by Julia London
“You know, your list of must-haves in a partner.”
He shook his head.
“Like, you’re saying that the person you date has to meet your non-negotiable standards, so you’re not just dating someone for the sake of sex.”
Outlander looked terribly confused.
“Because presumably, you’re looking for something more meaningful than a hookup, right?”
He looked even more confused.
“Like Vanessa. Her non-negotiables are no cheating, and he has to spend quality time with her watching romantic comedies or something, and he has to love her unconditionally.”
Outlander frowned. “Could she no’ just get a dog, then?”
Jenny laughed.
“And you?” he asked as he slid the plate across the bar to her. “Do you really have such a list?”
“God, no,” she said with a snort. “That would eliminate a significant portion of my dating pool. Anyway, it’s easy for my friends to have those standards. Vanessa doesn’t even date because she’s so into her job. She’s a lawyer. And Brooke has been dating Grayson for years. He’s so besotted, he would clean her floor with a toothbrush. He wouldn’t judge her if she ate an entire pizza by herself, which of course, Brooke would never do. Two slices, tops, would be her big pizza binge. Thank you!” She picked up the sandwich. “I also love the dancing.”
“What?”
“At weddings. Love the dancing. I mean, how often do you get out and let it all hang out? Did you?”
He blinked.
“Did you dance?”
Outlander leaned back against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked as if she’d exhausted him. “A wee bit.”
If she’d been at a wedding tonight, she would have been on the dance floor, that was for sure. “Nothing more fun than dancing with a bit of an adult beverage buzz. Now that’s a non-negotiable for you,” she said, and horror of horrors, she followed up that inane comment with a wink. What in the hell am I doing right now?
She took a healthy bite of her sandwich as she tried to think of how to rein this all back in. “I took dancing lessons a few years ago,” she said in a desperate attempt to turn the comment around. “Ballroom. But I had two left feet. I couldn’t do a paso doble to save my life. And forget the quick step—my partner said I looked like I was having a seizure. Apparently that was a non-negotiable for him.”
God, she wasn’t reining anything in, she was rambling and making it worse. Why oh why did she always have to talk so much? It was a horrible, ingrained habit of hers—if no one else talked, there was some automatic switch in her that shifted into turbo mode, filling up all the available air with words.
She looked down at her plate. “Well this is delicious.” She took another big bite of the sandwich. Too big. Her eyes watered. She chewed maniacally and managed to swallow it down. “So delicious!” she said hoarsely. “What’s on it?”
“Chutney.”
“Chutney! That’s different.” A little too different for her tastes. “Not familiar. Where do you get it?”
“We make it.”
She imagined him and a cute little blonde making whatever the hell was ruining her perfectly good sandwich. The cute little blonde’s name was probably something very Scottish, too, like Fiona. They probably wore matching aprons and laughed gaily as they stirred something in a ginormous pot, then fed each other bites of it. She coughed.
“Beer?” He pushed away from the kitchen counter and walked to the fridge.
“Actually, could I have some water?” she asked hoarsely.
He got her a glass of water and set it down before her. “Thank you,” she said. He was watching her closely as she drank, probably wondering if he should dial 9-1-1. Jenny put down the glass and forced a smiled. “So whose wedding was it? Yours?” She laughed at her own joke.
His brows dipped.
“Oh, I get it. Too soon in our relationship for me to ask.” She laughed again.
Now he just looked horrified.
“Sorry. Dumb joke,” she said with an airy wave of her hand. “I know we don’t have a relationship…yet.” Come on, sometimes, jokes just teed themselves up.
But Outlander didn’t think she was as hilarious as she thought she was, and turned to the sink and began to wash things.
Okay, so the sexy guy in a kilt wasn’t much of a talker, and clearly he had no sense of humor. “It’s so pretty here at Lake Haven. This whole area is beautiful. You know what I like about it? People are so friendly and helpful.” That was really more of a guess than actual experience, but whatever.
He turned back to the island and reached for the bag of chips, but before he could do something ridiculous like put them away, Jenny put her hand on the bag to stop him. Her fingers brushed his, and she glanced up into stark green eyes that were boring through her. “Sorry. I’m just really, really hungry.”
He pulled his hand back from the bag. “And I’m really, really knackered.”
“Ah. I can take this to my room.” She stood up, gathered up the plate and her water as he checked his wristwatch. She resisted the urge to burp as she stuffed the bag of chips under her arm. “Thank you so much, Edan Mackenzie.”
He nodded.
God, but he was a tough one. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a very quiet man?”
A vague hint of a smile turned one corner of his mouth, and he arched a brow. “I’d wager a quiet man is the only type of man you’ve ever met.”
Surprised, Jenny laughed. “Very funny,” she said, nodding. “I’ve been told I am a woman of many words.”
He braced one hand against the island.
“Okay, all right. I know that look,” she said. “That is definitely the look of a man who has been kept too long in his apron.” She started for the door.
“We’re good, then?” he asked through a yawn. “No cake?”
“Surprisingly, no,” she said. The waistband of her palazzo pants was so freaking tight all of a sudden. “I’ll save it for breakfast. What time is breakfast?”
Outlander looked at her like she was crazy, but Jenny was definitely the type of girl who needed to know where her next meal was coming from. “I’m kidding,” she said. “But…breakfast will be served, right?”
“No. The inn is closed,” he reminded her. “There’s a market in East Beach if you need anything.”
Jenny had no idea how to get to East Beach, obviously, but she’d figure it out tomorrow. She was suddenly too full and exhausted. “Great. Well, thanks again,” she said, and started for the door. When she reached it, she looked back. Outlander was still watching her. Warily. As if he expected she’d make a run at the pantry. “Wi-Fi?” she asked hopefully.
The corner of his mouth rose up so fleetingly that it was possible she’d imagined it. “You canna eat Wi-Fi.”
“More’s the pity. But I need to email my dad and tell him where I am.”
“In the lounge,” he said.
“Great. Thanks again, Edan. Good night.”
“Good night, then.”
She walked out with the vision of a pair of muscular legs beneath that kilt dancing in her mind’s eye.
Of all the gin joints in all the world, she had to walk into his, she thought, in her best Humphrey Bogart accent.
Four
The sun slipped through the seam between the drapes to wake Edan the next morning. He groaned, sat up and looked about the spacious and fairly empty master suite he occupied in the turret of the old inn. His kilt was on the chair where he’d tossed it last night. His boxers were hanging off the post at the foot of the bed. His shirt was lying crumpled up on the floor. Sandra, his late aunt’s long-time partner, had minded this place for years and would not be happy with his slovenly dispatch of last night.
He hauled himself out of bed. He shoved his hands through his hair and padded naked across the room to the en suite. As he walked by one of the windows, a flash of orange caught his eye. Edan paused. He took a step backward and squinted out
the window. That was the motor mouth Jenny, judging by the caramel hair. She was on the first tee of the little 9-hole golf course he’d put in two years ago to attract more guests. She was bent over, her hands and feet on the ground, her hair pooling on the orange mat she’d spread beneath her.
What the bloody hell was she doing? Edan squinted as she suddenly moved one leg back, then rose up, lifting her arms high in the air as she arched her back.
Yoga? On his tee box? What time was it? He glanced around to the clock on the mantel above the hearth. Half past six in the morning. Was she mad? It was a bloody golf course! It was too early for controversy, and yoga on a tee box was definitely his idea of controversy. There was a time and place for everything.
He walked on. Stomping, really, still disconcerted and at odds with the world. Between the wedding and her unexpected arrival, he couldn’t seem to find his bearings.
He was being ridiculous, he knew. Yesterday had been a perfect day—the air had been still and crystal clear, the hills around Lake Haven a verdant-green backdrop to the dancing of inebriated, happy adults. The bride and groom had made a beautiful couple.
Edan had known Rosalyn and Hugh since he’d come over from Scotland five years ago to help his aunt with the inn. They’d come a year before him, two ex-patriot Scots who had happened upon work at the inn. At the time, they’d been merely friends. Edan had known almost the moment they’d fallen in love.
Or rather, Audra, his ex-fiancée, had figured it out and had told him.
It had taken Rosalyn and Hugh a while to make their way to the altar. Edan and Audra were supposed to have been at the altar a full three months before them, but that obviously hadn’t happened.
Still, the wedding for Rosalyn and Hugh had been everything Edan could have hoped for them. They were like family to him, especially since he really had none of his own here now. His aunt was gone, his fiancée was gone. All he had was this bloody inn.
The Cassian Inn was an old family estate, left to his American mother and her sister. It had been in the family for generations, but Edan’s mother had met a Scot and married him, and had given the inn to Clara. When Edan was nineteen, his mother lost the battle with breast cancer. Fifteen years later, Aunt Clara was diagnosed with the same aggressive form of cancer and had died two years ago.
She’d left her money to Sandra, and the inn to him.
Edan had grown up in Balhaire, a tiny village in the shadow of an old Scottish Highland fortress by the same name. He was the son of a fisherman who was generally out of reach physically and emotionally. Edan’s older brother had gone into fishing with his father, and Edan had, too. But when Clara had asked him to come to America and help with the inn just before his thirtieth birthday, he’d lept at the chance. He liked fishing—he just preferred it standing in a trout stream, and not out on the ocean. He did not care for deep-sea commercial fishing at all.
The Cassian Inn was a shadow of what it had once been, as depicted in various old photos around the dining room. Modern finishes and the hacking of grand rooms to create smaller, functional ones, had replaced the Victorian charm. The population around the lake had grown up on the north shore, and even the addition of his golf course had not been enough to bring guests around to the south side of the lake. In the last few years, it had become increasingly difficult to keep the inn booked when just five miles around the bend one might have a room at a the Lake Haven Spa Resort, with upscale spa facilities, boats, and nightly concerts.
Still, for his aunt and Sandra, Edan had done what he could. Rosalyn was the head cook and Hugh the head groundskeeper. Sandra kept the inn clean and the old bachelor Ned manned their little farm. Together, they’d kept the inn lumbering along.
Three years ago, Edan had struck up an online relationship with a girl he’d known in Balhaire. Two years ago, just before Clara’s death, Audra had come from Scotland to live with him at the inn. Eight months ago, Audra told Edan she wasn’t feeling it anymore. It wasn’t the inn, she said. It was him. All him. They weren’t on the “same page,” whatever page that was. She missed Scotland, she said.
“Then we’ll go home,” Edan had said instantly. He loved Audra. He had envisioned a quiet life for the two of them, with children eventually, all of them enjoying the relative peace at Lake Haven.
“Aye, Edan, I want to go home. But alone,” she’d said with a wince.
There was, of course, more discussion between them. More of his faults had been succinctly outlined for him. He understood Audra had grown bored of life in America, and maybe he’d been a little bored, too. But he’d been blindsided by the news she didn’t love him anymore. “I donna know if I ever did, if I am being honest,” she’d added, far too casually.
Edan hadn’t know what he was to do with that. They had a wedding date. Everyone back home had booked their tickets to the States to see it. He had plans, concrete plans, which started with a wedding.
But she’d packed her wedding dress and left, and Edan had been stuck listening to the happy planning of Rosalyn and Hugh’s wedding and listening to break-up songs in his spare time.
To the point he couldn’t take it.
To the point he’d decided he ought to be in Scotland. That of course Audra was right, it was too bucolic, too staid. He had come up with the altered plan: He would sell the inn and move back to Scotland and prove to Audra she’d made a mistake. Of course she had. They’d been wild about each other in the beginning. Wires had been crossed, that was all. What was he doing here, anyway?
Yes, Edan had a plan, and he was marching along with it, crossing item after item off the to-do list. He was going back to Scotland to start over.
Today was the last day of his little vacation. The inn would reopen Friday morning for the last bookings, and there was still much work to be done to close the inn down. He planned to reflect on it all with a bit of fishing, perhaps make some mental revisions to the blueprint.
Thank God Rosalyn wasn’t here to badger him about it. She said he spent too much time alone. Rosalyn meant well; she loved him like a brother. She and Hugh were concerned about him. Poor bloke, they said, he lost his fiancée. Poor man, they said, he rarely speaks.
That was just his nature. Jenny was right—he was a man of few words. He didn’t even know how to come up with more words if he were so inclined.
Audra had complained about it. “Why will you no’ say something?” she’d said after one heated argument. Edan had never understood what she wanted, exactly. He did say things. Just not in long sentences. In fact, now that he was alone, entire days could pass without him uttering a word.
God willing, today would be one of those blessedly quiet days.
Edan dressed, grabbed an apple on his way out, and went down to the shed to gather his tackle and waders. His two Scottish terriers, Wilbur and Boz, trotted along behind him, their snouts to the ground. They followed him to the river’s edge past the ruins of an old river mill and a pair of cottage rentals that sat empty.
There was a spot here that he liked very much, a natural outcropping of stones under which trout liked to hide. Old Buggar lived under those rocks. Edan had been trying to catch the brown trout for two years. He’d come dangerously close at the end of last summer, but the bastard had outwitted him time and again. That was disquieting, really, given that a brown trout’s brain was the size of an English pea.
Edan affixed his favorite lure to the line, one his father had given to him long ago. “Never lose it, lad,” he’d said. “This lure will catch the biggest fish, aye?” That particular day with his father was a vivid memory, and Edan was sentimental about the lure. He’d kept it all these years, but he’d never come close to catching the biggest fish with it.
He’d have to bring that up with his father when he saw him again.
He affixed the lure to his line and waded into the river. He cast his line. The lure floated softly along the current—until something nibbled at it, jerking it to the right, and Edan began the slow, methodic reelin
g in.
The line came up empty.
Old Buggar was hungry, was he? He began to swing his arm to cast again, and had just begun to throw when the dogs startled him by barking wildly. He jerked and cast his arm too wide as he tried to catch his balance and the line sailed into a thick hedge of wild bramble bushes on the shore.
“No! Bad dog!” a woman shouted.
“God save me,” Edan muttered. He turned and scanned the bank. There she was, the woman who couldn’t read a sign if it hit her on her nose, the woman who had taken his only bag of crisps, the woman who bent her body in strange ways on his tee box. And now, she’d caused him to toss his line and tangle it in a bush.
He whistled at Wilbur and Boz as he began to slosh toward his tangled line. “Come, you bloody heathens,” he shouted to them. The dogs obediently turned away from Jenny and trotted back to him.
“Oh, hey! I didn’t see you there!” she called out to him, waving as if he hadn’t seen her, either.
Edan reached the bush where his lure had gone. Sharp thorns were thick in the branches. His line was hopelessly caught, the lure dangling in the middle of the stems. Edan reached into a pocket for a knife, cut the line from his pole and set his pole aside. The lure was in the thickest part of the damn bush. Edan carefully reached in. As he worked to free it, grimacing at the nicks of the thorns, he heard feet clomping toward him on the well-worn path beside the river.
Her legs appeared, visible through the stalks of the bramble. “Are you fishing?”
No, he was playing tennis. “I was.”
“What are you looking for?”
“My lure.”
“What’s it doing in there? I don’t know that much about fishing, but isn’t the lure what the fish tries to get? Maybe you could use worms. I went fishing with my grandfather when I was like, four, and he tried to get me to put a worm on a hook. Disgusting. I never went fishing again.”
Edan could almost reach the damn lure and stretched his arm, but his shirt caught on a thorn.
Jenny squatted down. He couldn’t see her face through the gap in the bramble shoots, but he could see long, wavy tresses of her hair. “Oh, I get it, you lost it. Wow, that’s a lot of thorns. You’re going to hurt yourself, you know. You should leave it. You can buy more at the gas station, I’m sure. They have everything.”
