Charming the Highlander

Spoiler Disclaimer

Synopsis

Grace Sutter is a scientist who is working on technology that she hopes will make space travel to Mars a common thing in the near future. While developing this groundbreaking project, she was visited by her sister, Mary, who was pregnant and running away from her boyfriend, Michael, but very secretive about why. A few months later, Mary decided to return to Michael, but was gravely injured in a car accident on the way home. After giving birth via C-section and just before succumbing to her injuries, she finally revealed that Michael had told her that he was a time traveler, and her dying wish is for Grace to take the baby back to his father. Grace wants to honor Mary's final request, but unsure whether she can trust Michael given his seeming delusion, she decides to take leave from her work and return to the small town of Pine Creek where she grew up. On the way there, the small plane she's traveling on crashes in the snowy mountains, stranding her with a handsome Scotsman who is the plane's only other passenger. He stirs her desires in ways she's never felt before, but more importantly he saves both her and the baby's lives. Once she's safely back at home, Grace still must decide the baby's future, while navigating her growing feelings for Grey. But then she discovers that her boss sold her technology to another company that wants to use it as a weapon and that as the only person who can unscrambled a garbled transmission from their space probe, they've sent unscrupulous men to get her. Unless Grey can rescue her again, she may not get the chance to tell him how she feels or be a part of her nephew's life.

Greylen MacKeage was born eight hundred years ago and was the laird of his highland clan. While engaged in a skirmish with his rival, Michael MacBain, both they and their men were catapulted centuries into the future. They aren't entirely sure how they got there, but a kindly priest befriended them and showed them the ways of twenty-first century life. Now Grey and his men, who've settled near the town of Pine Creek, Maine are about to open a ski lodge in the mountains. While returning from a travel convention, his plane crashes, leaving him stranded with a beautiful scientist and her baby. Grey's survival instincts kick in and he doesn't hesitate to save them both from the bitter cold. He almost instantly knows that Grace is the one for him and perhaps the reason he was brought to this time. Before he can convince her of this, she's kidnapped by bad guys who want her for the secrets she holds in her brain, leaving Grey in a race through the snowy mountains to save her. But even if he can best the bad guys and get her back, how will she feel when she finds out he's actually from a time hundreds of years in the past?

Review

Charming the Highlander is the first book in Janet Chapman's Pine Creek Highlanders series. Laird Greylen MacKeage and three of his men, along with their chief rival and several of his men are catapulted forward in time eight hundred years, thanks to the magic of a wizard named Daar. For the past four years, they've been acclimating to their new surroundings with the help of Daar who is now masquerading as a priest. They've taken up residence in the small town of Pine Creek, Maine, where Grey is now the owner of a ski resort, which is nearing it's grand opening. Elsewhere, scientist Grace Sutter works for a space exploration company and hopes that the technology she's developing will allow people to travel into space and even to Mars on a regular basis in the near future. However, her work was put on the back burner when her sister came to stay after leaving the man who got her pregnant. She had just decided to return to her boyfriend when she was