Off Kilter

by Donna Kauffman

  He wanted what they had for his own, and had never more keenly felt the lack of it. As Katie spoke her vows in hushed but happy tones, Roan’s gaze drifted of its own volition to Tessa. She was staring through the viewfinder of her camera, not paying the slightest attention to him.

  Why you? he thought for the thousandth time. Why not someone like Kira? Why not any one of the dozens of other lasses that had crossed his path over the years? Why had he never, not once, felt the tug that he felt now … when it was directed toward a woman who wasn’t simple or easy. No. Leave it to his heart to latch on to the most difficult, challenging, inconvenient woman he’d ever met.

  Then briefly, she lowered the camera, and he could have sworn, even from the distance where she stood, that she looked directly at him.

  But Father Maddy was announcing Graham and Katie to be man and wife, and Tessa whipped the camera back up while Roan turned to watch the two kiss as if it were the first and finest they’d ever shared. He felt a burning behind his eyes as Graham turned and embraced his best friend. Roan moved to kiss Katie’s glowing cheek as Graham clapped Shay’s back, then Roan and Shay stood side by side, cheering uproariously as bride and groom turned to face the likewise cheering assemblage for the first time as man and wife.

  “You’re a lucky, lucky bastard,” Roan murmured, as he watched the two head into the crowd. Blaine got Roan’s attention then and turned his finger in a circle, meaning they had to speed things up. Roan looked out past the crowd toward the shore. Sure enough, at some point during the ceremony, a very large, very sleek sailing vessel had come to anchor inside the small, calm sound just off the northern shore.

  Roan moved into the crowd behind Graham and cupped his elbow. “Your company has arrived,” he leaned in to say quietly. “Say your thank-yous, then let us get you to your whirlybird.”

  “I’ve got it,” Shay said to Roan. “Stay here and glad hand the crowd a bit. You’re better at that. We’ll leave Blaine to handle the parents.”

  “Aye, right then.” Roan clapped Graham on the back and gave another quick hug to Katie. “Dinnae worry,” he whispered in her ear. “We’ll take care of everything.”

  She pulled back, and her gaze was nothing but pure joy. “Nothing can ruin this moment,” she assured him. “Thank you for your help. We both really appreciate it.”

  Graham sent the crowd into a complete tizzy by scooping his bride up into his arms. “You’ll excuse us,” he said, a grin as wide as the brilliant blue sky splitting his rugged face, “but I believe we have a honeymoon to get on with.” He turned and caught Katie’s gaze, and his expression was completely swamped by his obvious adoration for his new wife.

  Roan realized right then that things would be different. Yes, the two had been inseparable since Katie’s arrival on the island. But the mates he’d grown up with, the bond they’d always had … was forever altered. He wasn’t sad about it so much as bemused. What would come next?

  He sought out Shay, thinking to share the philosophical moment—Shay being so overly serious he was generally stellar at those—but he was already herding the newlyweds toward a waiting car that would get them back to the abbey and the helicopter. The crowd was almost deafening, cheering and shouting, so Roan hung back and clapped and cheered along with them.

  He felt a bump at his elbow, and turned to find Tessa standing next to him. “I’m torn,” she said.

  He was so caught off guard that he just said the first thing that came to mind. “About?”

  “Whether to follow the happy couple and get their dramatic departure …”

  “Or?”

  Her gaze drifted out toward the harbor. “Or stay for what might be the better fireworks.”

  “You’re not here as a journalist,” he reminded her.

  “Yeah.” She smiled. “But which pictures would you rather see?”

  He couldn’t help it, he smiled back. “I’m still trying to understand what kind of family treats their only daughter this way.” From the corner of his eye, he caught a bit of flinch on Tessa’s face. It was barely more than a tic or tightening of her jaw, but he’d seen it nonetheless. He faced forward again, watching as Graham tucked Katie safely into the car, while Shay climbed in to drive them.

  A movement off to his left caught his attention. It was Blaine, who’d taken one of the horses from its carriage tack and was presently and quite adeptly leveraging himself onto the beast’s back. “What in the—”

  Roan watched as Blaine nudged the animal and surged forward, looking quite comfortable astride. Roan supposed he’d played polo or something, given his upbringing—but what was more surprising was that he didn’t appear as idiotic riding bareback in his formal wear as anyone else likely would have. “Where in the devil is he going?”

  “My guess is there.” Tessa directed his attention back to the sound, where a small inflatable speed boat was heading toward shore. “Rather surreal, isn’t it?”

  “Which part?” Roan asked.

  “Which part isn’t? Seriously. From what I gather, Graham sailed off across the ocean to Annapolis and snatched a woman he’d never so much as laid eyes on from her wedding—to Blaine. Graham brought her back here for a business-only marital merger—didn’t she just escape one of those?—because you all live and die by some four-hundred-year-old marriage pact law. By the time they got here, that had all changed and before you know it, they’re marrying for real. You and she hook up like long lost litter mates, then Blaine shows up, but he’s not trying to win back his bride. Oh no, he just wants to be her BFF and hang out.” She glanced at Roan. “Unless you are all blind, you have to realize the man is as gay as the grass is green, so what was that wedding all about anyway? And now, supposedly, Mummy and Daddy dearest have arrived—too late—like some horrifyingly misguided dysfunctional cavalry, to snatch their only daughter back into the maw, but not because they’re concerned about her welfare, oh no, but because her absence makes them look bad and they can’t have a tarnished social reputation bring down the number of new yacht orders. Now the bride and groom are being forced to flee by helicopter to avoid that confrontation, and their gay almost-son-in-law has just taken off to confront them. On horseback.”

  “Well,” Roan said at length, “when you put it like that …”

  He heard a small, dramatic sigh. “So, you can see my dilemma.”

  “Aye.” They stood for another moment as the crowd slowly dispersed after sending off the happy couple. People began to make their way toward the village, where the reception was still very much on the agenda. “Have you ever been married?”

  “What?” She looked at him. “Where did that come from?”

  Roan looked at her. “We’re at a wedding. Not so big a leap.”

  “Oh. Right.” Suddenly she didn’t sound quite so dryly amused. “No. I haven’t.”

  “Close calls?”

  “No.” She fiddled with her camera for a moment. “You?”

  “No to both. No siblings?”

  She looked at him as if he was being deliberately annoying. And maybe he was. The last time he’d provoked her, they’d ended up kissing each other’s brains out. So he didn’t think it was entirely a bad idea to kick things off that way again.

  “Why do you ask?” she replied, sounding anything other than interested in the line of questioning.

  “Just … watching Graham get married was like watching a close member of my immediate family leave the roost, so to speak. In a good way, but a way that will forever change things. I wondered if that’s how it feels when a brother or sister marries.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I’d think it’s close to the same. We’re the closest to family we’ve got, all three of us.”

  “You’re an only child?” she asked.

  He smiled. “I wouldn’t know.”

  She turned to him then, frowning in confusion. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t know. I was abandoned as a baby. I have no idea if eithe
r of my parents ever procreated again.”

  Her mouth dropped open, then she shut it again. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? I had a great childhood.” He glanced at her. “They’re right you know. It does take a village.” His smile grew. “At least it did with me. But I believe I’m better for it.”

  “I doubted you.”

  “What? Why? About what?”

  “Your comment about understanding being a misfit. I couldn’t fathom it. You were born and raised here and are openly adored. I’ve never met anyone who so clearly fits his environment. So the whole misfit tag just didn’t work for you. I shouldn’t have judged, though. I know better.”

  “We all come to conclusions. That’s normal. Like with me, I thought you were a bit of a snob. Maybe prima donna was a better term.”

  “Me? A snob?” She barked a laugh.

  “It wasn’t specific, more of an air, the way you carried yourself. I thought you presumed we were all backwoods bumpkins, living out here on our little scrap of earth. As if we were somehow beneath your notice.”

  “And I thought you were a pretty boy who got by on looks and charm and didn’t have much motivation to do more than that.”

  Roan looked up as the helicopter flew over their heads. He waved. “Well, at least one of us was wrong.”

  She gave him a shot with her elbow, then lifted her camera and got a few departing shots of the whirlybird as it sailed into the sunset. “I guess that takes care of my shot selection dilemma.”

  “Where did you grow up?” he asked.

  She lowered her camera and took aim toward the shore. The bright yellow inflatable skiff had landed. Blaine had dismounted and was waiting, legs braced, the horse standing next to him as if they’d ridden in battle together many times. It was quite the vision, what with the top hat and all.

  “I sure hope he doesn’t have to resort to using the cane as a weapon,” Roan said conversationally.

  Two people debarked from the skiff with the help of their skipper, and confronted Blaine on the small spit of sand, the waves lapping at their feet. Things appeared to get rather … animated.

  “Even two to one, I’d put my money on him,” she said, shutter whirring.

  “Well, technically, he does have the horse as back up.”

  “True.”

  Roan listened as Tessa’s shutter continued to whir. “So, small town? Big city?”

  “I’m working.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re being nosy. I like it.”

  She glanced at him with a you’re impossible look, then went back to shooting. “Big estate in a small town,” she said after a few seconds.

  That surprised him. Both that she’d answered, and the answer itself. “So, I wasn’t far off then, after all. Woman of privilege. What does your family think of your globe-trotting job that takes you to the most dangerous places on earth?”

  “I don’t have a family. No, that’s not entirely true. Kira is my family. I don’t have any blood relatives.”

  “Not one?”

  “Not a one. We’re both little orphan Annies, it appears. Or little orphan Andrew in your case, I guess.” She shot him a quick smirk.

  He wasn’t going to let her derail the conversation. He’d started it as idle conversation, to keep her talking to him, but he was truly intrigued. “What about the big estate part?”

  “Well, my estate manager lived there with me, until I was sent off to boarding school. Overseas. The better to keep me out of the loop, don’t you know. He continued to live there. At least until I was made aware that he’d filched my trust fund and invested it in some development scheme in Hong Kong. That was to cover up the fact that he’d already bilked the estate out of the rest of its assets.”

  “What did you do? How old were you when you found that out?”

  “Seventeen. How I found out was when the school I was attending in London escorted me to the curb with all my worldly possessions. My tuition was long overdue and they’d finally determined there would never be any additional monies coming their way.”

  He gaped at her. “That’s … an incredible story.”

  “It’s a true story. I’m not sure, even in hindsight, if I’d have been equipped to handle things any differently. He was a very trusted employee and close friend of my father’s at the time of my father’s death. I thought he was loyal and cared about me, so I had no sense not to trust him. He was my sole legal guardian. It was a pretty easy ripoff for him, I must say. But I was too young to have any realization of that.”

  “How old were you when your father passed?”

  “Six and a half. I was in boarding school by the time I was eight.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Well, when the cookie crumbled, he took off. To where, I had no idea. I had no legal representation or money to hire anyone to go after him. I lost the estate, everything. I wasn’t a legal adult yet, so, fortunately, none of the debt followed me, but I was penniless and homeless. They tried to put me in a foster home, but that didn’t take very well. I took off and managed to stay under their radar until I was eighteen. No one had any right to say what I did from that point on.”

  “He got away with it?”

  She laughed. “You’re so outraged.”

  “It’s an outrageous thing to do! Leaving a young girl completely alone and destitute. The man should be strung up and have his knackers sliced off. In tiny pieces.”

  She pretended to flinch and it occurred to him she’d seen far worse than that.

  “Remind me never to cross you,” she said, still amused. “But I didn’t say he got away with it, just that I couldn’t go after him at the time.”

  “But you did. Eventually.”

  She nodded. “How do you think I became an investigative reporter?”

  Roan grinned. “Really? Well. I rather like that story.”

  “So did the London Examiner. And the Wall Street Journal. And Time magazine. 60 Minutes enjoyed it, too.”

  Roan grinned. “Well done.”

  She smiled, nodded in acceptance.

  “So … you became the righter of wrongs then, is that it?”

  “I became interested in exposing stories that outsiders might judge wrongly due to preconceptions.”

  “Like the poor little rich girl.”

  “Something like that.”

  “And the camera? When did that become the predominant thing?”

  “Oh, I’d always lugged one around. I’m not even sure when that started. I was in school. And the camera was … like … my friend. A way to see the world, judge it even, without having to be part of it, I guess. A way to grieve about my father passing, I suppose, be a little mad about it all. I was so unhappy on my own in school.” She smiled briefly. “I met Kira there. It got better after that. When I started working, the pictures were the part that, for me, were telling the truer story. In a way the words—my words, anyway—were not. The words could only convey so much. The pictures were important, vital. They were what delivered the ultimate knock-out punch. That’s what called to me.”

  He’d dug deeper into her career over the past few days as he’d struggled to come to terms with the strong feelings she provoked in him. But he hadn’t dug into her childhood, or even her early career. There was so much to read about what she’d done since, he’d hadn’t gotten to the point of digging that far back.

  He had only about a million other questions on the tip of his tongue, but before he could choose which one to ask next, a small car came whizzing back up the single track road and stopped in a spray of rock and dirt right at the edge of the meadow.

  “That’s Eliza’s car.” Alarmed by the speed with which she’d come toward them, Roan started moving across the meadow, worried that something had happened. The chopper was long gone, so it wasn’t anything to do with Graham or Katie. Probably a pub fight had broken out, or something of that sort. “What is it?” he called, as she scrambled to get her stocky girth out from behind the tigh
t fit of the wheel. He’d never figured out why she drove the tiny thing in the first place. She’d always struck him as the type to drive a big, oversized utility vehicle. The better to intimidate folks with. “Is everything okay?”

  Tessa was right behind him as they made it to the road before Eliza, still in her wedding finery, but with her bun slightly askew, had fully righted herself.

  “Oh, good,” she trilled, upon seeing Tessa with him. “You’re both here.” She waved a manila envelope at them. “We’ve gotten word!” She beamed at them both. “Came in on the ferry during the ceremony. It was at the office when I stopped by on my way in. We’ve won!” She looked as pleased and excited as a child on Christmas morning. “The calendar contest,” she clarified when they both simply stared at her. “Ye’ve gone and done it, lad!” Her blue eyes twinkled like those of a woman half her age. “And you’ve snagged the best slot of them all.” She smacked the envelope into Roan’s chest. “You are Mr. December!”

  Chapter 11

  “It’s not funny.”

  Kira smiled at Tessa. “Oh, I assure you, it’s quite amusing.”

  “Well, amuse me by telling me where on earth—or on Kinloch, to be specific—we’re going to get Christmas-themed photos. In September. The calendar people want at least three to choose from, preferably five. Why couldn’t he have been Mr. October?”

  “You don’t have to have snow.” Kira’s smile widened. “You could always pose him in front of a roaring fire wearing nothing more than St. Nick’s velvety red stocking cap.”

  It did not improve Tessa’s mood in the slightest that her traitorous mind immediately latched onto that visual like she was a sex-starved fiend. Which she wasn’t. Okay, so the sex-starved part might have been a tad close to the truth. But she took umbrage at the fiend part. Except, ever since the wedding, her imagination had taken on rather fiendish tendencies.