But not today. The holiday had well and truly ended. And by the time he left out without saying good-bye, the past four days already seemed like a dream she’d had. An amazing dream, but one that was now over meaning it was time to return to her real life. `
Milly did as he’d instructed. Took her shower. But she stopped suddenly when her reflection in the bathroom mirror caught her eye. Her hair…there was no other way to describe it but radiant.
The unmanageable, frizzy nest was gone. In its place were luscious curls that fell just to her shoulders, gently framing her oval face. And her skin…forget Scottish beige. It was now a warm honey brown and appeared to be glowing with good health.
Happy. The foreign word floated into her consciousness. She looked like a happy, healthy young woman.
But she wasn’t that. Like, at all.
Her image in the mirror felt like a punch to the chest and left an ache that lingered even after she turned away. Milly wished as she’d never wished before that she hadn’t gotten that call this morning. That she could stay longer with Iain. Enjoy a day of simply hanging out and getting to know each other that Iain had proposed.
But when had this disease ever given a damn about what she wanted?
So yeah, Milly was pretty much resigned to how the rest of her day would go when she came out of the bathroom. And zero percent surprised when she saw a bag from Superdry on the bed, but no Iain.
He’d probably left for the office. Now that she was Leukemia Girl again, he could go back to being Iain Scotswolf, king of the post-coital bounce. Why not?
But then she walked into the living room…and he was there, standing by the front door in what looked like a pair of new jeans and a gray Henley he must have purchased at the same Superdry store where he picked up the new wrap dress she currently wore.
“The valet is bringing round my car,” he told her. “Do you want to stop by your place to pick up your lucky yellow cardigan before we head to the doctor?”
Milly shook her head. “It’s not lucky anymore, remember?”
His expression sobered, “I reckon not.”
“You…you don’t have to come with me,” she said into the awkward silence that followed. “I mean, feel free to just drop me off at the clinic, and I’ll catch the train into work.”
“Not come with you…?” Iain reached out to her, enveloping her slender hand in his much larger one. “That’s not an option, Millicent.”
“But...”
“It’s not an option.”
Chapter 8
Milly might have said she’d let Iain accompany her to her appointment, but it didn’t really feel like she had a choice. They sat together in the waiting room of the Edinburgh Cancer Care Centre, her hand folded into his, both hands resting together on his denim-clad thigh.
The waiting room was tiny. She hadn’t noticed that before. But that’s how it felt now, especially here with Iain. His size and larger than life vitality seemed to fill up the small space to capacity.
The thigh their hands weren’t resting on jiggled impatiently. But she didn’t bother to remind him he didn’t have to wait with her. She’d already done so—several times—and had only gotten scowls in return as if she’d somehow insulted him.
But despite his apparent impatience with all the waiting, he’d only released her hand once since they walked through the main entrance doors: when one of the nurses came to take her back for a blood draw and urine sample. And when she returned to the small row of seats in the waiting room, he’d snatched her hand back in his as soon as she sat down beside him.
“I’m sorry it’s taking so long,” she said, eyeing the front office staff who’d whisked her away for more tests only to leave the two of them waiting in the uncomfortable chairs for over an hour.
“It’s fine. They want to compare these latest results to those of your previous tests,” he answered, voice tight. “They need to be sure before they have you meet with the doctor.”
She peeked sideways at him. “It sounds like you have a pretty good idea what’s going on here.”
He shifted in his seat, his grip on her hand becoming a little tighter. “I have some inkling.”
A couple entered the room through the Cancer Centre’s patient treatment exit door then. The man with red hair and a somber expression on his face, and the woman wearing a knit cap and bald spaces where her hair and eyebrows should have been.
She looked to be one or two decades older than Milly, but cancer had a way of aging a person until it was hard to know how old he or she really was. However, she carried a portable oxygen tank in a backpack, with a long clear tube running from it to a nasal cannula fitted to her nostrils with an elastic head band.
She watched the woman carefully shuffle out on her husband’s arm. And as she passed by, Milly could swear she could smell the disease eating away at her like rot, along with the medicinal scent of the chemo she’d just been injected with to fight it. Smell it, but not mind it.
Another item on the list of things to ask Dr. Keller about. Not only had her sense of smell become significantly more heightened since her diagnosis, but she’d also undergone some weird psychological changes.
For example, she used to hate the smell of Marmite—a gross food paste that was a snack food favorite among many Scots, including Iain. But when they grabbed a quick breakfast in the clinic’s cafeteria, and Iain spread the dark goop on his toast, she’d been surprised to find she didn’t care one way or the other about its dank and yeasty smell.
It was as if she could smell everything now, but intense smells that used to make her gag no longer struck her as unpleasant. They just were. And then there was her 20/20 vision. And the intense sex craze that had fallen over her for four days straight only to disappear just as suddenly and mysteriously as it had started. Milly’s cheeks heated, wondering how she planned to bring that one up…
Iain looked over at her. “Milly, you know you don’t have to—” he began but was cut off when the waiting room door opened.
“Millicent Odoom?” a voice called.
Milly gently removed her hand from Iain’s and made her way towards the nurse. “That’s me,” she said, her voice sounding as nervous to her ears as she felt.
“Hello, luv. Right this way,” the nurse said, beckoning her forward with a manila file folder. “Dr. Keller can see you now.”
Iain had followed her across the small room and stood resolutely by her side as if he meant to accompany her to her appointment with Dr. Keller.
“No, Iain,” she said, reaching out to pat his hand.
“Millicent, I’m coming with you,” he stated in a tone that brooked no argument. He clasped her hand in his as if to further emphasize his point.
But she didn’t back down. “No…this is something I need to do on my own. But I really appreciate you offering. I promise I’ll be back soon.”
He blinked hard, nose flaring. But finally, he released her hand and said, “I’ll be waiting here when you get out, chri—Millicent.”
She turned to follow the nurse only to stop again when Iain caught her arm and pulled her back towards him. He gently cupped her neck, thumb stroking hard as he kissed the hell out of her. He didn’t seem to give a damn about the staff watching him from the check-in window, or the nurse who waited patiently next to the treatment area double doors. “You can do this alone if you want to, chridhe, but from this point forward you will always have a choice. I’m here now.”
His endearment and his sweet words brought tears to Milly’s eyes. Especially coming from someone she’d been certain gave less than two craps about her only a few days ago.
“I always cared about you, Milly,” he said. “And that was the problem. Humans are so fragile. It makes it difficult to form connections. But I am sorry for how I handled your announcement when you came into my office. I was just… caught off guard and didn’t know how else to keep you here where you’d have my support to get through this.”
Milly gazed up at
him, feeling so unbelievably touched. Their history rewriting itself, forcing her to reevaluate everything she’d thought she knew about him. It seemed more and more evident that she’d been reading him wrong this entire time.
“I love you.” The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Because it was true. Because it felt stupid to hide her feelings from a man she’d spent all weekend with naked. Because she didn’t have much time left. What did she have to lose when her life was already on the line? There was no point guarding her heart like a wounded animal.
So she said it again. “I love you, Iain. And this weekend was the best weekend of my life. I never get to be the healthy girl. But you changed that. I felt whole, sexy, and strong—like I could do anything. No matter what Dr. Keller tells me in there, I’ll always have these last four days when I got to experience what it was like to be normal, to be someone who isn’t walking around under a Leukemia cloud. So…thank you. I’m so damn grateful for this time I had with you.”
“Millicent, moi chridhe…” he said, voice rough with emotion as he pulled her in close again.
But then the nurse waiting at the door gently cleared her throat, “Millicent, Dr. Keller is waiting.” Her expression was sympathetic, however her kind but firm tone made it clear that Milly needed to get a move on.
Milly broke away from Iain, honestly afraid she wouldn’t be able to return to Dr. Keller’s office if she didn’t do it immediately. But leaving Iain’s arms felt like it should be accompanied by a ripping sound.
It hurt, almost on a physical level. And even though she still had every intention of getting the updated diagnosis on her own, she threw a few looks over her shoulder as she left. Her heart panged at the sight of Iain, standing in the waiting room, arms folded over his chest as if it was taking everything he had to stay behind.
Which was why Milly wasn’t all that surprised to find Iain standing in the exact same place she’d left him when she returned to the lobby a mere twenty minutes later. His position hadn’t changed. Nor had the expression on his face. Not one iota. He was the same Iain she’d left behind.
But this was more than she could say for herself.
Milly opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She was obviously in a state of shock.
Iain scanned her closely and then seemed to make up his mind about something. “Right then. Saw a pub on the way here. We’ll go there for this conversation.” He curved an arm around her shoulders and gently guided her out the main exit towards the car park. “Think I’ll be needing a drink as well.”
Chapter 9
“Apparently, I’m cancer free,” Milly told him as soon the waitress walked away with their drink orders. Herbal mint tea for her, a twelve-year Macallan for him. And that was only after he’d attempted to order a ten-year-old, cask-strength Laphroaig and a sixteen-year-old Royal Brackla and been told the Macallan was the best they had.
Milly expected Iain to look surprised. Maybe stare at her in shock as she’d done with Dr. Keller. But instead, he only nodded and said, “Is that so?” As if there’s nothing remotely unusual about a person going from an end stage cancer diagnoses to completely cancer free in a matter of days.
“My doctor is beyond baffled. He double checked my labs from two weeks ago, but everything aligned with the original diagnosis. He said it couldn’t be the drug cocktail he gave me since none of those medicines have anything to do with fighting cancer. They only deal with its symptoms. But according to all my tests, my white blood cell count is completely normal, and all my other tests came back normal, too.”
Milly waited for Iain to react. But again, his response was underwhelming to say the last. “Good. That’s good news then.”
“Yeah, it’s great news,” she agreed, wondering why he was acting so odd. “Though it’s also a huge mystery. Dr. Keller has asked me to participate in a study so he can try to figure out why I—”
“No. No studies. You canna agree to that,” Iain growled, his gray eyes flashing.
“Yeah, I know I can’t,” she answered, shaking her head. “I told him I’d be traveling in New Zealand, so…”
“Wait, you’re still planning to go? To leave Scotland? And your job?”
Milly’s eyes softened. “Iain, listen. Yes, I’m apparently in remission, but who knows how long this will last? I’ve got to start living now. I’ve already wasted three years of my life doing a job I hate. And for what? So I can keep paying off all the medical bills I’ve accrued since I was nineteen? So I can keep my private medical benefits to fight a disease that will most likely come back any day and kill me anyway?”
“It won’t,” he said.
She chuffed, shaking her head. “Iain, you don’t know that. No one does.”
He made an irritated sound, then said, “So you hate working for me that much then?”
She paused, realizing how insulting that must have sounded to him, and she almost backtracked. But why should she lie to him like she’d been lying to herself all these years? “You’re a brilliant, visionary leader. But you’re also really demanding. And being stuck inside that office all day, making sure everything is up to your standards, is not how I want to spend the rest of my life. But, no worries, I’ve already received over a hundred resumes from people who really want to work with you. Good people who are excited and motivated to do this job.”
“I don’t want to work with ‘good’ people,” Iain sneered the word ‘good’ like it was something terrible. “You’re the only one up to my standards.”
Milly crooked her head at him. “C’mon Iain. I know you don’t like change, and you’re used to working with me. But you have to believe me when I say you’ll get used to working with someone else.”
“So what you said to me in the doctor’s office…about love, about gratitude. You didn’t mean any of it? I’m just the arsehole you want to fob off on someone else before you go buggering off to New Zealand?”
“What? Of course, I meant it! But Iain, our time together lasted four days. This is my entire life we’re talking about here, not just some long weekend sex fest. I can’t just stay here indefinitely because you don’t want to train a new assistant.”
“But you can’t just go,” he bit out. “I won’t let you—”
Iain broke off and sat back in his seat when the waitress returned with their drinks. But as her tea cup and his whiskey tumbler were set down in front of them, Milly could still feel the anger and frustration radiating off him, as if it were her own. Even worse, his mask was back, more stony and colder than ever.
Milly tried again. “Iain, I will train my replacement to meet your standards, I promise,” she said, fighting to keep her voice calm.
Because what the hell? How could he care more about her leaving Scotland for a month or two until her savings ran out than he did about her having gone into remission? For the first time, she wondered if maybe she’d misread his gruff genius act. Maybe there was something truly wrong with him—
“There is nothing wrong with me. I’m not mad,” he insisted. The mask finally slipped, revealing an expression almost haggard with distress as he said, “But you are not replaceable. Not to me.”
“Iain. I am replaceable. Like, so totally replaceable. You should see these resumes. They blow mine out of the water. And if this is about hooking up again, my savings won’t last that long. I’ll be back in a few months, and if you haven’t already moved on with a new cover model of the week, maybe we can do it again.”
She jumped when he slammed a hand on the table. “Stop it! Just stop it!”
“Stop what?” she asked, spreading her hands in the air. “Being reasonable?”
“Dumping on yourself. When will you see how special you are! How much more braw you are than any other woman I’ve ever met. Any other woman that’s ever crossed my path.”
“I don’t get this,” she said trying to keep her voice low. “It was just four days, and I’ve seen how you date.”
“What
did I just say?” he shot back, voice also low. “You must stop comparing yourself to the other women I’ve been with for one night only. You’re more than one night to me. And the fact that you don’t feel the same way? That you’d rather go chasing ghosts in New Zealand than stay here with me?”
He shook his head at her, his gray eye blazing with anger and hurt. “It fecking guts me, Millicent. You might as well break one of those beer bottles and shove it right in my stomach.”
Milly was genuinely struggling to keep up. What was going on here? Opposite day? Was she seriously having a black-and-white French movie level lover’s quarrel in the middle of some random pub? Why was he being so dramatic? Saying these things? Insisting she stay?
“Because you gave me your claim!” he roared, saying the words slowly as if addressing an obtuse child. “If you were a member of my clan, we would be married on this day. You would ken better than to break our mate bond, and you’d be keen to continue working with me because it would mean we’d be near one another day in and day out.”
“I don’t…I don’t understand.”
Iain rubbed a hand over his face. “I know you don’t. Which is why I will go to Faoltiarn first thing tomorrow. Talk with my brother and Da. Get permission to tell you everything, even though it’s days too soon for you to pass a pregnancy test.”
“Wait, what?” Did he just say pregnancy test?!
However, Iain just kept going like she hadn’t said anything. “But in the meantime, you canna just give me your claim and then go buggering off to New Zealand with my bairn in your belly.”
“Bairn? Like, as in Scottish for baby?” she asked, shaking her head. “I’m not pregnant. I can’t get pregnant after all the chemo and radiation I’ve had—”
“You are a very smart lass, but you ken nothing about these matters,” he shot back viciously. “Dinna just slag off our four days in that hotel room together. They meant something, and I ken better than you what you are and are not these days. You no longer have leukemia. It will never come back. You will live, Millicent.”
Her Scottish Wolf (Howls Romance): Loving World Page 8
