Page 69 of A Highland Healer Captured
They turned toward the storehouse, the elm at their backs, the smell of harvest coming stronger on the wind. Somewhere a piper lifted a tune, thin and sweet. Zander listened to it and tried to tell himself he wasn’t already measuring the distance between his hand and hers, between sense and the moment when he’d finally stop pretending.
The path back to the elm wasn’t long, but Skylar made it feel like a road that bent too many times. She walked beside him with her hands clasped before her, the barley-gold shawl folded neat in her arms.
A healer’s posture, precise and composed. But every so often she turned her head to glance at the ground or the far hedge, and hefelt her measuring things again. And he found himself trying not to watch the curve of her cheek in the late sun.
The elm tree rose up from the green like it had grown out of the clan’s bones. The lower limbs spread broad and low, a throne for boys who climbed before their mothers could snatch them down. Zander’s carpenter had left braces and nails at the trunk, and Zander bent to them, glad for the excuse to put his hands to honest wood.
“Ye’ll hurt yer back lifting like that,” Skylar said behind him.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Ye’ll tell me how to heft boards now?”
“I’ll tell ye how to keep yerself from limping like an old crofter when Grayson’s wanting on yer shoulders, and out of me surgery for damned sure,” she shot back, eyes sparking.
Zander huffed and straightened. “Aye, fair,” he said, then hefted the brace with deliberate care, letting his muscles show for the pleasure of hearing her sigh under her breath. He caught it, too, though she turned away quick, feigning interest in the grass at her boots. He wanted to grin but didn’t.
Her surgery…
He set the brace against the trunk, lining it with the first cross-board. His palms pressed flat, wood biting against callus. He hadworked stone and timber enough to know when a thing would hold. “Strong,” he muttered.
“Needs a second brace higher up,” Skylar said. She stepped close, pointing to the trunk above his head. “Else the lad’ll end up dangling from a splinter and ye’ll curse yerself for half measures.”
He tipped his head back to look at where she pointed. Her arm lifted, sleeve slipping, a pale wrist bared. He caught himself watching the shape of it, slender but steady, as though she’d never drop what she’d chosen to hold. He bit the inside of his cheek and forced his gaze back to the wood. “Aye,” he said, throat tight. “We’ll add another.”
She dropped her hand, and the shawl shifted. The blue stripe along the weave brushed the swell of her breast, and the sight struck him harder than a sword butt. He swallowed once, then twice, and tried to cover it with a cough.
Skylar tilted her head, her braid loosening at the nape. “Ye’ve the look of a man thinking hard.”
“Of nails,” he said shortly. “Of how many I’ll need to drive.”
“Of course,” she said, but her lips curved as if she knew better.
Zander bent for the hammer. The swing steadied him, the clean ring of iron into wood reminding him who he was. A man who put promises into timber so a boy could climb closer to the sky.Still, when he turned to take another board, she was watching him with an expression he didn’t want to name.
Curiosity. Scrutiny. Or perhaps something else he was blind to. Either way, the way her eyes landed on him made the back of his neck heat.
“Ye—” she cleared her suddenly trapped throat. “Ye’requitehandy with tools,” she said, softer now. “I thought lairds left that to men who ken better.”
“I ken enough,” he answered, the hammer heavy in his palm. “And I daenae mind work. A laird who willnae sweat willnae keep a clan.” He set the next nail, swung once, twice, the wood biting deeper. “Grayson should have his perch. He’ll see farther than he can walk.”
The words slipped out, unguarded, and he knew they had given her something. He didn’t look up, but he felt her eyes. Warm, but dangerous.
“That’s love,” she said.
The hammer stilled in his hand. He turned, met her gaze, and saw that she hadn’t meant to speak it. The word hung between them anyway, raw and unclaimed.
His pulse jumped.
He wanted her then—not just her hands or her mouth, but the way her eyes softened when she spoke of boys and birds and ladders up trees. He wanted her, and the want felt like treachery. His son’s laughter had barely returned, and here he was imagining how Skylar’s hair would feel tangled in his fingers.
He forced a laugh, rough and low. “That’s… carpentry,” he said, and drove the nail too hard, splintering the board.
Skylar startled. Then, she stepped closer, her fingers brushing the split wood. “Ye’re hitting harder than ye should,” she said. Her voice was gentler than her words. “Ye’ll ruin the brace.”
Zander stared at her hand on the wood, inches from his. Her nails clean, her knuckles ink-stained from writing. Her palm steady. He wanted to cover it with his own, pin it there, hold her until she admitted she wanted it too.
Instead, he jerked back, tossing the hammer aside. “We’ll fetch another,” he muttered.
“Zander—” she began, but stopped when he turned too sharp toward her. Her lips parted, eyes wide, and for a moment neither moved.
