The Ranger Read online

  “It’s no use, Anna. Trust me when I say it won’t work. I could never give you what you want. I can never make you happy.”

  Frustration and anger rose inside her. “How dare you presume to know my mind better than I do! I know exactly what I want. After what happened, how can you not know that you are the only man who can make me happy? Don’t you realize that I love you?”

  Her declaration was as unexpected to her as apparently it was to him. She snapped her mouth shut, but it was too late. Her words seemed to echo in the sudden blast of silence.

  He went utterly still, his expression not unlike that of someone who’d taken an arrow to the chest. Hardly the reaction she’d hoped for. She hadn’t expected a return declaration. Really, she hadn’t. Not yet at least. But neither had she expected the silence. Silence that slowly—cruelly—broke her heart.

  I love you. The words reverberated in his ears. Pounding. Ringing. Tempting, damn it, tempting.

  Arthur stood stone still, not daring to allow himself to believe her. He couldn’t believe her. Because if he did, it might make him happy. Happier than he’d ever been in his life.

  She didn’t mean it. She was confused. Anna MacDougall gave her heart to everyone. It was part of what made her so damned irresistible.

  He shook his head, as if trying to convince himself. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You can’t love me. You don’t even know me.”

  “How can you say that? Of course I know you.”

  “There are things about me, if you knew …” He couldn’t say any more. He’d said too much already. She was too damned perceptive.

  Her mouth pursed, and he recognized the stubborn glint in her eye. “I thought we’d been over that. Your abilities are a gift—one that has proved extraordinarily useful more than once.”

  He hadn’t been talking about his skills, but about the fact that he was with Bruce and a spy. About the fact that there was no one he hated more in the world than her father, and that he’d been waiting fourteen years to destroy him. But he could hardly tell her the truth.

  “I know all about you that matters,” she continued. “I know you like to watch and listen rather than speak. I know that you don’t like drawing attention to yourself and try to blend into the background. I know you have valuable skills that you try to hide because you think they make you different. I know you’ve convinced yourself that you are different and that therefore you don’t need anyone, and so you try to push people away before they get too close because of it. I know that you’ve spent most of your life on the battlefield, but that you can wield a quill as effectively as you can a blade.”

  She stopped long enough to take a breath. He should have cut her off, but he was too unsettled to speak.

  “I know that you are smart, and as strong of character as you are of body. I know that when I’m with you I feel safe. I know that you pretend not to care about anything but would protect me to your dying breath. I know that a man who can hold a child in his arms with gentleness, and show patience to a puppy who’s given him nothing but trouble, has a kind heart.” Her voice lowered to almost a whisper, the anger drained out of her. “I know that since the first time you kissed me there would never be another man for me. I know that when I look up into your face, it’s the one I want to see for the rest of my life.” Her eyes, bright with unshed tears, met his. “I know you are loyal and honorable and care for me but something is holding you back.”

  Jesus. He felt as if he’d been poleaxed. No one had ever said anything like that to him before.

  It humbled him.

  It moved him.

  It scared the hell out of him.

  She’d seen too much. She wasn’t just a threat to his mission but to him in ways he’d never imagined.

  He hardened his jaw, and his heart. “You see what you want to see, Anna—not reality.” The war. Her father. Him. She was blind to the faults of those she professed to love. “But little girls who believe in faerie tales only grow up disappointed.”

  “Don’t do this,” she whispered. “Don’t try to push me away.”

  It’s what he did. What he always did. Even if for the first time he didn’t want to, it was what he needed to do. For her own good.

  He grabbed her arm, intending to shake some damned sense into her, but it was a mistake. Touching her only made the emotions firing inside him hotter. Louder. More twisted and out of control.

  “Then don’t act like a naive postulate. We’re in the middle of a damned war. Bruce is about to bring the full force of his army down on top of you, but you want to plan for the future. There is no future, Anna. Only today. Hell, you might not have a home next month.”

  She flinched as if he’d struck her. “Do you think I don’t know that?” A sob strangled in her throat. Her beautiful blue eyes blurred with tears, stoking the fires burning in his chest. “Why do you think I went to Ross? I know what’s at stake. But I couldn’t do it. Because of you.”

  “Your father should never have asked it of you,” he snapped.

  Her stricken expression made him wish to call his words back. She had a girl’s vision of her father—the perfect knight who could do no wrong. One more illusion he would help destroy.

  “He didn’t ask it of me. It was my idea. You talk of war and uncertainty, but I can tell you one thing that’s certain. If you never take a risk, if you always push people away, you’ll be guaranteed to be alone. Is that what you want?”

  His jaw was clenched so tight his teeth hurt. “Yes.” Damn her.

  “Good, because that’s exactly what you’ll be.” The tears fell on her cheeks. “I don’t know why you’re doing this, but you’re a coward, Arthur Campbell.”

  Anger rushed through him in a fiery blast. He wasn’t a coward. He was trying to do the right thing. But she wouldn’t let him. She kept pushing and pulling him, making him crazy with feelings that didn’t belong to him. He couldn’t think straight. All he wanted to do was drag her into his arms and kiss her until the hammering in his head—in his chest—stopped.

  He might have done just that, but he didn’t have the chance.

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  Arthur jerked around, his head still spinning, as Alan MacDougall strode into the clearing.

  Arthur swore. He’d been too wrapped up in Anna and hadn’t heard a damned thing.

  What the hell was the matter with him? He was out of control. He needed to get a rein on his emotions. His senses were dull and fuzzy. He was too distracted. Too twisted up in knots. He’d felt like this only once before—the day his father died. He was losing his edge.

  So much so that he wasn’t ready for what came next.

  “Let go of her,” Alan boomed, tearing Anna out of his arms at the same time his fist came slamming toward his jaw.

  Arthur’s head snapped back as he took the full force of the blow. His head exploded in pain. A white flash blinded him.

  Anna cried out in horror. “Alan, please, it’s not what you think!”

  But her brother wasn’t listening. Proving his efficiency with both fists, another blow caught Arthur from the other side. Then the stomach. Then his ribs.

  “I told you to fix it, damn it. Not make her cry. What the hell did you do to her?”

  Arthur didn’t try to defend himself. Not because he couldn’t—MacDougall might have a smith’s hammer for an arm, but Arthur had learned enough tricks from the best hand-to-hand warrior in the Highlands to have him on his back in a few seconds. He didn’t fight back because he deserved it. Hell, he deserved far worse for what he would do.

  “Stop! Stop!” Anna sobbed, her voice teetering on hysteria. “You’re hurting him.”

  Alan dragged him up by the collar, shoving him hard against a tree. “What did you do?” His gaze shot to his sister’s. “One of you had better tell me what the hell is going on.”

  Neither of them responded.

  Alan looked back and forth between them, his face fired hot with anger. “