security cameras in the corners of the courtyard and occasionally she saw men dressed like security guards walk by with pistols at their hips.  These ones too paid her no mind.

“Nice place,” she said, looking around.  “Real friendly people.”

“They are that,” said a voice behind her.

She turned and saw a man approaching, followed by the same maid that she had met minutes before.  His hair was red and tied in a thick ponytail that reached down to the small of his back.  He also wore a beard of matching color, though his eyes were of a deep blue that looked like they could have been coursing with electricity.  His skin was pale, despite being in this region of the world, and he wore a robe that made her think that this man could have been a younger version of Hugh Hefner. 

Underneath that robe she could sense that there wasn’t an overabundance of muscle, but he was still broad shouldered and well made by the look of him.  Oddly enough, as he drew closer, she thought she saw a strange pattern across his bare skin.  It was subtle, almost imperceptible, like seeing cracks in glass when light hit it at just the right angle.  But there had seemed to be…
something
across his face.  And in all of a moment it was gone.

“Everyone here is quite polite,” said the redheaded man.  “They only become unpleasant if I tell them to.”  He stopped at arm’s length from her and extended a hand.  “Luke Silva.  I own this island.  And whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

He
owns
this island? 
Tristina shook her head, coming out of a daze that she wasn’t aware she had been in.  “Uh… sorry… Tristina Howe… most people just call me Tris.”  She shook his hand and felt he had strong grip.

“Tris,” the man, Luke apparently, said experimentally.  “I like that.  Welcome to my home.”  He looked her over.  “Oh, but your poor thing!  You’re clothes are in tatters!  And I can smell the sea on you.  How did you come to be this way?”

Tris became aware of her disheveled appearance and withdrew her hand from that of her host and absentmindedly tried to straighten her attire out.  “Uh… that’s an interesting story… you’d laugh if you heard it.”

Luke smiled at her.  “Then I look forward to your tale.  I enjoy a good laugh.  But over something to eat and possibly something to drink, I think.”  He turned back to his maid and spoke to her in Spanish, though Tris didn’t understand a word of it.  The maid gave an affirming nod and gathering up her broom she trotted off for unseen places.  “My staff will prepare us something to eat… you’re just in time for lunch.  They’ll also find you some replacement clothing.”

Tris again attempted to straighten her semi-ruined clothing and found herself blushing.  “Thank you… you’re very kind.”