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Chapter 1 It was dusk -- too late for sunset, too early for stars. Ian MacKenzie had expected at least another hour of daylight, but night was coming fast to the Smoky Mountains. Making matters worse was the storm blowing in from the west. Slate-gray clouds rolled across the rounded mountaintops; thunder rumbled ominously in the distance.
Before being talked into this damn fool scheme, he'd been on his way to Monte Carlo, where he'd planned to spend the next two weeks sailing and romancing supermodels and princesses.
Instead, he'd come to this remote mountain borderland between North Carolina and Tennessee to catch a thief. The plan was to reclaim his family's property, by stealing it back if necessary.
Then, his duty done, his conscience cleansed, he was heading to Monaco to begin making up for six long months of celibacy.
The sky darkened like a black shawl settling over the mountains. The dashboard thermometer revealed that the temperature outside his rental car was plummeting, and ominous drops of rain began spattering the windshield.
"This is insane." Ian had been saying that ever since he'd landed in Washington, D.C., from Edinburgh, by way of London. He'd then climbed aboard a commuter jet at Dulles International Airport to Asheville, North Carolina, where he'd rented a car for this final leg of his journey.
The Hertz rental agent had told him Highland Falls was approximately sixty miles from Asheville. "As the crow flies," she'd said as she handed him back his credit card. "It's a bit longer by road."
That was proving to be a vast understatement.
The wind picked up; the rain began to slant. He hadn't passed another car for at least an hour and it had been nearly that long since he'd seen any of the small cemeteries, with their worn gravestones grown over with rambling honeysuckle and blackberry briars, or the weathered cabins tucked into the protective, fog-shrouded hollows.
Beginning to suspect he'd taken the wrong fork ten miles back, Ian considered turning around. The problem with that idea was that he'd undoubtedly end up getting mired in the mud. Besides, he hadn't come all this way to give up because of a little squall. He was a Scot, accustomed to miserable weather.
Thunder shook the mountain and rumbled from ridge to ridge, and soup-thick fog reflected the yellow beam of his headlights -- which was why Ian didn't see, until it was too late, the storm-swollen creek that had overflowed its banks. Clenching his jaw, he plowed ahead.
His relief on getting through the torrent rushing across the narrow road was short-lived when the engine coughed...then shuddered to a stop.
"Damn." He slammed his fist against the steering wheel. "Damn Duncan MacDougall's black heart."
Ian twisted the key in the ignition.
Nothing.
"And damn the bloody Stewart clan. Every bloody last one of them."
Forcing himself to wait a full thirty seconds -- during which time he also cursed the rock-hard Highland stubbornness that had maintained the Stewart and MacDougall feud for seven hundred years -- he tried again.
Still nothing.
Rain streamed down the windshield in blinding sheets as he turned on the dome light and studied the map. If it was at all accurate, he was approximately a mile from his destination.
"Hell -- barely a decent jog."
Giving the car one last chance to redeem itself, Ian tried the ignition again. When the attempt proved futile, he jammed the keys into his jacket pocket, grabbed his duffel bag from the back seat and began marching up the road, cursing into the wind.
"Well, what do you think?"
Lily Stewart glanced up from the uncooperative computer that had already crashed three times tonight, and took in the redhead twirling in a blaze of glitter.
"I don't believe I've seen so many sequins since you dragged me to that Elvis impersonator convention in Memphis." Her aunt's scarlet sweater was studded with red sequins and crystal beads, and the short red leather skirt displayed firm, stocking-clad thighs. "You're certainly showing a lot of leg tonight."
"If you've got it, flaunt it."
Ruby rings blazed, and diamonds flashed as the fifty-something former chorus girl fluffed her cloud of firecracker-bright hair, several shades darker than Lily's strawberry blond. "I'm not tryin' to be subtle, baby doll. Ian MacKenzie is showing up tonight with his video cameras, and you know what I always say: too much -- "
"Is never enough." Lily had heard the motto innumerable times while growing up. Zelda Stewart was part Auntie Mame, part Dolly Parton. She was also the closest thing to a mother Lily, who adored her aunt, had ever known. "I never have understood how you manage to walk in those ice-pick heels."
Lily had been seven years old when she'd broken her ankle falling off her aunt's skyscraper-high gold platform sandals while playing dress-up with her two sisters. That was the day she'd realized she'd never be the glam type.
"Practice, my darling niece, practice." Zelda performed another spin Lily suspected not many supermodels would have been able to pull off on the end of a runway. "So when is this Scotsman who's going to save our collective butts due to arrive?"
"I don't know. He's already late."
Since confirming that his plane had landed at the Asheville airport more than three hours ago, Lily had begun to worry he'd been delayed by the storm. Even worse was the possibility he'd taken a wrong turn and gotten lost. She'd grown up on tales of people who'd disappeared into these mountains, never to be seen again. Wouldn't that start the annual Highland Games off on a lovely note? She could just see the tabloid headlines now: "Oscar-winning documentary director disappears deep in Deliverance country."
"And I don't think he's coming here to save anyone's butt."
Lily couldn't figure out why the filmmaker was gracing Highland Falls with his famous presence and unlike everyone else in her family, she wasn't certain Ian MacKenzie's out-of-the-blue announcement that he was considering documenting the town's Highland Games was a good thing. His work, while technically brilliant, showed a dark and pessimistic view of the world that always left her feeling depressed.
"It's just as the cards predicted," Zelda claimed. "We desperately needed an economic savior, so the gods sent us MacKenzie."
Lily, who didn't share her aunt's faith in the well-worn deck of tarot cards, didn't respond as she booted the computer up again.
"I did a scrying before I came down here." Lily also wasn't certain what her aunt saw when she gazed into her collection of crystal balls gathered from all over the world, but Zelda's predictions had proven correct more often than not. "The past months, the crystals have been filled with thick, dark clouds, but this afternoon they were rising."
"A positive sign." They could certainly use one.
"Absolutely. And there was a bright spot right in the middle, like the sun breaking through, which means an improvement in finances. Ergo, having Ian MacKenzie show us off to the world is bound to bring in more tourist dollars."
"I suppose so." It was certainly what everyone, from her father and Zelda down to Jamie Douglass at the Tartan Market seemed to be counting on. Too many hopes and dreams were being laid on the shoulders of one stranger.
"Did you see the piece Biography did on him last week?" Zelda asked.
"I caught a bit of it."
Liar. She'd been riveted to the screen for the entire hour. Of course, her only interest had been in discovering whatever scraps of information she could about the notoriously reclusive director. She'd barely noticed, and then only in passing, how sexy his butt had looked in those faded jeans with the ripped-out knees, which she doubted had been intended as a fashion statement.
Zelda sighed. "Such a tragic past the poor man's suffered. No wonder he's chosen to document the dark side of life. My first thought, when I saw that clip of him walking in the fog on the moors, was that he'd be a natural to play Heathcliff in a remake of Wuthering Heights. Not only is he gorgeous, in a dangerous, 'gone to the dark side of hell and lived to tell about it' way, that Highland hunk is going to put us on the map."
The thick, towering front door burst open. One look at the very large, wet male silhouetted by a bright flash of lightning revealed that Zelda had at least nailed the dangerous part.
His lean, rangy body, the shock of black hair glistening with raindrops, the strong, firm jaw and broad shoulders and long legs, made Lily think of an ancient warrior wielding a claymore in the midst of battle.
Dressed from head to toe in black, with the storm raging behind him and the wind howling like a banshee, the man definitely lived up to his Dark Prince of Documentaries description.
All those photographs and video clips on Biography hadn't done him justice. Ian MacKenzie's lived-in face was all planes and hollows, decidedly masculine, but starkly beautiful in a way that Lily, who'd spent twenty-nine years plagued by the description of being the perky Stewart sister, found eminently unfair.
Her assessing gaze locked with eyes that were swirling shades of gray, as stormy as a winter sea. As she was unwillingly pulled into those fathomless depths, Lily dearly hoped that the violence depicted in his films wasn't echoed in this scowling Scotsman who didn't remotely look like anyone's savior.
Copyright © 2003 by The Ross Family Trust
