the hell she’d made of their lives. No amount of money could make up for that. And half a fortune wasn’t going to excuse Jillian for not trying to come home.
No. She wasn’t Jillian. She’d never be Jillian.
Jules put her hands in the pockets of her jacket. "My name is Jules. I'm not Jillian."
"Of course ye're not Jillian." The woman winked. "How silly of me. I can see the difference now."
Jules resisted the urge to ask what the woman saw that made her so different. She never wanted to look like Jillian, of course, but she didn’t care for the feeling that she was lacking in some way. She wasn’t jealous.
Well, maybe just a little envious—it didn’t help that Jillian was married to the mouth-watering Highlander that had started to haunt her dreams for no reason whatsoever. The website for Castle Ross Tours said the man was Quinn Ross, but it must have been the name he used for tourists. Jillian’s husband was Montgomery Ross, or Monty, as Ewan called him.
In her dreams, she’d never known his name, only that they had to stay together or...something bad would happen. And she’d always been pretty sure it would be bad for them both. Pretty melodramatic for a dream with a stranger, but anyone who’d laid eyes on Montgomery Ross wouldn’t laugh. Even the shot of him on the website took her breath away and made her heart stutter—and this from a girl who never got breathy over anything but a great dessert.
Every night, when she’d fallen asleep, she’d willed herself back into that dark dream. She’d make it there, too, but only every couple of weeks when she went to bed early. Maybe their dreams only linked up when they were both asleep, and time-zone-wise, that meant earlier in New York.
Holy shit. What if the guy was really dreaming about her too? What if he might be sharing the whole emotional ride?
Jules shook her head and sighed. It wouldn’t make any difference if he was—he’d just think it was a dream about his own wife. And that thought made her instantly sad.
She dragged along next to Ewan, hoping he’d take her somewhere quiet where she could sit down and shut her eyes for a minute. What she really needed was to just confront her sister and get the hell away from her, and her husband, but the woman was even farther out of her reach than before. Over five hundred years away. And the only short cut back was through that tomb, now inconveniently guarded by Jules’ personal Angel of Death.
It was just so surreal. What had it been, an hour since she’d started running down that hill? She couldn’t have made it into another time zone, and yet she’d traveled centuries? What a crock. Maybe, after she’d rested a bit, she could figure out another explanation. And it was a great plan...
...until they rounded a corner.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Since she’d come through the back entrance to the castle, Jules had never seen the great hall except in a photo gallery on the internet. But this was no polished museum. It was a madhouse. Tables filled every corner except for the raised dais where three large items were the only decoration. The tomb—the one she had to have been inside. A giant carved throne which looked a little too imposing to sit in. And a massive statue of Jillian’s husband, in his kilt. It looked so much like him—or at least what he looked like through binoculars—that she expected him to walk right off the stage.
But the most shocking part, and the thing making her nauseous again, was the crowd.
They were all dressed in medieval garb. Every last one of them. Women, children—even the dogs looked a little barbaric.
She turned back to Ewan and took a good look at his clothes. His kilt was nothing like any kilt she’d ever seen in real life. In the movies, yes. But modern day Scotsmen did not dress this way, not even for their Highland Games and Scottish Festivals. She knew. Her parents had taken her to them every year. They’d always been searching the crowds for some reason. When she was big enough, she realized they were searching for Jillian.
Always Jillian. Their lives had centered on finding Jillian. If her parents hadn’t been driving across that long stretch of Wyoming highway, hunting down one more lead, they would have still been alive. But they’d been sure they were going to find her that time, just