Chapter 1
The ghostly fog made Julia feel as though she had slipped into the primordial past. She couldn’t believe she’d made it to the Highlands of Scotland where a castle beckoned, filled with secrets, intrigue, and hunky Scots—with any luck. Hopefully, none of them would learn why she was really here and put a stop to it.
Nothing would dampen her enthusiasm as she and her friend Maria Baquero headed for Baird Cottage, within hiking distance of Argent Castle—and the end of her writer’s block.
At least, that was the plan.
After flight delays and missed luggage, they’d had trouble getting their rental car at Inverness Airport—following a mix-up when a Scotsman declared their car was his. Another man had creeped Julia out when she realized he was watching them, and she’d felt apprehensive at the way his thin lips hadn’t hinted at a bit of friendliness. But then she dismissed him as she and Maria finally set off in late afternoon with Maria driving the rented Fiat into the deepening fog.
The laird of Argent Castle, Ian MacNeill, had been a royal pain to deal with concerning filming the movie at his castle. Luckily, as assistant director, only Maria had to do business with him. Pretending to be Maria’s assistant, Julia was to watch from the sidelines and take notes. But not for the film production. For her breakout novel. Julia Wildthorn was one of the United States’ most successful werewolf romance novelists and the only one, she was sure, who had ever suffered a writer’s block like this one.
Dense fog obscured the curving road as it ran through rocky land on either side. Pine trees in the distance faded into the thickening soup, which offered glimpses of quaint dry-stone dykes that must have stood for centuries, snaking across the land and dividing someone’s property from another’s.
Despite Julia’s enhanced wolf vision, she couldn’t see any better than a human in the soup.
Eyes widening, she caught sight of something running in the woods. Something gray. Something that looked a lot like a wolf and then melted into the fog like a phantom.
Heartbeat ratchetting up several notches, she tried to catch another glimpse, her hand tightening on the door’s armrest as she peered out the window, her nose almost touching the glass. “Did you see anything?” she asked Maria, her voice tight.
Maria gave her a disgruntled snort. “In this fog? I can barely see the road. What did you think you saw?”
“A… wolf.” Julia strained to get another glimpse of what she’d seen. “But it couldn’t have been. Wolves here were killed off centuries ago.”
Off to Julia’s left, the mist parted, revealing older aspen, the bark covered with dark lichen stretching upward, while tall, straight Scots pines and stands of willowy birch clustered close together in the distance. But no more signs of a wolf. Julia blinked her eyes. Maybe because she was so tired from the trip, her eyes were playing tricks on her.
Julia straightened and faced Maria. “Maybe it was a lupus garou, if I wasn’t imagining it.” She smiled at the thought. “A hunky Highland werewolf in a kilt.”
She’d never considered she might run across a lupus garou in Scotland. Not as elusive as their kind were, hiding their secret from the rest of the world. Unless she bumped into one and could smell his or her scent, she wouldn’t know a lupus garou from a strictly human type.
“Hmm, a Highland werewolf,” Maria said thoughtfully, sliding her hands over the steering wheel, “although getting hold of a Spanish conquistador would be just as intriguing.”
An Iberian werewolf whose ancestors had been turned by a wolfish conquistador, Maria was a beauty with dark brown hair and thick, long eyelashes.
Being a redhead with fair skin, Julia turned heads on her own, but the two of them together often stole the show.
Maria was still stewing about the laird who was in charge of Argent Castle. “Laird Ian MacNeill is being a real hard ass about the filming particulars—restricting our use of the castle and grounds, the times, the locations, and who knows what else when we arrive.”
“Maybe he won’t be so bad once the filming begins.” Although Julia didn’t believe that—and the sour look on Maria’s face said she didn’t, either. Julia pulled the laird’s photo from her purse. Maria’s boss had paid a private investigator good money to obtain the picture. “Exactly how did the guy get a picture of the laird like this if it’s so difficult to catch a glimpse of him?”
“The P.I. followed him to a Celtic festival. The laird was surrounded by his men and a couple of women, so the detective snapped one shot right before the laird took part in a sword-fighting demonstration.”
“Who won?”
“The laird and his men. According to the P.I., the MacNeills had a real workout against the Sutherlands. Bad blood has existed between them for centuries. The fighting looked so real, he thought organizers of the show might step in and stop the demonstration.”
In one word, Julia summed up Laird Ian MacNeill’s appearance: dangerous.
It wasn’t his handsome features—his short, very dark coffee-colored hair, the rich color of his eyes, the rigid planes of his face, and his aristocratic nose—that made him appear that way. Not his broad shoulders or firm stance or unsmiling mouth, either. It was his unerring gaze that seemed so piercingly astute, like he could see into a person’s very soul.
That worried her.