Page 120 of Highlanders for the Holidays
“I can’t hold any longer,” she whispered.
As she started to fall, he dove to the side and caught her around the waist with one arm. But he’d thrown himself off balance and banged against the side of the cliff. He quickly found his footing again, but he’d started a small slide. Fearing it would grow, he raced up the rope, protecting Lily from the flying rocks and debris as best he could.
When he made it to the top, he untied the rope and ran with Lily in his arms until they were a safe distance from the slide. He heard a crack and a thunderous crash and turned in time to see an entire stretch of the cliff break off and fall into the sea.
He fell to his knees and held Lily tightly in his arms.
Praise God, he had found her in time.
“I knew you’d come,” she said, and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“I always will,” he said.
“I know that now,” she said.
When he got her back to the cottage, he bundled her in blankets, gave her a cup of hot whisky, and sat her on his lap before the hearth. His heart might never recover from this night, but Lily seemed to revive quickly.
Once she did, she took him to bed and tested the strength of his heart again. And in the morning, she insisted they go back to where he had rescued her the night before.
The cliff looked like a cleaver had shorn it, and there was a huge a pile of rocks on the shore below it.
Lily turned to him and held out her hand. In her palm lay the key to her shop, the one she had been so frantic to find after they had made love the first time.
She closed her hand around the key and then flung it off the cliff.
“I take it that means you’re staying?” he asked, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“My home is where you are,” she said. “Always and forever.”
Then she threw her arms around him and gave him a kiss to remember.
