Page 29 of A Highland Healer Captured (Scottish Daddies #3)

“Of course,” she said, composed, as if she hadn’t noticed the ragged edge in him. But when they started across the green, she kept to his side instead of a pace behind, her sleeve whispering the linen at his wrist now and then, an accidental brush that didn’t feel accidental.

“Tell me,” she said after a moment, eyes on the river. “If the weather turns, what’s yer call? Keep the feasting outside or bring the long tables into the hall?”

“Outside until the saints themselves spit on us,” he said. “The hall holds fewer; a crush is worse than a drizzle.”

She nodded, lips pursed. “And if someone were to fall sick in the crowd—someone important—where would ye want them carried?”

He stopped. She didn’t. Three steps ahead, she realized he had halted and turned back, face open and too calm.

“Ye’re thinkin’ of the boy,” he said.

“Aye,” she said. Not a flinch, not a blink. “I think of him when I’m awake and when I sleep. I plan for what I can fix, Zander. That’s all.”

He should have believed her. He did, partly. Enough to keep walking. Not enough to quiet the stubborn voice that counted rings and gates every time she spoke.

They reached the postern. The guards fell back smooth as fish sliding under reeds. The keep’s shadow took them in. The shawl bumped his knuckles where she’d folded it against her side. He could smell clean wool and the faint sharp of vinegar clinging to her skin from the surgery.

“Ye’ve eyes for other folk’s work,” he said, to say something that wasn’t stay or don’t run or if I kiss ye once more I will forget the name for air .

“I’ve eyes,” she said. “They’re good for finding what’s missing.”

“What’s missin’ now?” he asked before wisdom tightened his mouth.

She looked at him a long moment. Not a healer. Not a prisoner. A woman. “Nails,” she said at last, and the corner of her mouth went wicked. “Ye need more nails for that perch.”

He made the mistake of smiling back. Heat went through him in a clean, bright line. For the first time since fever had taken his boy, the wanting didn’t taste like betrayal; it tasted like a man waking. Hope and hunger were poor cousins, but they could share a table for an hour.

“Come,” he said, voice not as steady as he liked. “We’ll fetch them.”

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 he felt 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 had worked 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’re quite handy 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.

The wind sighed through the elm leaves above them. The festival grounds hummed with voices farther off, but here it was only the two of them, the half-built perch, and the space between their bodies that felt thinner than a breath.

Zander clenched his fists at his sides. “We should go,” he said.

“Aye,” she whispered, but she didn’t step back.

Saints, she was too close.

He could smell the vinegar sharpness of herbs on her skin, the faint sweetness of honey from the surgery clinging to her shawl.

It was all tangled with her own scent, something warm and female and maddening.

His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, his throat dry.

He told himself to move, to lead her away, to think of his son.

Instead, he looked at her mouth.

And when he did, he knew he wouldn’t last much longer.

Zander couldn’t move.

She stood within arm’s reach, shawl slipping low against her elbow, lips parted just enough that the torchlight brushed the damp curve of them.

She wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t mocking him as she so often did.

She was just… there. Watching him with eyes that gave nothing and everything away all at once.

He felt his neck go taut, the cords drawn like bowstring. His tongue thick in his mouth, useless for words. A vein of heat coursed low and fierce through him, and he cursed himself for letting it. She was meant to be a healer, a captive, a means to save his son. Not this. Not temptation.

And yet?—

When her hand lifted, almost absently, to tuck back a loose strand of hair, his body moved before his head could reason. He caught her wrist, gently, almost reverently, his callused thumb brushing the pulse that leapt there.

“Skylar,” he rasped.

Her breath hitched, and that was all it took. He dragged her against him, the shawl crumpling between them, and crushed his mouth to hers.

The kiss was nothing of restraint. Desperation poured out of him—the weeks of holding his temper, of denying the thoughts that had stalked him at night, of pretending her fire didn’t spark his own.

He kissed her like he needed the taste to breathe, and when she kissed him back, fierce and unyielding, he lost the last of his hold.

Her hands fisted in his shirt, dragging him closer, as if she hated him and wanted him all at once. His palm slid to her nape, fingers threading into her braid, tugging her head back just enough to claim her mouth deeper.

The sound she made was something like half growl, and half surrender, and it burned through him until he thought he might come undone just standing there.

He pressed her into the elm, the rough bark biting around her shoulders while his body caged hers. His thigh shoved between her skirts, holding her still, keeping her his. She arched wildly, and the friction of it nearly undid him.

“Christ above,” he groaned against her lips, voice raw, “ye’ll be the death of me.”

Her answer was another kiss, hot and hungry, her teeth catching his bottom lip before she released him with a ragged gasp. Her eyes blazed, defiance and want wrestling in them.

He slid his hand down her side, over the curve of her waist, memorizing the shape through wool and linen. All the while, his mind shouted that he shouldn’t. That Grayson, the clan, her family, all of it, would crumble if he took her now.

But his body didn’t care.

His body only knew she was fire, and he wanted to burn.

Her hips shifted against him, a motion so slight he might have imagined it. It drove him mad. He pressed his forehead to hers, panting, trying to ground himself, but her breath mingled with his and made grounding impossible.

“Skylar…” He whispered it like a prayer, like a curse. “Tell me to stop.”

For one terrifying, perfect heartbeat, she didn’t. She only stared at him, lips swollen from his kiss, her chest rising hard against his. His gut twisted. He would take her right there, against the elm, if she didn’t?—

“Stop,” she said, the word cracking like kindling. She shoved weakly at his chest, though her palms lingered longer than they should.

Zander braced his hands against the bark on either side of her head and stepped back, dragging in a breath like a drowning man. His heart thundered, his blood still singing with heat, but he forced his body to obey.

She wrapped the shawl tight around her shoulders, trying to hide the tremor in her hands. “We cannae,” she said, voice raw.

He stared at her, fury at himself rising sharp. “Aye. We cannae.” His tone was harsher than he meant, a shield against how much he wanted her still.

Silence cracked between them, both of them trembling from what they hadn’t done as much as from what they had.

Finally, Skylar lifted her chin, eyes blazing again, the healer’s fire back in its place. “Take me back to the keep, Zander,” she demanded.

He nodded once, short and brutal. He would. But as he led her across the dark green, the taste of her lingered on his mouth, and the ache of her pressed into his veins. He knew restraint wouldn’t last forever.

And judging by the way she kept her shawl clutched, her lips bitten, and her steps too quick — she knew it too.