Return to the Highlander: Falling for Love, #3

By Eliza Phillips

Aileen swallowed her heart as she made the leap. A leap of blind faith that the fortune teller wasn’t lying. That jumping off the cliff would mean she could return to her modern times. And not break her neck in the process.

Giving up Roderick will be the easy part, she tells herself. He was a husband of convenience after all. Spine arching passion doesn’t change the fact that she doesn’t feel the love he confessed to her on their last night together. She’ll miss the passion, but nothing more.

Or so she tells herself.

Roderick watched the woman he loves jump off a cliff. The fortune teller promises him that she’ll return. But who could return from such a fall? And if such a thing were possible, why should she? She’s never echoed the sentiments of love he’s professed. And with the rebellion spiking, perhaps it’s for the best she’s gone.

His deceased wife might have sent Aileen to him, but she never promised she’d stay.

But Aileen is haunted by a pair of brilliant green eyes and a sickening feeling she’s made the worst decision of her life. The war between her modern life and her marriage of convenience will drive her to the brink of her sanity.

Will she chalk up her time in the past as nothing more than a passionate affair? Or will she Return to the Highlander?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eliza Phillips
• Release date: Oct 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519946980

Eliza Phillips

Eliza Phillips is a Midwestern gal who's heart belongs abroad. She writes romances that will curl your hair or make your heart sigh with whimsy. She enjoys all things historical, particularly if it wears a kilt. Her heroines are independent thinkers that don't need no man...but wouldn't mind if a man came and swept them off their feet. When she's not writing Eliza spends her time lusting after travel destinations, recipes for bruschetta, and red heads. She keeps her sanity with a cocktail of 80's rock, Caribou Coffee, and...cocktails. Preferably with friends.

Book preview

Chapter One

Wind rushed up around Aileen’s ears as she sailed into the air. She couldn’t hear anything. Save the sound of wind and her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. There was a sort of peace to the quiet. As if time had slowed around her and she was hanging suspended in the air like a puppet on a string. But perhaps that was a construction of her imagination. Fed from the desire to undo everything she had just done.

Regret had seized her in a frigid grip the moment her feet had left the ground. For weeks she had imagined the elation she might feel sailing through the air. On her way back to her own time. How she might shout for joy or exhilaration. How her whole body would tingle with the thrill of getting what she wanted. But instead her gut twisted and she felt like she might be sick.

She thought of Roderick standing alone with Madame Fae on the cliff’s edge. Did he feel abandoned? Would he blame Madame Fae? Would he still think of Aileen in the years to come? He had told her he loved her for the first time as he had held her pressed again the door to his door. Had he meant it? Or had he just said it in the scope of an apology?

Aileen knew the answer. Roderick would never have thrown around those words so carelessly. He wouldn’t have tossed them around to make his apology sound more sincere. Roderick was stoic and often had trouble expressing his feelings. He was a man of logic and sound reasoning. He built their relationship assuming it would benefit them both. 

He had told her he loved her in a moment of vulnerability. She had repaid him by abandoning him on the frigid ledge of the cliff. Roderick had watched another woman that he loved leave him. And for that Aileen felt like she had been punched in the gut.

She hadn’t deserved a man as kind as Roderick. She had just proved it with a single impulsive decision. One she would have to live with that for the rest of her life. She had accused Roderick of being unfaithful to her. But Roderick had been nothing but faithful to both the women that he had loved. He hadn’t been able to marry another women, no matter how lonely he had felt, without the blessing of his first wife. He had believed that he had been given another chance at love. Under the basis that it was what his first wife had wanted. 

It was Aileen that had been unfaithful. 

She had behaved insincerely. She had promised Roderick to be his faithful wife for all her days during their vows. But here she was, falling through the air to return to her own time. Lustfully chasing her previous life. She might as well have run off with a lover. Perhaps that would be easier for Roderick to understand. It might even be better for him to believe that she was unfaithful. His anger would act as a shield for his grief.

All these thoughts flashed through Aileen’s guilt laden mind as the water rushed up to met her. As her feet broke the surface of the waves, Aileen briefly thought she deserved to break her neck against the rocks. That’s what was deserving of a wretch that would break Roderick’s heart the way she had just done.

Aileen disappeared into the depths of the icy water. The cold shocked her and tightened iron bands around her ribcage. The needles of cold stabbed all over her skin, robbing her of thought. She could only think of the thousands of pinpricks erupting over her skin. If she didn’t drown, the cold would suffocate her.

Something propelled Aileen to coordinate her limbs. The need to survive was still strong. No matter the self pitying thoughts she had moments before. She kicked her legs and thrashed her arms wildly in an attempt to rise to the surface. The current pulled against her. The waves overhead threatened to pull her towards a siren’s death. Crashed against the rocks.

Aileen’s lungs burned with the need for oxygen. She kicked more frantically towards the surface. Her ears were ringing as she broke through the surface sucking down as much air as she could. She sputtered as she swallowed some water along with the much needed oxygen.

Her eyes found the shoreline and she set her mind towards it. She couldn’t afford to stay in the water. The current would exhaust her and pull