Evelyn grimaced, embarrassed that her worst injury was caused in this time. Mellie came in with the requisite giant tray of sandwiches and tea things and Piper went to wake up Sam.
He sat up with some effort and grinned at her, pulling up his hospital gown to show her the bandages around his middle. All the memories rushed back at her and she put her hands over her face, her eyes prickling.
“I’m sorry,” he said, dropping his shirt. He got out of bed and shakily walked over to her, dragging his drip bag on its rolling stand. He had on plaid flannel pajama bottoms under his gown. Evelyn looked down, realizing she was wearing a hospital gown as well. She held up her hands.
“What is all this?” she asked, looking from Piper to Mellie. They both looked extremely pleased with themselves. Sam sat down on the edge of her bed and accepted a sandwich. Evelyn noticed his hair was singed in the back and on the sides. She reached up and patted his once lovely curls sadly. He took her hand and looked at her meaningfully. She nodded quickly and he dropped her hand. They wouldn’t be sappy in front of Piper and Mellie. There was plenty of time for that later now that they were back and alive.
“Yeah, Piper, what’s with the home hospital?” Sam asked. He turned to Evelyn. “I woke up wondering where I was and what happened and she crammed me full of painkillers and told me to shush.” He looked at Piper. “When was that?”
“It was just this morning,” Piper said with an eye roll. “Evie was still out from the bonk on her head and you were moaning in your sleep all night so I thought it was for the best.”
Sam looked abashed at having moaned in his sleep and took a bite of sandwich. Evelyn decided she was hungry and took a cream cheese and cucumber. She gave Piper a look.
“What happened? All I remember is suffocating and thinking Sam was- was dead.” Her throat caught on the words and she inched her hand over to touch Sam’s. He twined his fingers with hers as best he could around the gauze.
“Oh, all right,” Piper pulled the armchair close to Evelyn’s bed to tell the story. “You were screaming bloody murder,” she said. “Mellie heard you from the second floor, through a Benadryl sleep, to boot.”
“I took two,” Mellie admitted.
“When she found you, you were both unconscious, and Sam was bleeding. It did seem pretty dire. I was out in the barn -”
“The barn?” Evelyn interrupted. Piper put her head down and swallowed.
“That’s where I did the … that’s where I sent him back,” she said and the sadness was back in her eyes with a force. Evelyn put down her sandwich and gave her other hand to Piper. Piper shook her off. “So, you two came back when he left. Mellie called emergency and then found me and I did some first aid. When I realized you were both basically okay - I mean weren’t going to die anyway, I knew you wouldn’t want to go to the hospital.” She nodded to Sam’s midsection. “I figured in a small town like this, people’s heads would explode if word got out that you were stabbed.”
Sam thought about this for a second and then shrugged. “Aye, probably. But where’s all this from then?”
“I’m getting to it,” Piper said. “I thought, what’s the good of being filthy stinking rich if I can’t buy someone’s silence? So, while I got you to stop bleeding I sent Mellie to race to the next village for a discreet doctor.”
“Doctor Stone?” Sam asked. Mellie looked chagrined and nodded.
“Wait, you know him?” Piper said. Sam smirked. Mellie hung her head and nodded again.
“I used to get bad nose bleeds and after Sam’s mum retired, I saw him for it,” she said.
“So, he knows you as well?” Piper threw up her hands in disgust.
“It’s just the next village,” Sam said apologetically. “There’s not so many doctors around here. I’ve known him since I was five at least.”
“But he was so discreet,” she said, frowning. Mellie cleared her throat.
“Well, it seemed so important to ye that it be a secret,” she said. “And he was happy to oblige. He’s going to remodel his whole office and get a new head scanner thingy on what you paid him.”
Piper made a harumphing noise and Evelyn burst out laughing, which turned into a fit of coughing.
“You did a good job,” Evelyn told Piper, motioning to all the equipment and good pain medicine. She knew she had it to thank for not being able to feel her shoulder wound. “And no one in Castle on Hill will know that Sam got stabbed.”
Sam was starting to droop from sitting up for so long. He looked pale. Evelyn took a few of her pillows and propped them up next to her and patted the bed beside her. He dragged himself over and gratefully sank back into the pillows, winded from the effort. She helped him get comfortable, gently touching his cheek below his black eye.
“Poor thing,” she whispered. He smiled and closed his eyes, leaning closer to her.
“It does take a lot out of one, being stabbed and set on fire.”
Evelyn remembered that Piper and Mellie were still in the room and she turned to face them boldly. Piper’s eyebrows were almost to the ceiling, and Mellie looked slightly discomfited, but then they both just pretended nothing at all was amiss, and that it was perfectly natural that Sam should be crawling into bed with Evelyn. Piper and Mellie took it in turn to fill in what happened while Sam and Evelyn were in 1729, then they listened in rapt horror as Sam and Evelyn told their side of it.
“You’ve got to burn the book and destroy those pendants,” Evelyn said. “Lachlan was right. They are evil. Daria was insane, and wrong, all the way wrong. If that book was hers, no good can come from it.”
Piper looked uncomfortable and wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye. She nodded vaguely and changed the subject to getting everything back on track to open the castle for tourists.
Evelyn watched her closely and decided to let it go, for now anyway. Every time Lachlan was mentioned it was like Piper was getting hit from within. Evelyn would give her some time but then make certain the book and pendants were destroyed.
They chattered about the renovations Piper had planned, carefully avoiding anymore painful reminiscences. Mellie doled out pain medicine in little paper cups, looking adorably proud of her role as nursemaid. Shortly after that, Sam was fast asleep. Evelyn gently tugged one of the pillows out from under his head so he’d be in a more comfortable position, and smiled at him. She felt a tear working its way out and she blinked rapidly to stop it.
Piper awkwardly cleared her throat and motioned at Sam’s sleeping form.
“Do you want to move to the other bed? Or I could wake him up,” she said with a shrug, trying to suppress a knowing look. Evelyn was tired and going down fast from whatever pills she just took. She mustered up a glare and then giggled through the drug haze, completely ruining what she hoped was going to be stern dignity.
“He’s fine where he is,” she said, choking back the giggles. Piper nodded.
“I’ll bet he is,” she said, disgustingly pleased with herself. “So, do you think that’ll stay in the past?” She smiled at her unwitting pun. “Literally?”
Evelyn was already half asleep, her head lolling on the pillows. She mumbled something she hoped was scathing.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maison Craig was aglow with candlelight and bustling with patrons. Reginald placed a mint sprigged rack of lamb in the middle of the table and a waiter was setting tantalizing looking dishes of savory glazed vegetables by each of their places. The wine had been flowing since they arrived. Evelyn’s last night in Scotland. She adjusted the sleeves of the gorgeous vintage little black Chanel dress she was wearing, one of the hundreds of amazing pieces of clothing she and Piper had spent the last week going through while she finished up her recovery. Fenella had been an absolute shopaholic her entire life, and it also seemed like no one in the entire long line of Glens ever got rid of anything.
Padma had to be let in on the secret of Sam’s injuries, though not any of the details. He’d been away from the store for so long she wa
s beginning to wonder if she should alert his parents in Spain that he was missing. When she came to the estate to inquire, Evelyn’s first instinct was to throw a bucket of water on her, if for no other reason than to see if her ridiculously perfect hair would go frizzy, but fortunately for Padma, Piper answered the door and let her in instead. They were dressed in some of the more outrageous of Fenella’s outfits, and when Sam came downstairs to prove he was alive, he explained Piper’s idea of opening a costume museum in the village.
Padma turned out to not be one hundred percent horrible, and she knew a lot about clothes. When she offered to find a space for the museum and help curate it, Piper was excited to turn it over to someone so she could concentrate on the day to day of the estate.
“Can she run the museum and your store?” Evelyn asked Sam after Padma left. Sam snorted.
“She could probably run the country if she wanted to,” he said. “Maybe even your country.”
Evelyn and Piper had been alone at the house for the last three days, except for Mellie and the occasional carpenter, electrician or gardener. Sam finally went back to his own house, clearly worried about his shop, despite Padma being so spectacularly effective at everything.
Evelyn looked up from her tender lamb chop and smiled at him. He smiled back, now sporting a rakish buzz cut, all the singed ends gone. He looked devilishly handsome, and with a hint of his black eye still showing, dangerously sexy as well. Evelyn felt a little stab at the thought of leaving the next day. She was hoping Sam would offer to drive her to the airport so she could have some time alone with him. She hadn’t seen or heard from him at all in the last three days since he’d left the manor house. It was disconcerting and she didn’t know if she was making more of their passionate night in the eighteenth century than she should be. He certainly seemed to have forgotten all about it.
“So, what time should I be ready to leave for the airport?” she asked, looking at both Sam and Piper, while trying to make it seem as if she wasn’t looking at either one of them.
“No,” Piper whined. “Don’t talk about it, I don’t want you to go.”
“I wish I could stay, too,” Evelyn said, trying not to look hopeful in Sam’s direction. He was frowning slightly at his vegetables. “But I have to get back to work and I don’t even want to think about how far behind I am with my course load.”
“Evie, you can’t go back to work at that awful Hoochie Mama’s,” Piper said, putting her fork down firmly. Evie sighed. Sam was looking at her with a naughty glint in his eye. She wanted to once again reiterate that she was not a stripper, but just narrowed her eyes at him and addressed Piper.
“Only one more year and then I’ll have to sell my soul to the university to pay off what’s left of my loans.”
Piper reached across the table and took Evelyn’s arm. “Just let me pay your student loans.”
“That’s sweet, Piper,” Evelyn dismissed the gesture without a second thought.
“No it isn’t, it’s nothing to me. Let me do it.”
Evelyn tried to imagine her life if she didn’t have to worry about money. She couldn’t. It wouldn’t be her life.
“No, you know I can’t let you,” she said, shaking her head.
“You’re like my sister, Evie. If you had a sister, wouldn’t you pay for her school if you could? I may be a billionaire, nobody even knows yet! There’s three separate lawyers and an accounting firm in Dubai trying to figure it out.”
Evelyn felt herself tearing up. She wished she could accept Piper’s offer, just to make her happy, but she declined again. “I’d feel weird. And Hoochie Mama’s keeps me honest. I’d be insufferable if I was a full time academic. Like all those professors I complain about.” She laughed and glanced at Sam who’d remained quiet during this exchange. He was looking at her thoughtfully and nodded once as if he approved.
“Well then, you’re going to be getting an awfully extravagant birthday present,” Piper said, knowing she wouldn’t win the argument and giving up.
“I better,” Evelyn said and they laughed. When the dessert came, a chocolate rum cake that tasted like alcoholic heaven, Evelyn again danced around the subject of who was taking her to the airport.
“We better leave early,” Piper said. “I’m so excited to get into the city. I want to take you to this one shop that has the cutest boots. And you’ll have to take a ton of stuff home to my mom or she’ll kill me.”
Piper chattered on as Evelyn looked at her plate, trying not to let her disappointment show, wishing Sam would have offered earlier. But of course he was too much of a gentleman to take away Piper’s last few hours with her, especially not after she professed them to be just like sisters. She loved Piper exactly as if they were sisters, which is why she wanted to throw a fork at her head for being so stupid. Here she’d found a molten hot man who loved to read and had never been to a strip club and she wasn’t going to get a romantic farewell at the airport, complete with promises to call every day and to visit as soon as possible. They’d kiss and he wouldn’t be able to let her go ... Oh my God, had she been hoping he’d beg her to stay? She thought about it, and deep down it was exactly what she had been hoping. Her face grew hot at the realization and she jumped guiltily when she felt Sam nudge her calf with his foot under the table.
He tilted his head almost imperceptibly toward the back of the restaurant, then excused himself and headed in that direction. Heart racing at the James Bond-ness of it, Evelyn waited about twenty seconds and then squirmed in her chair.
“Ugh, Piper, this dress is cutting off my circulation. You and your tiny ancestors.” Her voice came out too loud and completely unnatural and she felt her face getting hot again. “I’m just going to pop to the ladies.”
Piper’s eyes about rolled out of her head. Evelyn jumped up and tried not to run to the back of the restaurant.
There was a curtained partition with a small hallway that led to the restrooms behind it. At the end of the hall was an exit. Evelyn took a deep breath and pushed through the door. Sam enveloped her in his arms as soon as she stepped outside, pressing her against the ice cold side of the building and kissing her deeply.
“I think Piper knows,” he said.
“Well, she isn’t blind or stupid,” Evelyn agreed. He grinned down at her and she felt a warm glow. Then she felt a gust of Scottish night air and shivered violently. He pulled her tight and tried to wrap his suit jacket around her.
“We are pretty obvious,” he said into her hair and she could tell he was still smiling. She let her hands wander down his backside.
“Listen,” he said, pulling away and looking serious. “I didn’t want you to think, because of what happened, that I presumed anything.” He winced and started again. “I like you, Evelyn.” He leaned over and kissed her quickly.
“I like you, too,” she said breathlessly.
“I want to take you out to nice places and get to know you more. A lot more.” He paused and she slid her hands up his chest. He still had a bandage under his shirt and she placed her hand gently on the spot. “I was worried things might be weird.”
“A little weird,” she said. “A lot, really. But not bad.”
“So, I can call you, then?” he asked, worry creasing his brow. She could have cried at that, if her tears wouldn’t have frozen instantly to her face. Evelyn put her arms around his neck and pulled him tight.
“You better,” she said into his neck.
“This’ll just be goodbye for now,” he said, kissing her again.
Chapter 23
Evelyn wrestled down her fire engine red pleather mini skirt and tapped on the bar while she waited for her order. Good old Langston tried to sneak up behind her but she spied him in the mirror and whirled around before he could get his hand out. She smiled her best smile and let him awkwardly hug her.
“We all missed you,” he boomed over the music. He pointed to his table and all his friends made fake sad faces. She laughed and waved, trying not to feel sorry for
them or judge.
“Hey, Landon, take a picture of me, will you?” She handed him her phone and struck a goofy pose by the bar while he snapped it. As he droned away about everything she missed, including an unprecedented fist fight and an angry wife busting past the bouncer and throwing a raw chicken at one of the dancers, she sent the picture to Sam.
Later, when they video chatted he’d tell her all about everything that was going on in Castle on Hill and she’d tell him all her stories from Dilbert. They talked a couple times a week, sometimes Evelyn going without sleep due to the time difference, but unwilling to go without seeing him, even if it was just on a screen. She met his parents for about ten seconds when they visited Sam for Christmas, sticking their heads into the camera range and pretending they had no idea whatsoever about technology. She chatted with his sister when he’d gone down to Glasgow for New Year’s Eve and they’d gotten along wonderfully. Everything was nice.
She and Sam were very definitely the best of friends, and it was making her crazy, confused and frustrated.
She wasn’t at all sure what happened in the time since she left Scotland and their passionate kiss goodbye. Sam was as charming and sweet as ever, but he never said he missed her or needed her, or begged her to come back to him.
Don’t be an idiot, she thought, finally deciding what they had must have just been the kind of thing that happened to people when they were thrown together into intense circumstances. Sam had probably realized it shortly after she left and was just too nice to completely drop her off his radar.
When Piper sent her a picture of the grand opening of her costume museum, and in it Padma was completely draped all over Sam, who was holding a champagne bottle aloft and grinning, Evelyn almost couldn’t go to work that night, she was so upset. Was the picture Piper’s subtle way of telling her to forget about him, or was it a warning to get her ass back to Scotland and fight? Or was it just a picture of the grand opening and she had become an obsessive freak?
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