Spell of the Highlander Read Free

hours she kept, she’d be better off tucking a cot into that stuffy, forgotten janitor’s closet down the hall, amid mops and brooms and pails that hadn’t been used in years. She’d not only get more sleep, she’d save on gas money too.
    When the professor had called her from the hospital to tell her that he’d been in a “bit of a fender bender” on his way back to campus
—“a few inconvenient fractures and contusions, not to worry,”
he’d assured her swiftly—she’d been expecting him to ask her to pick up his classes for the next few days (meaning her sleep window would dwindle from four or five hours to a great, big, fat nil), but he’d informed her he’d already called Mark Troudeau and arranged for him to take his classes until he returned.
    I’ve a wee favor to ask of you, though, Jessica. I’ve a package coming. I was to accept a delivery at my office this evening,
he’d told her in his deep voice that, even after twenty-five years away from County Louth, Ireland, had never lost its lilt.
    She
loved
that lilt. Couldn’t wait to one day hear a whole pub speaking it while she washed down a hearty serving of soda bread and Irish stew with a perfectly poured Guinness. After, of course, having spent an entire day in the National Museum of Ireland delightedly poring over such fabulous treasures as the Tara Brooch, the Ardagh Chalice, and the Broighter Gold Collection.
    Hugging the phone between ear and shoulder, she’d glanced at her watch, the luminous dial indicating ten minutes past ten.
What kind of package gets delivered so late at night?
she’d wondered aloud.
    You needn’t concern yourself with that. Just sign for it, lock it up, and go home. That’s all I need.
    Of course, Professor, but what—
    Just sign, lock it up, and forget about it, Jessica.
A pause, a weighty silence, then:
I see no reason to mention this to anyone. It’s personal. Not university business.
    She’d blinked, startled; she’d never heard such a tone in the professor’s voice before. Words sharply clipped, he’d sounded defensive, almost . . . well, paranoid.
    I understand. I’ll take care of it. You just rest, Professor. Don’t you worry about a thing,
she’d soothed hastily, deciding that whatever pain meds he was getting were making him funny, the poor dear. She’d once had Tylenol with codeine that had made her feel itchy all over, short-tempered and irritable. With multiple fractures, it was a sure bet he’d been given something stronger than Tylenol 3.
    Now, standing beneath the faintly buzzing fluorescent lights in the university hallway, she rubbed her eyes and yawned hugely. She was exhausted. She’d gotten up at six-fifteen for a seven-twenty class and by the time she got home tonight—er, this morning—and managed to fall back into bed, she would have put in another twenty-hour day. Again.
    Turning the key in the lock, she pushed open the office door, fumbled for the light switch, and flipped it on. She inhaled as she stepped into the professor’s office, savoring the scholarly blend of books and leather, fine wood polish, and the pungent aroma of his favorite pipe tobacco. She planned to one day have an office of her own very much like it.
    The spacious room had built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcases and tall windows that, during the day, spilled sun across an intricately woven antique rug of wine, russet, and amber. The teak-and-mahogany furniture was formally masculine: a stately claw-foot desk; a sumptuous leather Chesterfield sofa in a deep, burnished coffee-bean hue; companion wing chairs. There were numerous glass-paned curio cabinets and occasional tables displaying his most prized replica pieces. A reproduction Tiffany lamp graced his desk. Only his computer, with its twenty-one-inch flat screen, belied the century. Remove it, and she might have been standing in the library of a nineteenth-century English manor house.
    “In here,” she called over her shoulder to the deliverymen.
    The