by L. L. Muir
“Scots are traditionally a picky lot.”
“Fine. Yes.”
“Then I shall be here at ten o’clock on the morrow.” He swirled his hand around and gave her a fancy bow, then turned away again.
“Kerry?”
He sighed and faced her.
“I won’t call you a liar…”
He snorted. “Generous of ye.”
“I’ll just point out that you promised to tell me about yourself, and I don’t intend to let you leave until you do. Besides, it will be easier for you to be on time in the morning…if you never leave.”
She dropped her shoulder and swung her bag around, fished out the keys and unlocked the door. When she went inside, she left it open—hoping he’d come after her. It was a trick she’d learned from him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The door to Jordan’s rented flat opened into the kitchen. She walked to the fridge and opened it while she waited to see what the tall Scotsman would do. There were only half a dozen items inside, left as a token of welcome by the man who rented her the space. She scanned the contents about twenty times while pretending to be nonchalant.
He stepped over the threshold and put his hands on his hips, ignoring the fact he was letting cold air in. “I’ve considered, Miss Lennox, and I’ve concluded that ye would rather not ken much about me. I believe that, despite my ultimatum, ye mean to keep yer distance, remain detached. Do ye no’?”
Jordan dropped the pretense and straightened, letting the fridge close. It was impossible to hide her disappointment. “You’ve reconsidered, then? You don’t want to work with me?” Was that why he’d left the door open, so he could high-tail it out of there?
“I’ll do as I promised. But I believe the safest thing for ye is to think of me as some fictional character, one ye can walk away from at the end of our venture and feel nothing.”
“That sounds a little harsh.” She opened the fridge again and picked up the back-bacon, wiggled it in the air until he noticed it, then put it back in. She did the same thing with a small carton of eggs. “I didn’t mean to insult you, by the way, when I asked if maybe you don’t need the money. I’m not some gold-digger, wanting to know if you’re worth pursuing, you know?”
“No insult taken, lass. However, I believe I have already confessed enough. So, from this moment onward, think of me as...one of those lads from Brigadoon. I have no need of money, ye see, because I’ll have everything I might ever need when I disappear into the mist again.”
Jordan rolled her eyes and exhaled loudly. “Fine. But I should point out that you said you have two days. The citizens of Brigadoon only get one.”
“Weel, now, that’s because I come from Brigadoon two-point-0.”
She bit her lips for a second to keep from barking out laughing. “So naturally, your village and your magic bridge won’t disappear for two days.”
“Precisely. And now, having unburdened myself of my secrets, I feel light as a feather. I can enjoy our time together and not be trippin’ over my tongue, aye?” He stepped further into the room so he could close the door behind him.
“So I’m Gene Kelly in this version?” She held up the tiny tomatoes and a small brown sack. “These are mushrooms. No sign of blood sausage.”
He nodded but waved away her concern over the missing ingredient. “Nay, lass. Neither Gene Kelly nor Cyd Charisse. Ye’re the lovely American photographer, Jordan Lennox. No need to play parts, here. This is our story alone.”
Our story sounded pathetically, wonderfully romantic, but she wasn’t about to encourage him. They were far too chummy already, without getting starry-eyed. Better to keep debating—and to avoid as much eye contact as possible with those…were his eyes completely green now?
She swallowed and looked away. A can of baked beans and a package of coffee sat on the counter. She picked them up and held them out between her and her guest. “This is everything, I think.
“Auch, aye. Breakfast will be grand, I’m certain.”
Lordy it was hot in that kitchen all of a sudden. And if he kept purring like that, the whole house was going to burst into flame. It was better when he was lying to her.
“Uh. About that fish supper...”
“Aye?”
“You acted like you’d never had fish and chips before. But I suppose, in Brigadoon 2.0, they don’t deep fry anything.”
“Precisely.” He moved back to the little table, pulled out a chair, and sat backwards on it, carefully tucking the drape of his kilt between his legs as he lowered himself, not that she was watching. “In all my three hundred years—popping in and out of the mist, mind—I’ve never once been served anything so hearty as tonight’s supper.”
She laughed, finally relaxing again with the chair between them. “You sound so convincing.”
Lines crinkled around his eyes. “Imagine that.”
Jordan put the beans and coffee back and excused herself. In the bedroom, she took off her coat, heavy with humidity, and draped it around a pink tufted chair so it could dry. She could hear him, feel him pacing in the kitchen as if he were as nervous as she felt, and the idea made her smile.
Imagine, a guy like him, nervous about anything.
Putting a wall and a closed door between them didn’t do much to help her adrenaline settle down. In fact, wondering what he might do and say next just made her heart beat harder. So she slipped out of her clothes and into a comfy pair of sweats and a hoody, took a deep breath, and went back out.
Kerry was sitting backwards on the chair once again, like he’d never left it. The hushed footfalls of an upstairs neighbor drew her attention to the ceiling and she realized the tall Scot hadn’t been the one pacing after all.
While he took a good look at her change of clothes, including the tear in the knee of her sweats, there was a raw masculinity to him that made her fingers itch for her camera. It wasn’t to take advantage of him for a sellable shot, but to prove to her future self that Kerry Mather had been real, sitting in her kitchen, within reach—in case she made the mistake, one day, of thinking her memory had embellished the image.
The reality of him being within reach was dangerous enough to warrant more distance between them, so she marched to the opposite end of the kitchen and parked her butt on the counter, next to the bag of coffee.
Jordan began feeling like an idiot, for being the only nervous one, until she noticed Kerry tapping his thumb on his tartan-covered thigh. He wasn’t as calm and cool as she’d thought.
Maybe he worried she was going to jump him.
Maybe they were both worried about the same thing…
She shook her head while she sucked in a deep breath. No one was going to jump anyone. He was a gentleman, wasn’t he? He’d only come inside when she’d bullied him into it, and it was she who’d insisted he stay the night. Though she waited for alarms to go off in her brain, for her survival instincts to warn against letting a stranger stay in the house while she slept, the only thing stirring was her hormones, and those could, literally, cost her career.
The job at Foster and Foster, the job it would kill me to lose.
At the moment, however, she couldn’t separate that job from the man sitting at her table. So she reached for a little justification.
“I hope I didn’t freak you out by asking you to stay. If I would’ve let you leave, I would worry all night that you’d change your mind and not show up in the morning.” She put her hands between her thighs and shrugged. “You see, I let Fate decide where to look for the perfect shot, and Fate sent me to you—er, to Brechin. I just don’t want to screw it up, that’s all.” Jordan’s words replayed in her head and she groaned. “That probably didn’t help.”
Kerry’s breathing changed, and Jordan had the craziest sense of him moving toward her, even though his butt was still in the chair. “Tell me how Fate led ye here.”
She shrugged again. “The usual way. I closed my eyes and pointed at a map.”
He nodded, but he seemed disappointed, like he
expected her to say something else.
“Look. I’ll play along with your Brigadoon story,” she said lightly, looking anywhere but his eyes, “but for all I know, you really did step off that pediment, a ghost stepping out of the statue.” She let her voice go all spooky with the words, then laughed. “But seriously, you are the spitting image of it, you know. In fact, I think we should go down there in the morning and take a shot of you and the statue together.”
He jumped out of his chair like it had caught on fire. “I would rather we dinnae. Statue or no, I’d rather not face my ancestor again until I’ve earned my place beside him.” He sighed and looked at the ceiling like he could see beyond it, to that ancestor waiting for him in Heaven. Then he closed his eyes and shook his head. “I cannae expect ye to understand.”
“Part of that Scotland I can’t see?”
He smiled and opened his eyes. They were green after all, with little specks of yellow that flashed bright and glossy, and nothing like a statue. “But ye will, Jordan lass. Ye will.” He gestured with one hand toward the living room, then suddenly frowned and moved to the door, to lock it. “A lass like yerself shouldnae be leavin’ the door open. Ye never ken what sort might wander inside, aye?”
Drawn like a magnet to the lilt of his brogue, Jordan followed him into the living room. “You’re right. Good thing I’ve got an ancient Highlander here to protect me.”
He glanced again at the hole in her knee, then looked away. “Perhaps ye’d best wrap yerself in a blanket until I get a fire lit.” He moved toward the little fireplace, but before he could get to it, Jordan flipped the switch that turned on the gas. The guy jumped and stumbled into her. And while he patted her shoulders and apologized, all she could do was laugh.
“I’m fine. You didn’t step on me.” She chuckled again. “It’s a gas fireplace, Mr. Eighteenth Century.”
“I realize it now, aye. But I wonder...” He walked slowly to the little fire and held his hands out in front of the smeared black glass that contained the small flames. “Doesnae seem to lend much warmth, though.”
“It will in a minute.”
He glanced at her knee again. “Ye must be cold as a witch’s...fingers.”
“Cold as a witch’s fingers? Is that how they say it in Brigadoon?”
He smirked. “In the 2.0 version only.”
Since the guy couldn’t see past the state of her sweats, Jordan headed back to the bedroom and caught sight of herself in the mirror. How long had it been since she’d grinned herself silly? How long had it been since she’d had that much fun?
Maybe she had been living her life with a camera in front of her face…instead of just living. Photography was a solitary job. Even when she was shooting people, there was always a lens sitting between them. But then again, it was necessary if she was going to make it back into the award circles.
Since there wasn’t a camera in front of her face now, however, maybe she wouldn’t have to wait until morning to see more of that Scotland she’d been missing…
CHAPTER EIGHT
The lass emerged from the bedchamber wearing something altogether more modest than the short sark or the pants with her skin showing through at the knee, and Kerry immediately relaxed. No matter how times and fashions had changed on the moor, it was something quite different to find himself alone with a pretty lass with little more than their honor between them. But now, with her generous, poufy pants, it was easier to forget the shapely legs that hid beneath.
No. Not altogether easy, but easier.
She brought with her a laptop computer and her camera bag. The former, she set upon the coffee table, lowered her bottom between the table and the couch, then patted the floor beside her. “Would you like to see the shots I took today?”
The warmth of the gas fire had started to seep further into the room and he moved away from it.
“Sometimes, ye dinna ken how cold ye are until ye begin to warm.” He tucked his kilt between his knees and sat as gracefully as possible.
The lass pushed the table away to afford him more room, then tethered her camera to the computer with a short black cord. Her fingers flew across the keyboard for a moment and a picture filled the screen. It was the statue of his da, big as life.
“I had forgotten how much I looked like my father,” he whispered.
She laughed lightly. “Your father?”
He caught his breath when he realized the lapse. “My forefather, of course.”
She nodded and changed the picture with the push of a key. “They must be some strong family genes if that face showed up almost three hundred years later.” She narrowed her eyes and turned to look at him. “Unless you are an actual ghost from the past, and this really is your father.”
He held perfectly still, like a rabbit cornered. She finally laughed and he was quick to join in. Swiftly and thankfully, she turned her attention back to the screen.
Each photo moved away from the statue in increments. She flipped through them quickly until she got to those taken from the opposite end of the park. Two photos in a row were poorly focused and a bit sideways. He turned his head to make out the figure of the statue in the distance. In the next shot, he recognized himself standing in the picture as well.
“This is where I kind of lost my grip on the camera. I’ll delete them later. Right after this, I started chasing my ghost.”
My ghost? Her words rubbed together in his chest and created an orange warmth where the fire could never have reached. For certain, the lass had no ken how her words had affected him, nor had she meant them as he’d chosen to take them. But no matter. With only a pair of days in which to enjoy mortality, he would welcome any sentiment, intended or not.
It did put him to mind of all those days of his original life which he’d squandered, doing much the same as Jordan Lennox was doing—focusing on his destined duty and not on the faces around him.
It was his lonely life that helped him recognize hers so immediately. And if a noble deed was required of him, he had an excellent idea of what might qualify.
Showing a lovely but lonely lass the error of her ways.
Jordan clicked the button again and the familiar tunnel appeared with himself standing in the opening. “Here you are,” she murmured and sat back. Her upper arm pressed against his own. Though he felt the tension rise between them, she did not move away. Perhaps she thought their proximity was necessary for both of them to see the screen.
He’d seen that well-dressed fellow before—in the mirror of the toilet, at the restaurant. A finely turned out Highlander, cleaned and pressed and fit to meet the prince himself. His cock-wise smile promised mischief.
Though the photograph might be a fair rendition of the day he went off to join the Jacobites, the moment it truly captured was the second he’d looked into Jordan Lennox’s eyes—just a sliver of a second before she lifted her camera.
He watched her staring at the photo and wondered if she was remembering the same.
Had she been as affected as I? Or had she been studying the composition of the shot? If only his pride would allow him to ask…
Kerry paid token attention to the rest of the pictures. Different angles, different lighting. But for the most part, they all appeared as pieces of the same picture.
Jordan, on the other hand, seemed to find plenty of nuance in each frame, and though she tried to point out these subtleties, they were lost on him.
“Ye seem pleased, though?”
She glanced at him and blushed. “Very pleased. It will be hard deciding which to submit, and that is a very good sign.”
“Excellent.”
“That doesn’t change my plans for tomorrow,” she assured him. “If anything, it just makes me want to start earlier. You’re very photogenic.” Then she blushed again, as if she’d flat out called him handsome.
It gave him a devious idea, and he donned a sober demeanor. “I am relieved to hear it.”
“You were worried?”
“A
uch, aye. What if ye’d opened yer camera and found only a tunnel staring back at ye? What if I hadn’t appeared in the photos at all?”
She eyed him warily. “I don’t get it.”
“Suppose I was no more photogenic than a vampire, than a ghostie. I might have shown up as little more than the mist from whence I came.”
“Oh. Right. Brigadoon 2.0.”
“Precisely.” He reached up and tapped the screen. “But now there is proof I’ve been here. There might not be a grave with my name on it, but there will always be this, aye?”
She grinned and grabbed her camera bag again. From within, she pulled two sheets of paper and presented them to him, along with a pen. “While you’re in such a good mood, I’d better ask you to sign these.”
The papers were already covered with words. “What is this?”
“A contract. If you sign them, you grant me the rights to publish or sell any and all of the pictures I take of you.”
He paused, pretending to read the contract, letting her worry for a moment that he would not sign it—just so he might see her bite that bottom lip.
It was the next best thing to biting it himself.
CHAPTER NINE
After the contract was signed and hidden away, ostensibly so that Kerry might not be able to change his mind, they sat before the computer and flipped through other collections of photographs Jordan had taken.
As the lass had done before, she was quick to point out the composition of the shots, while completely ignoring the emotions those shots evoked. After an hour of watching her reveal herself, in what she said and left unsaid, they stumbled into a file she hadn’t meant to open. The woman in the first picture was so compelling to Kerry, however, that he balked when she closed it again.
“Who is she?”
Jordan sighed and held her tongue.
“Let me see it again,” he said. “It is only a picture, is it not?”
She nodded, clicked on the file again, and the image filled the screen. It was a very close shot of an older woman’s face. Her chin rested on the heel of her hand and a ghost of a smile turned up the edges of her lips. Though her skin was dotted with freckles and lines, her dark eyes were wet and bright with reflected light. In fact, the entire shot was rather dark, and yet it lightened his soul to see it.
