Now, Thane was not only acting like nothing happened, but he was treating me with cold politeness.
The kids weren’t up yet. I was in the middle of setting out their breakfast dishes and juice when Thane, dressed in a suit, came hurrying down the stairs. When I offered him coffee, he didn’t even look at me and just coolly told me he could get it himself. Then he disappeared upstairs again instead of chatting like he normally would before waking Eilidh and Lewis.
I blinked at the sight of him now.
He’d trimmed his beard. Like, really trimmed it.
And it looked amazing.
Was he trying to kill me?
“Your beard,” I said.
His eyes flicked up before moving away as he grabbed his car keys off the hook on the wall near the photo gallery. “Excuse me?”
“You trimmed your beard.”
“So I did.” He walked out of the kitchen toward the front entrance.
Was that it?
I wasn’t even getting a goodbye?
Tears stung my eyes, and I quickly blinked them back as I heard the front door slam shut.
“I hate men,” I whispered harshly. Even the best of them couldn’t escape the asshole gene when it came to sex and attraction.
* * *
THANE
He was thirty minutes from Ardnoch before he stopped fighting with himself to turn around and drive back to the house.
Now it was too late. He couldn’t be tardy for work after yesterday’s debacle with Paul.
Still, his gut churned with that awful feeling he got when he knew he’d done something wrong.
He’d handled Regan badly. There was a difference between reminding her they should act professionally around one another and acting like an insensitive bastard. Leaving without saying goodbye was fucking rude.
“Arsehole,” he muttered for the hundredth time as he pulled into the parking lot. How did he apologize now without getting her hopes up?
Would her hopes even be up?
He was assuming Regan gave a shit if he wanted to sleep with her.
“She gives a shit,” he said under his breath as he got out of the SUV. If he was being honest, they’d been dancing around their attraction to each other for weeks. That day at the beach, they’d most definitely been flirting, and when he’d seen her flirting with Jared McCulloch, he’d acted like a jealous arsehole then too. Thane thought he was past all the games and possessiveness at his age.
“Thane Adair?” A man stepped from between two vehicles in front of him, drawing him out of his thoughts.
Thane abruptly stopped walking.
Guard up at the suspicious behavior, and with the punch he’d given Paul in mind, Thane glanced around to see if they were alone. They weren’t. A few other employees were making their way to the lift. Relaxing slightly, he asked, “Who’s asking?”
The man drew nearer. His huge, dark eyes were haunted behind his round spectacles.
But Thane suddenly recognized him. Dread and anger and grief and despair and possessiveness fired within. “What do you want?”
“To talk with you. About Eilidh.” He slurred the words.
Rage consumed him, and he took a menacing step toward the man. “You will stay away from my daughter.”
Desperation lit up the man’s face. “But she isn’t yours, is she? She’s mine.”
A quick look around the lot told him they were alone now. Thane lunged at him, grabbing him by the shirtfront. He cried out, but Thane ignored his pleas, hauling him through a gap between cars to slam him against a concrete pillar. The smell of whisky wafted strongly off the bastard.
“Just because you fucked my wife doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. Eilidh is mine!” He was so furious, spittle flew from his mouth as he raged, “I don’t know why you crawled out of the woodwork now, but I’m warning you to crawl the fuck back in, or I will ruin your goddamn miserable existence. And you know I can.” He pushed him harder into the pillar. “Do you understand me?”
The man nodded as his trembling hand reached to straighten his glasses.
His fear doused some of Thane’s rage, and he stumbled away. “Get out of here … before I do something we both regret.”
14
Regan
“So Arrochar wants to host us all at her place on Saturday, since she’s doing the cooking. But I thought you and I could try baking the cake.” Robyn folded the clean laundry as she spoke.
I glanced at her and frowned before turning back to my ironing. “I told you, you don’t need to help me. This is my job.”
“Yeah, but I’m not doing anything right now and these kids have more clothes than a Kardashian.”
I shrugged. “Thane likes to make sure they have everything they need.”
“I know.”
At Robyn’s silence, I looked up. She narrowed her eyes, expression ponderous.
“What is it?”
My sister scrutinized me some more. “You sounded a little defensive, that’s all. In fact, you’ve been a little short all morning.”
“If you mean about the Adair brothers’ birthday plans, then it’s because I’m not sure us baking a cake when we have no prior experience beyond the odd tray of brownies is a good idea.”
“No, I just mentioned the cake. You’ve been off all morning.”
My pulse raced at Robyn’s probing stare. I hemmed and hawed over whether to tell her about Thane. I worried she’d judge me as that impulsive, irresponsible woman who had dated an asshole after running away from another asshole. However, I also needed someone to talk to. Someone I could trust. Someone whose advice meant a lot to me.
“Okay, I’m getting worried.” Robyn pushed away from the laundry room counter and stood right in front of the ironing board so I had nowhere to look but into her eyes. They were golden today beneath the room’s bright spotlights. “Talk to me.”
Sighing, I placed the iron down. “Robyn … when you started your affair with Lachlan, did you ever think you were doing something wrong? Like he was an inappropriate choice because he was Mac’s friend and boss?”
My sister seemed surprised by my question but considered it. “Well, yeah, I think more so on Lachlan’s part because I was Mac’s daught—oh my God, you have feelings for Thane.” She guessed, her eyes big and round and absolutely not revealing whether she was horrified or surprised.
I grimaced. My sister was way too smart for her own good. “If I said I did?”
Robyn blinked like an owl for a few seconds and then exhaled slowly. “Okay … well … I’d have to ask what kind of feelings? Feelings-feelings or lusty feelings?”
Relieved she wasn’t acting creeped out about it, I relaxed. Marginally. “At first I thought it was just a crush. He’s sexy and nice and he’s got that accent—”
“Oh, I know all about the accent thing, trust me.”
I gave a huff of laughter. “Right? And he’s adorable with Eilidh and Lewis. It was the first thing that struck me about him was the way he looked at his children, like they were his universe.”
“They are his universe.”
“I know. And I thought I just had a typical female reaction to being in proximity to a smokin’-hot single dad. I mean, it’s one of my favorite tropes.”
Robyn’s lips twitched with laughter.
“I was absolutely determined to ignore the lusty feelings he was eliciting in my southern region.”
“Thanks for the overshare.”
I grinned unashamedly. “You’re welcome. As I was saying”—my humor fled as I remembered Thane’s coldness toward me that morning—“there have been times these past few months when it seemed like we might be flirting with each other a little … and I even told him about why I left you when you got shot.”
My sister raised an eyebrow, obviously surprised I’d divulged that to him.
“And he’s entrusted me with some of his history. Things I don’t think he discusses with many people. We get along amazingly. It’s like we fall natural
ly into sync, as though we’ve all been a family forever.”
Concern entered Robyn’s eyes.
“I know,” I hurried to say, “I know, before you say that those are dangerous ideas to have. But I’m finding it harder to ignore how I feel. Until … well, you know how I rushed to his work yesterday to drop off his portfolio?”
She nodded.
“There was this sleazy colleague that Thane wanted me away from as fast as possible, and he was kind of an ass about it. He apologized when he got home and then told me he smacked the guy in the face for making a crude crack about me being the nanny, and, well, he didn’t tell me the details but I could guess what was said.”
Robyn nodded. “Lachlan told me last night. I was shocked. Thane always comes across as the levelheaded brother, but Lachlan said when they were younger, Thane was kind of a scrapper.”
I filed that information away, coveting it, as I did anything about Thane. Seriously, I was borderline obsessed. “I was icing his hand afterward, and we had this moment. There was touching … of my ass. More like a manly, hot, grabbing of my ass, actually.” I shivered remembering it.
“Keep the details to a minimum.” Robyn scowled. “You are my baby sister, and I do not want to have to kill Lachlan’s brother before our wedding.”
I chuckled unhappily. “Well, that was all that happened. He was about to kiss me when your stupid fiancé walked in, and I ran away.”
“I will let the stupid comment pass since you’re clearly upset.”
“I am upset. Here I’m thinking, there’s no denying Thane is attracted to me, too, because I had evidence of said hard-on digging into my stomach—”
“God save me from baby sisters who have no filter.”
“—and being a complete naive fool, barely sleeping because I’m daydreaming that something special might come from this, and all he’s thinking is ‘How can I make it as clear as possible that I’m repulsed by my reaction to my nanny last night?’”
Robyn frowned, her amusement gone. “What did he do?”
The hurt rose to the fore, and I couldn’t meet her eyes. Instead, I smiled breezily. “He was kind of cold to me this morning, no big deal.”
“Regan, it’s me you’re talking to.”
I met her loving gaze and instantly dropped my guard. “It hurt.” I shrugged, trying to pull back the ridiculous emotion I experienced over a guy just because he’d acted monosyllabic and short with me. “I’m making a bigger thing out of it than it was.”
Robyn leaned on the ironing board and reached for my hand, her expression concerned and tender at the same time. “If there’s one thing I know really well, it’s Adair men and how they think. One thing I love about Lachlan and Thane is their sense of honor and responsibility. Having a sense of honor is a dying trait, and it’s appealing when you find it in someone. But it can also make a person pretty hard on themselves. Lachlan gets tetchy when he thinks he’s failed someone or failed himself. And I can see Thane being that guy too.”
“What are you saying?”
She squeezed my hand, her sympathy making me uneasy. “I’m saying, how would it look if he seduced his twenty-five-year-old nanny?”
I pulled my hand away. “When you say it like that, you make it sound crude and dirty. It’s not.”
“No, but that’s how some people will see it. And you are his employee, Regan. His much younger employee, and he has two children he needs to protect. Even from village gossip.”
My brows pulled together as my agitation built. “It’s not wrong if we have feelings for each other.”
My sister gave me a pained look. “Sweetie, I think any man would be lucky to have you, and any man who can’t see that is a fool … but there’s a possibility that all this is for Thane is a physical attraction. Baby girl, you are gorgeous. Could fit right in among all those stunning, famous actors running around the estate kind of gorgeous. He would have to be dead not to see that. And react to it.”
The hurt flared again. It had never crossed my mind that all it would be for him was physical attraction.
Why would it be anything else?
He was a professional, intelligent, sexy, wealthy single father.
And I was a flailing college graduate who had abandoned her family because she couldn’t face the harsh realities of life.
“No. No.” Robyn tugged my chin to bring my eyes to her. “Whatever it is you’re thinking right now, get it out of your head.”
“I’m a moron,” I whispered.
“You’re not a moron. Don’t say that.”
“Should I quit?” The thought of leaving Eilidh and Lewis killed me.
Robyn frowned. “No. They need you, Regan. They … Eils and Lew are so happy, and I see a difference in Thane too. He’s more relaxed, less stressed.”
“I have to leave in four months, anyway.”
“Actually … not really. I’ve been looking into it, and you could apply for a UK ancestry visa. Those allow you to stay for five years, as long as you can prove you have a work placement, which I’m sure Thane would provide.”
Surprised, I asked, “What’s a UK ancestry visa?”
“It applies to anyone who has a grandparent who was born in the UK. And you do, on Seth’s side. While his dad’s parents were born in Boston, his mom’s parents were born in the UK. In Newcastle, to be exact.”
“Is that what you have because of Mac?”
“No. Because my dad was born here, even though I was born in the States, I automatically have dual citizenship. Yours is something you have to apply for.”
“I think we need to sit so I can process this.”
Two minutes later, I sat on a stool at the island facing my big sister. “I have grandparents living here?”
Robyn winced. “They’re both passed now. But that means you have relatives living in the UK, if you ever wanted to look them up.”
“Oh. That’s cool.” I smiled. “So this means I can apply for this visa thingie?”
She nodded, excitement lighting her eyes. “I spoke with Seth, and he gave me his grandparents’ information so I could trace them. Mac helped. We found out two weeks ago, and I just … I didn’t know how to bring it up because I didn’t want to pressure you into staying.”
“Dad knows about this? Is he okay with the idea?”
“He’s not thrilled, but he sees a massive difference in you. Says you keep in touch more with him now than you did in Boston, and you sound happy. That’s all he wants. And he knows how close you and I are. I’d forgotten how much we need each other. Not that I’m pressuring you.” She rolled her eyes. “That sounded like pressure.”
I was so grateful Robyn wanted me to stay. “It’s not. And I would do it in a heartbeat, but … maybe this whole Thane thing is a sign I shouldn’t. It’s not exactly responsible.”
“Please,” Robyn huffed, “a person cannot help who they’re attracted to.”
“I wouldn’t call it attraction. It’s more like a desperate, savage need to be naked with him and have him do a lot of dirty things to me.”
“I have a gun,” she reminded me stonily.
I burst out laughing, pulling her in for a hug as she glowered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll stop saying stuff like that.”
“Please, please do.”
Wiping tears of laughter from my eyes, I settled back on my stool and groaned through my amusement as reality returned. “What do I do, Robbie?”
She stared at me, her expression serious. “I don’t know what’s between you two, but I’ve never heard you moon over a man like this. Is it ideal? No. But neither were Lachlan and me. Neither are other people,” she said a little mysteriously. “And all you can do is sit by and watch them waste something special because they’re afraid it’s inappropriate.” She shrugged, her gaze focusing again. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m biased because I’d like you to stay, and because I think Thane is one of the good ones. I just … I don’t think you should run this time.”
I w
inced a little at the reminder. “I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t say it to be harsh. I trust you would never start something with Thane, knowing what this family has been through, if you planned to take off as soon as things got tough.”
“Never,” I promised. “I would never do that, Robyn. Not to the kids. Not to Thane. Not to you.”
“I know.” She nodded. “I believe you.”
Tears stung my eyes. I hadn’t realized how much I needed her to say that.
She squeezed my hand. “I told you I wouldn’t hold the last two years against you, and I won’t. We’ll never move on that way. I am proud of who you’ve become. I’m proud of how you handle Eilidh and Lewis and the love and friendship and support you give them. I’m proud of how seriously you take your job, and I don’t want you thinking that your feelings for Thane diminishes that. We can’t help who we want. And who knows how Thane feels about you? What I do know is that if it is just physical on his part, if he is holding back because he thinks it’s inappropriate, his mind can’t be changed if you leave.”
As her words sank in, hope blossomed in my chest. I bit my lip against a giddy smile.
Robyn saw it and shook her head at me. “Jesus, you’ve got it bad.”
“You can’t tell Lachlan. Or anyone. This stays between us.”
My sister took my words to heart. “I don’t like keeping secrets from him, but I don’t want him jumping to conclusions about this.”
“Thanks. And thank you … for trusting me. For trusting that this isn’t just a flavor-of-the-month kind of thing. I am happy here. I do feel things for him that I’ve never felt before.”
“I can tell.” She considered this and then said, “Does that mean you’ll apply for the visa?”
I laughed at her persistence, overjoyed by it, in fact. “That means I will definitely think about it.”
15
Regan
Arrochar’s house was a midcentury bungalow in a well-kept, well-designed residential area a few blocks from Castle Street. The first time she’d brought me to her house for coffee, I was surprised, expecting her to be living it up in a stylish, modern home like Lachlan and Thane.
There With You: An Adair Family Novel Page 16
