Free Mystical Warrior by Janet Chapman Page A

I’ll dose your tea with it for you to sip while ye soak.”
    “Not that I’ll taste it,” he said, giving a grunt when Kenzie hauled him out of the tidal pool and dropped him onto the blanket. “I’ll be lucky if I ever get the smell of skunkpiss out of my nose hairs, let alone taste anything again.” He pulled the blanket around himself and dropped his throbbing head into his hands with a groan.
    Kenzie squatted down in front of him. “I’m asking as a friend, Trace, that ye please let Fiona stay,” he said quietly.
    Trace lifted his head to look the highlander in the eyes. “I came within one blow of killing a man the last time I got between a woman and her demons, and now she’s dead, the guy who killed her is serving five years for manslaughter, and I got kicked out of the military.” He dropped his head back into his hands. “As much as I’d like to help you, I’ve got my own demons to fight.”
    “What stopped you from killing him?”
    He looked up again. “Only the knowledge that I was as much to blame for her death as he was.”
    “It’s been my experience that intelligent men learn from their mistakes, my friend, and I have every reason to believe you won’t make that particular mistake again.”
    “Oh, I won’t. I have no intention of ever getting involved with another woman.”
    Kenzie chuckled at that and lifted Trace with him as he stood up. “No offense, Huntsman,” he said, hefting him over his shoulder. “But with your stones—even shriveled as they are from the cold—I can’t quite see you becoming a monk.”
    “Lovely, Gregor,” Trace muttered, gritting his teeth at being carried like a stinking sack of grain. “How friggin’ nice of you to notice.”

Chapter Seven

     
    “G o ahead, Peeps,” Trace drawled, shifting the ice pack on his knee. “You keep right on talking about me as if I’m not here, and I’ll continue telling your husband all about your more colorful teenage antics.”
    Maddy turned away from Fiona and Gabriella to glare at him, her nose wrinkled against the eau de skunk still oozing from every pore on his body. “Don’t you believe one of his stories, William. I was a saint compared to Midnight Bay’s infamous hell-raising Huntsman.” She moved her gaze around the room. “Jeesh, Trace, would it kill you to pick up a dust rag once in a while? Everything in this place looks like it was here when you bought the house, including the dirt.”
    “That’s because it was.”
    Maddy looked around again in surprise. “All this stuff is old man Peterson’s junk?” Her eyes turned sad. “Do you own anything?” she whispered.
    “I own my boat, my truck, and a falling-down house that sits on twelve acres of oceanfront property. But if you don’t slap a bandage on my knee so I can go fishing tomorrow, I won’t be able to pay the taxes on any of them.”
    “Sorry, big man, you’re laid up for at least a week. If you push that knee, you might end up needing surgery, and that’ll put you out of commission for over a month.”
    Trace closed his eyes on a stifled groan.
    He’d lost the battle with Kenzie. Not only was Fiona still there but she was in his living room, receiving instructions from his cousin—who was a geriatric nurse—on how to take care of him for the next few days. It was the least Fiona could do, Kenzie had said right after he’d called Maddy, for not immediately putting the skunks in a dark corner of the barn as he’d instructed.
    God only knew where the little pissants were now; probably hiding under the porch recharging their stink guns for another shot at him.
    He still couldn’t feel his face, his constantly weeping eyes were so bloodshot that everything appeared red, and half a bottle of Scotch hadn’t done a damn thing to kill the foul taste in his mouth except make him just drunk enough not to care that he smelled like a skunk.
    “If ye want, I can go out fishing with Rick tomorrow,” William offered.
    “And I’ll come