Before Cassie could thank her for the impromptu spelling lesson, a quick series of knocks sounded at the door. “At last,” Delaney cried, popping up from the chair. “My roomies have risen from the dead!” She whipped the door open, and Sadie and Ana stumbled in. With a groan, Sadie flopped onto Cassie’s bed while Ana collapsed into the chair Delaney had just vacated.
“Hey!” Delaney smacked Ana with the travel guide. “You stole my spot.”
“You snooze, you lose.” Ana tightened the tie on her bathrobe and scooted her generous bottom deeper into the leather chair.
“Says the girl who slept half the day away,” Delaney scoffed, lying down next to Bonnie.
“What time is it?” Sadie mumbled, face buried in the clothes piled on Cassie’s bed.
“After three.” Cassie nudged Sadie. “Get off my stuff.”
“Ugh,” Sadie groaned and shifted to her side, allowing Cassie to pull the pile of clothes out from underneath her. “I am never drinking again.”
“I’ve heard that before.” Ana chuckled with disbelief.
Like Bonnie and Cassie, Ana and Sadie had been best friends since childhood, no doubt making mischief since the day they met. Yin to the other’s yang, in looks, they were polar opposites. Ana was tall, with striking long, black hair and ample curves, the antithesis of Sadie’s short stature, playful cap of blond waves, and petite frame. Cassie often thought of the two of them as the duo from the classic movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with Sadie as a pixie-sized version of Marilyn Monroe and Ana as an even bustier Jane Russell, if such a thing were possible.
“And both of you are going out with us tonight. Cass has a date.”
“What?” Sadie rolled over so fast she almost fell right off the bed. She blinked up at them from beneath a halo of tousled golden tresses. “What’s this about a date?”
“It’s not a date,” Cassie argued. Amazing how fast her friends seemed to recover when her love life was up for discussion. Wait, no, not her love life. What she’d said was true, this was not a date. She was simply meeting a man she found equal parts attractive and irritating for a drink. That was all.
Besides, it’s not like she and Logan were going to be having a romantic evening alone, her friends were coming along—Cassie had insisted on it. She didn’t think Logan was planning to take advantage of her, but better safe than sorry. The Monte Carlo monkey boy had taught her that lesson.
Though to be honest, she wouldn’t mind being taken advantage of … a bit … on her own terms, of course. Cassie tugged a few more pieces of clothing out of her suitcase, and the box of condoms, which had been wrapped inside a rolled pair of jeans (the airport security people checking her luggage didn’t need to see everything) tumbled to the floor.
Ana eyed the box pointedly and chuckled, her throaty voice even huskier than usual, still scratchy from sleep and an abundance of whisky. “Not a date, huh?” She scanned the discarded outfits strewn about the room. “That one.” Ana pointed to a blue dress draped over the desk. “Wear that for your non-date.”
Cassie dropped the box of condoms on the desk and picked up the dress. It was a sweater dress, soft fabric and a simple cut. She’d packed it because it traveled well and was easy to accessorize. Plus, she loved the color—a pretty shade of indigo that walked the line between blue and violet.
“Nice call,” Delaney agreed. “She’s right, Cass. That’s the one. Your tushy looks amazing in that dress.”
Cassie held the dress up in front of herself. “We’re going to be sitting at a pub, he’s not even going to see my tushy.”
Sadie collapsed back down on the bed and blew a tangle of unruly blond curls out of her eyes. “Who is this he? And can we stop saying ‘tushy,’ please? You sound like my nana.”
“Sorry. Habit.” Delaney shrugged. “For some reason, parents tend to complain when you ask their four-year-olds if they remembered to wipe their ass.”
Bonnie cleared her throat. “Well, this conversation has quickly gone south.”
“Agreed.” Sadie looked over at Cassie again. “The point is, Ana’s right. Your ass does look amazing in that dress. Just be sure to get up and go to the bathroom or something so your mystery man gets the opportunity to appreciate the view.”
“Yes, Ana is right. Ana is always right,” Ana agreed, leaning her head back against the chair and rubbing her temples. “Now then, if Sadie and I are going to have to pull our wretched selves together and go out tonight, I want details. Who is this mystery man?”
“Oh my God, he is so cute!” Bonnie squealed. “He quoted Shakespeare and he was wearing a kilt—”
“Hold up, you saw a cute guy in a kilt without me!” Sadie rolled over again, and this time she did fall off the bed. “Ugh,” she grumbled into the hotel rug before propping herself up. “Ana and I stayed out all night looking for guys in kilts and found nothing.”
“It’s true.” Ana yawned.
“Hey, where did you find him, Cass?” Bonnie asked. “In the bathroom?”
“Ah, no.” Cassie focused on the contents of her travel jewelry case. “On the way back from the bathroom. I got lost.” She took out a pair of earrings and held them up.
Ana shook her head. “Not those. Something longer, dangly—sexy.”
“Dangly is sexy?” Bonnie asked.
“Depends what’s dangling,” Delaney quipped, patting Bonnie on the head. “Sorry, you walked right into that one.”
“Yeah, well I walked right into Mr. Sexy Kilt.” Cassie offered the jewelry case to Ana. “Here, you pick.”
“Sit down so I can do your hair first. You can’t choose a pair of earrings until your hair is done.” Ana tsked. “Haven’t I taught you anything?”
Cassie sat on the floor at Ana’s feet, jewelry case in her lap. While her hair was brushed and pulled, twisted and braided, she shared the entire embarrassing encounter, from start to finish.
“Logan Reid … why does that name sound familiar?” Sadie didn’t bother to get up from the floor, but instead rolled over to lie next to Cassie and monitor Ana’s handiwork.
“I told you, he runs that web show Shenanigans.” Cassie rummaged in her jewelry case again.
“Oh, I’ve seen him before!” Sadie propped herself up on an elbow. “He does those funny clips with bands, like that carpool karaoke guy,” Sadie said, pointing out tendrils of hair Ana missed, “except he makes the bands perform in an elevator … ‘Live in a Lift,’ is that it?”
“That’s the one.” Cassie stood and crossed to the mirror over the desk, slipping the hooks of the earrings she’d settled on into her ears. “He also films stupid prank videos.”
“Good. That means he has a sense of humor.” Sadie’s pretty pixie face dimpled. “And he’s cute, right?”
“Right,” Bonnie agreed. “Very cute.” She wiggled into Cassie’s spot in front of Ana. “Do me next.”
Ana sighed and ran her hands over Bonnie’s auburn curls. “I should start charging you people.”
“You probably should.” Cassie tilted her chin and admired the fruits of Ana’s labor. She’d done a great job, pulling the top half of Cassie’s thick, chestnut waves into two braids that twisted elegantly over her ears before sweeping into a single braid that draped down her back. “But I probably wouldn’t be able to afford you.”
Delaney, who only did her hair in one of two ways, up in a ponytail or straight down, laughed. “Go ahead. Wouldn’t be a problem for me.” She joined Cassie at the desk mirror and pulled her ponytail out, letting her straight, smooth, strawberry-blond hair drift over her shoulders. Then she picked up the condom box and shook it. “This Logan guy, do you think he could be your long-awaited foreign fling, Cass?”
“I told you, it’s not a date.” Cassie grabbed the box out of Delaney’s hands and shoved it in the desk drawer.
“R-i-i-ght.” Delaney winked at the other girls. “I guess we’ll find out tonight, won’t we?”
* * *
That evening, Sadie halted at the en
trance of the pub and braced her hands on the brightly painted doorframe. “Someone pinch me.”
“If it will get you to move, sure.” Directly behind Sadie, Ana reached two fingers out and nipped her friend in the arm.
“Ow!” Sadie let go of the doorframe, rubbing her elbow.
Ana maneuvered her bosom around Sadie and grinned. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.” A step later she came to an abrupt stop. “Oh. My. God.” The girls stumbled in after her, the heavy wooden door of the pub swinging shut behind them, the sound buried beneath an eruption of male cheers.
Suddenly Cassie understood what had frozen Sadie and Ana in place. This morning at the castle, she had mourned the fact Scotland didn’t seem to be overrun with hot kilted men. Apparently, she hadn’t been looking in the right place. From wall to wall, back bar to front door, the pub was packed with guys, and almost every single one of them was wearing a kilt.
“Praise Jesus,” Sadie exhaled, raising her palms to the rafters.
Bonnie’s forehead puckered. “I thought you were Jewish.”
“She is.” Ana smirked. “But she goes all holy roller when she’s horny.”
Sadie smacked Ana with her purse.
“Ow!”
“You had it coming for that pinch.” Sadie waggled her fingers toward a kilted duo standing at a high pub table, one fair-haired and the other dark, a matching pair to her and Ana’s coloring. “Now, what do you say we find out what religion those two are?”
Delaney shook her head. “While I’m all for a bit of package handling, we came here as backup for Cassie’s date, remember?”
“It’s not a date,” Cassie couldn’t help repeating, bristling. Why was she being defensive?
The rumble of male voices drifted on warm air pungent with the scent of ale and what could only be described as eau de fried tavern food. Bonnie glanced around the kilt-bedecked room. “How are we ever going to find him? It will be like looking for a needle in a haystack!”
“Now that sounds like a fun game.” Sadie tossed back her short blond curls, grinning as she rubbed her hands together.
Cassie swept a glance over the line of men at the bar and stiffened. In the far corner, a tall redhead stood in profile, nursing a long-necked bottle. Cassie swallowed convulsively, sending the butterflies on a return trip to her stomach as she followed the line of the man’s broad shoulders down his back to his—oh my God, he had a fine ass.
No question, the novelty of a kilt was alluring, but something had to be said for the view provided by a good ol’ pair of tight blue jeans. Cassie let her gaze linger on Logan’s backside, appreciating how the faded denim clung to his firm butt and equally firm thighs. She’d had a good look at his muscular calves this morning and was not disappointed to see the rest of him seemed to match. Heat crept up her neck, and Cassie turned away before one of her friends caught her staring.
Too late. Ana looked from Cassie to Logan and back again. “Is that him?”
In a move so synchronized it was almost comical, the other girls followed Ana’s glance to where Logan stood at the bar, his ginger mane a beacon. Maybe it was the weight of ten feminine eyeballs boring into him, but he seemed to sense their presence and turned to face them. He caught sight of Cassie and smiled, and if the collective gasp from her friends was any indication, Cassie wasn’t the only one to feel the impact of that sexy grin.
“Yeah, that’s him,” she muttered, annoyed at the sense of possessiveness flashing through her.
* * *
Logan took his time turning his attention to Cassie and her friends. He had known the second the girls entered the pub—of course he’d known, for the last twenty minutes he’d kept his gaze trained on the pub’s entrance, wondering if she would show up. And then she’d appeared in the doorway, sandwiched between her four mates. At the sight of them, Logan chugged his beer, wishing for a whisky himself right now. He wasn’t feeling quite so brave at the moment and could use a shot of liquid courage.
What was his problem? Women didn’t make him nervous. Logan couldn’t think of much that made him nervous. So why did it feel like a spring salmon had gotten loose in his gut?
Suddenly glad he’d kept his promise to the lass and left the consent form at home, Logan decided he would not try to convince Miss Cassie Crow to sign anything … not tonight, anyway. There would be no mention of media releases or websites or contracts or anything of the kind. Tonight, he was going to enjoy a drink with a pretty girl and her pretty friends, and the only thing he might try to do was convince the lass to kiss him again like she had this morning.
She’d noticed him. Logan couldn’t say how he knew for sure, facing away from the door as he’d been doing since the second she’d entered the pub, but he knew without a doubt the moment her glance landed on him. His entire body sizzled with an electric current. Knocking back the last of his beer, he screwed his courage to the sticking place—what was that crack she had made earlier about him and Macbeth rejects?—and turned to face her.
On the telly a kick went awry, and the crowd exploded in a flurry of half-drunken curses. Cassie and her friends jumped at the outburst, but didn’t seem intimidated. Most of the lads were too focused on the match to pay the girls much mind, but Logan knew with the way these lasses looked, that wouldn’t be the case for long.
“You came,” he said, barely able to hear himself over the roars of outrage as the opposing team scored.
“I did.” She nodded toward her gaggle of girlfriends. “And I brought my friends.”
Logan smiled at the girls, the two redheads he remembered from this morning, the tall leggy strawberry-blonde and the petite lass with frizzy auburn curls, and two more, a raven-haired vixen with an impressive rack and a tiny blonde with violet eyes who made him think of the wee folk from the stories Gran used to tell.
None of them, however, could hold a candle to Cassie. Her hair was pulled back, and the thick rope of her chestnut waves gleamed in the dim pub light. The dress she wore hugged her curves in a subtle, sexy way. She looked warm and soft and oh so touchable. The snug fabric was a deep blue, almost purple, reminding him of the sky over the loch at gloaming back home.
Logan made the round of cordial formalities and leaned in close to catch each girl’s name as she shouted over the din. The last girl had to repeat herself three times, finally jumping up to yell in his ear. A foul play on the telly had the pub exploding with expletives, and he barely heard what she said.
This wasn’t going to work. How the hell was he supposed to charm the lass if he could barely hold a conversation with her? He slid in next to Cassie. “I think this was a mistake.”
“Oh?” Her brow crumpled.
“No, not seeing you again.” Logan backpedaled as he realized how that had sounded. Christ, he was such a bumbler. “I meant coming here.” He waved a hand at the shouting crowd. “It’s too loud.”
“Huh?”
“Exactly.” He tried again, bending low, her soft braid brushing his cheek. “Why don’t we go somewhere with a wee less craic?”
“Crack?” she repeated.
He nodded. “Somewhere quieter.” She hesitated, and he hurried to reassure her, nodding at her friends. “They are welcome too, of course.” He’d rather spend the evening alone with the dark-eyed beauty, but any time with her was better than nothing.
“Bonnie.” Cassie shifted on her bar stool and tapped her friend on the shoulder. “You okay if we go somewhere else?”
“Where?” Bonnie asked.
“Where?” Cassie repeated, looking back at him.
Logan shrugged. “I doona care, you pick.”
The little redhead glanced over at the other girls in their party. They ignored her, engaged in a game of eye tag with some lads across the room. She shook her head and turned her attention back to Cassie. “I’m up for it, but I don’t think we could drag those three out of here right now.” She scrunched up her face in thought. “How about the hotel bar?”
Cassie no
dded and smiled at Logan. “Do you know where the Caledonian is?”
“Aye.” He returned her smile. They were going back to her hotel? Better and better.
As Cassie and her friend gathered their things and made their farewells to the other three, Logan settled his bill and passed the barman a few extra quid. He was sure her friends could handle themselves, but no harm asking the lad if he’d keep an eye out for the trio.
Soon enough, he was escorting Cassie and Bonnie back to their hotel for a drink at the much quieter bar there. A quarter hour later found them settling in on luxurious low-backed leather stools. “If I’d known you were staying at the Caldy, I would have suggested we meet here in the first place,” Logan said.
“Oh?” Cassie glanced up at him suspiciously. “Why’s that?”
Logan winked. “The Caledonian is pretty ritzy digs. You ladies are having quite the holiday.”
Bonnie shrugged. “Sadie’s dad hooked us up. He’s a big shot with Waldorf-Astoria and booked us rooms in their hotels for every stop on our trip.” She flipped through the cocktail menu with fierce concentration. “Anyway, it’s definitely quieter here.”
“Is that pub always like that?” Cassie asked. She leaned back and cast an admiring glance up at the ceiling, where the brass-plated lighting ran parallel above the entire length of the bar.
Logan tried not to stare at the creamy expanse of throat her movement exposed. “Ah, well, I forgot there was a match on tonight.”
She dropped her gaze back to his and laughed. “And here I’d started to worry a Scotland full of men in kilts was only a fantasy.”
“Oh, aye?” He let the brogue slip in; he couldn’t help it. He wanted to hear more about her fantasies.
Her eyes went smoky. “Oh, aye,” she echoed.
In an instant Logan was rock hard and damn glad he wasn’t wearing a kilt, or he’d be pitching a plaid tent right now.
“Oooh, how about this one, Cass? It’s called Edinburgh’s Bramble.”
God bless her friend for the timely distraction.
Getting Hot with the Scot--A Sometimes in Love Novel Page 4
