Once Upon A Highland Legend by Tanya Anne Crosby

no longer seemed quite so devoid of possibilities…if the girl stayed as well.
    “I need answers,” he said, “and I intend to get them, but, nay, I dinna find ye appealing, if that’s what ye mean. Ye’re too skinny for my taste,” he lied.
     
    Annie frowned. He was lying, she was certain. She recognized desire, and it was right there in his steely eyes. “Whatever,” she said and swallowed her bite of cheese.
    “Tell me your name.”
    “Annie Ross.”
    “Annie Ross,” he repeated.
    It wasn’t a question, Annie surmised. He seemed to be savoring the sound of her name—much like she was enjoying the bite of cheese he’d given her—judging by the mold, some kind of blue? She had never tasted anything quite like it—nor had she ever met a man quite like him. And he was acting a lot like a man with a hard-on. He was a liar.
    “So ye hail from Ross-shire, then? Are ye Fidach by blood?” He fidgeted uncomfortably, and Annie decided to prove him wrong—of course, without stopping to question why she felt so safe with such a blatant flirtation. She shifted, lifting her knee to see if he would sneak a peek.
    Fidach was a name she recognized, but she had no idea whether she was connected to the ancient clan. Oddly enough, despite her curious nature, and her obsession with the Stone of Destiny, she had never been driven to trace her clan’s ancestry. “Fidach? As in the sons of Cruithne, King of the Picts?”
    His look darkened considerably. “We are seven nations, all with royal blood. ’Tis a blasphemy we have taken the Pecht name. ’Tis no’ our own.” Annie was too shocked to be disappointed by the fact that he ignored her blatant invitation to peek up her skirt.
    Cripes , she thought. Callum is a Pict.
    I am talking to a Pict.
    The crystal was suddenly forgotten at her side. So was her failed attempt at seduction. He had her rapt attention now. The Picts had mysteriously vanished from the annals of history. Her peers were all making up plausible scenarios to explain how and why, and here she was sitting in the middle of a field talking to a Pict. She must be dead or in a coma. She must have fallen and hit her head and was lying unconscious in that field where she’d scarfed her sandwich. It just figured her idea of Heaven would be some sort of historical fact-finding mission. And despite that she suspected this was all a dream, she tried to keep calm and answer his question. “All I know is my father was a Scot,” she told him.
    Across the fire, the old woman suddenly gave a decidedly disapproving, “Hurrumph!”
    Callum paid the woman little mind. “How are your wrists?” he asked, changing the subject.
    “Fine.”
    “I’m sorry for binding them, lass. ’Ye happened upon me whilst I was burying my Da.”
    “I know. I’m sorry too,” she offered, and meant it.
    The old woman suddenly bounded to her feet. “ Chan eil fhios càise !” she announced, pointing at Annie, and left them, muttering. “ Dìt Scoti!”
    Alarmed by her outburst, Annie watched her march beyond the light of the fire, her painted body disappearing into the night.
    “Dinna mind auld Morag,” he said. “She’s o’ the mind no outlander is a good outlander, but the auld bat is harmless.”
    Annie wasn’t so sure about that. “What did she say?”
    “She said ye dinna know cheese,’” he disclosed with a grin. “That slice in your hand is as precious as your keek stane, and if ye were a Fidach in truth, ye’d know ’twas made by your own clanswomen for hundreds of years. But ’tis more like that her feelings are sore to see ye picking at it like a wee bird.”
    Callum seemed to be watching her curiously. “An’ ye say ye lost your Da?”
    “I was five,” she said, and hushed. The sense of loss was keen, even after all these years.
    He stared at her—waiting for her to continue, she presumed. Despite his size and breadth, there was a gentleness about him and a comprehension in his gaze that Annie found