“I can do that,” she said, slowly flipping through the pages, already excited about having something to sink her teeth into. She’d been on Kinloch for a week, and it was her first time going solo.
For the first couple days, she’d stayed at Graham’s, initially waiting until after his clan council meeting, which had gone about as well as Roan and Shay had predicted it would. Then he’d taken her into the village to meet everyone, and that part had actually gone quite well. She knew she was like the oddity at the circus, but they certainly hadn’t made her feel that way. In fact, to a man, or woman, they’d been nothing but cordial and kind.
She’d found them to be exactly as Graham had said they’d be, the nicest people to know. However, she wasn’t fool enough, to think for one second, there wasn’t gossip raging like wildfire behind her back. She didn’t take offense at it. After all, in their position, she’d surely be doing the same thing.
But she didn’t go off and hide. Graham had taken her on extensive tours of the fields. He’d shown her how they converted the plants she saw into the thread they wove into the baskets. It wasn’t until this morning, though, that she’d seen the end results, firsthand. Roan was going to take her to meet some of the weavers so she could see up close what they were all so deeply connected to. So far, she’d found each part of the process absolutely fascinating. She was equally intrigued by the contents of the folder she held in her hand.
Roan stood. “Are ye ready to go check out some of the weaver’s studios?”
“You’re sure they won’t mind?”
Roan barked one of his infectious laughs. “You are joking, right? You are the hot commodity on the island right now. There were actual arguments over who would hostess you and who would have to wait.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“I’m doing nothing of the sort.”
“Be honest, it’s because I’m a curiosity, right? I’m the McAuley that The MacLeod is keeping in his castle, but won’t make an honest woman of, isn’t that the draw?”
Roan rubbed his hands together. “Absolutely, darlin’. That’s what makes this so delicious.”
She laughed. He was so outrageous and yet so completely harmless she could hardly call him on it.
“So,” he said, putting a friendly arm about her shoulder as he guided her through the front office and out to his truck, parked in front. “How is your personal campaign coming along?”
She nudged him in the ribs. “Honestly, not here, where God and everyone are listening in.”
He laughed. “In the getaway car then, Mrs. Peel, and quickly.”
She rolled her eyes and climbed in the opposite side. She’d yet to drive herself anywhere, but she was slowly acclimating herself to the whole wrong side of the road concept. She looked over at her cohort in crime, and felt that little pang of homesickness she felt each time they set off on a new adventure. Actually, it wasn’t so much homesickness as it was Blaine-sickness. She missed her best friend. There had been no word, no contact made. She was starting to wonder how long was long enough, to risk checking in with her very best friend. Mostly to see how he was doing, but also, if she were honest, to find out what all had transpired since she’d left Annapolis. She’d been tempted on more than one occasion to get on Graham’s computer or Roan’s laptop and see what news stories had leaked out after her aborted wedding fiasco, but she’d chickened out each time, feeling what she didn’t know, couldn’t hurt her.
She was well aware that the friendship she’d instantly struck up with Roan had very much become a bit of a placebo for what she was missing with Blaine. Other than the very obvious difference that Roan was quite emphatically heterosexual, he really was the closest thing she had to a gay best friend. To her, Roan was like the big brother she’d never had. Or maybe the big cousin he truly was. Playful, and at times flirtatious, but always with the understanding that she didn’t regard him the least bit a contender for her affections.
It made him behave that much more outrageously around her, which she found pretty adorable. Making that fact clear to him was her amusement. It drove him crazy that he couldn’t get a rise out of her.
That was Graham’s exclusive domain. She was quite secure in the fact, and, thankfully, so was he. Graham might find his friend’s barrage of playful sexual innuendo around Katie tiresome and juvenile, two words he’d used often in Roan’s presence, but what it didn’t make him was jealous.
Katie found that immensely refreshing. He trusted Roan and her implicitly. She liked knowing she’d gained that level of trust with Graham. It meant a great deal. Between the crops, industry business, island business, and the general demands on Graham’s time, having Roan around to keep her distracted had also kept her sane.
It had been five days since the epic failure of the clan council meeting, and Graham still hadn’t given her an answer to her offer.
“Okay,” Roan said, as he pulled out on the narrow village track. “You share first. Is he cracking at all?”
Katie lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. We spent the couple days it took us to get here, and my first full day here, pretty much joined at the hip.” And a few other places, she thought, but despite Roan’s sense of humor, she didn’t say it out loud. “He’s been understandably busy and distracted the past few days, but we’ve spent meals together, supper, at least, and there has been time to talk.”
“He’s said nothing about your Marriage Pact proposal?”
She shook her head. She hadn’t told Roan about the other proposal she’d made. Given that the Pact proposal she’d made had come after, she assumed Graham thought it was something she’d said in the heat of the moment. She’d never been more clear thinking, but she’d been willing to leave that aside for the time being, in favor of getting him to say something, anything, about his plans for the deadline, which was four short weeks away.
Odd how the time she’d known him felt like a lifetime, yet since arriving there, time felt as if it were flying by.
“Has he said anything more to you about what his plans are? Has he talked to you or Shay since the council?”
Roan shook his head. “Shay is still in Edinburgh and likely won’t be back until sometime next week, if then.”
Katie hadn’t had the chance to meet Graham’s other close friend, as he’d been gone by the time she’d gone into the village. In addition to seeing to everyone’s legal needs on Kinloch, he also ran the small firm his father had started on the mainland. From time to time, he had to go there to work on or oversee a particularly difficult case. “It’s kind of ironic,” she said, “that Graham is here trying to figure out how to make the Marriage Pact functional, and Shay is in Edinburgh, trying to find a way to conclude the divorce case for two very dysfunctional people.” She looked over at Roan. “What are his views on the Marriage Pact?”
“Shay is a good mediator, because he can see both the merits of and the detractions of any kind of union. He happens to be very good at disassembling the marital kind, but he believes the Marriage Pact should stay.”
“Really?”
Roan nodded. I think he likes the continuity of it, of what it’s stood for. He likes to have faith where he can. Don’t fix what’s not broken is his motto. There are already enough broken things.”
“And you?”
“Maybe not for the same reasons, but pretty much the same outcome.”
“Do you think we should marry and leave the Pact be?”
“I think Graham should follow his heart in both matters. I’m just no’ certain he knows his own heart.” He glanced over to her, a kind smile on his face. “He hasn’t had to use it much. He’s a thinker by nature, a researcher and an investigator. He accumulates data and extrapolates theories. He’s not much for leap of faith moments. Except, perhaps where you were concerned. Very unlike him, that. So you’ll probably have to give him time to do it his way.”
“Which is?”
Roan’s smile spread to a grin. “Accumulate data and extrapo
late theories.”
“About marriage?”
“About you.”
Katie folded her arms over her suddenly knotted stomach. “Lovely.” She had to pray that when Graham added up all his data and came up with an equation, she was the sum of all the various parts.
“I’m taking you around the east end of the island. You’ll get to see the tower, and the abbey. Most of the weavers are on the MacLeod end of the island, but we have one artist in particular whose work I think you’ll find fascinating.”
“Has she been weaving a long time?”
Roan shook his head. “No, in fact, she’s new here.”
Katie hadn’t known Roan for very long, but she’d known Blaine her whole life. When Tag’s name had first started to enter their conversations, ever so casually, she’d come to recognize a certain look on Blaine’s face when he spoke about him. Right from the start, Katie knew, even before Blaine did, that Tag was The One. Roan had a very similar look on his face at the moment. She smiled. “So, what is her name?”
“There’s the tower, there,” Roan pointed, drawing her attention away from uncovering Roan’s possible secret love, and directing it to the dark, imposing tower built from the same stone, it appeared, as Graham’s stronghold castle.
“It’s held up as well as the castle has, it appears.”
“Aye, it’s rather defied the odds. The castle is somewhat protected, wedged in the high valley between the two mountains as it is. The weather on this end of the island is much fiercer and there’s less protection as a good part of the east end extends well past the mountain itself.”
“Oh,” Katie exclaimed. “Look at all the flowers.”
“That’s the machair. It’s a very unique, natural formation that runs just above a beach line, but below the actual strip of solid land.”
“It’s stunning and those flowers look so exotic.” There was a tickle at the edge of her mind, but it was easily ignored as they drove past the tower and along the machair, heading toward the bend in the road where the mountain eased out again and butted up against the track. It wasn’t until they’d gone past the tower and she’d turned her attention from the startling wall of mountain to her left, back to the flowery machair to her right, that she gasped, then said, “Stop the car.”
“What? Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, just—” She didn’t finish. The moment he’d coasted to a stop, she’d hopped out of the cab of the truck.
“Wait, where are you—”
“That building,” she shouted back over the wind, as Roan climbed out his side of the car, “out there on that spit of land. That’s the abbey?”
“Aye, ’tis. Why do ye ask?”
“Nothing, it’s just…” She walked away from him, her gaze fixed on the spot beyond the end of the machair, where the grass tufted up brilliant and green, a rocky tumble just beyond…and in the distance, what had been at one time, she knew for a fact, a stone abbey. She could have drawn it from memory. “It wasn’t always out in the water, was it? The abbey?” She turned to find that Roan was still back by the truck, and couldn’t hear her. Didn’t matter. She knew the answer. She was staring at the place where Graham had first made love to her. Or to some past version of her. “Right over there.” She wandered into the grass, tentative at first, then more boldly. Since the time she and Graham had consummated their relationship, neither of them had had a vision, not even a feeling of one.
They’d talked about it briefly, late one night, when she’d been looking at the carved headboard. They’d talked about her first vision in more detail, and she’d asked him what he thought the visions meant, and why they’d stopped. He hadn’t given her a specific answer, saying he was still confounded by the whole thing, but happy they’d stopped and neither of them had to worry about touching the other any longer.
“That makes two places. Both here on Kinloch.” Katie had her own theories. One was, by both of them coming back to Kinloch and joining together, the reasons for the visions had ceased to exist. She firmly believed they’d been some kind of spiritual message, sent to tell them they belonged together.
It was easy to believe that, because she believed they belonged together. As fantastical as the visions had been, they’d both had them. They couldn’t deny they existed, no matter how inexplicable and unbelievable they might have been. They’d only continued on while their future together had been in limbo.
She wondered what would happen, in a month, if Graham decided to send her away and reject both the Marriage Pact, and her. Unless…he didn’t think she was planning to stay on regardless, did he? Actually, he’d said he didn’t plan to stay on, because that would mean Iain would be in power.
As if she’d conjured him up, another car pulled in behind Roan’s truck, and out of it climbed the movie star handsome Iain McAuley.
She started back across the grass, but she’d gone a bit farther afield than she’d realized. He’d already approached Roan before she could get close enough to hear what they were saying. The wind snatched most of it away, anyway. However, Roan’s body posture and flat expression said it all. And it took a lot to dim the natural light that was Roan McAuley.
She’d had the misfortune to cross paths twice with the contender for Graham’s place on Kinloch. She’d like to think she would have found his charm and natural gregariousness cloying and overbearing even if she hadn’t had a personal stake in not liking the man. But the truth of it was, he was a very likable guy, which only served to confound her—and many of the islanders, it appeared—who would be much happier if he was simply vile and easy to hate.
The islanders of Kinloch were a people whose nature it was to throw open their doors, and welcome everyone as if they were a friend. It was easy to see why tourism was flourishing. Iain would have otherwise likely been easily loved by the people. He was very good looking, had an easy wit, and never met a person he couldn’t charm. The exception being the man she was currently living with, and his two closest friends.
She wanted to think Iain smug and smarmy, but thus far, he’d seemed sincerely friendly.
None of that explained what he was doing on the island, or why he wanted to take over Kinloch. Nice, friendly people just didn’t do that for no reason.
“Hullo, Katie,” he called out. “Beautiful day for a stroll.”
Other than herself, he was the only blond on the island. It was rather disconcerting, but worse was he felt it lent them some kind of special bond. She didn’t agree. His accent was highly refined, making him sound almost more English than Scot. She liked to think it made him sound entitled. But she knew she was reaching for reasons not to like the man.
“Yes, it’s a nice day,” she agreed, then turned to Roan. “We should continue on. Thanks for letting me stretch my legs. A pleasure seeing you again, Mr. McAuley.”
He looked surprised by her easy dismissal, as if he was used to people wanting more of his time, not less. It was perversely why she took great pleasure in cutting him off whenever he showed up. Although she couldn’t exactly point to a specific flaw, the fact remained he was a weasel of some stripe who was trying to thwart Graham’s continued work on the island. Just because the stripe wasn’t apparent to the naked eye, didn’t mean he wasn’t sporting one.
Roan opened her door and she climbed in without another look in his direction. “Good day,” Roan said to him, a rather satisfied smile on his face as he shut the door and climbed in his own side.
“Thanks,” Iain said. “And it’s Iain,” he called out to Katie.
She would never call him that, just to continue to piss him off.
“Still no idea why he’s really here?” she asked Roan as they got back on the single-track lane and continued on their journey.
“None. I’ve done about all the digging I can do. Shay has also done his share, given he’s in Edinburgh, but he’s found nothing other than that Iain has worked for the same firm since getting out of school, and his mumsy left him quite well off when sh
e kicked the proverbial bucket. I have no clue what he wants from us, or why he’s taken such an extended sabbatical to do it.”
“Hmm,” Katie said, but what she was thinking was the same thing she’d been thinking for the past few days now. There was one person she knew who could dig the dirt on the queen herself if given the time and proper motivation.
Roan’s phone chirped and he fished it out of his jacket pocket. “Aye, Eliza, what is it, my darlin’?”
“Dinnae ye darlin’ me, ye scamp.”
Roan and Katie shared a quick grin. Roan’s teasing of Katie was a new hobby of his, whereas he’d spent a lifetime getting a rise, and the occasional blush, out of his office assistant, who was easily old enough to be his grandmother.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous because I am off gallivanting the countryside with a beautiful woman. You know yer first in my heart, and—”
“Actually, ’tis Katie I am trying to track down.”
Roan glanced at Katie again. “Oh? Can I pass along a message, or do ye need to speak to her?”
“Well…”
Eliza had a stout voice to go with her stout figure, so Katie had heard every word.
“What is it, Mrs. McAuley?” she called out. “I’m right here.”
“It seems ye have a visitor. Just in off the ferry.”
Katie felt her face go pale. Had her parents found her so quickly? “I do?” she croaked.
“Aye, and he claims to be yer husband. Oh, and Graham just came in. Shall I tell them both to wait here for ye?”
Roan had already turned the truck around. In fact, they passed Iain, who’d climbed back in his car, and was following them back into town.
“Well, things just got interesting,” Roan said.
“You don’t know the half of it.” Katie slumped down in her seat and started to swear.
Chapter 21
Some Like It Scot Page 30
