Bad Boys In Kilts

by Donna Kauffman

  She’d come here to learn to relax. To find peace and embrace a slower pace of life. One that didn’t involve eating antacids like candy, and where intimacy meant more than grabbing the occasional nooner with a power broker during her lunch hour.

  Reese was off limits. Only his business was up for grabs. Nothing else.

  She stepped into her bathroom and pulled a brush through her hair, then smoothed it back and clipped it at the neck. There. Very sedate. Quite professional. Almost schoolmarmish. There would be no more off-the-record chats with Reese. She would go down to the shop, then very carefully and precisely lay out her business plans, and do whatever it took to make him understand that refusing her services as a marketing and publicity consultant would be detrimental to his business and that of the residents of Glenbuie.

  She sighed. “I’ll be happy if I can get him to agree to let me launch a Web site for him.” Which was her basic plan. Get her foot in the door, introduce him to the global world of the Internet, give him a taste of the kind of exposure his distillery could be enjoying, then gradually get him to let her overhaul his entire marketing scheme. Once the other residents saw what she was doing for the distillery, they’d surely clamor to have her help them expand their global presence as well. On a much more minor scale, of course, but one that would enable her to settle here quite comfortably. Not that running the stationer’s shop as it was wouldn’t provide her with a decent income, but she wanted to incorporate her own skills, do the things she loved to do. Just on a far more modest, down-to-earth scale.

  With a determined smile, she squared her shoulders again and resolutely refused to so much as glance at her bed as she marched through the bedroom and across her flat to the stairs leading below. She’d get Reese’s business. And that was all she was interested in getting from the man.

  Really.

  She found him downstairs in the shop, looking at a display of patterned envelopes by the front window. His head was bent and he appeared to be giving the arrangement the same kind of focused interest he seemed to give everything that crossed his path. Including her. She felt that shivery little rush of arousal again and very purposefully shut it out of her mind. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  He straightened and turned to face her, his expression unreadable. “Not a problem.” His gaze stayed on her face and didn’t so much as dip beneath her chin.

  Of course, that was exactly what she wanted. That’s why she’d pulled her hair back and dressed more conservatively. She was positively thrilled that they were back on a professional footing, and the awkward conversation between them was going to be pushed aside as if it never existed.

  Now if she could only have the same kind of convenient amnesia about the electricity that had crackled between them upstairs. In her flat. Not a dozen feet away from her bed. Her big, empty bed.

  “If you want to come back to my office, I can show you some of the other Web sites I’ve designed and we can talk a little about what kind of thing I’d have in mind for the distillery.” She was already talking too fast and her voice was pitched higher than normal, but if Reese noticed, he didn’t let it show. He merely nodded and fell into step behind her.

  She crossed the small shop floor, wending through the narrow aisles filled with stationery, cards, notepads, journals, and the like, along with a variety of ink pens and marker sets, until she arrived at the set of paneled doors in the back. One led to a tiny bathroom, the other to her almost equally tiny office. With shelves lining one wall and a desk and office chair wedged into the corner, it was more a nook with a door, actually.

  Something she became painfully aware of the moment he stepped into the small space behind her, all but filling up what little available room there was. Bad idea, she thought, her body already reacting to the proximity of his, clearly with a mind of its own, no matter what restrictions she tried to impose mentally. “Um, there is a stool just outside the door. Maybe if you want to slide that in here and ...”

  She heard him moving around behind her, but took that moment to slide into the chair facing her desk, which faced the back wall. There was a giant tackboard hanging in front of it, with a few photos that Maude had pinned up there, along with various articles and columns she’d clipped from the newspaper, all of them yellowed and faded. There was a dried rose with some baby’s breath still entwined around it, tacked next to a picture of the shore. She hadn’t removed any of Maude’s memories or notes, but had merely made some room for her own. Notes, that is. She’d left all her memories behind, intent on making new ones here.

  In the center of the tackboard was a flowchart she’d drawn up with a list of the various local businesses she intended to target, followed by a basic marketing plan for each. She wondered what Reese would make of it, and his prominent position at the top of the chart, but it would be too obvious to remove it now. And besides, she had nothing to hide here. Her plans were for the good of the town. And her own business, of course, but she hoped Glenbuie and its residents would come to embrace her business savvy as they’d seemed so willingly to embrace her.

  She heard the scrape of the stool across the tiled floor and felt Reese angle himself just behind her right shoulder. It was imposing enough to be stuck in these small quarters with him after what had transpired upstairs. Having him in such an alpha position, his body seemingly surrounding hers as he leaned forward to get a better view of the monitor ... well, it was nothing short of pure torture.

  She moved the mouse and clicked on the Chisholm Distillery icon she’d created along with his file. Pay attention to the monitor. Not to the fact that Reese’s body was emanating heat, and hers had somehow become a heat-seeking missile. “I’ve worked on a variety of accounts over the years that have successfully marketed products ranging anywhere from imported Scandinavian furnishings to a line of Japanese jeweled collars for your pet.” She paused and delicately cleared her throat. Somehow her voice had gone a bit hoarse. “I initially worked on print ads and catalogue layouts, but eventually, as the Internet became an important tool in the global consumer market, I shifted my focus to building a Web site catalogue for my company that complemented the print, radio, and television ad campaigns for our larger clients.”

  “Sounds interesting. And complicated.”

  She tried not to shiver. His voice was so deep, so smooth ... and so close. She wondered what it would feel like if he just dipped his chin slightly, and pressed his lips to that sensitive spot on the back of her neck. “It can be,” she said, with a bit more forced cheer than absolutely necessary. “But the beauty of it is we can adapt each Web page to the needs of the client. Make it eye-catching, inviting, user-friendly, and, most of all, memorable. So that the person browsing your site thinks of Glenbuie first the next time they buy a bottle of whisky. Or, better yet, orders it directly online from one of your distributors. Or, one step beyond that, plan a trip to the Scottish countryside to tour the distillery in person. We can facilitate all of that very easily, in a single, unified site that will link—”

  “We don’t rely heavily on that kind of tourist market,” he interrupted. “We’re not close enough to the tour loop for that to be—”

  “Nonsense. If people think you have something unique to offer, they will go out of their way.”

  “While I would like to think that the whisky that has been my family’s pride and joy for close to two centuries is something unique, I’m afraid there are too many distilleries in Tayside alone to—”

  “You are one of the only family-owned distilleries left in Scotland.” She made the mistake then of turning to look at him. He’d been leaning down to see the monitor, so she found herself quite abruptly face-to-face with him. His gaze immediately shifted from the monitor ... to her. She felt it like a physical touch.

  “Yes, we are,” he said, not so much as blinking. “But that by itself isn’t such a big attraction.”

  “I, uh, it can be,” she said, struggling not to just sit there and stare into his eyes.


  Finally he shifted back in his seat, which, in a way, was worse, as now she had to stare up at him. And he was dominant enough at the moment.

  “It may not be something that would attract the locals,” she said, persevering. “But if you promote yourself properly to the tourist trade—”

  “We’ve never really been after that market. We give tours, yes, but only as a standard courtesy. In the overall scheme of things, ’tis no’ the focal point of my business plan.”

  He was such a clear speaker that his accent was all the more melodic for it. She could listen to him talk all day. And night. Don’t go there, Daisy. “I’m not suggesting you change your overall business strategy. I’m merely saying that the expense of investing in an Internet presence would be far superseded by the potential returns. It might never be a focal point in terms of income, but it doesn’t have to be that to still be a viable, cost-effective part of your business plan. Heightened visibility is never a bad thing.”

  He continued to stare at her, and the silence spun out for a long moment. There was still a tension between them, no matter that they were trying to pretend otherwise. Or maybe that was just her. He didn’t seem to be having the same difficulty focusing that she did. He was probably thinking about her proposed business scheme ... while she was still struggling mightily to keep from wondering what those hands of his would have felt like if he’d continued to unbutton her dress ...

  “I’m still not sold on the idea,” he said abruptly, proving she’d been right. He’d asked one off-the-record question upstairs. Probably because she had the kind of sunny disposition that invited confidences. Yes, he’d admitted that he was specifically asking her, but he’d apparently put aside the whole provocation discussion when he’d left her flat for the business environs of her shop. It was only Daisy who couldn’t shake the whole idea.

  “What would it take for you to be able to give me a clearer idea of how the site would benefit my business?”

  She blinked, thinking she hadn’t heard him right. He’d been about to brush off her and her marketing proposal, she’d been sure of it. She quickly regrouped. “I can show you some other sites I’ve developed—”

  “I’m not particularly Internet savvy. I don’t know that it would make much sense to me to see other sites—”

  “Well, it would give you an idea of what kind of interactive elements we can incorporate, the kind of design plans I would use. If you’d like, I could do a mock-up of something specifically geared to Glenbuie Distillery, but I don’t have enough information at this point to really do it justice.”

  “What would you need for that?”

  Her heart skipped a beat. He was considering it. Despite the complete lack of enthusiasm in his tone, he was really considering it. She had a toe in the door; now all she had to do was keep it there until she could wedge the rest of her in there as well. “I’d want to know more of the history and folklore surrounding both the area and the distillery itself. But mainly I’d need access to the distillery, all parts of it. I’ll need to photograph everything, and I’ll need a full tour. Someone, perhaps, who could explain the entire process in detail, in layman’s terms, which is the same language I’d use on the site.”

  “Why would that matter to anyone?”

  “Because people are a curious lot by nature. Designing a Web page is a little like telling a story. If you make it look and sound fascinating—and frankly, anything new can be fascinating if presented the right way—they’ll be interested in it. They’ll want to know. I’m not saying I’m going to exhaust anyone with a detailed manual on whisky-making, but the more I know, the more I have to work with.”

  He seemed to ponder that for a moment.

  Not content to let him think on it too long, she plunged ahead. “If you could spare someone for just an hour or two, for a more detailed, behind-the-scenes tour, with a healthy question-and-answer session, that would be a good start.”

  “Start?”

  “I’ll need to know more about what you do, to know what kind of other information I’ll want or need. After the basics, I’d ask that you let me wander around a bit—safely, of course—and take some pictures, get a feel for how the place operates on a normal day, maybe talk with a few of your people.” She held up her hand. “I’d be very unobtrusive, I promise.”

  It was hard to tell from his enigmatic expression, but she got the impression he wasn’t all that keen about having someone underfoot.

  “Just a few days. Then maybe a sit-down with you to cover any final questions I might have. Then give me a week and I’ll put together at least a basic idea of what to expect. We would then work together to develop it into something that you feel represents Glenbuie as you envision it. I’ve done some research on the other competing sites on the Internet and I think I could easily duplicate their traffic successes with your site, perhaps exceed them.” She was babbling again. She took a short moment, breathed, and smiled. “And don’t worry, this is all on spec. Nothing from you except some time and a little access. If you like what I come up with, we’ll talk contract then.”

  “You sound quite confident.”

  Her smile grew slightly. “If I didn’t, you’d never have given me this much of your time.”

  “Quite good at your job back in the States, I’ll wager.”

  She felt her cheeks warm a bit. “I did okay.”

  He studied her for a moment. “I’m guessing that’s an understatement.”

  She said nothing. Success had a different meaning to her before. But on any scale, yes, she’d done quite well for herself.

  “So why relocate so far away? And pitch your lot with such a small village? What of your family? And your career? No matter if you have every one of us on your client list—I’m sure it won’t match what you were accustomed to before.”

  “Maybe that’s why I’m here. Because I don’t want what I had before.”

  “What do you want, Daisy MacDonnell?”

  Oh, there was a loaded question if ever there was one.

  “I want access to your distillery so I can show you what I can do.”

  His eyes sharpened at that, and she wondered, for a moment, if he was as unaffected by her as he appeared to be. “Okay.”

  She’d already opened her mouth to rebut his reply—then the single word sank in. She snapped her mouth shut, then smiled. “Really?” She quickly regrouped. Never give a client a moment to doubt their decision. “I mean, thank you. You won’t regret it.”

  There appeared to be an almost amused hint of a smile hovering around his mouth, the corners of his eyes. It was mesmerizing, really, that little hint. “Now that I’ve given you what you want, tell me the real answer.”

  “Real answer?”

  “Why did you come to Glenbuie? Surely your life goal was not to create a Web site for some obscure, family-owned distillery. I know it was an inheritance that lured you here, but you could easily have sold that, remained in the States. But you didn’t. You uprooted your entire life and transplanted yourself amongst strangers. Again, I ask, why?”

  She cocked her head slightly. He wasn’t making small talk. He was hardly the type. In fact, he seemed quite serious. But then, when wasn’t he? “Why does it matter?”

  “I guess I’m curious to know what drives you. Success, clearly. I recognize that, as I see it in the mirror every day. But for that you could have remained where you were. Why here? Why us?”

  His gaze settled on her then in such a way as to make her feel as if he could see straight through her. Or want to, anyway. It might have been business on the surface, but the way he held her gaze felt eminently personal and intimate to her. Foolish on her part, for sure, but it encouraged her to speak more freely, more frankly, than she otherwise might have. “I want a different kind of success. I don’t have any real family per se. My dad took off when I was little and my mom passed away right after I graduated from college. So my career has been my partner in life, my haven, my security. But somewhere along the li
ne, I let it become my entire life. I let it define me. All of me.”

  She paused, but he didn’t say anything, encouraging her to continue. “I want a balance. I want a blend to my personal and professional life.” She laughed. “I want a personal life, period. When I got the telegram saying I’d inherited this place from a relative I didn’t even know I had, I decided it was a sign. That if I really wanted to alter my life drastically, a life-altering change was necessary. And I knew I could always go back. But from the moment I stepped out of the taxi into the village square, I knew I’d done the right thing. Glenbuie feels like the perfect place to find the new me.”

  He stayed silent for the longest moment, then looked like he was about to speak, but thought better of it. With a short shake of his head, he stood, pushing the stool back. “Then I believe you’ll find what you seek.”

  Daisy impulsively stood as well, put her hand on his arm. “What else?”

  He raised a questioning eyebrow in response.

  “What were you about to say just now?” When he hesitated, she prodded him. “There was something else you were about to say, but you didn’t. Come on. You’ve asked me some pretty personal questions.”

  He looked down at her, then sighed. “You came here to find balance. Yet, I’ve lived here all my life, and I haven’t managed to find it.”

  “But you think I will?”

  “I don’t imagine any goals you set eluding you for too long.”

  Her lips quirked at that. “I’m not so sure that’s entirely a good thing. All that goal-setting, I mean. Maybe I need to learn how to just let life happen. It’s one thing to plan with business, quite another to plan out a personal life. It should be more spontaneous, more impulsive.” The corners of her mouth lifted. “I’m still working on that part.”