Bad Boys In Kilts

by Donna Kauffman

  Until today.

  Her nipples tightened to the point of pain, and she pressed her thighs together as she thought about what she’d potentially started today. Or what she’d potentially let Reese start. All those lectures she’d given herself about building a personal life separate from her professional one were falling on deaf ears. Ears that only heard the echo of that guttural groan Reese had made when he’d taken his kiss deeper. Dear God.

  Thankfully, Doris—one of the nosier gossips—hadn’t really seemed to pick up on anything happening between her and Reese. She’d asked a question or two about the publicity business Daisy was hoping to launch, but steered their chat in other directions almost immediately. Daisy smiled, knowing quite well that Doris had been afraid Daisy would try to sell her and Fergus on her services. If she only knew, Daisy thought, she could have relaxed. Daisy hadn’t lived here long, but even she knew better than to put the Grangers’ butcher’s shop on her list of potential clients. Even if every shop on the square hired her in some capacity, she doubted Fergus would follow suit. Still, she’d happily followed Doris’s conversational lead.

  She’d needed something, anything, to distance herself a little from what had taken place today. All of it, from the spilled ale, to the discussion up in her apartment, to the toe-curling kiss he’d delivered right before Doris’s untimely arrival. She needed perspective, needed to put some distance between her still-raging libido and rational, common sense.

  Daisy had no idea what to do about Reese Chisholm. Well, that was a lie. She knew exactly what she wanted to do about him, and that was drag him to the nearest available bed, strip them both naked, and get him to put his hands and mouth on her again. On every part of her, in fact. Lingering in certain places perhaps longer than others. For a man who professed to be all business with no social skills ... well, he had skills, all right. In spades.

  With a sigh, she shut down her computer. She’d spent the past few hours pretending to work on some details and ideas about the other businesses in the area she’d targeted after, she hoped, getting the distillery account. But she finally admitted defeat. The more she tried to shut Reese out of her mind, the more he invaded it. And now there was his invitation for tonight.

  How would the village respond to an outsider pairing up with one of their own, especially when that one was Reese Chisholm? And if it ended up a fling, nothing more, then what? If she’d thought it was awkward when the man in question was a corporate peer, how much worse would it be when she had to live in what amounted to a fishbowl with the guy? And with his brother running the pub right across the square? She’d come here thinking she’d settle in, find her balance with the shop first—business was the one thing she understood—and let the rest of her life sort of figure itself out. So what did she go right out and do? Get the hots for the one guy she’d targeted to do business with. Who also happened to be the only guy in town who could be considered a high-octane executive. The Glenbuie version, anyway.

  Relaxation was as foreign to Reese as it was to her. For all the reasons she’d come here, she’d be crazy to give in to lust the first time it tempted her. Most especially with him. To even consider going to the distillery tonight was the beginning of the end of her carefully rationalized life plan. She had to think beyond her empty bed upstairs, and how badly she wanted him in it, to the bigger picture. A far better idea would be for her to put her physical reaction to him in its proper perspective, then call his office number and leave a message saying she couldn’t make it and would prefer something during the day. Reese was a sharp man—he’d get the message within the message. And if her swift turnaround on the subject of them continuing any personal liaison cost her the account, then so be it. From what she knew of the man, she doubted that he would be the punitive sort. He practically wore his integrity on his sleeve.

  So, she thought, emitting a long, dejected sigh. It was decided, then. She’d end this before it went any further, return their liaison to a business-only proposition, and go back to her initial new-girl-in-town game plan. So what if he made her pulse jump like no one else ever had? So what if he looked at her in a way no one else ever had? So what if he had that rare combination of intensity and reserve she’d never seen before? She thought she’d been with enigmatic, charismatic men in her past, right?

  But not one held a candle to Reese’s controlled intensity, her little voice whispered insidiously. Not one had his innate ability to focus. Especially when that focus was on her.

  Just thinking about that did make her squirm a little in her chair. No. She mustn’t give in to that ... that need to shiver whenever she so much as thought about him. In time that would pass. It was hormones talking. She’d been here alone for six months. It was natural she’d feel a bit needy. So her reaction to an alpha male like Reese was perfectly understandable. Hell, she’d be worried about herself if she hadn’t reacted that way. Right?

  She slumped down in her seat, dejected. The truth was, she could counsel herself until she was blue in the face. None of that changed the fact that, even though nipping this in the bud was the absolute smartest thing she could do, she wanted to go tonight. Badly. Wanted to see where this ... whatever it was that had flared up between them, would lead. And the hell with the collective village opinion of her, the hell with keeping business separate from her private life, and the hell with not being able to hold steady to her hard-made decisions at the very first opportunity to fall right back into her old ways.

  The real question was, which would she regret more? Falling off her self-imposed wagon? Or not finding out what she might have with Reese? No matter how short-lived?

  Or incredibly hot.

  “God, I hate this,” she murmured. Before she could second-guess herself any further, or talk herself out of it—and into more trouble—she jerked up the phone and punched in the office number for the distillery.

  After getting the canned recording, and honestly, she was going to have to mention that to him—he really could spruce that up a bit—she waited impatiently for the beep. Her heart was pounding and her palms were a bit sweaty. What was she doing, turning down a man like Reese? And potentially her biggest future account along with it? Despite knowing he wouldn’t hold it against her, he wasn’t exactly gung ho on the idea in the first place. Integrity or not, this could easily be the deciding factor, and she could hardly blame him if it were. Then the beep echoed in her ear and she scrambled to sound cool and professional with her message.

  “Hello, this is Daisy MacDonnell. With regret, I can’t meet with you at the requested time. Please contact me so we can set up a time most suitable to both of our schedules. Daytime would work best for me. Thank you.”

  She hung up, then immediately slumped over and covered her face with her hands. “You are such a moron.” But, she hoped, this time a smarter moron. She wondered how Reese would take the message. She hoped he didn’t think she was being coy, or playing some hard-to-get head game. She felt bad enough just jerking him around this much. It hadn’t been intentional, though, which she’d make sure he understood when they did talk. Showing up tonight would have been essentially tacitly agreeing to continue to explore what they’d started today. Hopefully he’d make things easier and realize she’d had second thoughts and decided to keep things businesslike between them.

  Out of habit, she turned back to her computer and was reaching to flip it back on again when she caught herself. It was late, well past any normal working hours. And there was absolutely nothing that required her immediate attention this evening. Talk about falling back into old patterns.

  So she resolutely got up, flipped off the lights, and headed upstairs. To do what, she had absolutely no idea. She had Maude’s ancient black-and-white television, with its hideous reception. A decent radio, but little patience to keep skimming for something decent to listen to. She had her own stereo and music, which had provided an almost constant soundtrack for her in the early weeks when she’d felt a little homesick in a strange, new w
orld. She’d long since grown tired of them, but had been so busy familiarizing herself with the business and making her future plans that she hadn’t gotten around to expanding her CD collection just yet.

  There was always Hagg’s, which had been her destination often as not when she was looking for something to do in the evenings. But after her disastrous late lunch there earlier today, she thought it best to steer clear for a little while. She climbed the stairs, thinking she could be having a social life right now if she’d taken Reese up on his offer to mix a little pleasure with their business. But no ... And there would be no second-guessing now—she’d already cancelled on him.

  “You really are a moron.” But it had been the right thing to do. She knew that. Trudging up the stairs, however, she was having a hard time rousing any excitement for the evening ahead. She could kill some time folding the pile of laundry awaiting her. Then maybe she’d really get wild and read one of the murder mysteries in Maude’s extensive collection. One thing she wouldn’t do was give in to the urge to go back down to her office and work, so she’d feel productive. This was off-hours. She didn’t need to produce anything. Hell, she could even flaunt convention and leave her laundry unfolded for another whole day if she wanted to. She could waste the entire remainder of her evening lazing around doing absolutely nothing. And learn to like it, dammit. She smiled a little at that as she let herself into her flat.

  She flipped on the lamp by Maude’s knitting chair and glanced down at the basket of yarn that was still tucked beside it. Maybe she should take up knitting. It would teach her patience and give her a much-needed hobby at the same time. She reached down, lifted out a soft spool of blue yarn, and rubbed it between her fingers. She glanced over at the ormolu clock on the mantel and saw it was closing in on nine-thirty. Yep, a whole evening ahead with nothing to do but sit back and relax and just enjoy the hell out of her brand new personal life.

  Who was she kidding? “Yeah, well, at least you gave it a try,” she murmured, then tossed the yarn back in the basket, turned, and walked straight out of her flat, not even bothering to flip off the light.

  Ten minutes later she was right where she really wanted to be, and life plans be damned. She stood in front of the employee entrance to Glenbuie Distillery, praying Reese hadn’t picked up his phone messages yet.

  Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly, then lifted her hand and rapped on the steel door. In addition to the old Renault she’d recently bought, there was one other car and two company trucks parked in the rear lot. Hopefully one of them belonged to Reese. She waited what seemed like an eternity, and had just about decided she’d blown the whole deal when the door cracked open.

  It was darker inside than out, so Reese was totally cast in shadow, little more than a disembodied voice. “Change your mind?”

  She flushed a little. “You got my message?”

  “Aye. I was just locking up. In fact, if I hadn’t seen you on the surveillance camera, I wouldn’t have known you were out here.”

  He sounded quite professional, cool and distant. Maybe she’d already blown it and he was just being polite now. She really felt like the moron she’d accused herself of being earlier. He must think her a complete flake. She couldn’t say she blamed him. “Do you—do you want me to go?”

  He stepped back and pushed the door open wider. “We can still do the tour if you’re up for it. Did you bring a recorder or something, to take notes?’

  “What?” Still off guard, she stepped inside the building. He flipped a switch and the short hallway they stood in was immediately illuminated. She blinked a few times against the sudden brightness. “No, I, uh ... I didn’t.” She definitely felt like an idiot. She’d rushed out of her apartment and raced over here, thinking about nothing other than seeing him again, about finding out what exactly was going on between them. For once in her life, business had been the very last thing on her mind. Quite naturally, given all her mixed signals, he probably had no idea what she was thinking.

  If she hadn’t been so mortified, she’d have laughed at herself.

  When her eyes adjusted to the change in light, she finally looked at him, trying to determine if he was merely teasing her, or ... or if he wasn’t. She had no idea how to play this without further embarrassing herself, or him. So rather than play at anything, she simply came right out and asked him. At this point, what did she really have to lose? “I was under the impression from your invitation that, perhaps this was a more ... personal tour.”

  Reese didn’t make a move to leave, or escort her further into the building. She couldn’t see beyond him down the hall—he filled her entire line of vision. He held her gaze quite intently. “I was under the impression from your message that you were no’ so thrilled with that suggestion.”

  “I was perfectly thrilled, to be honest. But then I stupidly got to thinking and, well, it made me second-guess myself.”

  He shifted forward slightly, keeping her between him and the door at her back, with little space to spare. “That whole issue about mixing business with pleasure, you mean.”

  She nodded. “My goal here was to find a way to separate work from play. Or to find time to play at all.”

  “I don’t believe these are work hours.”

  “But taking a tour, being here at all, is work-related.”

  “So would you rather I’d left a message inviting you to my place instead, then?”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again. He still hadn’t come right out and answered any of her questions. “Is that what you’d rather have done?”

  His mouth quirked a little at the corner, but his eyes were dark and enigmatic, difficult bordering on impossible to gauge. “You wanted to see the distillery. For business purposes, yes. And I’d like to show you the business my family has spent centuries building. For personal purposes. Because it’s part of who I am.” He made a short, almost self-deprecating snort. “Aye, perhaps too much, but I canno’ change that fact. If you’re going to capture the spirit of this place in order to effectively promote it, then I felt it was imperative that you see it through my eyes.”

  She was mentally scrambling to keep up. “And for that you felt we needed to do this after hours?”

  “After hours there is less distraction and no immediate demands on my time, so yes, that was part of it.”

  “Part?”

  “The other reason was maybe a little foolhardy on my part. You seem to bring out that side in me.”

  “Why foolhardy?”

  He shifted closer still. “You invited me in today, gave me a glimpse of yourself, your private self. I liked getting to see that side of you, getting to know more about you. And so I was hoping you might feel the same. Sad to say, but this is my private self.” He gestured behind him. “I thought to offer you some insight into me. Maybe help reduce the problem we both have about that balancing problem you mentioned earlier.”

  “That doesn’t sound foolhardy to me. It sounds ...” Sweet, she thought. And sincere. The latter didn’t surprise her. Reese Chisholm was nothing if not earnest and forthright. But he was also edgy and enigmatic. Not to mention sexy as hell. Sweet hadn’t been the first trait that had come to mind, or the second.

  “I’ll admit, I still don’t know about the whole Internet thing. But I am curious to see what you’d do with it. More because I’m curious about seeing how you work, how your mind works.” He smiled then. “I figured, worst case, the evening would be a personal bust, end up all business, but I’d get a Web site out of the deal, eh?”

  She smiled at that, and began to relax a little. “So ... you do want me to take notes, then.”

  “I dinnae think that will be necessary this evening.” He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Let me show you a little bit of my world. We’ll start there. You can take notes next time.”

  Next time. Her heart began to thump, and her thighs trembled a bit. He hadn’t called her here because he wanted to get her naked. Although she
was fairly certain he’d given it some thought. As she had. But he was right—if that was all they were about, he’d have just invited her to his place, they could have jumped each other, and gotten it out of their systems. No, instead he’d offered to share a different, but perhaps more intimate, part of himself with her. He was serious about trying to figure out how to proceed with her, with ... this. Whatever this turned out to be.

  It should have unnerved her, or at the very least disconcerted her. She’d caved and given in to his request because he’d gotten her hormones hopping, yes. But she was also here because she’d been wrong in her initial assessment of what she’d live to regret. There was something about Reese Chisholm that was different from any man she’d ever met. And that something had called to something inside her that was new, and very different as well. That call was only getting stronger.

  And now here he was, telling her he felt the same tug, the same pull. A shiver of awareness raced over her skin as his fingertips brushed along her cheek.

  “Okay,” she told him. “Show me.”

  Chapter 7

  Reese was surprised he didn’t lose it right then and there. Show me.

  If she only had any idea what that quiet request made him want to show her. It took considerable restraint not to bury his fingers in her hair and drag her mouth to his. It still shook him, the primal way in which her very presence snatched at his control. Never had he felt so driven by impulses he had such little power over. His reaction to her should have made him run far and fast. Which had been precisely what he tried to tell himself to do when he’d left her shop earlier today.

  And that argument had lasted all of the ten minutes it had taken him to get back to his office.

  She’d apparently applied the same logic, or tried to ... and had lasted only slightly longer than he had.

  He’d spent the remainder of his afternoon wandering around the distillery in a bit of a daze, the taste of her still on his lips, the scent of her filling his head, the sound of her little moans echoing through his mind. He found himself wondering what she’d think of the place, seeing it through new eyes as he imagined showing her around, explaining the distilling process to her, the history behind it, the indefinable essence, the magic of knowing what to bottle and when. He tried to imagine what she’d make of it, how her creative mind would go through its own distilling process, taking the rather technical and not particularly seductive information and blending it with the history, the importance of what the Chisholm experience lent to the process, to the area, and blend it into a provocative on-line elixir intended to give Glenbuie whisky a global audience.