Claire beamed up at Hugh, impressed with his cleverness, but Danny said, “It’s not in the worst of it.”
“It’s close enough.”
“It willnae be too much of a blow to my pride to claim I was lost,” Hugh said at the same time and he shrugged, his dimple deepening in response to Claire’s raised brow.
Danny only shrugged. “You should probably agree on a description of the guy who robbed you, too, while you’re at it. Who do you want to admit robbed you?”
“A short, frail fellow of sallow complexion, perhaps?” Hugh suggested. “If I am comprehending your term ‘addict’ appropriately?”
“Not a new epidemic, I take it?” Danny asked curiously. “What was the poison in your day?”
“Opium, mostly.”
Danny snorted at that. “Guess not much has changed. Heroin is made from the same stuff.”
“Okay,” Claire said. “So Hugh’s got his police report saying that his passport was stolen. We just take that to the British Consulate? And then what? They issue a new one just like that? What if they question him?”
“You do worry too much, lass.” Hugh’s fingers entwined with hers.
“Planning, not worrying,” Claire corrected.
“Dinnae fash yerself. I’m certain I can get what I need. I will just ask nicely.”
“That’s what you’re going to go with? Your charm alone?”
“Haven’t we already determined that I am the greatest flirt in Scotland?”
Or in the world. “What if it’s a guy? What if they try to call someone or …”
“Sorcha, please,” Hugh cupped her cheek in his hand and forced her to look at him. “Trust me. How did you say it? I got this.”
“I’m just scared they’re going to figure out that it’s a scam and detain you or something.”
“I’m certain Danny will keep a weather eye on their computers and telephones. I hae every faith in his abilities tae protect me from exposure.”
Danny nodded, looking speculatively back and forth between Claire and Hugh. “I’ll be watching the surveillance feed, too.”
“Then I shall feel doubly secure,” High said, clapping a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “For what ye hae done for me, lad, I shall be forever in yer debt.”
Danny shifted uncomfortably, and Hugh suspected, after hearing Sorcha’s description of her brother, that the lad was more comfortable praising himself than receiving it from others. “Yeah, well, don’t thank me yet. It might not work at all.”
“I hae faith in yer abilities,” Hugh repeated assuredly. “Ye dinnae need tae gae tae such extremes after ye realized the truth of the matter.”
“I did it for Claire.”
“I know.”
Danny looked up at Hugh then with a grin. “Someday, man, someday I’d like to sit down with you and hear your side of this whole thing, like where you’re from and all that.”
“And someday I’ll be happy tae oblige.”
Hugh looked at his solemn face peering out from the computer monitor and thought about all that it represented. Safety for himself and Sorcha. Second chances. Freedom. Hugh thought of his homeland, waiting now within reach. As much as Rosebraugh would be missed, it was Scotland itself that his soul yearned for. The smell of the heather in the Highlands, the salty winds from the North Sea. In a matter of days it would all be his once more … and Sorcha! How she would love it there!
“Good enough.” Danny lifted another envelope out of the pile on his desk. “Claire?”
Lost in thought, Claire started and blinked at her brother, taking the envelope he held out.
“Anticipating that this whole thing is alarmingly bigger than you first implied and since you haven’t accessed your credit cards or bank accounts since last week, I assume you’ll need this.”
Claire peeked into it, finding a thick stack of twenties. She stared at him, dumbstruck. “Danny …”
“It’s nothing.” He brushed away the thanks. “I’ll also get one of the minions to book an emergency flight out of there when you’re ready. Can’t do it too early or it will look too planned for his emergency travel documents.”
“Thank you, Danny.”
“I already said …”
“I know, don’t thank you yet.” Claire nodded, swallowing back the lump in her throat. Brothers were notoriously pesky things, always teasing and tweaking, but every once in a while they did something that forgave it all. She pulled her brother out of the chair and into her arms for an affectionate hug. “Can we at least get a ride back to the ferry?”
“You’re a real nag, you know that?”
“I know.” She blinked back the tears burning at her eyes. Danny really was the most impossible brother but damn, it was nice to know how much he really cared.
Chapter 32
“Just pull over there,” Claire pointed to the corner of the parking lot away from her car. Danny had insisted on carrying them the entire way, keeping her and Hugh safely hidden in the back of the van throughout the short ferry ride in case the NSA was monitoring the security feed, now that they knew for certain that she was in Seattle. Her brother had been full of admonishment since learning of her near apprehension at Pike’s Market that afternoon, washing away any lingering sentiment Claire had been feeling for him.
She’d been called an idiot more than once in the past hour. Numbskull. Moron, nitwit, nincompoop—that was a nice throwback to their childhood, though it was an insult she had delivered more often than received.
Parking in an empty space, Danny shut off the van and turned in his seat. “Well, I guess this is it,” he said. “Try not to do anything stupid, all right? Or in this case, stupider than you already have. Just stay off the grid. No buses, no public transportation. Be at the dock in Blaine by five in the morning the day after tomorrow.”
“How are we to take the ferry then?”
“Just take Robert’s car.”
Claire rolled her eyes at his casual direction. “You want me to steal Uncle Robert’s car?”
“Borrow,” Danny emphasized. “It’s not like you’re not going to bring it back.”
Claire looked at him expressionlessly while Hugh shook Danny’s hand and thanked him one last time. Commanding Claire to stay put while he scouted the area, Hugh slid open the van door and disappeared.
Danny leveled a stern look at her the moment Hugh was out of sight. “I saw that frown when I said that about Robert’s car. Claire …” he paused, running a hand through his hair. “Shit. You do know that you can’t go to Scotland with him, don’t you?”
Shaking her head, Claire stared at her brother in disbelief. “What are you talking about? Of course I have to go with him.”
Danny ran both hands through his hair then. “You cannot be this stupid, Claire. Not if this is going to work.”
“We’ll be fine,” she insisted stubbornly.
“Damn it, Claire! Always, always got to have things your way, don’t you?”
“You think I always get things my way?” she asked in disbelief. “I and my personal history beg to differ. Besides, I have to go with him. Hugh isn’t ready to face the modern world alone yet. He hasn’t even seen an ATM or the inside of a bank yet, much less knowing about anything like utility hookups or tax forms. He’s going to need some help, and I plan to be the one to give it to him.”
Claire started to scoot out of the van but Danny caught her arm tightly and pulled her back to face him. “You get on that plane with him and the NSA will tear a hole through everyone that was on it,” he told her bluntly. “When they can’t get him on paper, they will start going through the airport and customs surveillance footage. Then they will have his picture and that will be that. You get him on that plane and get out of Vancouver before they know you were ever there and he might have a chance of making this thing work.”
The truth of it all resounded in her, but Claire’s heart denied his words. She wouldn’t let Hugh go. She couldn’t. “He can’t go alone.”
>
Danny laughed harshly. “Give him some credit, will you? I don’t know who he is or was but Hugh is freakin’ smart. He’s a survivor. He’ll be fine.”
Clenching her teeth to stop a biting retort, Claire shook her head once more, but knew that all her reasons for going were just an excuse. Danny was right. Hugh would undoubtedly find his way without her help or anyone else’s. He was brilliant and resourceful, and that charm of his would probably take him anywhere he wanted to go. “But …”
“No buts, Sis,” he interrupted. “I get it, I really do. I never thought I’d see you look at a guy like that again, but you can’t have him. Not now. Maybe not ever. As long as they think you know where he is, they’ll follow you. They’re tenacious like that. Believe me, I know.”
Claire stared at him, her heart thudding heavily in her chest as his words echoed in her mind and heart. Not now. Maybe not ever. No, she thought, feeling the tears well once more. Not tears of gratitude this time but tears of loss. How could she let Hugh go? Let him walk away? He needed her.
No, that wasn’t it at all, was it? It was her. She didn’t want him to go. She didn’t want Hugh to leave her alone once more, not when it seemed that life—which had long ago left her standing alone by the side of the road—had suddenly seen fit to pick her up once more.
“Good-bye, Danny,” she said, getting out of the van.
“Claire,” he pleaded. “Be realistic.”
Claire pulled the door shut and walked numbly toward Goose, not caring if the entire NSA saw her do it. Getting in the car, she slammed the door and stared dully out the windshield. She had to let Hugh go. Truth that it might be, some part of her refused to digest it.
She couldn’t go through that again.
With a sigh, Claire pulled her phone out of her purse and turned it on. Thumbing across the pictures, she pulled up a picture of her husband taken the last time he’d been home on leave. Matt was smiling that light, teasing smile he had always worn. The smile she always thought of when she pictured him. Hugh had been right. Claire had enshrined Matt in her memories, making him perfect in her mind. He had been far from perfect. Claire forced herself to remember that. To remember that they had fought like normal couples. To remember that Matt had had bad habits. Done things that annoyed her from time to time.
But she had loved him and he had loved her. Claire stroked her thumb across the image tenderly. She had been happy and in losing that happiness, had almost been destroyed.
Emptiness had filled her, lived within her for years. Hugh had been right. She had lived in fear of loving and losing once more. The anger over his loss and the subsequent fear of trying again had ruled her life. Now, somehow, Claire was filled again. Miraculously, amazingly filled. Filled with joy and anticipation and love because of Hugh. He wasn’t perfect either, not by a long shot. Hugh was superior and occasionally condescending. That sense of entitlement had probably been ingrained in him from birth. But he was perfect for her. There was that laughter, that challenge—he would always call her out on her stubborn flaws and bad habits! And he challenged her mind as well.
How was she to give that up willingly? How was she supposed to, in essence, hold the door open for it as it walked away from her again?
The car door opened and Hugh slid into the seat. “I told ye tae wait.”
“Sorry,” Claire mumbled as she swiped the picture away before turning off the phone and throwing it in the backseat. “Can we go?”
“Aye. I dinnae see anything suspicious, so let’s make haste.”
Nodding, Claire started Goose up and backed out the parking space, heading through the twilight back to Robert’s. She knew she should be making plans for their departure, needed to do so sooner rather than later, but she couldn’t get Danny’s warnings out of her head. She didn’t want to lose Hugh, but really, what was more important? Her happiness or his freedom? If she didn’t let him go there was ample chance that they would have neither.
“Sorcha? Are ye all right?” Hugh asked, taking her free hand between his and chafing it lightly. His hand was rough, hard, and warm. The press of his skin against hers made her hand tingle. She would have to remember that feeling.
“Sorcha?”
“I’m fine,” she lied woodenly.
“We should pack our things tonight and be ready tae leave tomorrow evening,” Hugh said, not recognizing—perhaps for the first time—the falsehood on her lips, as he was too busy making the plans she could not. “We dinnae want tae cause undue troubles for yer uncle, so I believe it best if we dinnae leave yer car there tae be found but somewhere else along the way before we leave the island. If we’re tae meet this boat by dawn and this Blaine is three hours away, as yer brother said, we will need tae leave in the early morning hours. What time is the last ferry?”
“What? Oh, about one in the morning.”
Hugh nodded thoughtfully. “We will have the day then to gather our things with plenty of time to rest if necessary before we leave. That would be best, do ye agree?”
“Yes,” Claire agreed stiffly. “Whatever you think.”
She could feel Hugh’s eyes on her, wondering at her sudden capitulation no doubt, but Claire finished the drive in silence until the garage door fell protectively behind them.
“Sorcha?” Hugh lifted her chin until he was able to meet her eyes. “I will keep ye safe, I swear it. I willnae let any harm come tae ye.”
The warmth of his hand felt like fire against the flush of her cheeks. Hard and rough against the softness he must feel. Remember it, her heart cried. Memorize it because it is all you will have left.
But it wouldn’t be enough.
Yes, even if it killed her to do it, she would let him go to ensure his freedom, but she needed more than the memory of a few gentle kisses, Claire decided. If she was truly going to let happiness walk away from her once more, then damn it, she was going have something more spectacular to remember.
Chapter 33
“Sorcha? What troubles ye, lass?” Hugh asked, finding her alone on the balcony outside her bedchamber late that night.
Sorcha visibly started at his words, turning away from the rail but gripping it behind her back with both hands. “Nothing, Hugh. I’m fine.”
The words were as transparently false as her habit of introducing a new topic when another was uncomfortable, and Hugh had to wonder what had unsettled her so. Sorcha had been abnormally withdrawn ever since their return to the island, which was to say she participated in their conversations, including another more in depth dissection of human evolution, but her thoughts were clearly elsewhere. Her eyes followed him unblinkingly as if she were studying every inch of his person. It might have been that her thoughts had returned to the offer he had made back at the marketplace, and Hugh wondered if her considerations were leaning toward joining him or not.
Perhaps he had asked too much, too soon.
Or perhaps she was simply not as confident of their success with the plan they had laid out as he was. It was certainly an easier topic to broach, and Hugh cursed himself for his sudden cowardice. “Do ye hae a concern over our strategy, lass? Is that what preoccupies ye?”
She was chewing her lip uncertainly. Her feet were bare, one on top of the other as if it might warm the one beneath it. She looked smaller and more nervous than Hugh had yet seen her. “I do worry about getting into Canada safely,” she murmured.
There was some truth in the confession, but Hugh could tell that wasn’t the whole of it. Something more was bothering her. If it was not their strategic departure, there had to be something else that had changed her mood between their arrival on the island and their return to the beach house. “Did Danny say something to distress ye?”
Sorcha blinked and met his gaze, and Hugh knew that he had the right of it. “What is it? What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
Also patently untrue.
“Come now, lass,” Hugh murmured as he approached her. “After our time together, I’ve become
a fair hand at telling when yer lying. What is it?”
Tilting her head back to look at him, she said, “You said I was a terrible liar.”
“Aye, that’s why it is so easy to see it.” Hugh cupped her cheeks in his hands and bent his head, brushing a tender kiss across her lips. He meant for it to be only a kiss of affection but Sorcha’s dewy lips unexpectedly clung to his. Nostrils flaring, he inhaled the warm scent of her, citrus and floral. The heady desire of being so close to her when he had endeavored to keep his distance set his heart pounding heavily, his body tensing with the need to pull her close.
Her soft lips parted with a sigh, encouraging him to deepen the kiss. Easing away, Hugh looked down at her in surprise. She looked soft and sweetly feminine with her hair loose around her shoulders, her lovely face pale in the muted glow of the moon, but her eyes shone like jewels as she caught her lip between her teeth once more as if she were suddenly nervous.
“There is nae need to worry so, my love,” he said, hoping to reassure this unexpectedly vulnerable woman who up to this point had shown nothing but spit and fire. “I swear tae ye, all will be well.”
“I know it will,” she said softly, looking up at him through her thick lashes. Hugh felt her hand against his waist and her fingers curling into the fabric of his t-shirt before her palm flattened against him and smoothed across his ribcage and over his chest. Skin met skin as her fingers tickled at his neck above his collar and curved around to tease the hair at his nape, and Hugh swallowed deeply. “Sorcha, what are ye about, lass?”
Lifting herself onto her toes, Sorcha kissed him once and then again, sighing against his lips. Hugh’s fists clenched, fighting the urge to grab her, to pull her closer. All week he had fought this. Even with permission to flirt as outrageously as he chose, Hugh had resisted the temptation to touch her, knowing that once he succumbed, he wouldn’t be able stop. The theory had become truth, and soon he had been taking any opportunity to hold her hand or touch her. Each tiny caress was a torment. He had wanted her too much; knowing that she wanted him as well, knowing that she was tempted and teetering on the edge of surrender had only inflamed that desire. He hadn’t been able to touch her without longing for more, and didn’t trust himself to kiss her lest he take so much more.
A Time & Place for Every Laird Page 26
