Page 1 of Her Scot of the Morrow
CHAPTER ONE
North Salem, New Hampshire
PresentDay
–Willow–
IKNEW IT would only bring me temporary relief from my frustration, but the moment my sister, Hazel, passed out on the couch of the old colonial we just purchased, I snuck out and went flying.
Anything to get off the ground and get him out of my head.
And byhim, I mean Mr. Morrow, as I called him these days rather than by his actual name. He didn't deserve to be formally addressed, given he was a betraying, heartbreaking Scotsman living six hundred years in my past.
A place where he should stay.
Hazel thought I was enjoying a few cocktails with her while we caught up over the past few hours, but I hadn’t been. Not a cocktail with alcohol in it, anyway. Instead, I let her think I was imbibing because I had long become a master at deception if it meant getting away from the voice in my head.
And I mean that literally because I still hear the bastard.
Mr. Morrow, or my Scot of the Morrow as I used to lovingly call him, had taken it upon himself to haunt me for longer than I could remember. Well, that's not entirely true.Hauntwould bethe correct word before we met.Pesterwould be the better word, years later, when I told him to go to hell in person, and he keptpesteringme telepathically across time regardless.
But I digress.
There was a time I wouldn't use either of those words to describe him. Years that are vividly etched in my memory. How could they not be considering he had been the love of my life?
If I were to reflect on it, and I have been quite a bit over the past few days, I suppose it all began during my childhood when my imagination was more fanciful than logical, and he was a dashing ghost I could hear but couldn’t see. Well, as dashing as a boy’s voice in my head could be at the time, until eventually I made a chance discovery and learned my dashing hero was very much alive, and living in medieval Scotland.
“And now what am I, all things considered, if not still a dashing hero?”he wondered, shocking me when he spoke to me for the first time while I was flying through the air, where I could usually avoid him and enjoy the peace I found soaring over the moonlit trees in my LSA or Light Sport Aircraft 2-seater plane.
Allthingsconsidered?What was he talking about? Whatever it was, I had no intention of answering him or engaging in conversation. Not now. Not ever. Sure, there might be a looming medieval pact determined to say otherwise, but I had worked hard to get over him.
I had excelled in school so much that I graduated early, got my pilot's license, and haven't stopped flying since. While I loved being in the air, deep down I knew I was forever trying to escape him and our past.
Better still, the terrible pain he had caused me.
I pretended not to hear his deep Scottish burr in my mind, because I usually couldn’t when I flew, and he knew that, so I swooped down lower over the vibrant autumn trees as a fresh surge of anger that made no sense blew through me. It didn’tmake sense until my new home came into view, minus the ancient oak tree that had been out front.
Instead, my willow tree had taken its place.
And this time, I had a bad feeling it had everything to do with him.
Like my sisters and the trees they had been named for, I’d been seeing my willow on and off for years. As a rule, it tended to appear at points in my life when I needed to be particularly strong. When my mother died and my father left, for starters. So why now?
“I think you know verra well why, lass,”Mr. Morrow said.
Again, I ignored him because I knew he implied seeing my willow tree meant I was next in line to travel back in time. Next in line to be tested to see if I was part of some ridiculous, primitive pact that meant breeding with a half-dragon stranger six centuries in my past.
Honestly, I thought it was all crap. But then, I’d stop believing my inner dragon would ever surface when I was a kid. So the idea I could be destined to breed with one to fulfill some crazy pact seemed as ridiculous and fanciful as giving an asshole medieval Scot a fairytale name they didn’t deserve.
“Land the plane, Willow,”that very Scot counseled, his internal voice as tight now as my emotions.“And come face me once and for all, aye?”His medieval brogue thickened, and his voice grew grim, yet taunting in a way I knew all too well.“And I suggest ye travel via the Morrow or ye willnae like where ye end up.”
“On that we agree,”Adlin MacLomain said, right there in our internal conversation as if he knew all about us talking across the centuries. Then again, he was a wizard who seemed to have a hand in all of this, so I wasn’t that surprised.
“You should return to the house, lass,”Adlin went on,“so we can decide where ‘tis best for you to go next. Thus far, I havecovered for you, claiming that you never left when your sisters were worried over your whereabouts.”
Say what? He made no sense. “What are you talking about?”
Even if my sister Ellie had arrived while I was flying, how could he explain why my car was not in the driveway?
