Free Highlander 04 - Some Like It Kilted (2010) by Allie Mackay

it’s just that—”
     
“No it’s just that s, either.” Mindy sighed inwardly. She knew better than to let her sister get on a tangent. “I love flying, anyway. It isn’t as if—”
     
“These quotes can’t be right.” Margo frowned at the notepad. “You could send the castle to the moon and back for this kind of money.”
     
Mindy shook her head. “I checked everywhere imaginable. Those figures are the most competitive and they came from the experts. One of the Global captains I know has a brother who works on the Acquisitions Committee at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. No one knows more about such things.
     
“They buy up everything from Tuscan villas to entire French palaces and bring it all back to New York, stone by stone. Apparently”—she paused to glance over her shoulder, half certain she’d felt someone standing behind her, listening—“they even keep secret warehouses throughout the city to hold such treasures until they decide what to do with them.”
     
Mindy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, remembering her phone conversations with the museum’s luminaries. “The Metropolitan’s board of trustees kindly recommended several removal firms best suited for”—she looked at her sister and forced a smile—“such a monumental task as I’m about to undertake.”
     
Margo brightened. “Maybe the Metropolitan will want the Folly? Let them deal with—”
     
“The castle isn’t for sale.” Mindy drained her coffee. “It will be dismantled, each stone and every stick of furniture and what have you packed in straw, acid-free paper, and Bubble Wrap, then shipped home in at least ten thousand crates.”
     
“I still say you’re making a mistake.” Margo glanced at the very spot where Mindy was sure someone invisible was standing. “Even Madame Zelda said it was your destiny to live in this castle. She didn’t say anything about you getting rid of it. She—”
     
“That was in the early days when I’d just met Hunter.” Mindy couldn’t believe Margo would bring Ye Olde Pagan Times’ resident fortune-teller into it. “Besides, we both know she only tells people what they want to hear. And”—she couldn’t resist raising a finger—“her name isn’t Madame Zelda of Bulgaria. She’s Marta Lopez and she’s Puerto Rican.”
     
“She’s accurate all the same.” Margo helped herself to another salami slice and then slung her oversized leather handbag over her shoulder. “You did move in here not long after she read your tarot. And”—she went to the door arch, pausing just outside the shadows—“she was right about Hunter. She said your one true love would be a big, burly Scotsman who favored kilts and was a notorious ladies’ man.”
     
Mindy tried not to snort.
     
She started to remind Margo that the fortune-teller also said the Highlander would carry a sword, but she caught herself in time and just glared.
     
Glaring was good.
     
She did so until her sister waved an airy good-bye and disappeared into the narrow corridor’s gloom. But the instant the tap-tapping of Margo’s heels on the stone flags faded and she heard the castle door fall shut with a muffled thunk , the glare slipped from her face.
     
Damn her sister for reminding her of Marta Lopez/ Madame Zelda’s predictions.
     
And double damn herself for remembering the bit about the sword.
     
Hunter wouldn’t have touched one with a ten-foot pole.
     
He’d claimed they gave him the willies and he’d even considered selling the Folly’s entire armory collection of medieval weaponry. Something he would surely have done if his parents’ testament hadn’t forbidden the sale of artifacts they considered part of their family heritage.
     
Mindy shivered, the fortune-teller’s words echoing in her mind.
     
They were coming back clearer by the moment, reminding her of things she’d rather forget. Like how Madame Zelda’s eyes had widened when she’d professed to see the