Free Return of the Highlander (Immortal Warriors) by Sara Mackenzie

men? Is that what you’re doing, lass?”
    “My last book sold…well, at least five thousand copies.”
    Maclean heard the ironic smile in her voice but did not understand it. “Five thousand? That’s an awful lot of books.”
    “Then why is this story so hard to tell? Am I being true to history? Or am I writing it the way I want it to be? My fantasy Scottish warrior.” She groaned and buried her face in her hands.
    He peered down at her, frowning in his attempt to see into her mind. But she was off again, lurching forward to begin her furious tapping, the words lighting up the screen. If he had been a living man they would have butted heads, but as it was she passed right through him, leaving him with an odd dizzy feeling and the lingering scent of her perfume.
    “’Tis a beautiful morning,” he said, glancing longingly at the window. “We could go for a walk?”
    She sighed. “Work, Bella, work.”
    Work? Did she call her tapping on the machine work? He smiled indulgently. Women’s work wascleaning and cooking and raising babies. And pleasing a man. Maclean thought Bella could please him very well. She was perfect, her skin creamy and smooth, her curves lush and womanly. Any guilt he might have felt watching her wash and dress was soon overcome by the pleasure it gave him. But there was something odd about the speed with which she covered herself. Almost as if she knew he was there, or…was it possible she was ashamed of her beauty?
    He pondered on it now, turning the question over in his head. Was physical attractiveness something to be kept hidden in this new world?
    He could not accept it.
    Unless…Did Bella not know she was beautiful? Had someone convinced her she was ugly—not fit to be seen? This seemed a far more likely explanation for Bella’s strange behavior. Words could be cruel. They could continue to cause pain and suffering long after the person who had spoken them was gone.
    Maclean’s own father had a vicious temper, and would strike out at those around him with words that slashed and cut and maimed as efficiently as a sword. The memory came out of the void in his mind.
    His mother’s face, tear-streaked and unhappy, the bruise growing on her cheek, and Maclean, his voice quavering, “She dinna mean it, Father, please, forgive her,” and his father, raging, “I’ll no’put up with ye taking sides against me, laddie! She has betrayed me, betrayed us both. There can be no forgiveness. Tell him, woman! Tell him how you meant to abandon your child!”
    And his mother, bleak, wooden. “I did plan to leave Loch Fasail, Morven. I didna want to abandon you andI would not have done so, only…your father would never let me take you with me. He would kill me first. Now it does not matter. My lover is dead.”
    Her lips wobbled. Tears spilled from her eyes.
    But he did not see her anguish, he was not old enough to understand her conflict. Only one thing had relevance for him.
    “You meant to leave me?”
    Maclean could still remember the incredible sense of betrayal as his mother’s silence confirmed the worst he could imagine.
    From that moment on, Maclean was his father’s son, turning his back on his mother as she had turned hers on him. And now that he was a grown man, he did not feel as if he knew her at all. Women were a mystery to him.
    Maclean frowned.
    Women are no’ important. A man must look to his lands, his clan and his enemies. Women are nothing but a distraction.
    There was his father’s voice, ringing in his head. Maclean knew it was a fundamental truth that distractions could kill a man.
    The ironical thing was that now he had nothing to do but be distracted by a woman.
    He glanced down at Bella, and the familiar warmth spread through his ghostly body. She had dressed in a white overshirt today, so tight he was amazed that she had got it on. He’d noticed before that some of her clothes seemed to stretch out as she tugged them over her head or hips, and then reshape