Read Claimed by a Laird for Free Online

Campbell.
    Nausea swept over her and she inhaled erratically, her
breaths coming almost one on top of another. How? How could this have happened?
    She grasped the pendant. It had threatened to overheat like
a machine spinning out of control not long after her thoughts had turned to her
thirteenth-century namesake. Anna had been thinking of how much she would like
to experience the same sort of love and passion as this other Anna Campbell had
with the imprisoned MacAirth laird.
    Who just so happened to be holding her hand at this
very moment.
    “Lass, what is wrong?”
    Her heart pounded and she gasped for air, shaking her head
at the impossibility of it all.
    He roughly grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
“Anna, look at me!” he ordered. “You must get a hold of yourself!”
    She closed her eyes and several moments of silence passed as
she concentrated on slowing her breathing before she hyperventilated or, worse,
blacked out. When she finally opened her eyes, she avoided his face and stared
past Galen’s shoulder into the dying light of the small room. It was just
coincidence, wasn’t it? Certainly her mind was just playing tricks on her and
she wasn’t actually sitting there with a deranged, albeit hot stranger. She
couldn’t possibly have been hurtled nearly eight hundred years into the past.
    Could she?
    The warmth of Galen’s body pressed against hers drew her back
to him again and she lifted her gaze.
    His brow wrinkled in confusion and he stared at her for
several moments. “So, you are aware of the circumstances of my imprisonment.”
    “I am,” she whispered with a slow, careful nod, uncertain if
she should trust this man with her ludicrous suspicions of how she had arrived
here. “I just heard the story from a tour guide.”
    “I do not understand.”
    She took a deep breath, praying she wouldn’t regret telling
him the truth. “Where I come from this castle is in ruins. Aside from a few
walls, this dungeon is the only thing still intact.”
    “But it is not in ruins, lass,” he patiently replied. “You
saw it for yourself.”
    Her shoulders slumped. It all sounded quite ridiculous when
actually spoken out loud, but she had little choice other than to continue.
“They’re in ruins in my time. The year 2013.” Her stomach churned nervously. “I
honestly don’t know how I got here.”
    Anna’s free hand wrapped around the pendant once more. She
fought the urge to shake her head in denial, not wanting to look as crazy as
she must have sounded.
    He gave her hand a demanding squeeze. “Give me the truth,”
he ordered with a mixture of exasperation and amusement. “You are acting
honorably in assisting my escape. I care not to whom you might belong so long as
you do not attempt to betray me.”
    Not entirely certain what he meant by those words, she
concentrated instead on what she could possibly say or do to prove she wasn’t
insane.
    The British currency in her wallet sprang to mind. She
turned toward her purse and quickly dug through it. Eventually, she pulled out
a one pound coin and a ten pound note from the Bank of Scotland and dropped the
wallet back into her bag. “Here,” she said, handing the currency to him.
    As he tilted the money toward the light, Anna pointed at the
date stamped on the coin to the right of Queen Elizabeth II’s head. “There. Do
you see that?”
    “Two, zero, zero, eight.” His eyes darted around the coin
and then to the ten pound note. “Who the hell is this fool?”
    Anna placed one hand on his forearm to steady herself as she
leaned in for a closer look. Not recognizing the man with his obviously
eighteenth-century powdered wig, she shrugged and struggled to keep her focus
on proving her claims, and not on the rock-hard muscles twitching beneath her
fingertips.
    “And this woman?” Galen asked, waving the coin at her.
    “That’s the Queen of England in my time.”
    Much to Anna’s confusion, the man proceeded to bite the
coin. Speechless,