Not Quite a Scot Read online

  Still, it was clear that who I was triggered some kind of post-traumatic stress for Finley. I reminded him of a time in his life he’d rather forget.

  Chastened and hurting, I paced the floor, barely noticing the loud tick of the clock. I should go back to my room. Cinnamon’s presence in the house had saved me from making a bad mistake. Clearly, the time-out had brought Finley to his senses, as well.

  It was time for me to go. I had my hand on the door when it opened abruptly, whacking me in the head. “Ouch,” I cried, stumbling backward.

  Finley gaped at me. “McKenzie. What were you doing?”

  I rubbed the red spot on my forehead. “So this is my fault?” I asked crossly.

  He picked me up by the waist and set me on the bed. “Let me see.”

  His thumb feathered across my eyebrow as he examined my injury. “It may bruise. I’m sorry, Duchess.”

  I shrugged. “It’s fine.” I couldn’t quite look him in the eye. “It’s late,” I said. “I should get some sleep. I have a big day tomorrow.”

  He sat down beside me, making the mattress dip and tumbling me against his shoulder. “What’s wrong, McKenzie?”

  “Nothing. Everything. I don’t want to remind you of her.” I folded my arms across my chest. “You were gone so long I thought you must have changed your mind.”

  “About having sex with you?”

  I nodded jerkily.

  “Look at me,” he demanded.

  When I reluctantly complied, he turned sideways to face me and held out his hands. “This is what took so long.”

  His long masculine fingers distracted me for a moment. Then I noticed the angry red burn on his right hand. The flesh in the center of his palm was raw. “Oh, Finley. What happened?”

  “Cinnamon,” he said ruefully. “She heard something in the woods and caught me off guard. I tried to stop her and got a rope burn when she yanked the leash right out of my hand.”

  “I’m sorry that happened. I was going to my room, because I thought we weren’t going to…well, you know.”

  His gentle smile was quizzical. “No. That’s not it at all. I had to catch up with my wretched dog, drag her back to the house, and put her away for the night. Then I had to clean my hand. I never meant to leave you for so long.”

  This was as good a time as any to call a halt before we did something that might look very different in the cold light of morning. I took a deep breath. “I don’t want to have sex with you because I remind you of Vanessa.”

  Finley didn’t react at first. In fact, if I hadn’t been studying him so closely, I might not even have seen the barest flicker of his eyelashes. “Why would you think that?”

  “She’s a myth. Somebody frozen in the past. No matter who she really is, you have this painful, decade-old memory of her.”

  His jaw turned to granite. A look I was beginning to understand was his reaction to anyone who pissed him off or dared to enter emotional rooms labeled hands off.

  The muscles in his throat worked. “I don’t need a shrink, Duchess. And even if I did, you’re not exactly qualified.”

  His chilly tone gave me goose bumps. I’d always believed that heated confrontations were healthier than icy ones. Sometimes his blue eyes glowed with fire and life. Now, they were cold enough to shatter.

  Near tears, I pressed on, knowing even as I did so that I was going to regret my honesty. “You’re welcome to hide out here in Scotland until you’re a shriveled-up old man,” I said. “Despite the chemistry you and I have between us, I won’t be a stand-in for another woman, no matter what your twisted reasons for making love to me.”

  “Fucking,” he said. “It’s called fucking. Don’t paint this as some kind of romantic fantasy.”

  I stared at him, incredulous that the charming man I knew could be so deliberately cruel. Shaking all over, I stood up on legs the consistency of spaghetti. All I wanted to do was make it out of the room without collapsing. “I appreciate your honesty,” I said, my throat raw. “I doubt we’ll see each other again, so I’ll say goodbye. Thank you for the roadside rescue and for the room and board.”

  I waited for him to stop me. To tell me he was sorry. To erase the hurtful words with soft kisses.

  But he didn’t.

  He let me walk out of his bedroom and close the door behind me.

  When I got to my own room, I locked the door and stripped off my clothes. I was so cold I didn’t think I’d ever be warm again. In the tiny bathroom, I started the shower and ran it as hot as I could bear it.

  Then I stepped into the tub so no one would hear me sob.

  I cried because I missed my friends and for the aching emptiness inside me and because Finley had tarnished my dream of Scotland. The trip of a lifetime had been reduced to a date-night gone bad. One more in a line of sad stories about men who weren’t worth my time or my emotional investment.

  The trouble was, crying never solved anything. In the end, it left you with a stuffy nose and a hollow certainty that few things in life lived up to the hype. Perhaps I was becoming as cynical as my host.

  I found my comfiest pajamas and pulled on fluffy woolen socks. My feet were numb. Despite the hot shower, I still felt cold to the bone. After climbing into the big bed, I huddled under the covers, flung an arm across my face, and listened to myself breathe.

  How could I have such a pain in my chest? It’s not as if Finley Craig was the love of my life. Even so, my pillowcase was damp when I finally managed to fall asleep.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning, I awoke to gray skies. I didn’t even care. The weather matched my mood. Suddenly, I was desperate to escape from Finley’s house without seeing him again.

  I needn’t have worried. The man was nowhere to be found. I packed up my things haphazardly. I wasn’t going far. Part of me needed to make a big dramatic gesture and throw the black dress with the rhinestone clasp into the trash. Not only was it the single really dressy thing I’d brought with me on the trip, I didn’t want to give Finley the idea I was upset.

  Let him think our time together was nothing more than a blip on my radar. He was nothing to me. Nothing at all. I cared more about his sweet, mischievous dog than I did about a closed off, emotionally stunted alpha male.

  Sadly, even Cinnamon deserted me…no opportunity for goodbyes on that front either. She was probably in the workshop with her master. The same workshop that was off limits to me.

  When I was ready, I took one last look at the room where I had spent my first nights on the Isle of Skye. I’d been careful to erase every evidence of my stay in Finley’s home. I felt as if I had lived a lifetime since my car went into a ditch. Certainly not what I had expected. Then again, life rarely went according to plan.

  I fell into a weird sort of emotionless calm as I loaded the car and drove away. I was almost positive Finley was around somewhere. Clearly, he had no desire to bump into me. I wouldn’t let his indifference hurt me.

  The drive to my new lodgings took longer than it should have. The rain had set in. I managed to find a radio station with a weather report. Apparently, the Scottish Highlands were being buffeted with the remains of Hurricane Mabel. It had made its way across the Atlantic, losing its hurricane-strength winds, but still powerful enough to stall out and dump almost unprecedented amounts of rain.

  Mrs. Clark had hidden the house key under a rock. Hunched over beneath an umbrella that was barely able to keep the worst of the rain off my neck, I found the key and let myself in.

  I’d prepared for disappointment. It was a raw, gloomy day, and the house would probably be damp and unwelcoming. I had underestimated the sturdy Scottish cleaning lady. As soon as I opened the front door and shrugged out of my wet rain jacket, the smell of lemon furniture polish surrounded me.

  Even a cursory inspection told me the house had been totally overhauled. I was so grateful I wanted to sit down and weep. Instead, I wiped my nose, put my coat back on, and unloaded t
he car. It didn’t make any sense to wait. There would be no break in the weather anytime soon.

  At her insistence, Mrs. Clark had also stocked the fridge and cabinets with staples. Even if the storm lasted several days, I wouldn’t starve. Soup and sandwiches, if nothing else, would sustain me.

  I picked the larger of the two bedrooms and unpacked my bags and carry-on, putting things away in a rickety bureau and hanging a few items in the alcove that passed for a closet. Then I went back into the main room and put a match to the pile of kindling in the fireplace. Soon the smell of wood smoke mingled with the lemon scent.

  After boiling a pot of water and brewing myself a cup of tea, I pulled a rocking chair close to the hearth and warmed my toes as I sipped my drink. I wondered what Hayley and Willow were up to. Had the rain impacted their plans? Though neither of my friends was all that far from me as the crow flies, I felt a million miles from them and from civilization. Here I was, tucked away in my pleasantly secluded rental house, and all I could think about was the faux Scotsman with brilliant blue eyes and a tendency to be a curmudgeon.

  Dogs were good judges of character. If Cinnamon loved Finley, I should give the man the benefit of the doubt. We had let our hormones run away with us, and we had shared too much personal information too soon.

  When I looked past my own hurt and disappointment, I couldn’t really fault Finley for speaking the blunt truth. I’d spun him a tale of three women crossing the ocean in search of adventure and romance fueled by a novel of time travel. It must have sounded far-fetched to say the least. I suppose it made sense that he didn’t want to give me the wrong idea.

  At noon I opened the package of crusty bread and cobbled together a messy grilled cheese sandwich. Along with a cup of cocoa, the comfort food made me feel a little less hollow inside.

  After reading for an hour, I found myself on my feet pacing the confines of the modest house. I’d fantasized for weeks about what it would be like to be alone with my thoughts…to have the freedom to do anything or nothing. In my dreams, though, I’d been ranging around the Scottish hillsides, soaking up the summer sun, and taking photos to my heart’s content.

  It appeared that my camera was going to sit idle for quite some time. Unless of course I wanted to do still life portraits of ordinary fruit and artsy shots of raindrops on windowpanes.

  Though it was pointless, I checked my cell phone again. No bars at all. I wasn’t going to be able to check in with Hayley and Willow every night at nine. I knew they were grown women and very competent women at that. Being cut off was an odd and worrisome feeling in this day of über-connectedness.

  At least I had the landline. Though it seemed old-fashioned at best, the phone with the rotary dial was all that stood between me and complete isolation. That was a completely reassuring backup until midafternoon when I lifted the receiver and realized the phone lines were out of commission.

  My imagination went haywire suddenly. What if my appendix burst? What if I cut my hand with a kitchen knife? What if a spark from the fireplace set the whole cottage ablaze?

  In the end, none of it mattered. I was essentially helpless to change my situation in the short term. Unless I was prepared to make my way back to Portree and sleep in my car, this small house was my only shelter from the storm.

  The hours passed with agonizing slowness. By late afternoon, the skies had darkened to the point it seemed almost like night. The rain thundered now, the roar a steady, menacing presence. I was usually a fan of rainy days. This was something else again.

  When I peered out the front window, I could barely see my rental car. It seemed as if a river of mud surrounded the vehicle. I couldn’t be sure, and I definitely wasn’t going outside to check.

  Dinner was a reprise of lunch. Only this time I opened a can of tomato soup and heated it to go along with the sandwich. Mrs. Clark had left a bouquet of wildflowers in a clear glass jar in the center of the kitchen table. The cheery yellow blossoms kept me company while I ate.

  For someone who had logged many weeks and months as a world traveler, I had woefully underestimated my tolerance for solitude. It honestly never occurred to me that I could be trapped inside. I knew it was often cloudy and gray in Scotland, but a tropical storm? That twist seemed far-fetched.

  Yet here I was…a victim of my own careful planning.

  The little cottage creaked and groaned beneath the force of the wind and the rain. So far, no leaks in the roof. I didn’t know how long that would last. Cedric’s home was at least half a mile up the hillside. The rest of the small mountain loomed above me, obscured by the storm.

  By eight o’clock I had drunk so many cups of tea I knew I was destined for a sleepless night. Still, tea or no tea, the storm would no doubt keep me awake. I took a shower and changed into the same cotton pajamas that had comforted me last night.

  It was hard to believe that only twenty-four hours had passed since Finley and I quarreled. Already, the episode seemed a lifetime ago. What was fresh and real, however, was the memory of how he had carried me into the house en route to our night of passion.

  I knew the term coitus interruptus. Unfortunately, there was no good description for what had happened to Finley and me. We’d never gotten past the first kiss. Thanks to Cinnamon’s antics, I would never know if intimacy with Finley Craig was actually as thrilling as the anticipation.

  I stood at the window beside the front door, my palm pressed to the glass. Cabin fever set in with a vengeance, along with a healthy dose of paranoia.

  It occurred to me in the midst of my mental gymnastics that I was well on my way to an old-fashioned fit of the vapors. There was no one around to see me have a meltdown, so why did it matter?

  Since it was far too early to go to bed, I perused Cedric’s single bookshelf for something to read. I had my Kindle, but I wanted to preserve the battery for emergencies.

  The choices in my current abode were limited. The Bible. A Scottish version of the farmer’s almanac. Several lurid crime novels. No, thank you. And last, but not least, five or six volumes of folktales.

  At least, that’s what I called them. I guess if you were an old man from Scotland—like Cedric—they were simply stories.

  I picked up the fattest of the lot and reclaimed my rocking chair. Though in the beginning, I had to force myself to absorb the words on the page, soon I was drawn into a world of fairies and witches and changelings and pagan dances under the harvest moon.

  The Gaelic heritage came with a healthy dose of superstition and whimsy. Some of the stories made me smile. Others sent a shiver down my spine. My favorite was a tale so skillfully crafted, I found myself wanting it to be true. It was about a farm lad spirited away every night by a witch who put a magic bridle around his head and turned him into a horse.

  The crafty witch forced him to gallop across the moors until he was dead exhausted. Then she led him home to his farmhouse, took off the bridle, and tucked him back into bed. Every morning the poor lad was gaunter and more ill than the day before. The boy’s brother began to suspect magic afoot. So one night he slept in the brother’s bed and let the witch take him.

  The same sequence of events occurred, but when the witch stopped by the farmhouse of one of her evil acquaintances, she put the horse in a stall in the barn. The wily brother in horse form chewed off his own bridle and was changed back into a man. He slipped into the house and killed the witch and her cohorts. Only then did the other brother begin to recover from his mysterious illness.

  I closed the book and stared into the fire, trying to imagine a time when every inexplicable twist and turn in life was explained by the work of unseen creatures, malevolent ones at that. No electricity. No hospitals. No instant communication with everyone else in a person’s life.

  The entire world likely consisted of a few square miles where a man or woman was born, lived, and died. The book slipped from my lap. I let it fall, stricken by the knowledge that I had come to Scotland in search of a lif
e that wasn’t even my own. I wanted to be someone else. Not the heiress. Not the dutiful daughter. Not even the friend who paid for an expensive trip.

  I was thirty-two years old, and I had no idea who I was or who I wanted to be. What kind of messed up head-game was I playing with myself? Photography? A lonely house in the middle of nowhere? What did I expect to find on the Isle of Skye? A personal rebirth? A miracle?

  The fire had burned down to nothing while I sat and rocked. I felt empty inside. Numb. Somehow, Finley had seen the truth and called me on my bullshit. Somehow he knew that my quest for adventure and my own Jamie Fraser was a cover for the fact that I had no idea what I wanted.

  My whole life up until this point had been scripted for me. Even though I had moved out of my parents’ shadow long ago, I had never quite found my niche. Part society belle, part modern philanthropist, I was a walking, talking cliché.

  Chapter 18

  For a long moment I wondered if some force within the walls of this small, nondescript house had bewitched me. McKenzie Taylor was smart, focused, and confident. At least that’s what the world thought…what my friends thought.

  I’d learned long ago not to reveal my weaknesses. Hayley and Willow believed I had chosen this self-catering cottage because I didn’t like hotels. That was partly true, I suppose. I did like my privacy.

  Now, in the midst of an unlikely tropical storm on the Scottish moors, I would give my last dollar to be tucked into the nearest Holiday Inn Express with matchy-matchy art on the walls and plenty of vending machines.

  I jumped six inches when a loud pounding at the door startled me out of my mental epiphany. Hurrying across the room, I peeked out the window to see a tall man who bore a striking resemblance to Finley. Behind him a black Jeep sat at a drunken angle. In his arms he held a large blob wrapped in a blanket. A black backpack was slung over his shoulder.