The MacTaggart Brothers Trilogy

by Anna Durand

  "How did it feel?" I asked.

  "Good, but not as exciting as making love to you."

  My spirit soared high above the car, detached from my earthbound body. He'd used that word again. Love.

  With so many detours, and a stop for lunch, we didn't make it to Skye that day. After so long driving, to make sure I got the full experience, Rory was exhausted when we reached Invergarry. We got lucky and scored a room at a quaint farm that doubled as a bed-and-breakfast. Despite his fatigue, Rory rebounded after a homestyle dinner, and once we got inside our cozy room, he made love to me for an hour, with a reverence and tender care that took my breath away.

  I slept better than I had in all my adult life.

  On the second day, the sights blurred together because I had trouble concentrating on anything beyond Rory. He'd grown so animated while pointing out landmarks and explaining the history of this ancient land that I couldn't look away from him. Watching him made me smile and soften in the best ways. I twisted my torso to get a better view of his face, with my cheek against my seat's back.

  A stop for lunch. More sightseeing. I saw nothing anymore, except for him.

  Tonight, I had to tell him. I had to say the words even if it freaked him out. I love you. He needed to know, because I hated keeping it secret. After vowing we'd both be honest with each other, always, I felt like a hypocrite for not sharing my feelings.

  The sun was lagging toward the horizon when we crossed the Skye Bridge over Loch Alsh. Fifteen minutes after setting wheels on Skye, we pulled up in the circular drive of a two-story home.

  Rory parked in front of the door. "This is it."

  I climbed out of the car, tilting my head up to survey the gray-stone building. "It's a mansion."

  "A manse," Rory said, coming up beside me. "Not a mansion."

  "What's the difference?"

  "This was, at one time, the home of a clergyman. Houses like this are known as manses."

  "Sure, whatever you say. I'm used to America. We have mansions and McMansions, but no manses I know of."

  He pulled me against his side. "You're Scottish now."

  We wandered into the manse, and I oohed at the intricate woodwork on display in every room, as well as the period-appropriate furnishings and decor. Rory informed me the house dated back to the 1800s. I might've thought I'd stepped through a time portal into the past, if not for the modern amenities tastefully blended into the historic elements. We had a modern kitchen with an old-timey feel and a modern bathroom upstairs.

  Rory prepared dinner, which I gobbled up like I'd been starved for three days. Nerves made me eat too fast. Since deciding to confess my feelings to him, I'd developed an underlying sense of dread that frayed my composure.

  How would he react? Would my confession drive him away?

  I held out no hope — only the slenderest thread, at least — he might say he loved me too. I suspected he did, or maybe prayed he did, but he wasn't ready to admit it.

  After dinner, we retired to the sitting room. I curled up on the couch with my knees folded and turned to the side. Rory reclined beside me, his feet on the coffee table.

  D-Day had arrived.

  I angled my body toward him and wrung my hands on my lap. "I'm a hypocrite."

  He moved only his eyes to glance at me. "Why?"

  "I need to tell you something." I anchored my hands on my knees. "Something I should've told you days ago when I realized it, but I've been afraid of how you might react. That's not like me, you know, to be afraid to speak my mind. I have to say this, even if you freak out."

  He swung his head toward me, lips pinched. "What is it?"

  My fingers dug into my knees. My mouth went dry. "I'm in love with you."

  "I understand." Blank face. Flat voice.

  "You understand? What does that mean?"

  He faced forward, his body stiffening, and cleared his throat. "I need a drink."

  Rory launched off the couch and hastened to the liquor cabinet. He brought out a bottle of Ben Nevis and a glass tumbler. When he decanted a precise inch of whisky into his glass, I jumped up and stomped to him.

  I bumped my hip into the liquor cabinet. "I love you, Rory."

  "Heard you the first time," he muttered between mouthfuls of booze.

  "And your response is to get drunk again."

  He slapped his glass down on the cabinet, sloshing the remaining liquid. "If you're expecting me to —"

  "I'm not expecting anything from you. I'm telling you how I feel because we both promised each other complete honesty." I eyed his whisky, and a memory of our wedding night flared in my mind. "That's a lie. I do expect one thing from you — not to get wasted."

  The corners of his mouth tugged downward. "I am not getting drunk. I'm having one drink."

  "Because I told you I love you."

  "Stop saying it." He nabbed his glass and downed the rest of its contents in one gulp. "Repeating the words ad nauseam won't make me say what you want."

  Ad nauseam? He was freaked out, and I didn't have the energy to talk him through it, not this time.

  "Do what you want," I said, whirling toward the doorway. "I'm going to bed."

  I tried to storm off in dramatic style, but I was too tired for melodramatic gestures. Despite knowing he wouldn't say he loved me, despite not knowing if he did love me, I'd thought he learned his lesson on our wedding night. I'd believed he'd refrain from drowning his angst in a whisky bottle.

  Ten minutes later, I shambled out of the bathroom into the master suite wearing a silky black nightie trimmed in black lace. It was the only item of sleepwear I'd brought on this trip. I didn't feel sexy in it tonight.

  I made it to the bed, my gaze downcast, before I realized I wasn't alone.

  Rory lay in bed, under the covers, his chest bare and the remainder of him concealed under the sheet and blanket. His head rested on a plush feather pillow.

  I nudged the bed with my knees, mulling whether to get in.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I've been an erse again."

  I snorted. "An eejit and an erse, I'd say."

  "Aye." He gave the covers a hesitant pat. "Should I sleep in another room?"

  "No."

  He pushed up on an elbow. "I'm sorry, Emery. I reacted badly, again, and hurt you — again. But I am not drunk. I never intended to get drunk, please believe that."

  I rocked back on my heels and then forward again until my knees met the mattress. "I believe you."

  "Thank you." The words emerged on a relieved sigh. His eyebrows rose. "You're wearing a nightie. Didn't think you owned one."

  "I have a few, but I don't sleep in them very much. Bought this one for —" I smoothed my hands over my nightie. "Doesn't matter."

  "What did you buy it for? I'd like to know."

  His gentle tone convinced me to say it. "For our wedding night."

  Rory winced.

  I raised a hand to stop his imminent apology. "You already said you're sorry."

  "Will you sleep with me, then?"

  As an answer, I peeled back the covers and crawled on hands and knees toward him. At his side, I sat back on my heels.

  He fingered the hem of my nightie. "It's bonnie, but not as bonnie as you."

  Melting. Again. Damn, sometimes I wished I didn't turn gooey for him so easily.

  "What are you wearing?" I asked, picking up the edge of the covers to peek beneath them. "Oh. You're not wearing anything. Does that mean…"

  "Too tired for sex, I'm afraid."

  "Me too." I let the covers fall back over him. "Why the nudie show if we're not getting it on?"

  "I like feeling your naked body beside me." He ran a finger along my nightie's hem, grazing my skin. "You've picked this night to wear clothing to bed, for the first time since I've known you."

  "Not true. You made me wear your shirt on the second night we shared a bed."

  "So I did." He shot a po
inted look at my nightie. "You complained then, but now you voluntarily cover your luscious body."

  "A problem easily resolved." I raised onto my knees and whisked the nightie over my head, tossing it toward the foot of the bed. "See?"

  He flipped the covers up so I could crawl underneath and nestle against him. We slept through the night, cuddled under the covers, content despite the issues hovering between us.

  I woke at eight thirty to find Rory slumbering beside me.

  When he roused a few minutes later, I was sitting beside him smiling.

  He arched one brow. "What?"

  I pointed at the bedside clock. "You slept in, without being drunk. It's after eight thirty."

  With a negligent shrug of one shoulder, he said, "I woke at five, but I couldn't bear to leave my wife lying here all alone, soft and warm and naked. I went back to sleep."

  My smile broadened. "That's what I call progress."

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  After a breakfast cooked by me, Rory and I explored the area around our property. Maybe if I'd grown up in Scotland, I wouldn't have gotten so excited about Skye, but for an American like me, the island had a mystical aura. Ancient people built mysterious monuments here. The whisky that won Lachlan a wife had been crafted right here. Rory had bought a house here, though for reasons I hadn't yet coaxed out of him, he'd never visited it before.

  Yes, okay, maybe I hoped Skye would work its magic on my husband the way it had for Erica and Lachlan. They hadn't set foot here. A bottle of Talisker single-malt cast the Skye spell on their relationship.

  "You look pensive," Rory said.

  "Guess the amazing view inspired deep thoughts."

  "About what?"

  "Whisky and men." And you, my mercurial husband.

  He pulled me against him. "You do have the strangest thoughts. Here we are on the coast of Skye, on a beautifully sunny day, and you're musing about whisky."

  I swept my gaze over a loch I'd forgotten the name of and the various craft navigating its waters, from tourist boats to dinghies to sailboats. The coast was rocky here, and I'd clutched Rory's hand as we trudged across the stone-littered shore so I could get a closer view. Across the water from us, craggy mountains soared up to the heavens. Behind us, a road wended its way around the coast and the jagged cliffs gave way to a flatter area that housed a tourist shop and a parking lot. Nearer to us, between the road and the shore, large black stones thrust up from the earth.

  Pretty, puffy clouds dotted the azure sky.

  I linked my arms around Rory's waist and snuggled my cheek on his chest. "Don't you want to know what men I've been musing about?"

  "I hope it's not Luke, or that bod ceann before him."

  "Mm-mm." I smiled, though I doubted he could see it. "Your brothers."

  "I see." He had that amused lilt in his voice, the one I usually figured was him trying not to laugh. "Aidan, I can understand. We used to call him Don Juan, after all. But Lachlan?"

  Rory made a disgusted noise.

  "Oh come on," I said, and gave him a playful slug in the gut. "Lachlan's hot. As for Aidan… Whew."

  Rory twisted in my arms until we faced each other. He secured me against him with both hands joined over my lower back and tipped his head down to narrow his eyes at me.

  "It won't work," he said. "Trying to make me jealous. I have no worries you want someone else more."

  "More than you? Never."

  "Last night —" He flattened his lips, which normally indicated annoyance, but something in his eyes suggested a different emotion, a mysterious one that edged dangerously close to the thing he refused to talk about. "I warned you I can't give you what you need."

  "You said you won't, not you can't." My forehead on his chest, I gave in to a weariness more emotional than physical. "Don't worry, I'm not trying to make you love me. I told you how I feel to get it off my chest, that's all."

  His gusty breath fluttered my hair, the only way I knew he'd dipped his head near mine. "Whenever you want to leave, I'll give you the money."

  I made a rude face only his shirt saw. "I'm not leaving. The only way you're getting rid of me is if you give me the heave-ho."

  Another breath gusted over my hair. "The heave-ho sounds terrible, as if I'm pitching you over the side of a ship in the middle of the ocean."

  "How this ends is up to you, Rory."

  We huddled there for a while, ensconced in each other's arms but not speaking or looking at each other. Waves lapped on the rocky shore. Car engines grumbled on the road. Gulls squawked. I pressed my ear to Rory's chest and let the rhythmic thumping of his heart soothe me. Odd that I found comfort in the one part of him I couldn't reach. I might crawl over his entire body, licking and touching him from head to toe, but could I ever penetrate his ironclad heart?

  Rory shrugged away from me and turned his haunted gaze to the dark loch.

  "You asked me once," he said, "why I bought a house here."

  I stuffed my hands in my jacket pockets, afraid to speak, sensing he might be about to confide in me.

  "Three years ago," he began, his gaze remote though directed toward the water, "I came to Skye on business. Doesn't matter why. On my way home, I drove past the manse and saw the estate agent's sign. Something about the house made me pull into the drive and get out of my car. No one was living there at the time, and the grass and shrubs were overgrown. With sunset almost over, the house looked dark and forsaken in the twilight, and I stood there watching the shadows consume it."

  Consume. The tone of his voice transformed that word into the most desolate thing I'd ever heard. Though I longed to touch him, my muscles refused to budge.

  He rubbed a palm on his chest, eyes closed. "This was a few days after I learned Una had given birth to a baby girl. She and her partner had done in vitro with a sperm donor. I learned this from Lilias when I ran into her in Ballachulish. Somehow over the years, she and Una had become friends."

  The impulse to speak, to ask questions or offer comfort, became so powerful I had to literally bite down on my tongue to restrain it.

  Rory looked at me, his expression rife with a pain I couldn't understand — not yet.

  "Lilias was excited," he continued. "She showed me pictures of Una's baby, and of the three children she had with the boy she'd —" An emotion akin to anguish flashed on his face, only to be eradicated by a stony expression. "The teenager she'd become involved with while she was married to me. He's an adult now, of course. They married and have a wonderful life together with their children. Una is equally blessed, Lilias said. She also mentioned Isobel, gossip she'd heard about her. Apparently, my first wife was never able to have children, but she's happily married."

  I couldn't bite my tongue any longer without drawing blood, so I dared to light a hand on his chest and say, "That must've been hard to hear."

  He nodded solemnly. "I'm pleased for them, of course. And I might not have minded hearing about their joyful lives if Lilias hadn't also said — She told me I looked sad. Lonely. She offered to arrange for me to meet a woman she knew."

  "Your cheating ex-wife wanted to set you up on a blind date?"

  "Aye." He peered out at the loch, bleakness creeping into his eyes. "I thanked Lilias for the offer but politely declined, then I excused myself. Said I had an appointment to keep. For days after, I kept wondering why my ex-wives seem happy while I'm… not." He stared at the horizon beyond the road, his whole face squinted. "When I saw the manse, forsaken and unwanted, I felt a kinship with the house. Ridiculous, I know. But it spoke to me, and I thought I might like to come here once in a while to… I don't know. Wallow in seclusion. I bought the manse the next day, over the phone, without ever setting foot inside it. I paid people to renovate and furnish it. I still pay people to care for the place."

  "You never visited the house until now." He'd stopped practicing the caber toss three years ago, the same timeframe when he'd learned his wives were happy and re
alized he wasn't.

  His smile was rueful. "Wallowing in desolation isn't as appealing as it seemed at first."

  I eased my hands into his. "Why did you bring me here?"

  "You wanted to see the ocean."

  "Don't be deliberately obtuse. You know what I mean. Why did you bring me to Skye, to the house you bought because it looked as melancholy and forlorn as you felt?"

  He tried to back away, but I held fast to his hands.

  "What makes you think I felt melancholy and forlorn?" he asked.

  "You just told me." I inched closer. "The house was forsaken, unwanted, consumed by shadows. You felt a kinship with it. Takes a real genius to figure out you were talking about yourself when you described the house."

  Rory's lips twitched upward. "You are the cleverest woman I've ever met."

  "I was being facetious."

  His subtle amusement broadened into a warm smile. "I know. But you're still the cleverest."

  I hopped up to give him a swift kiss. "Let's get off this depressing jaunt down memory lane. You've had fun with me, haven't you?"

  "Cannae help it, you insist on making me do ridiculous things."

  I tapped his chest. "You say it's ridiculous, but I've figured out that's Rory code for 'thanks for showing me a great time.' And you're welcome, by the way."

  He fanned his hands over my back. "Never could fool you, could I?"

  "Nope." My pulse jumped when I noted the gleam in his eyes and the way his entire demeanor had lightened. "Why don't we go back to that lonely, desolate house of yours and find ways to have fun there. Maybe we can turn its frown upside-down too."

  "If anyone can make a house smile, it's you."

  We wended our way back to the house in no hurry after relishing a meal at a local eatery. For the rest of the day, we enjoyed ourselves in every room in the manse — every room except the bedroom. Rory had wanted to save it for last. We made love, yes, but we also told each other silly stories, laughed for no good reason, and played an erotic version of hide-and-go-seek. Rory's idea, not mine. Seriously. I won, of course. Not many places for a big Scot to hide, so little old me had the upper hand. On our last go-round, I'd come upon him attempting to hide in a closet. He hadn't been able to shut the door, however, because his big feet wouldn't quite fit. Somehow, he managed to have his way with me in that very same closet, with the door wide open.