Read Online Return of the Highlander (Immortal Warriors) by Sara Mackenzie - Free Book Online

swum in the loch once and rushed out, white-faced, saying something had tugged his foot. She had laughed at him, but he’d been adamant it wasn’t his imagination.
    “This place is haunted. That massacre you’re writing about, there must be restless spirits all around us. That’s why no one else wanted to stay here. That’s why it was so cheap.”
    “It’s not haunted,” she’d mocked, “and if it is I don’t care. I want to live here forever.”
    “I do want to live here forever,” she said now to the silence. “Despite the spirits and the each-uisge . Please, can I stay?”
    And it was strange, but when she looked up there was a big bird, a majestic eagle, soaring above her. Considering her request.
     
     
    The sweat popped out on Maclean’s brow. Could ghosts sweat? Well, they must be able to, because he was.
    He tried again, concentrating fiercely on the tea mug Bella had left on the desk the night before, and his fingers shook as he tried to close them about the hard shiny surface. For a heartbeat he felt it…and then his fingers slipped through.
    Maclean sat, head bowed, feeling confused and depressed.
    Since the rider had appeared and tried to hurt Bella, Maclean had felt a change in himself. A tingling in his fingertips. He’d hoped it meant he was regaining his sense of touch, but although several times he had almost caused the mug to move, it seemed he still had a long way to go.
    He was worried, too.
    What if something else happened to Bella? How could he protect her properly if he was barely anything more than a puff of air? He needed to regain his full faculties as soon as possible. When he was alive, there hadn’t been much about warfare and battle he did not know. He had been protecting his people since he was a boy—it was one thing he was very proud of—and watching over Bella would be no hardship.
    Indeed not.
    Sometimes he wondered whether the real reason he wanted to feel again, to be a man again, was to protect Bella or because he wanted to hold her in his arms and feel her womanly curves. Both, maybe. It was true that the sight of her burned into him. He admitted it. For a man who could not feel hunger, Maclean was ravenous with lust. If this was two hundred and fifty years ago, he’d have taken her into his four-poster bed by now. He let himself picture them lying on the fine feather mattress with the bedcurtains pulled all around them and her soft pale skin flushed by his attentions. Muted, safe, intimate—just the two of them.
    But that was a randy dream—there was no possibility of taking her to his bed. Whether he liked it or not, Maclean could only watch and listen, and every hour that passed increased his awareness of her.
    Last night he had watched her sleep.
    When Bella slept she had such a peaceful expression on her face and her body grew soft and relaxed as her breathing slowed. Maclean did not sleep himself. Like other functions of the living, this was denied him, so instead he watched her with an intensity that was almost envy.
    “Maclean?”
    With a jolt he had leaned closer in the darkness of Bella’s bedroom.
    “Maclean.”
    Bella was calling his name in her dreams.
    All the hairs on his skin had stood straight up. She was dreaming of him .
    “I’m here,” he’d whispered, peering into her face. “Och, Bella, ye are so beautiful.” He bent forward and kissed the air above her cheek.
    “Maclean…” She’d turned over and snuggled into her quilt, a smile curving her mouth.
    Maclean’s eyes stung with tears. He had not cried since he was a wee lad, but he was in danger of it now.
    Because, if he lived in her dreams, did that mean he existed, somewhere in the shadowy realm of sleep?
    Did that make him real ?
    At that moment Bella came into the room, her hairstill tangled from sleep, her face fresh and beautiful, all of her so delicious. He badly wanted to stand up and swing her into his arms and take her straight back upstairs to bed.
    “Not real enough,