Stranded By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance-Highlander Forever Book 2 Read online

  Stranded By The Highlander

  A Scottish Time Travel Romance-Highlander Forever Book 2

  Rebecca Preston

  Illustrated by

  Natasha Snow

  Edited by

  Elizabeth A Lance

  Copyright © 2019 Rebecca Preston

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Natasha Snow

  Edited by Elizabeth A Lance

  Similarities to real people, places or events are purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  VIP Reader Club

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  About Rebecca Preston

  Also by Rebecca Preston

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  Chapter 1

  “Well, what d’you think, Nancy? Any sea monsters down there?”

  Nancy Kane beamed, jumping out of the back of the truck and taking eager steps toward the edge of the flooded quarry. Her friend and old teacher, James was waiting by the edge for her, grinning as he gestured for her to join him. They’d known each other a long time — she was well past being bothered by his constant ribbing about her fascination with mythical creatures and paranormal zoology.

  “The shore’s maybe two minutes down the road,” their driver Hannah called from behind the wheel of the truck. “Do you want me to just meet you there, or —”

  “Hold your horses, woman. Just come and look at this.”

  Heaving a melodramatic sigh — Hannah does like to stick to a plan, Nancy thought with a grin — the woman hauled herself out of the truck and slouched over to join them. She was itching to get into the water, that was for sure. Nancy couldn’t blame her. She’d been looking forward to this trip for weeks, ever since James had let her know that there was a hitherto undiscovered network of caves at the bottom of a flooded quarry north of Raleigh. It had been flooded for a long time, but nobody had looked too closely at the loose stones at the bottom… not until James, on a whim, had taken one of his scuba classes up to the quarry as a change of pace from their usual training grounds. To his surprise, one of his students had off-handedly mentioned that there seemed to be a ‘secret tunnel’ at the bottom of the quarry, covered by rocks and debris. Further inspection had revealed a deep passage that seemed to plunge into the rock for a considerable distance. He’d followed it long enough to discover that it wasn’t just a tunnel — there was an attached network of caves there as well — before turning back, resolving to return with a more qualified team than the curious bunch of students he’d been with.

  And Nancy Kane was certainly qualified. Ever since she was a kid and her dad had taken her swimming at Falls Lake, she’d loved the water more than anything. She’d practiced holding her breath every chance she got, always desperate to swim deeper, to find what was hiding at the bottom of the lake... she was convinced, as a young girl, that there were mermaids waiting for her down there, and that if she could just spend enough time down there under the water, they’d come out to play with her. As she’d grown, she had grown out of that conviction… but not completely. She was still fascinated by stories of paranormal creatures, of monsters and myths, of the unknown, creatures that were still out there to be discovered. Who could really say mermaids weren’t real, after all, when so much of the sea floor hadn’t been explored yet?

  “Don’t get your hopes up too much,” Hannah warned James now, peering down at the unruffled surface of the flooded quarry. Always a cynic — a realist, she called it — Hannah was a good person to have on a mission like this. She was rigorous when it came to safety checks, almost to a fault — sometimes Nancy felt like triple-checking every last piece of equipment was excessive. But she’d never had an accident in all her time spent diving — and she’d been on some pretty dangerous expeditions. It took a special kind of person to willingly submerge themselves in pitch dark, freezing water, to explore underwater cave systems that nobody had explored before. And when it came to uncharted territory, it made sense to be as safe as possible. Hannah was in her forties, Nancy suspected, though she wasn’t quite sure… the dark-haired older woman had a distinct air of mystery, and rarely discussed her personal life. Whether that was because she was keeping it to herself, or she legitimately didn’t have much of a life outside of diving, Nancy wasn’t sure. She’d mentioned having a cat, once.

  “I’m not getting my hopes up,” James said with some dignity — then tipped Nancy a wink that made her giggle. He was absolutely getting his hopes up. James had always had a strong sense of whimsy — it was part of why he and Nancy got on so well. “I just think there’s probably millions of dollars’ worth of buried treasure down there, that’s all. Is that so much to ask? Just a little bit of buried treasure?”

  “Or an undiscovered species of fish,” Nancy put in thoughtfully. “Maybe a sea monster? A dinosaur that escaped extinction? Anything like that would be just fine.”

  “If there’s a dinosaur down there you’re on your own,” Hannah warned them, her expression not changing. “Dinosaur wrangling equipment wasn’t on the brief.”

  She could never quite tell when Hannah was joking, Nancy thought with a grin as the short-statured woman stomped back toward the truck. James punched her on the arm. “Who’d have thought that excessively dedicated young girl I met a decade ago would’ve blossomed into such an intrepid explorer?”

  “Me,” Nancy said, matter-of-fact. “You know I would’ve been taking scuba classes in kindergarten if your school didn’t have an age limit.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” James grinned.

  Nancy had spent a lot of her childhood impatiently waiting to get old enough to be allowed to take scuba classes — the
school usually required their students to be twelve or older, but had made a special exception for Nancy, allowing her in when she turned ten. She’d had a countdown on her wall for months, carefully marking off each day with a specially selected mermaid sticker with her amused father looking on. There had been no question of going to school on her birthday… they’d been up, bright and early, headed to the scuba school in Raleigh. And sure enough, she’d been as diligent a student as James could have dreamed of. He’d been in his thirties at the time, just getting started with the school, and as Nancy had grown, so had the school. She’d been first on the list to get her teaching certification, and once she’d finished high school, she’d started teaching classes full-time. She was young, but any doubt that her age raised in the hearts of her students was banished straight away by her clear dedication to the art of scuba diving.

  For her twenty-first birthday, they’d joked about setting up an underwater bar, piping beers in through the equipment somehow. That hadn’t quite materialized, in the end, but she had celebrated her birthday in style… in a pool with a swim-up bar at a fancy local hotel, all her friends and family in their most formal bathing suits. It had been a wonderful night — made all the better by James approaching her halfway through the party to tell her that there was a newly-discovered underwater cave system to explore.

  Now, as always, she couldn’t wait to get into the water. She had her drysuit ready to go, packed and waiting for her in the truck. It had been a gift from her father on her eighteenth birthday. He’d always known what was important to her, his strange, water-obsessed little daughter. A Navy SEAL in his younger days, her father had been put out of the service by a back injury that also, unfortunately, stopped him from being able to do much swimming beyond recreational paddling. He’d always joked that Nancy had inherited all of her father’s interest in water, and all of her mother’s complete disinterest in the military. Perhaps he’d wanted a military daughter, Nancy often thought… but he’d never let on that her chosen vocation disappointed him. On the contrary, he’d always been her biggest support when it came to scuba diving — even indulged her fascination with stories and myths about paranormal creatures. She thought of him fondly every time she pulled on the drysuit and took scrupulous good care of it. It was a good quality piece of equipment, and as James was fond of drilling into his students, taking good care of your equipment wouldn’t only save your life… it’d save your wallet.

  “Do you want to buy a cheap one every year, or an expensive one every decade?” he always asked whenever she was examining the scuba school’s wares. Staff discount or no, the gear did run into the expensive range... but it wasn’t just salesmanship from James. He was a stickler for quality, and often refused to even stock lower-end gear.

  She and James walked quickly now, heading down the track in pursuit of the truck that Hannah had started up shortly after their brief reconnaissance of the surface of the quarry. It was still early, the sun not yet close to its high point in the sky — they’d set off just before dawn, wanting to get a good head-start on the day. The water was going to be cold regardless of when they dove in, but the earlier they started, the more of the warm middle-of-the-day weather they’d be able to get. Not that Nancy minded the cold — not when she was underwater, anyway. There was something exhilarating about it. All that water, pressing down on you.

  When they reached the little cove — the preferred entrance to the lake that had been formed years ago, when the quarry had first been flooded — they found the truck, neatly parked, and Hannah, already climbing into her own drysuit. The conditions were calm and mild, with only a light wind ruffling the surface of the water, and Nancy was ready to get in the water. More than ready, in fact — she’d been keen for this day since her birthday.

  It wasn’t as if there were many other thrills in her life, she thought ruefully as she started to put her gear on, working steadily and carefully under James’s watchful eye. Even though she’d been training for over a decade now, and she was one of his most trusted colleagues, the guy never could shake his ‘teacher mode’ when he was around other divers. It used to annoy her, especially as a teenager, but now she took it for what it was — a sign that he cared about her. After all, even the most seasoned divers could make oversights and mistakes, and his watchful eye reminded her that he’d catch her if she slipped up.

  If only the other men in her life were so reliable. Well, calling them ‘men in her life’ may have been a bit of an exaggeration. Though she’d dated a few guys in high school, and there’d been one or two little romances at the scuba school, since she’d turned twenty-one, Nancy had been wanting to branch out a little, romantically. Find someone to get serious with. After all, her career was exactly where she wanted it to be — she had her own place, the next step was a proper relationship. After all, plenty of girls her age — including half of her friends — were already in serious relationships. One of them — Annie, her best friend from primary school — was even engaged. Unfortunately, though Nancy was ready to get serious, the men around her didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. At her birthday party, she’d asked her friends to set her up on blind dates with the most eligible men they knew. In the six months since her birthday, she’d been on eight truly terrible dates. She was beginning to think she was going to find a real-life sea monster before she found a man who was worth her time.

  “You look sour.” James was looking at her, one eyebrow raised as he adjusted his drysuit.

  “Thinking about my love life,” Nancy said, rolling her eyes. She’d regaled everyone at the scuba school with the tales of her terrible dates — especially the guy who’d spent half an hour (incorrectly) explaining basic diving techniques to her. Eventually, she’d interrupted him to tell him that she was a qualified scuba instructor — one of the youngest in North Carolina, actually. Not only had he not stopped talking, he’d chastised her for interrupting him, warning her that talking over people didn’t make a great impression on a first date.

  “Give up on men,” Hannah said cheerfully as she checked the line they intended to use as their guideline. “Spend all the time and money you save on diving.”

  Nancy laughed. “I’m beginning to come around to that opinion.”

  “So young to be so cynical,” James said, shaking his head. “You’ve got nothing but time, kid. Love’ll find you when you’re not looking for it. Why, I didn’t meet Suzie until —”

  “— you were thirty-three and ready to give up on love,” Nancy and Hannah finished for him in perfect unison.

  “Exactly,” he said, unruffled as he brushed a fleck of dust from his goggles. “So, your Mr. Right is out there. You just might have to give it a year or twelve. That’s the problem with you damn young people, no patience.”

  “Speaking of patience, are we going in the water or just looking at it?” Hannah asked. “The guideline’s ready to go, and so am I. Let’s see if Nancy’s Mr. Right is at the bottom of this lake, shall we?”

  With a whoop, Nancy finished fastening her gear, then turned to the lake, ready for action.

  Chapter 2

  A big part of what Nancy loved so much about being underwater was the silence that enveloped her. There was something so unbelievably peaceful about it. The rest of the world always felt so noisy and chaotic after she’d spent some time underwater. And as they swam as a team toward the bottom of the lake, she sighed with pleasure at the way the silence rushed in.

  It was fun, diving with friends. They all looked a little like space aliens — masked, covered by the sleek drysuits, their short flippers extending their legs and gloves keeping their hands safe. James was carrying four lights — three was the recommended number, but he always kept an emergency, emergency, emergency backup on him, just in case. He had a horror story about a dive in which he was left in complete darkness, miles under the earth, because of a combination of his main light running out of battery, his second backup breaking and his third backup getting dropped into a crevasse and
lost forever. It had been the closest he’d ever gotten to panicking during a dive, he’d told them. Ever since, he’d brought four lights — more for the psychological reassurance than out of any real concern that another disaster like that would happen. Nancy herself carried three lights… but she always checked their battery levels four times.

  Hannah was in charge of securing the safety line behind them. They reached the mouth of the cave, the sunlight already much weaker than it had been closer to the surface — Nancy switched her main light on, ready to enter the cave, and she and James waited as Hannah secured the safety line outside the cave.

  “The good divers always live,” James drilled into all of his students.

  It was a reassuring statement, but it was also a mnemonic device for remembering the essentials of dive safety — training, guideline, depth, air and light. The guideline would stop them getting lost and be their way back out in case they got turned around or disoriented. Additionally, if too much silt or debris was kicked up, it would allow them to leave the cave even if they couldn’t see. Nancy brushed against the line as they began to swim down, deep into the heart of the cave. It was a reassuring sight when she turned back to look at the mouth of the cave — a lifeline, stretching back up toward the surface, where there was light and air aplenty.