His Lass Wears Tartan Read Free Page A

no rushing around needed except the tours, and we’ll continue selling tickets until the writers’ group comes in at the end of May.”
    Robbie scratched his head, taking his time getting up from the chair. “How are we doing with those new maps we had printed?”
    Baillie turned back to the craggy little man. “Actually, it would be good to bring up another box to the office, Robbie. Well, goodnight, both of you. Thank you again for an excellent job getting this wedding successfully completed. This small but insanely expensive event will do our budget well this year, especially since we’ll be closed to the public during the weeks before and after the solstice. We’ll hopefully get a few referrals from this last event to soothe the insanity we endured.”
    Baillie reached for a heavy crocheted shawl hanging on a post near the doorway into the castle and wrapped it around her shoulders before stepping out of the warmth of the kitchen. The chill of May had seeped through the hallways and larger rooms during the night. She loved the stillness while everyone slept, when only the sound of her skirt rustling against the stone floor as she walked could be heard.
    Lord Kai materialized next to her and put his cool, strong arm around her waist. “I saw our niece flouncing her way toward her room barefooted. Can’t keep that lassie in shoes for more than a few hours of the day.”
    “She is a child of more natural things; comfort she finds in boots rather than heels.” Baillie looked up at the face above her. It was such a delight to see his intense gaze and wavy auburn hair next to her, an honor to be the only one in the castle able to see and hear the ghostly laird. “We did give her highness a tough time tonight about meeting that young man, Bruce MacKenzie. Putney believes they would be a perfect couple.”
    “The lass is well on in age; she should be thinking of a suitor.”
    “Kai, she’s just twenty-four.”
    “An old maid in my time she’d be.”
    Baillie chuckled. “Thank goodness it’s no longer the seventeenth century. I wouldn’t be here, nor would she, you know. I just want the girl to be happy, and I know how easy it is to immerse yourself in your career or life and think you need no one else. It took a 300-year-old ghost to prove to me otherwise. I’d like it if she were to find someone as noble and infuriating as yourself to add to her life.”
    Kai growled and lifted her into his strong arms, planting a rough kiss on her lips. “Infuriating, you say?” His eyes lit with an inner twinkle of mischief.
    She shook her head and kissed him on his cheek. “Kai, we still have guests, love. Put me down before we scare the daylights out of someone.”
    “And what of our upcoming wedding, my Annie Rose?” Lord Kai, with his long-sleeved white shirt neatly tucked into his Baillie kilt of blue and green, looked as dashing and dramatic as the first night she’d met him, but then, a seventeenth-century ghost never aged. “Are ye ready to be Missus William Andrew Kai Robert Baillie, the fourth, my love?”
    He wrapped muscled, ruddy arms around her, nuzzling his face against her neck, the delicious slight chill of his cool, supernatural touch making her knees weak. “I, meself, canna wait to stand in a handfast ceremony with ye, Catharine Anne Baillie, my own sweet Annie Rose, and make ye mine forever.”
    “Kai, as good as it feels in your arms, we need to be inside a room for this.” Baillie sighed, her eyes twinkling at his closeness. “Behind closed doors, my love.” She leaned into his cool, rather transparent embrace, giving herself a delicious moment of pleasure. No ordinary romance for them, more like the mortal Heathcliff living happily ever after with that other C-named ghostly girl who died in his arms in
Wuthering Heights
. She’d practically memorized the 1939 movie. The heart knew what the heart wanted, and hers was a kilted ghost.
    “And a wee niece to nurture or nudge into love,” Kai