The Chieftain's Yule Bride - a Highland Christmas novella (Clan MacKrannan's Secret Traditions #10) by Jonnet Carmichael Page B

at Glasgow Airport had thrown her.  It started out with Why was she calling from the Monlachan number?  She didn't even get to tell him anything before he'd launched into a further tirade about the bathroom supply company.  It was all she could do not to yell that it was his own fault – how many times had she warned him not to go for that ridiculously cheap tender from a new trader?
    She heard him out, and told him how to fix some of it, and then his flight was boarding and he was telling her to say Hi to Isla from him.  Her ending mention of heading up to Orkney on some family business and might be out of touch a couple of days only got her a Have fun.
    The awful part was she could have made him listen for the few seconds it would have taken to tell him that Callum was with her.  She hadn't.  Didn't want to.  Nothing about the portrait either, because... because he just wouldn't understand.  He thought that sort of stuff was for Murder Mystery Weekends and Fright Nights.  Zavier just didn't get anything that wasn't in a catalogue.  He thought Auntie was 'like something out of Stonehenge' and she'd never told him about her own Sight.
    Freya should have been on that flight to Dubai too.  For one day she'd stepped out of Zavier's world – her world – and the resulting divide was a chasm of her own making.
    And she didn't say Hi to Auntie Harper from Zavier because Auntie hadn't mentioned his name once, which she would have done every five minutes if she'd disapproved of Callum bringing her to Monlachan and taking her to Orkney.
    Being home in Scotland often brought her extra senses to the fore even though she didn't want them.  This time was stratospherically worse – or better, if she were honest, because she needed to make sense of all this, and that would never happen if she stayed in rational Executive mode.  She had to go back to being totally Highlander for this, forget all her office life and just be a Harper.
    The portrait had come into her life for a reason.  She wouldn't necessarily have believed it tied up this much with Callum personally if she hadn't recognized him too.  Had she seen the portrait hanging somewhere in the castle, well, she would just have taken it as a sign from her ancestors that she'd brought Zavier to the right wedding venue.
    The portrait also had a big effect on her beyond the shock of it.  It brought out feelings in her that had been dormant a long time – a sense of belonging, a connection with her ancestors, an appreciation of the special teachings she'd had outwith formal education.  Auntie had guided her well, she knew that.  Again Freya felt the guilt about throwing it all back in her face and living like a normal person.
    This time she'd only be using her abilities for one thing and one thing only.  She was glad to have them to call on and had thanked Auntie this morning before leaving.  Isla Harper never cried, but both of them had certainly been close to it then.
    The fact that Freya was sitting beside Callum MacKrannan told her that what she really needed here was a dollop of plain old common sense, and that seemed to be deserting her by the minute.  Trying to rationalize anything never helped much when the esoteric was involved.  The Celtic goddesses from her early learning were calling and she could listen or run.  Freya was choosing to listen for the first time in years.
    She'd let everything play out.  Trust that she was being guided on the right path... and hope that went for Callum too, for they'd gone way past Stromness down roads that got narrower with each turn, and had now been driving down a dirt track for a good half a mile.  The esoteric was getting all too real, and the hailstones that started battering off the windscreen helped.
    The little cottage he'd chosen was like something out of a fairy story.  The lady who came out to greet them was pure Orcadian, telling them the fire was lit for them coming, and where the woodpile was, and the