Rogue Male: A Highland shifter romance Read online

  Contents

  Rogue Male

  Afters

  Rogue Male

  A Highland shifter romance

  Ruby Fielding

  Published by James Grieve Press

  © Ruby Fielding 2015

  www.rubyfielding.com

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  Cover images © Tankist276, Demian, Inigocia and Marusja2, with design by James Grieve

  This ebook is copyright material and no portion of it may be reproduced or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law.

  Rogue Male

  Prologue

  It’s late, it’s dark out here, and she’s tired, but she has no excuses. No reason why she approaches this man who she now knows to be a stranger.

  No possible reason to put herself at risk like this when every bone in her body is screaming at her to stop, turn, walk away. Run.

  Anything but carry on slowly approaching.

  He’s standing on the bridge, leaning on the stone wall as if staring down into the water.

  Waiting for her.

  Now, he straightens and turns.

  She stops walking, and his eyes crawl over her features, taking in the floppy fabric rose in her hair, the leather jacket.

  “You must be Skye,” he says. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  She can’t move.

  “I believe you have something I want,” he adds.

  Why are her feet so frozen to the spot?

  Why can’t she just turn and walk away?

  All she has to do is calm herself. Lift her feet. Walk.

  She hears a sound, turns her head.

  Sees yellow eyes staring at her from the darkness by the bridge wall, the narrow path that leads down to the water.

  Hearing a sound from behind this time, she twists at the waist and peers back.

  A dark-coated wolf stands there, lips drawn back across its teeth.

  “I believe you have information about some mutual friends,” says the man, taking a step towards her. “I want to know where they are.”

  Two more steps, so that now he looms over her.

  “I want you to come with me, Miss Parker. I want to know all that you know about our friends. And then either I will go and find them, or they will come looking for you. I’ve yet to decide which of these two alternatives is more to my liking. What do you think?”

  The wolf down in the shadows by the bridge has edged forward. Now she can see that its fur is a dark silvery-gray.

  How many are there?

  She glances back, and the dark wolf has edged closer. Much more and she’ll be able to feel its hot breath on her back.

  The other wolf is up on the road now, its body held low to the ground.

  And the dark wolf: closer still.

  Involuntarily, she takes a step away from them.

  She would never have believed that terror could be so intense. She feels sick with the fear.

  She doesn’t even need to look. She can feel the wolves closing in.

  Herding her like nightmare sheepdogs.

  What’s the advice to kidnap victims? Leave evidence. If you’re in his car you should pull your hair and leave it behind. Rub your skin raw on the seat so there’s DNA left on the upholstery. Scratch him to get evidence lodged under your fingernails... for when they find your body.

  She isn’t in his car, though. She’s still out in the street.

  She should scream.

  She knows that.

  But she has no voice. No control.

  She should drop her purse.

  Pull that ridiculous big flower from her hair and make sure she leaves it behind – everyone would recognize that.

  Anything.

  Anything but give herself up to this man...

  1

  Five days earlier...

  All it took was a single look.

  The flash of dark eyes, the curl of the lip, the eyebrows raised in – surprise? disbelief? – and Skye Parker knew she’d made a big mistake.

  Iain hadn’t expected to see her here. Didn’t want to see her. Hadn’t even entertained the possibility that she might not want to leave things where they had been left back in July.

  Then it was as if a cloud had pulled away from the sun. His expression lit up, he gave that disarming grin, and he said, “Skye? Skye fucking Parker?”

  His voice was deep, with a delicious Scottish burr. He stepped forward, wrapped those long arms around her and hugged her so hard she thought she might never breathe again.

  But that look had stung like a slap to the face.

  Even as she hugged him back she knew that coming here was probably the biggest mistake of her life.

  §

  She’d driven most of the day to get here. A beautiful route up the north-east coast of England, with the North Sea to her right and the Cheviot Hills to her left, then through the sprawling suburbs of Edinburgh before she crossed the Forth road bridge and headed for the Highlands. She’d felt excited and nervous in equal measure, and she really didn’t understand why she felt this way at all.

  It just wasn’t her.

  She wasn’t that girl. Never had been.

  The one who chases love. The one who puts romance ahead of everything else. The one who would drive the length of the country in response to an online comment that suggested maybe, just maybe, the guy she’d drunkenly snogged two months ago might still be interested.

  She was a strong young woman. Independent. A career woman – or at least she would be when she’d completed the final year of her university course in ecological and environmental sciences.

  She’d set off mid-morning, the first part of the drive familiar from previous journeys between her parents’ home just outside Whitby and Edinburgh, which she increasingly thought of as home since she’d started studying there. Beyond that, it was all new to her as a driver. She had vague memories of the scenery from childhood holidays – the rolling green hills of Fife becoming ever more craggy as she approached the mountains and glens of the Highlands – but that was about it.

  What had been a sunny, blue-sky day when she set out rapidly became gray, the occasional downpour working the wipers of her old 2CV hard. When she’d set out she’d had the striped canvas roof rolled back, but around Dunbar the first of the rain had put paid to that idea.

  The 2CV was a collector’s piece now, not many of them left on the road, and as she progressed north Skye came to seriously believe that the hills might be the end of this little car. She was so glad that in between teaching her how to replace brake pads and adjust the contact breaker points, her father had also taken the time to teach her how to double-declutch down through the gears when you hit a big hill. Anything to give that little 602cc engine a chance!

  The last stretch of road after she’d left the A95 was narrow, and the overhanging pine trees cast so much shade she switched the car’s headlights on, even though it was still daylight. The forest floor climbed steeply to her left, giant boulders dressed with ferns and rich moss; to her right, the ground fell away to a river she occasionally glimpsed through gaps in the trees. After a time, the land leveled and the forest pulled back to reveal a cluster of squat, gray houses. Just as Iain had once described, a turning to the left revealed the villag
e pub, the Calder Arms. She pulled up before the blocky building and now the nerves took over.

  What was she doing here? Why hadn’t she at least let him know she was coming? Was it only yesterday that they’d had a light-hearted exchange on Facebook, him telling her about being back home again?

  It’s beautiful up here Skye. Don’t know how I ever stayed away for so long you know?

  She’d encouraged him to go on. She’d always enjoyed his descriptions of his Highland home. Stalking deer on the mountains, watching ospreys at the nest, the way the hills could turn purple overnight if the conditions were just right for the heather to all come into bloom at once.

  Then at one point he’d said:

  You should come, there’s always a spare bed at my ma’s!

  She’d told him maybe she would.

  And so she had, and now she was here, sitting in her little blue car, staring out at Iain’s local pub through a windscreen awash with rain.

  §

  It was too late for second thoughts now, but also pretty late to be sitting here realizing she had no idea what to do next. She knew she’d come to the right place but she didn’t have an address for Iain, didn’t know what he might be doing right now, late afternoon on a Sunday.

  Even though it was still daylight, the sun had dropped below the hills and the day was edging towards dusk. Lights were on in the Calder Arms. Someone there must know where she might find Iain, and maybe a quick rum and Coke would soothe her nerves.

  Nervous wasn’t something she ordinarily did, either. She wasn’t sure she liked that another person could make her feel like this. She liked to think she was normally in control of her emotions. Not nervy. Not impetuous.

  She stepped out into the steady rain.

  The pub was a substantial building with a steep, gray-slate roof and walls made from randomly sized stones of varying shades, from gray through brown to a deep blood-red. As she drew closer, she saw that the walls were skinned over with patches of white, silver and yellow lichen, a sure sign of the purity of the air up here. The scientist in her made her want to identify the species, but she knew that was just her brain latching onto detail to distract her.

  She was soaked through already.

  She pushed at the door, was hit by that sudden wall of sound of a busy pub: the voices, talking and laughing, the electronic music of a games machine clashing with the background music, the clatter of something falling to the floor behind the bar.

  She half-expected that movie moment: the place falling silent as every head turned towards her, but no, the noise carried on uninterrupted. She stepped inside, aware of her hair plastered to her face, the big velvet flower hairband heavy with rain. No doubt her mascara was running, too, and she’d have smudged panda eyes.

  She took a step towards the bar, then she stopped, recognizing his shape, the way he held himself, his square shoulders and dark, tousled hair.

  She hadn’t expected him to be here. However skimpy her plan was, just bumping into Iain like this certainly wasn’t a part of it.

  He stood with his back to her, one elbow leaning on the bar while the other arm flapped, gesticulating as he talked animatedly to a big man with pink cheeks, a drinker’s purple nose, bushy white whiskers and a bald head. Then he let his arm fall to his side and shrugged at something the older man said.

  He hadn’t noticed her yet. She could turn now, go back out to her car and gather herself.

  Her nervousness all coming together as a big lump in her throat, she approached him, opened her mouth to speak, then paused. The older man had seen her, and now he fixed Iain with a look and nodded in Skye’s direction.

  Iain paused, turned his head, and that was it. The flash of the dark eyes, the curl of the lip, the raising of the eyebrows. He didn’t want her here, hadn’t expected her to show up like this. She could see his mind racing, working through the complications of her being here.

  And then the grin, the hug where she hung on just a moment too long because she didn’t want to see the look on his face when he pulled away again.

  She didn’t understand it. The effect he had on her. That he could make her travel so far on a whim. That he could make her feel like this.

  Stupid. Just stupid.

  2

  “I know what I saw, Jim! I’ve lived here all my life. I know these hills like the back of my hand.”

  “Och, your fancy degree’s gone to your heed, laddie. Maybe this isn’t the life for you any more. Aren’t there opportunities for you in the city?”

  Iain had known Jim McQueen since he was a bairn. The old man had taught him how to tickle a salmon into submission and track the wariest of red deer stags from glen to mountaintop. Jim still saw him as just a lad, though, and Iain knew what the old man thought of the difference between textbook learning and real experience. Fresh back from university, having spent the last four years in Edinburgh, miles away from the hills he now claimed to know so well, he couldn’t help but see Jim’s response as a put-down.

  Iain faltered. He’d wanted to say more, and he knew Jim’s comment was meant as a joke, maybe even a mark of respect, but it cut right through him. He reached for his pint of heavy instead, and took a long drink of the bittersweet beer. “I know what I saw,” he muttered once again.

  “We’ve no’ had wild wolves in Scotland for nearly three centuries, and there’s none left at Craigellen,” said Jim, his tone softer now. “Aye, they had some wolves in an enclosure but they had their license revoked in the summer.”

  “This wasn’t in any enclosure,” said Iain. “It was up on Beinn Madadh, running free.”

  He knew all about the captive pack the land-owner Jonathan Carr had kept on the Craigellen Estate. Mr Carr had been hoping to reintroduce them to the wild but that plan had been scuppered when one of the wolves had got free in the summer and killed one of Carr’s staff. That wolf had been hunted down, but... “They lose one, who’s to say they didnae lose more?”

  “I was there,” said Jim McQueen. “I was part of the investigation and I saw what happened. I was the one who shot the wolf.”

  Jim was a retired police inspector and Iain knew he’d been called on by the authorities when things had got exciting back in July.

  Now, Jim peered at him and said, “You found evidence, I presume? Tracks?”

  Iain waved a hand towards the rain-streaked windows of the Calder Arms. “In this weather? This kind of rain’ll wash anything away in seconds.”

  “Ye dinnae want to be scaring folk, y’know?”

  Iain shrugged. He’d been here in July, back up from Edinburgh for a couple of weeks after his final year there. He’d known something was wrong, probably before anyone else: there had been no tracks then either, no sightings, but you can tell when there’s a big predator on the loose; the whole atmosphere of the forest changes.

  He’d known then, just as he knew now...

  He’d been out on the slopes of Beinn Madadh early this morning, way before any normal person would be up for a walk, or so his mother would often tell him.

  It was his time of day, a quiet period when it was only him and the hills, when he could shut all the crap out of his head that would creep in during the course of the day. It was a time when you could stumble upon a big capercaillie cock strutting through the forest, when you could creep up against the breeze to get right up close to a fine red deer stag on the heather moor where the mountain pushed up beyond the forest fringe.

  One thing he’d never seen before this morning was that flash of silver-gray fur, the powerful body hugging low to the ground as a beast easily three foot tall at the shoulder darted across a parting of the trees.

  Only a glimpse, but there had been no mistaking it.

  The only other animals that size to be found here were the deer – roe, sika, fallow and the big reds – and a small population of reintroduced wild boar. The boar were unmistakable, and the deer were animals Iain had grown up familiar with, that he’d seen almost every day, and learned to
stalk under the tuition of people like Jim McQueen and Billy Stewart.

  All he’d needed was that glimpse.

  That was no deer or boar he’d seen this morning.

  It was a wolf.

  §

  “You know we don’t have wolves here, Iain. It’ll be a fallow deer – their coats can be all kinds of colors this time o’ the year, ye know that.”

  There was something he couldn’t quite place in Jim’s tone. Tiredness. Disappointment. Like a physics teacher explaining an equation for the sixteenth time, knowing his student would never get it.

  “Whatever.” That shrug again, Iain’s standard defense and they both knew it: he wasn’t going to persist for now, but he wasn’t conceding either.

  He felt a draft of cool air on the back of his head and paused, then saw Jim peering past him. He’d hoped for more from his old friend. He’d thought Jim at least respected his skills and experience, his knowledge of the land: there’s no way Iain had just seen a deer this morning.

  He stared into his beer, frustrated now that Jim had latched onto some newcomer to interrupt their conversation.

  When he turned to look, it took longer than it should have. She was a part of his other life. University. Edinburgh.

  She stood there, top of her head barely reaching his chin, hair that was normally bouncy and blonde now flattened down to her scalp and plastered around her jaw, a good deal darker from the rain. Jeans and that battered brown leather jacket of hers, and the way she stood with one hip higher than the other, attitude somewhere between a catwalk model and a stroppy teenager. It was the flower that did it: that big, floppy velvet rose she wore in her hair, now heavy and sagging with the rain.

  A grin stole over Iain’s face and he said, “Skye? Skye fucking Parker?”

  He took two big steps and threw his arms around her.

  She felt good in his arms and he held on, probably for too long.

  His mind raced. What was she doing here? How had she even found the place? They’d chatted about it online, sure, but seeing her like this was kind of unexpected.