“Wow,” she said. “Like I said, Annapolis alone is something like thirty thousand or so, and it’s not considered a big city. It’s hard to imagine even the eight or ten thousand in Oban. But the islands are really quite, well, I’m guessing rural isn’t really the right word, but—what about Kinloch? It’s smaller, I take it, than Barra?”
He smiled and nodded, even while inwardly wincing. What would she think when she discovered just how “rural” her new home would be? Temporary though it may be, he didn’t want it to be any more temporary than necessary. Meaning he needed her to stay at least as long as it took for her to make up her mind about him. About his proposal, he mentally added. It wasn’t him she was judging, but what he was offering her.
He was actually glad their manner of exiting the chapel had prevented her from retrieving her purse and any real access she had to other people or to personal funds. Not that he considered her imprisoned by any stretch, but, at the moment, he wasn’t unhappy with the reality that she was somewhat beholden to him.
He was well aware, however, how much she loathed being beholden to anyone at that particular juncture of her life, so he wasn’t going to take too much comfort in the setup the fates had so kindly handed him. But he did plan to take as full advantage of them as he could.
As the ferry moved out into the sea, and he could barely see home on the horizon, he felt that primal tug toward his singular place on earth. He was reminded anew of what was at stake, and what his priorities were.
His hands tightened on her shoulders, and she lifted one of her own from the rail, covered his, and squeezed. “You haven’t been gone all that long, but you miss it, don’t you?” she asked, looking ahead, not at him. But leaving her hand covering his.
He nodded, then realized she couldn’t see the gesture. “Aye,” he said, his voice a bit more guttural than he’d expected. It had been an emotional couple of days. Months, actually, if he factored in the turmoil since Ualraig’s death.
“Will ye miss your own place in the world, Katie McAuley?” he heard himself ask. It was an unwise thing, to plant any seed of homesickness in her head, or in her heart. But they’d be there regardless. At the moment, he was feeling a particular kinship with her that was hard to ignore, so the question just came out.
She nodded, and squeezed his hand harder.
Quite instinctively, he stepped up and pulled her more fully into the shelter of his body. “I understand. And I’m sorry.”
He thought she might have sniffled, but she merely nodded, her head bobbing beneath his chin. “Thanks,” she said, her voice barely carrying above the thrumming engines of the ferry.
He nestled her against his chest, and slid their joined hands around her waist, matching it with his other arm, until she was ensconced inside them. He felt, rather than heard the sigh that preceded her relaxing back against him, taking his comfort, and perhaps, borrowing from his strength as well.
She wanted independence and autonomy, he thought, and understood the desire. But, at the moment, she fit quite perfectly where she stood. As he found comfort and strength in their joined embrace, he didn’t think she’d given up so much of either, as it was more like they shared them with each other.
He thought of the things he wanted to say to her. Tell her about Kinloch. His friends there. The islanders who were both his extended family and his responsibility. He had a sense she would understand him, understand the dual pressures, possibly better than anyone he’d met. Not because she understood his culture, as their differences were vast. But because she had faced that same duality of purpose and expectation in her own life. Though, for him, it was more welcome task than unwanted burden.
She leaned a bit more heavily into his arms as they entered the open waters, heading toward Castlebay. The sun was setting, the air was warm, but the wind crossing the bow of the ship made it feel a bit more brisk than it actually was.
“I wish I could paint,” she said.
“Paint?” he asked, confused momentarily as he was pulled from his ruminations about her, his future…and what role she was going to play.
“You know. Oil on canvas kind of paint. That is a pretty stunning view, with the sun setting, all the colors and hues. I don’t think a photograph alone could do it justice. I’m not bad with pen and ink, but that…needs to be painted.” She laughed shortly. “My skills run more toward using rulers and T-squares. Not exactly the most elegant art.”
“Did you help design your family’s sailing boats?”
“When I was young, before I went off to college, I fancied myself as a future designer of high-end racing sloops and fancy yachts. Not so much the engineering aspect of how it sat in the water, but the look of it, the style.”
“Sounds like a perfect fit with the family business.”
She sighed and he tucked her more fully against him. He’d have said it was to keep the wind from tossing her hair about and into her face as she spoke. But he knew it was every bit as self-serving as it was to afford protection from the elements.
He was feeling very…elemental at the moment. But the wind, the deepening colors of the sky, the churning waters, and the beautiful vista ahead of the peaks of Barra had little to do with it.
“I’d have thought so, too. But my father made it very clear that my talents were to be focused on the pragmatic and practical, not the whimsical. After that I tried to win him over to the idea of letting me get into the marketing end of things. I thought I would simply move toward a graphic artist approach and help advertise our business, direct my focus to something that combined the art with the industry.”
“And?”
“Shot down. My mother, actually, was the dream crusher in that instance. She had these kind of dueling desires for me. On the one hand, she pushed every bit as hard as my father did for me to be part of the business. I am their only child, much to my father’s dismay, as he’d wanted a son to mold into a new version of himself.”
“A daughter couldn’t do the same?”
“Oh, he molded me all right. Eventually—when he accepted that I was his only chance at industrial immortality. That was precisely why my mother was so torn. She was happy that he’d finally given up the idea that he’d have a male offspring to carry on his name and take over his share of the company. My mother was happy, I think, to have his disapproval over her inadequacy in childbearing off her shoulders. So she pushed the father-daughter bond every chance she got. No matter if she agreed with his plans for me, or not.”
“Did she work for the company, too?”
Katie laughed, but there was little humor in it. “In her own way, I think she contributes every bit as much, if not more, to the success of the company than my father does. Only she’s not on their payroll, no.”
“So, in what way—”
“Our business relies heavily on perception. People with lots of money want to buy a product they see as top of the line, which ours is. But it can’t just be well made, it also needs to be prestigious. My mother was nothing if not the best hostess, best corporate wife, best charity organizer, in terms of schmoozing the clientele. She dedicated herself to building McAuley-Sheffield into a very prestigious business, from the social end of things. It was no small feat, and led to her internal battle—let my father mold me, or groom me herself to be, well…her.”
Graham nodded, stroked her arms with his thumbs, and let her keep talking.
“You see, there was a lot of pressure for McAuley-Sheffield to go public, not remain privately owned.”
“Pressure from?”
“Blaine’s father. He believed the time had come to take it in that direction, in order to keep the company thriving. My father disagreed.”
“I’m assuming this dissension was part of why you and Blaine were pushed together?”
“Exactly. Finally, they had an opportunity to unite the company in a way they never had before. My dad was pushing me to learn the business so I could be strong enough to keep it private, as he wished. He knew Blaine wouldn’t
be a match for me in that regard, down the line. My mother, on the other hand, wanted me to marry Blaine and take over her duties, keeping the flames burning from the outside, the social angle. She couldn’t do it forever, and she feared without that combination—”
“The business was equally doomed,” Graham finished.
Katie simply nodded.
He leaned down to kiss the top of her head, as if that was something he did—often—and checked himself mid motion.
An odd sensation shot through him when he pulled back. As if he’d altered things in some way. Some wrong way.
“Anyway, that was more than you probably needed to know.”
On the contrary, he wanted to tell her. It was exactly the kind of thing he wanted to know. She’d claimed the need to break free and stand on her own, be her own person, with her own mind. Only she hadn’t once struck him as the kind of woman who’d tolerate anything less of herself.
He better understood why she’d been trapped as she had. It was rather astounding, actually, that on her wedding of all days, she’d finally taken that stand. He realized he might have played a small role, but she’d already been well pushed to the breaking point before he arrived, given the state he’d found her in.
“No,” he said. “Thank you for telling me. I appreciate the trust.”
“It’s probably best you know, anyway. So you know what you’re getting with me. And the potential for future, potentially ugly entanglements with my family, if we…you know.”
His arms tightened around her in an instinctive need to protect. As if the very idea that someone would threaten her in any way was his sole and absolute duty to defend. So strong was the notion that he shook his head, as if he could so easily shake off the feeling.
It was merely her discussing their legal union, which was naturally fraught with all kinds of anxiety and concerns, some of them he’d surely not contemplated as yet. The reaction was purely a subconscious reaction to everything that was roiling about inside his head.
Except the ache he felt was centered in his chest.
It wasn’t the sort of ache one would mistake for a heart attack. Not that his heart wasn’t under attack, just that the war being waged was one he didn’t fully understand. She wasn’t clinging, though, and she most certainly wasn’t pushing for, well, anything. In fact, she was one step away from turning tail and running. Or would be if she had her hands on her wallet.
Step back. That’s what he needed to do. Take a giant step back. Both figuratively…and literally.
To that end, he loosened his hold on her, and was moving away when she gasped and pointed.
“Is that it? Is that Kinloch?”
He glanced outward, surprised to see they were closing in on Castlebay. The ferry had moved far enough leeward in preparation to enter the harbor via the deepest channel, which provided a glimpse of the island just beyond and to the west of Barra.
His island.
“Aye,” he said, feeling the ache bloom anew in his chest, but the cause was entirely different. The source was not at all foreign or confusing. “That is home, Katie.”
My home, he added silently, with intent. Because what he’d thought, in that instant, was our home.
He realized he’d not only not stepped back, he’d actually stepped up and tucked her into the shelter of his body once again. She turned just then, and even though it was nigh on to midnight, the glow of the setting sun, barely apparent over the horizon of Barra, appeared to set the tips of her curls afire. There was a light in her blue eyes, one he couldn’t recall seeing before that moment.
“It’s beautiful, Graham,” she said, smiling up into his face. “I didn’t expect the mountains and the—all of it. It’s stunning.”
Not, “wow, it’s so tiny,” or “how do you survive on such a spit of land.” No, she’d gasped, smiled, and called it stunning.
As was she, he thought, lowering his head as he turned her more fully into his arms, his actions no longer under his control. Surely, he wouldn’t be taking that step—not when he most needed to gird himself, and gather his wits about him.
But he didn’t check the motion. Didn’t even try.
The truth was, he’d wanted to kiss Katherine Elizabeth Georgina Rosemary McAuley since he’d first laid eyes on her—dressed to wed another man. A stranger. Yet it felt like he’d waited eons already, before he took what he knew to be his.
Chapter 9
Katie froze, just for a split second, as she tried to shift gears from her excitement at seeing the island, and focus on the idea, the possibility that Graham was going to—
“Oh,” she said, rather breathlessly, as he slid his hand to the back of her neck and tipped her mouth up to his. “Graham—”
He paused. She hadn’t really thought he would. There was that fierce light in his eyes again. She’d seen it in the chapel…and again in the limo…the taxi, too. They’d been interrupted, every time. Her grip on his shoulders tightened, which was when she became aware she’d grabbed hold of him. And not with the intent to push him away.
“Aye, Katie?” he said, his gaze so intently focused on her face, most specifically her mouth, that any intelligent response she might have given was rendered pointless.
She was too busy trying to shore up her suddenly wobbling legs.
“You—we—should we be…?”
“Probably not,” he said, his voice like a sanding block against teak, “but I’m no’ thinkin’ so clearly at the moment, mo chridhe. So if ye feel ye should stop me, say so now.” He lowered his head another fraction of an inch.
She could feel the warmth of his breath mingle with hers, his lips were so close. So close she only had to lift the tiniest bit onto her toes to brush her lips against them. The yearning to taste him, to feel what it would be like to tap into that focus, that intensity, that…ferocity, all aimed so potently at her…by doing something as simple, as wonderful, as mating her mouth to his…was overwhelmingly powerful.
In the end, she decided the matter for him—and for herself. Lifting to her toes, she brushed her lips against his. Standing, as it happened, on her own two feet. Making her own choices. Taking control of her life. Taking, for once, what she wanted.
He let her kiss him, accepting without taking, and she felt his shoulders flex under the pressure of her fingers, even as she heard the soft groan come from somewhere deep inside his chest. “Katie,” he murmured against her mouth. “Mo chridhe.”
She had no idea what that meant, but the way he said it made her toes curl. Something deep inside her began to unfurl, and her kiss grew more insistent.
An instant later she was cradled fully against his chest as he bent his head to hers and shifted the kiss to one of need and possession.
She had absolutely no problem with that. She was feeling a bit needy and possessive herself at that moment.
He slid his hands around to cup her face. His palms were broad, and warm, and callused. Strong and steady, they were like a sturdy frame she could center herself between. His lips were warm, firm, and tasted a bit salty from the sea spray and wind, making her wonder if she tasted the same to him.
She tipped up a bit more onto her toes, wanting more of him, feeling suddenly as if she’d been starved and had been offered an endless feast.
She supposed the description wasn’t far from the truth. She and Blaine had never been intimate at any point in their lives, but despite knowing they’d end up bound forever in some way, they’d never been foolish enough to believe that their deep, abiding friendship would be enough.
That was why, when Tag had come along, she’d encouraged Blaine to pursue him. There had been others before, but they’d been teenage crushes or the shallow flings of the newly liberated college student. Tag had been the first serious threat to Blaine’s heart and Katie had wanted him to follow that call. Even to the point of discussing his coming out, to his family, to everyone, so he could have what would make him truly happy. Men had given up kingdoms for love, surely
the world wouldn’t end if Blaine gave up McAuley-Sheffield for his.
Though he had fallen head over heels, he’d never found the courage to do what his heart begged him—what she’d begged him—to do.
In the end, he hadn’t heeded either. His heart, because he’d wanted it too badly to risk losing it all. Or her, because he said she didn’t really know what she was talking about.
She’d had her own schoolgirl crushes, and she’d thought she’d found love in college. In the end, it had just been convenient sex. She’d never found her equivalent to Blaine’s Tag. After her college debacle, she hadn’t been in any big hurry to repeat that painful mistake. Once she’d graduated and gone to work for the company, she hadn’t been able to figure out how to conduct a private life that would remain truly private. Her parents could believe whatever they would about her relationship with Blaine. She’d never lied to them about her feelings for him. Whether they knew, or suspected what the full truth was, on either side, she had no idea. It wasn’t as if they discussed intimate matters. But, to her mind anyway, it had to be painfully obvious to anyone who knew them, or spent any time with them.
Yet the farce continued. What mattered was what people assumed they knew, not necessarily what was actually true. What mattered was the face one showed to the world, not what one might privately feel. How many times had her parents drilled that into her? That it was all about projecting what you wanted the world to believe to be true. Perception was a reality you could control. So, no way would she have set herself up, much less someone else, for the potential scandal that would ensue if she’d been discovered to be “cheating” on Blaine.
So it was only natural, normal even, for her to be feeling like a sex-starved maniac. Because…wasn’t she? Starving?
“Katie?”
She blinked her eyes open, to find Graham’s face an inch or two from hers, his steady regard still intent, but combined with sincere concern.
“What?” she whispered, then lifted her hand to her face…and realized the salty taste hadn’t come from the sea spray, or even Graham for that matter.
Some Like It Scot Page 15
