“I beg your pardon, Mr. Sheffield, but Katie is no’ your wife. I know this, I was there.” Graham had stepped into the office as Eliza was on the phone announcing the very fact.
He’d had a long, frustrating day—arguing with one of their seed suppliers, mediating a sheep-stealing issue between two of his crofters, then his lorry had blown a tire on the way in—and he was supposed to be there to talk with Roan, who was out and about with Katie. Again.
When he saw the two of them pull up out front followed by that arse in swine’s clothing, Iain McAuley, Graham came very close to simply chucking it all and catching the next ferry to anywhere but Kinloch. They could have the damn place. Let pretty boy run it into the ground.
“You!” Blaine said, stabbing a finger at Graham. “What the hell have you done with my Katie?”
“You might want to lower that finger before I snap it off,” Graham said with exaggerated politeness. “I’ve done nothing with yer Katie.” Except all the things you can’t do with her, he’d wanted to add, but that was his foul mood talking. He managed to keep his tongue. “She’ll be here in a moment to prove it.”
Roan held open the door and Katie rushed in. “Blaine? What are you doing here? How did you—”
“It wasn’t easy,” he said, with a relieved sigh as he swept her into a tight bear hug. “Took me almost a week. I believe that’s a record.”
“Speaking of that, I’m glad you’re here.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward Roan’s office. “Follow me, everyone.” She looked at Eliza. “Please, if you want Graham to continue keeping everyone on Kinloch happy and successful, do whatever you must, but keep that guy out of Roan’s office.” She nodded to Iain, who was stepping up to the front door as she spoke.
She didn’t wait to see what Eliza did, but hurriedly shuffled them all into Roan’s office and shut the door behind her, then locked it for good measure.
“Blaine, this is Roan and Graham. Well, you’ve met Graham. Sort of. Roan, this is—”
“The guy ye didn’t marry. Not good sport telling lies, ol’ chap,” he said to Blaine. “I have second dibs on her if Graham here proves himself to be a complete idiot and blows the best thing he’s ever been lucky enough to find. I’m thinking ye’re a distant third now. Especially seeing as there are some aspects of her new relationship that, let’s just say, might have been lacking in her last one.”
“Roan!” Katie gasped. “I’m never telling you anything ever again.”
Roan shrugged, unrepentant.
Graham watched the entire thing like a tennis match gone mad. “Care to explain your theatrics?” he said, before they could burst into simultaneous chatter once again.
“You mean me?” Katie asked, once she realized he was talking to her and not Blaine. “It’s not theatrics.” She turned to Blaine. “I wanted to call. A thousand times. And a hundred times that. I would have. But I needed to resolve things here first.”
“Here? You just got here. What could possibly need resolving?”
“I’ll fill you in later, and you can do the same for me. My parents?”
He just shook his head.
Katie winced. “That bad?”
“Armageddon is bad. This? Much, much worse.”
She flinched. “I’m sorry. You—did you—and Tag…?”
Blaine looked to Roan and Graham, then back to her. “As you said, we’ll catch up later.”
“Katie—” Graham began.
“I know, I know.” She looked to Graham. “I made another discovery today. About—uh, things. We’ll talk later.”
“Can I get in on this date night schedule?” Roan asked.
“Shut up, Roan,” both Katie and Graham said simultaneously.
He lifted his hands. “Just trying to keep up.”
“As I was looking at my…discovery, Iain pulled up.”
“What did he want?” Graham asked.
“What does he ever want? I have no idea. We blew him off and got back in the truck, and I asked Roan if he or Shay had gotten any dirt on Iain, which they haven’t, and that made me think of”—she turned to Blaine—“you. And now here you are. I really think there is something to the visions, Graham.”
“Visions,” Roan and Blaine said at the same time.
“It’s nothing, don’t worry,” she told them. “But you’re here, Blaine, and just in time.”
“We need to talk, Katie. You need to come home with me.”
“We do need to talk. Blaine, I’m not coming home”—she looked straight at Graham—“if I have anything to say about it. And, if a certain thickheaded man on this island will ever pull said thickhead out of his overly scientific ass long enough to see the good thing he already has right in front of him, and how damn lucky he is to have it, this will be my home.”
Roan hooted. Blaine spluttered. Graham…finally spurred into action.
He stepped forward, and very calmly, but deliberately, put his hand out for Katie. “It seems there is a lot of talking to be done with a number of different people. I’d like to pull rank here and talk with you right now. If you dinnae mind.”
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “Wait. No, I’m not. Graham—”
“Alone,” he said. “Please.”
She held his gaze for a long moment, mutiny in her eyes. Then her shoulders slumped and she nodded. “Fine, fine, but first.” She turned to the other two men introducing them again. “Blaine Sheffield, Roan McAuley. Roan? This is the man who will find the answer to our most perplexing question.”
“He can tell me why you’re chasing after that idiot when I’d marry you in a heartbeat?”
“Funny. We can’t marry. We’re like second cousins.”
“Right, second cousins, two centuries removed.”
“Well, you’re like a cousin to me.”
“Ouch.”
“Katie, honestly,” this from Blaine. “We really don’t have time—”
“No, we don’t. In fact, time is running out fast. Blaine, Roan will give you the details, but there is a man here, right out in that office, in fact, who is trying to take over this island, only none of us can figure out why.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“I want you to find out. If anyone can do it, you can. Come on, Blaine. You owe me.”
“I most certainly do not. You left me standing at the altar!”
“Okay, poor choice of words. But I did that for your own good, as well as for mine. I didn’t know what it would lead to”—she looked to Graham—“but I do now. After telling everyone including myself how independent I am now, I’ve done exactly what I always do. Sit back and don’t rock the boat.” She took a step closer to Graham. “Well, I’m rocking it now. So look out. Blaine, please, if you’ve ever loved me, then help me. I promise, other than coming back to Maryland, I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
She took Graham’s hand, and went to the door. Graham wasn’t sure who started clapping, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t Sheffield.
Graham, on the other hand, had just spent the past five minutes going from confusion, to fury, to disconcertment…to pride. As they passed Iain, he sketched a quick salute.
Surprised, given Graham had generally pretended the man was invisible to him, it took Iain a moment to snap to attention and take advantage of the occasion. “Graham, I’ve come to discuss—”
“Sorry,” Graham called back over his shoulder as Katie continued marching him out the front door. “Can’t chat now. But rest assured we’re all probably going to have a big chat later on.”
It was the first time he’d ever seen Iain frown.
“Where are we—”
“Mind your head,” she told him as she shoved him into Roan’s front seat with a strength that belied her much smaller frame.
He barely managed to duck in time to keep his skull from being cracked on the frame, and had just closed his door when she climbed in the driver’s side and shut the door. “Has Roan been giving you driv
ing lessons?”
“No,” she said, then peeled away from the curb.
Graham grabbed both dash and door handle. “Ye, uh, mind telling me what’s going on? Or where we’re goin’?”
She didn’t answer, but her expression rivaled that of the fiercest Valkyrie. He wisely held his tongue, thinking he’d figure it out in due time. The island wasn’t that big.
Still, it was a surprise to him when she drove away from the castle and across to the McAuley side of the island. Just past the machair, she pulled over and parked. Well, it was more a controlled swerve and slamming of the brakes, but he was happy enough to be alive and in one piece. He didn’t quibble.
“Come on,” she said, and climbed out. “I want to show you something.” She started off across the green.
He did as she asked. With his long strides, he was beside her in a few steps. “What is it, Katie?” He reached for her arm, but she leapt to the side to avoid his touch.
Neither of them had done that in days. Since she’d come to his castle, in fact. It stung more than a little.
“Not here. You’ll understand in just a—” She stopped and pointed. “There. Look there.” She pointed first to where the machair met the grass line. Then she pointed out to sea. “And there.”
Graham glanced from the grass, to the ruins of the abbey, and back to the grass, but he was still confounded. “I dinnae understand. What are ye—” Then he froze, and very slowly turned to look once again at the abbey, then the grassy knoll. Then, finally, at Katie. “It was here.”
She slumped in obvious relief. “Aye.”
“But…why? What is it you think this means?”
She started walking again, and stopped when she was standing directly over the spot where the two of them, or some previous version of them, had lain on a blanket, wrapped in a passion he’d only known from watching it. His gaze lifted to hers, and he felt his heart fill. “Now, I know it for real.”
“So do I.” She stepped closer. “Graham, don’t you see? You were going to buck the tradition. You were going to end the chain. I think…I think we’ve been…a part of that chain. Before. I don’t know how many times. This is what you’re meant to do. What we’re meant to do. As long as we’ve been heading in that direction”—she lifted her shoulders—“No more visions, no more messages.”
“So, I’m supposed to what? Ask for your hand to keep the visions at bay?”
She sighed and shook her head, but there was no hurt in her eyes, only frustration. “No. You’re supposed to take the leap of faith like your forebears did.” She stepped closer still. “Don’t you see, Graham? That’s what all of this is. That’s what life is. A huge leap of faith. Otherwise why get up in the morning? Why even try to improve your lot in life? Because you believe there will continue to be a life worth improving, that’s why. Leap of faith.”
“Katie—”
“No, let me finish. I was going to wait, to let you make up your own mind—because I wanted you to want this, want me, want the future with me, because you truly wanted it. Not because of the Pact, not to thwart the Pact. But because I was worth the leap.”
“But you—”
“I’m not done. Taking off from the church, leaving that life behind, was the only time in my life I’ve ever dared leap. Then what did I do? I came here…and went right back to sitting on the sidelines, allowing others to call the shots. Shots that involved me, and my life, and my future. Well, I’m not doing that anymore.” She boldly walked right up to him and put her hands on his shoulders.
They both paused a moment, stock still, but nothing happened.
“I didn’t know what I wanted when I left Annapolis. Only what I didn’t want. But in that chapel, you stood there and said, ‘You’re supposed to be mine.’ Graham, I don’t know how, or why or what forces really led you to that church on that day. But for every second since the moment you strode into that garden, I am absolutely convinced you are supposed to be mine. I don’t want to help you abolish the Marriage Pact. I think that any law, any…belief, that has lasted as long as that one has, with its brilliant and unassailable results, has to be something worth taking a leap of faith for. I told you I would convince you to marry me before the time was up. But if you don’t already know, don’t already believe, somewhere in your heart—in the place not ruled by data and equations, research and documentation—that I really am supposed to be yours, then waiting another four weeks isn’t going to change that.”
“Are ye quite done now?” he asked, when she seemed to finally run out of steam.
She started to pull her hands from his shoulders but he covered them with his own, and pulled them down between them, so he could weave their fingers together. Then he held on tight—as tight as he’d ever held on to anything in his life.
“I’ve spent my life figuring out solutions to complex problems by applying logic and rational thought. I don’t know that intuition ever came into play. My head has always ruled my gut, and my heart. It wasn’t even a contest. So ye can see why this Pact went against everything I believed in. It wasn’t logical.” He pulled their joined hands up between them. “An act of desperation sent me across an ocean, sent me to find you. From that moment on, nothing in my life has been orderly or rational. No amount of logical problem solving is giving me the absolute answer I am seeking. It was easier to break down the unexplainable, than it was to confront it. The visions, the Pact…I just wanted them to go away, so I didn’t have to deal with what I didn’t—couldn’t—understand.”
“It’s—”
He shook his head. “I gave ye yer moment.”
She held his gaze, then nodded.
“Roan and Shay tried to explain the Pact, the leap of faith required, as giving hope. They told me that no one here would ever vote it asunder, because no one wanted to stop believing in its promise, which is a lifetime bond. Four hundred years’ worth of them. It gave them hope. Taking that away would have been more brutal, more cruel, and more devastating than a blight that would forever obliterate our crops. That would be an act of God. Of fate. Destroying the Pact would have been an act of man. Namely this one.”
“When…when did you understand?”
“I think a part of me always did. I was simply too afraid to reach for it, to hand such an important piece of my life…of myself, to something I couldn’t absolutely quantify.”
“What changed?”
“You. I never wanted you to leave. If we’d have wed, I’d have never willingly divorced you. That’s why I couldn’t answer you, about your offer to help with the Pact. That you’d even do that, for me…was humbling and made me feel even less worthy.”
“For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have been able to go through with it. I’ve known that from the moment the words left my mouth. My only hope was the same as yours, that once we’d tied the knot, nothing would ever be able to unravel it.”
“I know that. Have known that.”
“When were you going to get around to telling me?” she said, the first hint of a smile curving her beautiful lips.
“I dinnae know. I was working my way up to it. It’s why I’ve spent so much time away the past few days. I can’t seem to think straight when I’m around you. I needed to figure out how I was going to tell you, once again, that I’d changed my thinkin’—Without you thinkin’ me so fickle you’d run from the proof of it.”
“I’d never run. The only running I ever did, was toward you.”
He tugged her closer, then lifted her up against him so he could kiss her, long, and lingering. “I know,” he said, against the side of her cheek, before letting her slide to the ground. “I watched you, just now, in Roan’s office, and that was when I knew I was done waiting. You were…you are magnificent. And you’re absolutely right. I’ve been a complete horse’s arse.”
“Well, maybe not a complete one.”
He smiled…and then he got down on one knee.
“Oh,” she gasped, and tugged one hand free to cover first
her mouth, then her heart. “Graham—”
“Well, the part of me that’s not a complete horse’s patootie would like to take a step…a leap, in fact.”
Her eyes—eyes he planned to look into for the rest of his life—went glassy, and her hand clutched at his, even as she clutched at her heart. “Hurry,” she said, hoarsely, “I might not be able to keep my knees locked much longer.”
“Katherine Elizabeth Georgina Rosemary McAuley, I would consider it an honor, one I vow to spend the rest of my life proving I’m worthy of holding, if you’d consider giving me your hand in marriage.” He lifted his hand, turned her palm over in his, and traced a heart there, before closing her fingers around it. “You’ve had mine since the day I met you. I love you, Katie. I’m fairly certain I’ve said these words to you for centuries, but I’d like the pleasure of saying them for at least another fifty or so more years. Will you marry me, darling Katie mine?”
“Aye,” she choked out. “Come here.”
He stood and swept her into his arms.
“I love you, Graham MacLeod. We’ll stand in this very spot again, across time. I know it. But I love you in this life, and I want every day of it. So yes, I’ll marry you.” Then she thumped him on the chest. “I thought you’d never ask.”
He laughed, then took her mouth in a bold, deep, claiming kiss as if he’d never kissed her before. She was well and truly his.
“If you dinnae mind, I’d like ye to choose another wedding dress,” he said, as she kissed the side of his neck, then pressed her cheek against his chest.
“Do I have to wear a dress?” She looked up at him then, and grinned.
“I was thinkin’ I’d like to claim you, and say my vows, in front of both God, and my friends and clansmen. We can always play naked bride and groom later, though.”
She laughed, then tugged his head down for a claiming kiss of her own. “Deal,” she said, making him laugh in return. “You know, maybe something that’s a little throwback to another era.”
“You mean like that dress you were wearing when we—”
She nodded.
And he cleared the sudden dryness from his throat. “Aye, that would be acceptable, indeed it would. Though we’ll perhaps have to put off naked bride and groom night.”
Some Like It Scot Page 31
