His appearance did not say extraordinarily talented architect.
Then again, I should know all about not judging a book by its cover.
“That’s amazing,” I said, genuine. “Really, the houses are beautiful.” The two plots were almost identical except each had a second, differently sized building made of the same materials. The one on Thane’s plot was a little larger, like a guest house.
Uncertainty glimmered in his eyes. “Thank you.”
“Daddy, can I take off my shoes too?” Eilidh suddenly asked.
I smiled. “It feels pretty nice.”
“You’ll catch a cold.” Thane shook his head. “Anyway, it’s teatime.” He turned his son and daughter toward the house.
I was curious about their mom, my eyes moving to their home, wondering if she was inside waiting for them.
“Thane!” Lachlan’s voice carried loudly across the yards.
“Uncle Lachlan!” Eilidh shot past me like a little bullet.
I turned to watch Lachlan hurry down the steps of the decking to catch his niece in his arms. The wind stole their exchange from my ears. But whatever was said, it made Eilidh erupt into infectious giggles as he settled her on his hip and walked toward us. He grinned and suddenly I saw an image of him from a movie, wearing that same boyish, wicked smile. Not only was I again reminded that my sister’s fiancé was famous, but seeing him interact with his niece took him up a few million notches on the hotness scale.
“You’ve met Regan, then?” he asked Thane.
The brothers stood next to each other, and I saw the resemblance. Lachlan was a few inches taller than Thane, his eyes a little bluer, but they both shared the same rugged, Scandinavian handsomeness that made me wonder if there wasn’t a little Viking mixed up in their Scottish blood.
They exchanged a wordless conversation, but I was more perceptive than people thought. They weren’t happy with my arrival. I could see it in Lachlan’s clenched jaw and Thane’s suspicious expression.
Pretending I couldn’t give a shit, I grinned at Eilidh. She seemed happy to be in her uncle’s arms, but she was staring at me with big, beautiful blue-gray eyes. Her gaze dropped to my cheek, and she lifted a small hand as if to touch me.
“Why do your cheeks do that when you smile?” she asked.
“Do what?” I teased, knowing exactly what she was talking about. I’d inherited my father’s dimples.
“That!” She giggled, pointing at my left cheek.
“They’re dimples, Eilidh,” Thane answered.
“But why?”
Perhaps being in Scotland, surrounded by lilting Scottish accents, I was reminded of a story Mac once told to explain my dimples. “Fairies gave them to me. You see, when they wander out of Faerie and into our world, they don’t want humans to know what they are, and having fairy dust on them would be a big giveaway. So they made these little pockets in my cheeks so they can hide their fairy dust in them.”
“Really?” Eilidh was wide-eyed.
I nodded.
“Uh-uh,” Lewis disputed. “Fairies aren’t real.”
“Yeah, they are!” Eilidh disagreed vehemently. “Uncle Mac says so!”
I tried not to be annoyed by the realization that after Mac had left Robyn to rot in Boston, he’d made an entirely new life for himself in Scotland where these little kids called him uncle. “It was Mac who told me about my dimples and the fairy dust.” My smile wavered just as I met Lachlan’s gaze, and something sharpened in his.
I glanced away but found myself snared in the curiosity that lit Thane’s eyes.
“You know, I’m a little hungry.” I backed toward the house.
“That’s why I came out.” Lachlan turned to Thane. “Robyn’s ordered enough takeaway to feed an army. Do you and the kids want to join us? She ordered everything from Chinese to chicken nuggets.”
“Chicken nuggets!” Eilidh yelled with more enthusiasm than I’d felt for anything in years. Lachlan winced, even as his shoulders shook with amusement.
His brother’s eyes flicked to me. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, definitely. The kids are a nice distraction for Robyn.”
From me?
Ouch.
“I’m not sure.”
“Please, Dad.” Lewis tugged on his sweater.
“Chicken”—Eilidh’s voice deepened hilariously, her eyes taking on a wild madness as she stared at her father—“nuuuggeeets.”
We all laughed and for a moment, it broke the tension.
Maybe the kids were an excellent distraction.
3
Regan
So was Thane’s wife not in the picture? I wondered as everyone put together plates of food at the nearby kitchen island before settling at the large dining table. There had been no mention of asking a wife to join us for dinner, so I assumed Thane was divorced. He didn’t wear a wedding ring.
Watching Eilidh point out to her dad what she wanted on her plate, I piped up, “Why don’t you make a chicken nugget mash bowl?”
Eilidh stared at me with round eyes, her expression intrigued. “What’s that?”
I looked at Thane. “May I?”
He nodded and stepped away from the island. “Have at it.”
“So.” I grinned at Eilidh as I got up from my seat and went to her. “I can pretty much make chicken nuggets into twenty different meals.”
“It’s true,” Robyn agreed, and my heart lightened at her nostalgic smile. “Regan was the neighborhood babysitter, and then she was a nanny during the summers for a few years. She got creative recreating takeout food.”
From the age of thirteen, I babysat the neighborhood kids. It was how I made a little extra cash throughout high school. I liked kids. They were sweet and funny and guileless. Because of that, I’d started taking on summer nanny positions for families during their school breaks. I worked as a nanny every summer from eighteen to twenty-two.
“Surprising,” Lachlan murmured. “The nanny part, that is.”
His insinuation made me defensive. “Why?”
He seemed unperturbed by the slight bite in my tone. “You just don’t seem like the responsible type.”
“Lachlan,” Robyn warned.
I didn’t want her sticking up for me when she was the reason he thought I was a useless flake. “I see my sister has been filling your head with the crap our parents filled her head with.”
Lachlan raised an eyebrow while Robyn stiffened in her seat. She opened her mouth to answer, but I looked away and smiled down at Thane’s daughter and teased, “Okay, so don’t freak out, but I’m gonna cut up the nuggets.”
Eilidh’s eyes got bigger, but she nodded with trust.
Grinning through the tension emanating from the adults in the room, I quickly set to work scooping some mashed potatoes from the takeout container into a bowl. I then arranged the chicken nuggets around the edges of the mash. There wasn’t any gravy, but there was ketchup. I shook the bottle at her. “You like?”
She nodded as she threw her arms out wide. “This much.”
Chuckling, I drizzled the ketchup over the mash and chicken nuggets and carried it to the table for her. “Enjoy.”
She dove in that bowl with so much delight, a person might think I’d given her a golden crown. Thane gave me a nod of thanks and took a seat to eat his dinner.
I sat next to Lewis, across from Robyn, and said, “Next time, I’ll show you how to do chicken nugget nachos.”
“I’d like that too,” Lewis said.
“Yeah?”
He nodded and took a bite out of a burger. Robyn really had ordered everything she could think of.
“What else can you make?” Lewis asked around a mouthful.
“Please swallow before you talk,” Thane admonished in a tone that suggested he’d said the same thing a million times before.
“Anything a six-year-old would want to eat, Regan can do it,” my sister answered for me.
“Actually, my cooking skills have prog
ressed a little since high school. I took a few cooking classes when I was in Europe and Asia.”
“Cooking classes in Europe and Asia.” Robyn whistled. “How very cultured of you.”
Thankfully, Eilidh spoke up so I could avoid my sister’s passive-aggressive comment. “This. Is. SO. GOOD.” She banged her fork on the table in emphasis.
“Yeah? Can I have a bite?”
She nodded enthusiastically and pushed the bowl across the table toward me. I took a scoopful of ketchup-soaked nuggets and mash on my fork. Chewing it, I nodded, my eyes dramatic and round. When I swallowed, I agreed, “So. Good.”
Her answering grin was the cutest thing I’d ever seen, her little face lighting up. When she spoke again, it was with kid randomness. “I love your nail varnish. Will you paint my nails?”
“I don’t know. That’s up to your dad.”
Thane shook his head. “You’re too young for nail varnish.”
“But, Daddy!”
Sensing a tantrum on the horizon, I intervened, “Nail polish is for when you’re older. But I could braid your hair. Have you ever worn a fishtail braid?”
“What’s a braid?”
I raised an eyebrow. Did her mom not braid her hair?
“It’s a pleat,” Thane answered.
Her expression cleared, and I realized we’d hit on a cultural misunderstanding. Scots called braids pleats, just like they called polish varnish and ken was know. I filed that away. “I can pleat your hair later. A fishtail is such a cute look.”
“It doesn’t sound cute.” She wrinkled her nose, making me laugh.
“Don’t think of it as a fishtail … think of it more like a mermaid tail.”
“I love mermaids!” Eilidh gasped, her eyes round with excitement.
Oh my God, she was so cute I could die.
“Lucy,” she panted around her food, “Lucy tried to pleat my hair once, but she said it was too curly.”
Before I could say that I’d have no problem mastering her wild curls, a thick tension fell over the table.
Then I realized why.
Lucy.
Did she mean Lucy Wainwright?
Shit.
And why was a starlet offering to braid Eilidh’s hair and not her mother?
“Dad said we’re not allowed to talk about Lucy, Eilidh. You’re so stupid,” Lewis snapped, his cheeks reddening with frustration.
Eilidh’s face crumpled.
“Lewis, I didn’t say that, and don’t speak to your sister that way.” Thane glared angrily at his son.
Lewis looked like someone had slapped him. “But you said—”
“You misunderstood me.” Thane sighed wearily. “The point is, you never speak to each other like that. Okay?”
Seeing tears brighten in Eilidh’s face, I hurried to distract her. “I can pleat your hair for school tomorrow.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
I nodded, smiling.
“Tomorrow is Saturday,” Lewis reminded me sullenly, his eyes to his food.
His dad watched him with a pained, worried expression.
Jeez. What was going on here?
“Right. Well, I can pleat Eilidh’s hair anytime.”
“Tomorrow?” She bounced impatiently in her seat. “I want a mermaid’s tail!”
“Sure. It’s a plan,” I promised, and then nudged Lewis’s elbow. “So school, huh? What grade are you in?”
He looked up at me, his cheeks still red from his dad’s earlier admonishment. “Grade?”
“Primary class,” Robyn offered.
“I just started primary three.”
I didn’t know what that meant. “Just started?”
“School just started back this week,” Thane replied.
“Oh, right. So … primary three. That makes you … eight, nine?” I guessed by his height.
His eyes lit up. “Seven.”
“You’re tall for seven. Must get that from your dad and uncle, huh?”
Lewis looked pleased and nodded.
Grinning, I turned to Eilidh. “And what primary class are you in?”
“Five!” She splayed the fingers of her right hand.
Her brother giggled. “Not age, Eils. Class. She’s in primary one. It was her first-ever week at school.”
“Wow. Big week for you then?”
She nodded rapidly around a mouthful.
Seriously. So freaking cute.
“She got Ms. Hansen, and she’s the best teacher.” Lewis grimaced. “I got Mrs. Welsh.”
“You don’t like Mrs. Welsh?”
He wrinkled his nose. “She’s grumpy and doesn’t like the boys and she picks on you if you don’t know the answer to something. And she smells.”
Thane sighed heavily. Looking at him, I could tell he wanted to reprimand Lewis for insulting his teacher, but after the moment they just had, he was probably reluctant to pile it on.
“Does she really smell, or are you just saying that because you don’t like her?”
He thought about this. “Well, Connor said she smells.”
“Who’s Connor?”
“One of my friends.”
“So … because Connor said Mrs. Welsh smells, you all say it now?”
He nodded.
“Is it true?”
He shrugged. “Not really. But the other stuff is.”
“Okay. Well, it sucks that Mrs. Welsh is impatient and grumpy, but we shouldn’t really say mean stuff about people if it’s not true, right?”
Lewis considered this. “So I should stop saying she smells?”
“Yeah. It would be the right thing to do. The kind thing.”
“But I can say she’s mean? Because that’s true.”
Trying not to laugh, I replied diplomatically, “That’s fine if it’s true, and it’s always good to be honest, especially if someone is picking on you, no matter what age they are. But I always say it’s best to fight unkindness with kindness. So anytime you come across someone in life who isn’t very nice to you, it does no good to come down to their level and be unkind in return. And sometimes, when you’re kind to someone who hasn’t been kind to you, you change their attitude, and they stop being mean to you. Yeah?”
I was shocked by how attentive this seven-year-old boy was, but Lewis was hanging on to my every word and seemed to process it. Finally, he nodded and said, “Okay.”
It was only then that I realized the table was quiet. Looking up, I found my three adult companions staring at me: Thane in gratitude, Lachlan in surprise, and my sister with an expression that veered between pride and melancholy.
The melancholy gutted me.
“Finished!” Eilidh yelled, breaking the moment. She had ketchup all over her cheeks.
I grinned, grateful for the cutie. “Did you eat any of it or just get it all over your face?”
Joy glittered in her eyes, and she slapped her little hands down on the table and cackled. Her loud, hilarious giggling was so infectious, she made us all burst into laughter.
It was a pity her magic didn’t last.
* * *
A while later, Thane and his cute kids left with the promise that I’d pop by in the morning to braid Eilidh’s hair. Jet lag had hit me, and Robyn sensed I was fading.
“Let me help with the dishes,” I offered for the thousandth time as she and Lachlan tidied up.
“We have a dishwasher,” Robyn repeated. “You look exhausted. Go to bed.”
My eyelids were drooping, so I followed her order and stumbled upstairs. I barely remembered changing into pjs and getting into bed.
It would be hours later when an electronic sound filtered into my unconsciousness, and I forced open my heavy eyes, blinking against the light flooding into the room. It took me a minute to remember where I was.
Groaning as soft daylight illuminated the bedroom, I rolled over in the super comfortable guest bed and fumbled for my phone on the side table. The screen lit up—six o’clock in the morning.
&n
bsp; The blackout blinds were on an automatic timer.
For six o’clock in the morning.
“We’ll need to do something about that,” I muttered grumpily as I shoved myself into a sitting position. It was then I registered the email notification banner on my phone.
All I saw was the word Austin and a wave of nausea rose in my gut.
No, no, how could he have this email?
Fingers shaking, I clicked on it, relief washing through me when I realized it was just stupid spam for a discount on a hike-and-bike trail tour in Austin, Texas.
“Fuck,” I muttered, cradling my head in my hands. It had been five months since my last email from Austin, when I’d finally stopped letting him control my life with his harassment and deleted my email and social media accounts, changed my cell number, and pretended he’d never existed.
It was his last email that had finally awakened my fighting spirit. His words were so unhinged, they were seared on my memory.
Beautiful, I can’t sleep again. How many hours of sleep have I lost over you? You owe me those hours. Hours I should have been inside you, watching you come, making those sweet noises you make as you’re reaching for it. I want to punish you so badly for making me feel this way. It’s your fault I’m so fucked up. You made me love you. You’re making me chase you. But when I find you, when we find each other, you’ll see what I see. That we’re meant to be together. I would never hurt you. Anything I say or do is to keep you safe with me.
I can’t wait to make love to you.
But first, you’ll get the punishment fuck you think you escaped. I’ve been imagining it over and over in my head. I want it to hurt so you can feel my pain. God, it makes me so hard just thinking about it.
You see what you do to me?
I love you. I love you so much, Regan. You’ll see it too. Soon.
All my love,
Austin
Remembering that morning in my motel room in California when I’d opened that email, my nausea intensified. At the time I’d thrown my phone across the bed, hurried to the bathroom, slammed up the toilet seat, fallen to my knees, and gagged.
There With You: An Adair Family Novel Page 3
