Moonlight on Nightingale Way

by Samantha Young

  I was the single one among us, as Chloe was also engaged. Her fiancé, Ed, worked in energy efficiency. He’d spent the last six months in Sweden working on developing some brilliant new technology that would help reduce energy costs in everyday housing.

  Chloe was lonely without Ed. And when Chloe was lonely she liked to play matchmaker. For me. Not that it was such a hardship to put up with her matchmaking. I was single and “looking.”

  Plus… it was Chloe. I’d do anything for Chloe, Aidan, and Juno. As they sat around me in Aidan and Juno’s lovely flat, I looked at them and I saw my family. They knew me better than the one I’d severed all communication with seven years ago.

  “Thanks,” I said to Aidan. “It actually felt good to stand my ground.”

  “If he gives you any more problems, you just tell Aidan,” Juno said, offering his services up. “He’ll deal with it.”

  Aidan didn’t protest, because the truth was, he would deal with it. Despite his reserve, he took shit from no man, and he didn’t allow any of us to either. Plus, he was huge, even bigger than Logan. No one – unless an idiot – would try to mess with him. Excluding one extremely drunken night at uni, I mostly thought of him as an overprotective big brother. He was more family to me than my own brother, Sebastian, who was never protective. In fact, he was the opposite.

  I threw thoughts of Sebastian aside and gave my friends a reassuring smile. “It will be fine. I’m just tired and cranky. I have that date tomorrow night, and I really hope I manage to get some sleep so I don’t end up looking like the walking dead.”

  “Date?” Aidan said.

  “The guy from my gym.”

  Chloe snorted. “I still can’t believe you made a date with a guy who pervs on women in a yoga class.”

  “He wasn’t perving. He was thinking about joining the class.”

  Aidan grinned. “Right.”

  I glowered at them. “You all think the worst of everyone.”

  “And for someone who was raised by Dracula and one of his brides, you see the best, even when it’s not there,” Chloe said.

  “Not always,” I grumbled, thinking about my neighbor.

  “So where is the yoga perv taking you?” Juno said.

  I ignored her teasing. “His name is Bryan and he’s taking me to dinner.”

  Chloe grunted. “You don’t sound that excited about it.”

  “Of course I’m looking forward to it. Bryan seems very nice.” And he did. He was also quite good-looking.

  “Nice?” Juno gave me a confused smile. “Sweetie, nice? No. Your first thought about this guy should be ‘wow.’” She shrugged. “When I met Aidan, it was very much a ‘wow’ for me.”

  Aidan smiled down at her. “Back at you, darlin’.”

  “Ugh. Stop.” Chloe waved her hands at them. “No cutesy, lovey-dovey crap right now. I haven’t had sex in five weeks, and Miss Farquhar here hasn’t been laid in three months.”

  I colored. “Thank you for sharing that.”

  “Just because you haven’t gotten laid in a while doesn’t mean you should settle for this guy,” Juno opined.

  “Who says I’m settling?” I threw my hands up in disbelief. “None of you have met him.”

  “We don’t need to,” Aidan said. “Your last five dates have all borne a scarily similar resemblance and the personality of a wet blanket. You keep selling yourself short, Grace. Can you blame us for being skeptical about this guy?”

  “And when Aidan says ‘scarily similar resemblance,’ he means guys who are punching way above their weight dating you,” Chloe added.

  “No, they weren’t. That’s such a shallow thing to say. It’s not all about looks, you know. I’m not exactly Angelina Jolie myself.”

  Aidan made an irritated noise and reached for his mug of coffee. He took a drink rather than saying something that might upset me. Chloe, however, cursed and snapped, “I could kill your bloody mother.”

  “Yes, well, get in line,” I muttered, taking a sip of my own coffee and avoiding eye contact with her. I did not want to have that particular conversation.

  “My brother’s friend Joe saw your photo on my Facebook page. He said he thinks you’re beautiful.” Juno grinned at me.

  I blushed and squirmed uncomfortably. “He did not.”

  She laughed. “He did so. I asked Ally to bring him to Scotland next time he visits me.”

  “Don’t be silly.” I huffed at the thought.

  “Is this Joe hot?” Chloe asked.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “As much as I appreciate the compliment, I think I’ll still go on my date with Bryan, if that’s okay. I can compromise on a lot of things, but having an ocean between me and my boyfriend isn’t one of them.”

  “How about a landing?” Chloe teased.

  I wrinkled my nose at her wayward thoughts. “Logan MacLeod is the least likely candidate for boyfriendhood of any man in the entire world.”

  She raised an eyebrow at me, and I flushed again when I realized I’d practically shouted it. “Famous last words.”

  “No, not famous last words,” I insisted, feeling that immediate aggravation ignite in my very blood at the thought of my neighbor. “Logan MacLeod is uncouth, probably riddled with sexual diseases, and he’s not at all to my taste. And I am definitely not to his taste. You should see the women he sleeps with. They’re all sexy, tan, blond hair and big boobs. He thinks I have a stick up my arse because the hem of my skirt sits below my crotch and I do up the buttons over my cleavage.”

  Chloe’s eyes were round as I ranted on. She turned to Aidan and Juno in seeming wonder. “I have to meet this man.”

  “Why?” I snapped.

  “Because he’s clearly got something intriguing about him if he can do this to you.” She gestured to me in a vague way.

  “Do what?”

  “This,” she insisted, repeating the vague gesturing.

  I clenched my teeth together. “What is this?”

  “I don’t know what it is. I just know it’s something.”

  It had been suggested in the past by people who didn’t really know me at all well that as an editor who spent her days editing romantic fiction, I might have unrealistic expectations of men. Anyone who knew me – really knew me – knew that wasn’t true. Although I was actively looking for the man I wanted to spend my life with, I wasn’t looking for a fantasy man. I was looking for someone understanding, protective, and funny. I didn’t expect perfection. I just wanted to like the person I was dating, and I wanted him to be kind.

  Bryan was neither funny nor kind.

  “So the bitch took the fish, even though she never bought the fish,” Bryan finished, his nostrils flaring.

  I blinked, wondering how my mentioning that my hake had been delicious had somehow gotten us onto the topic of his ex-girlfriend. Again. So far Bryan had turned all of our conversations on this abysmal date back to his last two ex-girlfriends.

  He seemed to be a very angry little man.

  Bored, I somehow found myself kicking the hornet’s nest. “But didn’t you say you won it at a fun fair for her?”

  He scowled. “That’s not the point.”

  “Surely a gift once given cannot be taken back?”

  “Ugh, that’s such a fucking female thing to say.”

  I stuck my hand up at the passing waiter. “Check, please.”

  Exhausted from the terrible date, all I wanted was to get home and snuggle up to watch the latest episode of my favorite reality singing contest, which I’d recorded from the weekend.

  I was hurrying up my stairwell when, to my horror, his door opened.

  Logan stepped out, surprising me with his attire. He wore a beautiful black suit and a black shirt. The top button was open on the shirt and he wore no tie, but still he was very smart – it was the most civilized I’d ever seen him. I had to wonder if he worked at night, and if so, what exactly it was that he did.

  I drew to a stop at the top of the stairs, and Logan jo
lted when he saw me, his gaze raking over me, his lips parting slightly as though he were in shock. Like him, I was wearing black. A black Alexander McQueen dress with a pleated knee-length skirt and a V-neck that showed off a modest amount of cleavage. The dress was a remnant from my previous life, and it was pure class. I loved it. I’d loved it for almost ten years. For once my honey brown hair hung loose over my shoulders, and my makeup was soft in dusky pink shades, which suited my light complexion.

  I flushed when those extraordinary eyes of his connected with mine.

  “Back from a date?” he said, sounding surprised by this.

  “Yes,” I answered out of politeness.

  “I take it the date didn’t go well?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you’re home alone.”

  Feeling my cheeks redden, as they had a tendency to do around him, I slipped past him, rummaging through my clutch for my keys. “It may come as a shock to you, Mr. MacLeod, but not all of us sleep with someone on the first date.”

  “How boring.”

  I jerked around at his teasing tone and found his eyes glittering at me. “It’s called respecting a woman.”

  “It is called not living life to the fullest.” He started to descend the stairs. “Maybe if you got yourself laid, you’d relax a wee bit.”

  I sniffed, denying even to myself that his perception of me stung. “I am perfectly relaxed.”

  “Oh, you sound it,” he called up, his infuriating chuckle trailing up to me as his head disappeared from sight.

  “Argggh.” I smacked my clutch against my door before throwing it open and slamming it shut behind me. The clutch went sailing down the hall of my flat in my anger. “Damn the man!”

  Next time I was bloody well going to get in the last word.

  CHAPTER 3

  “B

  ugger, bugger, bugger,” I muttered as I attempted to retrieve my keys from my purse while trying to juggle three shopping bags filled with food.

  A large hand suddenly tugged on the handles of one of the bags and I jerked my head up in fright. My gaze clashed with Logan MacLeod’s. “Wha—”

  The bag was in his hand and the second and third followed quickly into his other.

  I stared up at his serious expression, bemused. “I didn’t even hear you come up behind me.” He certainly moved quietly for a big man.

  Instead of speaking, he gestured to the front door of our building.

  Flustered, my hands shook a little as I tugged my keys out and selected the right one. I let us inside. “I can carry them now. Thank you.”

  His blank face and refusal to give me back the shopping bags forced me to keep walking. I stopped at flat one on the ground floor and knocked. Logan halted in confusion. Before I could explain, the door to the flat opened and I was faced with my favorite neighbor, Mr. Jenner, and his cheery disposition.

  “Ah, Gracie, there you are.” He grinned at me, his smile faltering a little when he glanced beyond me. “Oh, you have company?”

  “Mr. Jenner, this is Mr. MacLeod. He just moved into the building. He very kindly offered to carry your shopping.”

  I heard Logan’s grunt behind me and didn’t know whether it pertained to my diplomatic retelling of the situation or the fact that the shopping bags weren’t for me.

  “Oh, how kind.” Mr. Jenner smiled at Logan. “Come in. Come in.”

  I looked at Logan and he stared at me, his eyebrow raised in question.

  “I do Mr. Jenner’s shopping for him every week. I can carry them inside if you like.” I held out my hand for the bags.

  “I’ve got them.” He brushed past me, and I followed him into Mr. Jenner’s flat.

  The elderly gentleman lost his wife a few years ago, only a few short months after I moved into the building. His son had arranged for a cleaner to visit once a week, but she wanted more money to do the shopping, so I had offered to do it for free because the Jenners were kind and welcoming to me from the moment I moved in.

  I watched Logan as he glanced around the small, well-kept flat, wondering if he was really listening to Mr. Jenner’s chitchat as he followed our neighbor into his kitchen.

  I realized I had been so busy watching Logan I hadn’t heard Mr. Jenner’s chitchat and was thus confused when Logan offered, “I’ll take a look at it.”

  “Look at what?” I said, immediately diving into the bags Logan had placed on the counter. I started putting the perishables away in the refrigerator.

  “Mr. Jenner’s washing machine is playing up. I’ll have a look at it.”

  “Are you qualified to do that?” I said, still curious about exactly what it was he did for a living.

  “Yes. I have a Ph.D. in washing-machine technology.”

  I rolled my eyes at his sarcasm.

  “That’s very kind,” Mr. Jenner said, clearly oblivious to the undercurrents of tension between me and Logan.

  “I’ll do it now, if that’s okay?” Logan shrugged out of his jacket at Jenner’s grateful nod.

  I didn’t particularly want to stick around to see Logan do a good deed. It might put a dent in my annoyance, and I wanted nothing to penetrate my dislike for my new neighbor. One good deed did not outweigh the growing tally of complaints I had against him. “Well, I’m off, then.”

  Mr. Jenner smiled. “Thanks again, Gracie. You’re an angel.”

  I returned his smile but found mine wobbling a little under Logan’s fierce regard. Ignoring his quizzical, burning stare, I waved good-bye without looking at either of them and dashed from the flat.

  All those moments would be lost in time… like tears in rain.

  I stared at the sentence for the fifteenth time, trying to think what it was that niggled at me about it, why it was so familiar, but I couldn’t concentrate.

  I couldn’t concentrate because U2 had been screaming at me from next door for the last two hours. Every time one of their songs faded into the next, the lull was filled in by the sounds of laughter.

  Logan was having a party.

  “All those moments would be lost in time like tears in rain,” I muttered, tapping my finger against my computer mouse. “All those moments. All those moments… All those… Arrggggh!” I pushed back from the computer and glowered at the wall connecting my flat to his.

  It occurred to me that earlier I’d let myself soften a little toward him when he’d casually offered to help Mr. Jenner.

  Well, never again.

  He was an inconsiderate oaf.

  Last night I’d started thinking that it would take visiting a therapist again to deal with my gradually mounting resentment against my new neighbor. But I made the decision in the morning that it would be much cheaper for me to change my work schedule than to visit a therapist. I’d have to work in the afternoon from now on, and that was that.

  Okay, so I wasn’t really as blasé about having to rearrange my schedule as I was trying to convince myself I was. I knew it would take me days, if not weeks, to come around to a new work and sleeping pattern, but I could see no other choice since a hell-raiser had moved in next door.

  Upon that decision, I was up in the morning to run my errands so I could get back in the early afternoon to finish a manuscript that was due back to one of my authors that evening. It was a Saturday, and I’d much rather spend my Saturday with Juno and Chloe, who were buggering off to St. Andrews for the day, but I had work to do.

  I was tired, I was disagreeable, and I wasn’t in the mood to face any annoying neighbors. So of course I was delighted when my neighbor Janice appeared on the stairs just as I was locking my door.

  Janice climbed up the stairs to my landing and stopped at the sight of me. “Did you hear?” she snapped without preamble.

  I pulled on my patience like a winter cloak against her icy chill.

  Janice lived on the floor above me with her long-term boyfriend, Lukash. I rarely saw Lukash, and thankfully, I didn’t have that many run-ins with Janice. She was a defense lawyer f
or the Scottish courts, she was humorless, and she was… Well, there was no other word for it. She was a bit of a bitch really.

  “Hear about what?”

  “Your next-door neighbor.” She gestured to Logan’s door, eyes blazing with fury.

  So he’d pissed someone else off. I wasn’t surprised.

  “The ex-con,” she spat.

  Now I was surprised. “Excuse me?”

  Janice stepped toward me. I immediately wanted to back away from her. “Mr. Jenner told me that Logan MacLeod mentioned to him that he’d done time. Apparently, the idiot assumed we all knew of his prison time. That bloody old goat downstairs doesn’t even seem to think it’s a problem. He just went on and on about that thug fixing his washing machine.”

  I curled my hands into fists. “Mr. Jenner is not an old goat.”

  “That’s not the point.” Janice waved my defense off. “Aren’t you terrified you’re living next door to a convicted criminal? I went straight onto the phone to Mr. Carmichael, but he insists that thug is a friend of his and that we’re actually safer with him as a neighbor. Can you believe it?”

  Mr. Carmichael was our landlord. Although I’d never met him personally, he was a very good landlord. If anything went wrong in the building or our apartments, it was fixed immediately. “Perhaps he’s a good judge of character. And maybe we are safer with Mr. MacLeod here.” I couldn’t explain why I found myself defending Logan. He was certainly a very inconsiderate neighbor, and I was intimidated by him on occasion. But truly frightened?

  No. Never.

  Janice grunted. “Oh, you’re all idiots. You forget I defend people like that man. I know exactly what kind of person he is. I’ll be looking for a new place to rent.”