Chapter 42
Thomas, turn around and go home.
"I know, I know!" Thomas exclaimed, stomping on the accelerator.
"You know what?" Ian said, gripping the armrests and cursing fluently.
"I'm hurrying!"
"I'm not asking ye to!" Ian exclaimed. "Thomas, ye'll kill us both!"
Thomas pulled his foot back off the gas and took a deep breath. "Sorry. I just keep hearing voices telling me to hurry." He slid a look at Ian. "And what is it with you MacLeods that you lapse into dialect when you're stressed?"
"Habit. Be grateful I haven't started swearing at you in Gaelic yet."
"You already have. Several times."
Ian cursed as Thomas screeched around a corner. "Can you blame me?" he gasped.
Thomas managed a smile, but it was a weak one. He concentrated on the road in front of him. It was just barely dawn, and he'd been driving like a maniac for a good two hours already.
Ian hadn't appreciated being woken in the middle of the night, but he hadn't complained overmuch. Thomas hadn't told him that he'd woken to the sound of a voice in his head repeating the same words over and over again. Thomas, go home. He'd just said they had to go back. Ian had studied him briefly in silence, then risen and helped Thomas break camp in record time.
"I think I would have enjoyed that climb," Ian said. "Maybe another time."
"We have to get back to your house."
"Trouble?"
"I can't imagine what else it would be."
"I have a mobile phone. Jane would have called me if aught had gone amiss."
"I don't think it's Jane." Thomas paused, then shook his head. "No, I know it's not Jane. I just know I have to get back."
"Hmmm," Ian said thoughtfully, then fell silent.
Thomas was content with lack of talk, though it gave him more opportunity for thought than he perhaps would have liked. So he focused all his energies on keeping his car on the road and not in a ditch or plowing into a field full of sheep.
Voices again. It just figured.
It took two more hours, two hours longer than he wanted, but finally they were pulling into Ian's driveway. Thomas leaped from the car, stumbling over Ian to get around to the back door. Ian opened the kitchen door, and Thomas pushed past him to come to an abrupt halt in the kitchen.
There was his sister, Victoria, sitting calmly at the table, sipping some sort of beverage from a cup.
"Vic," Thomas said weakly.
She only looked at him appraisingly.
"Who is this?" Ian asked in Gaelic.
"My sister."
"She's fetching enough."
"Maybe, but she's miserable to live with." He managed a smile at Ian. "I think I've found her perfect match. You remember Connor MacDougal?"
"The one with the powerfully foul temper?"
"That's him. I think I'll give her the castle and watch her make the rest of his unlife hell."
"Will you two please speak in English?" Victoria asked crisply. "Thomas, introduce us."
Thomas looked at his sister. "Ian MacLeod," he said, pointing to his host. "Our cousin. And he's married, Vikki."
She threw a dish towel at him with enough force to sting as it whipped him across the face.
"I was only being polite," she said frostily.
"I'm just sure you were," Thomas said. "What are you doing here?"
"Tiffany was devastated by your fly-by-night departure from the States. I brought her here so you could make it up to her. Believe me when I tell you it wasn't easy to track you down."
"Tiffany?" Thomas asked weakly.
"Your former fiancée, remember?"
Thomas let that pass. "Who told you where I was?"
"Megan."
"She wouldn't have given in willingly. What'd you use? Thumbscrews?"
"Chinese water torture," Victoria said.
And Thomas didn't for a moment doubt her. He wondered where his parents had been, or Gideon for that matter, but Victoria wasn't above subterfuge when it came to going after what she wanted. Torturing their baby sister was just par for the course.
But that didn't solve the greater dilemma, which was the fact that apparently his sister had brought to his very doorstep Tiffany Amber Davidson, who was currently peg-legging it into the kitchen on impossibly high heels.
"Thomas!" she exclaimed. The tears began to flow. "Oh, Thomas, I knew you'd come back for me!"
"Who's this?" Ian asked, reverting to the native tongue. "Frightening wench, that."
"My former fiancée," Thomas said with a sigh.
"You almost wed with this one?" Ian asked incredulously.
"Amazing, isn't it?"
"English!" Victoria bellowed in frustration.
"I've missed you, Thomas," Tiffany said, producing a few more tears for the occasion.
Thomas looked at his sister. "Did she join your theater company, Vic?"
"I mean it, Thomas," Tiffany said, wringing her hands. "I can't live without you! It's been killing me not knowing where you were."
"Lost me at the airport?" Thomas asked politely.
Tiffany gasped, her hand flying to her throat. "What are you talking about?" she asked.
"Yes, what are you talking about?" Victoria asked.
Thomas ignored his sister. "How's your dad's little remodel coming, Tiffany?"
"Terribly," Tiffany said, looking pitifully grateful for a change of topic. "There are all these horrible picketers harassing him all day."
"Awful," Thomas agreed. "I guess he really needs those offices, doesn't he? Now that he has a new company to find room for."
Tiffany blanched. "Now, Thomas, you know I didn't have anything to do with that."
"I never said you did, did I? How nice of you to suggest the possibility."
Victoria cleared her throat with an imperiousness that would have done credit to her namesake. "Will you two cease with this useless bickering? Tiffany, go pack your bags. Thomas doesn't want you, and I don't have time for any more of this stupidity. I've got a production to start rehearsing. I need to get back to the States."
Ian turned to Thomas. "She's a player?"
"Runs her own theater troupe," Thomas said. "Off-off-off-off-off Broadway. It's so far off, there's no traffic stopping you from getting there. But," he added, staving off what he was sure would have been a colossal barb thrown from his sister, "it's actually really good theater." He smiled at his sister. "How'd you like a change of scenery? I've got a great backdrop for you."
Her ears
