by Ella Brooke
Natalie looked around nervously, painfully aware that she was dressed, like, well, a secretary. However, the only looks that she got were welcoming ones, and she felt a little better when the waiter seated them in a small recessed alcove.
There were no menus, and Patrick told the waiter to simply bring the special that night.
"I hope you know that I don't eat at places like this, like, at all," she murmured, blushing a little. "This is fascinatingly underground."
Patrick chuckled.
"Years back, I invested a bit of capital in this place. It's grown in some very interesting ways, but one of the provisions was that I would always have a table here."
From the location and the class of the diners, Natalie had been expecting something avant garde. There certainly was some very skillful cooking going on in the kitchen, but Natalie was pleased to discover that the food was slightly odd without sacrificing flavor for novelty. There were a few strange affectations, like a certain type of incense being burned while they ate or the salmon being chilled on a two-inch thick marble slab for a few moments before being served, but overall, the food was ridiculously good.
The plates that came out were small, and though many of them contained only a few bites of food, everything that passed her lips was delicious. It all blended together into a delicious meal that left her pleasantly stuffed, and she gazed at Patrick with a smile.
"I have to admit, you really know how to make a girl feel special," she said. "Honestly, that's a meal I am never going to forget."
He grinned at her, and to her surprise, his expression was shy.
“I am glad you like it," he said, and Natalie reached out to take his hand. It occurred to her that this was the first time she had touched him in public. It felt like a claiming gesture, and after a moment, he squeezed her hand tight as well.
"You are very, very welcome," he said, and Natalie thought of what he had said about loneliness. She didn't think that anyone ever got over it, not really.
After dinner, he led her out to the curb. They took a limousine from the airfield to the restaurant, another new experience for Natalie, but now there was a sleek and powerful car waiting for them at the restaurant. Patrick took the keys from the man in the car, and then he opened the passenger side door for Natalie.
"You know that this is all blowing my mind, right?" she asked, only half-joking as she got into the car. "Real people don't live like this. People don't have planes, or fly to another country just to eat, or have cars brought to them while they eat."
Patrick shrugged as he pulled into traffic.
"Those are all things I do," he said mildly. "I don't do them more often because I'm very busy, but it is always good to get away from it all for a bit."
Natalie winced a little.
"I guess I'm being a little provincial, sorry. That must be annoying."
Patrick uttered a sharp laugh, a sound that had very little humor in it.
"Don't worry about it. You haven't even begun to breathe on how bad people have gotten after they have found out how much I'm worth."
"Oh, I've known how much you were worth since I met you," she said absently, and he glanced at her in surprise.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Um, well, you swung into a fight ready to take on two chavs because some girl that you didn't even know had gotten herself in trouble. That makes you pretty priceless to me."
For some reason, it seemed as if Patrick was having trouble with that concept, so Natalie hurried to change the topic.
"All right, well, you paid for lunch, how about if I get us some snacks and possibly some dinner? That sounds fair, right?"
He shot her an amused look.
"What do you have in mind?"
"Oh, I don't know. Something good on the road, maybe? We'll see what we find."
***
"So we're going to eat in a field?" Patrick said speculatively, and Natalie shook her phone at him.
"No, we're going to get some custard and bring it back to eat in your car. All of these blogs are saying that this place is a must. "
"If it’s there at all," Patrick said with a rueful smile. "My GPS is state-of-the-art, and it still wasn't able to figure out quite where we were going."
"Luckily those two twelve-year-olds could tell us right away," Natalie said happily. "Here, you wait here in the car, and I'll go get some custard."
She couldn't quite tell by Patrick's face what he thought of this, so putting all of her doubt out of her mind, she made her way to the small custard stand that was, yes, in the middle of the field. She perused the menu, but in the end bought a vanilla and a chocolate custard. After all, there was nothing wrong with the classics. She paid the bored-looking teenager behind the counter and walking back to the car.
"All right," Patrick said after a cautious sip. "This is better than I thought it would be."
"Well, that's because it's real custard," Natalie said with a grin. "Real eggs, real milk, all of it. People apparently come from miles around on Saturdays to have some."
He shook his head, taking another sip of the vanilla and leaving her the chocolate.
"You really weren't joking when you said you wanted to pay, were you?" he asked.
"No, I said I would. Why in the world wouldn't I?"
He shrugged.
"Because I make more money in an hour than you might make in a week," he said. Natalie's eyes wanted to cross thinking about what that meant, but she shook her head.
"Like I said, you got lunch. I'm not going to be some freeloader. I might not be able to afford as many nice meals as you can for us, but I'll be damned if I expect you to cover it all."
He let her finish her bite of chocolate custard before cupping his hand over the back of her neck and drawing her close for a deep kiss. Natalie flailed a little over the awkward position, but then she relaxed into it. Her hand found its way to Patrick's shirt, holding on to a fold of it as he kissed her soundly. He tasted of vanilla, which mixed deliciously with the bite of chocolate that she had, and underneath that was the taste of a kiss with Patrick — a very specific and indefinable flavor that she was beginning to simply adore.
"Are you going to kiss me every time I buy you custard?" Natalie asked, a little breathless when he finally let her go. "Because if so, you should just let me out again, and I'll come back with enough to fill your trunk.”
For a moment, Patrick just stared at her, then he burst out laughing. She knew that he had ten years on her, but when he laughed like that, he sounded much younger, more carefree. She reached out to stroke his shoulder gently, but then he took her hand, kissing the palm with a tenderness that made her shiver.
"No, pet, no need to pay for the kisses. Those I'll give you for free, I promise."
Natalie laughed.
"Well, that's great. I don't know if you know this, but people who don't have private planes and retreats in the Scottish highlands really do like to look for deals."
***
As they drove along Scotland's winding roads, Natalie found her eyes drifting closed.
"I don't want to fall asleep," she complained. "This is the first time that I've been to Scotland, I want to see it all."
"Believe me when I say that I have seen a great deal of Scotland, and unless we’re driving through the national forests, it looks a lot like this. Close your eyes, get some sleep. I promise that you are not missing much."
She might have protested, but Patrick's hand reached out, pressing her back into the buttery softness of the leather seat.
"Oh, all right. Just wake me if something interesting happens."
"On my honor, I certainly will," he said solemnly.
***
Natalie realized that she must have been more tired than she thought. It felt like she had just closed her eyes for a moment, but as the car began to slow she realized that the sun was far lower in the sky, and they had come to a place that was far different from the suburban sprawl that they had been driving
through before.
"Where are we?" she asked, looking at the dense twists of trees and the desolate land between. She supposed that another person might have suggested that the landscape was sinister, but to her eyes, there was something desperately beautiful about it, if lonely. It made her think a little of Patrick, and she glanced at him.
"We're only about twenty minutes away from the property that I told you about," he said with a soft smile. "This land all belongs with that property. We're very close to Cairgorms National Park."
"Cairgorms..." Natalie ran the strange words over her tongue carefully, feeling how foreign it felt to her. "It's all beautiful."
"I have always liked it a great deal," Patrick said, something oddly quiet in his voice. "When I was a bit younger, this was a place I went to when I wanted to get away from it all. Back then, it was a little more primitive, a little more wild. When I wanted to relax, I would ship up some supplies and work on making the space a little more livable. I've made some progress, I suppose."
Natalie suspected that Patrick was a man with a grand gift for understatement. As they pulled up to the property that he had spoken about so fondly, she knew it was true.
"Oh, Patrick," she said softly, getting out of the car, and he followed her with a grin, his hands shoved deeply into his pockets. "It's gorgeous."
The building at one point had been a gatehouse, he told her, a place where the guardians who watched over the pathway to the castle would live. In peacetime, it could be a simple family abode, but in times of turmoil or strife, a group of soldiers might be stationed there as well. The gatehouse was made of sturdy stone and timber, and though there were elegant iron grates over the windows, the windows themselves were made of elegant mullioned glass.
Beyond the guardhouse, Natalie could see the ruins of the castle that Patrick mentioned in the darkening afternoon.
"A little spooky," she confessed to him. "Do you think it's haunted?"
Patrick came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her. She thought that he would make fun of her for her question, but instead he rested his chin on her head.
"Oh, most likely," he said, a slight hint of humor in his voice. "Though if you wanted ghosts, I would say that we should have stayed in Ireland. Ireland is most haunted, you know; with a ghost or goblin around every corner."
"A chicken in every pot, and a banshee for every family?" she suggested, and he squeezed her gently with a soft laugh.
"Now you're getting it. Come inside. I want to get the generator going, and then I will show you around."
She watched as Patrick competently brought the house to life. Once the power was going and everything was functional, the guardhouse was a gorgeously rustic place.
It was one large room with a half-loft above. The room below was luxuriously appointed with a full kitchen and living room, a long fireplace running almost all the way along the rear wall. A curving staircase led up to the loft, and when Natalie scampered up it to look, she found an enormous white bed that seemed far larger than even a king bed would be. The sight of it made her blush, and she moved back down the ladder again quickly.
It wasn't until she got back down to the ground level that she realized that Patrick was watching her, a slightly guarded expression on his face.
"What's the matter?" she asked, a little alarmed. "Did I touch something I was not meant to touch?"
He smiled a little, shaking his head, but there was still some kind of wall up between them.
"How do you like it?" he asked. "Too plain for a billionaire?"
Natalie tilted her head to one side, looking at him curiously.
"Well, I'm not a billionaire, I wouldn't know," she said practically. "But yeah, maybe a little plain." She didn't know what Patrick was going to say next, because she turned on her heel. "I've got just the thing to fix it, however."
Bemused, he followed her back outside. It was the cusp of spring when there was still a great deal of chill in the air, but there were already plenty of tough wildflowers putting up blooms. She had seen something beautifully golden in the ditches close by, and as she poked around the forested land that grew up to the gatehouse, she found a stand of scrubby purplish-gray flowers that sent up color in defiant spikes.
"Here, give me a hand."
She cut the flower stalks with her handy pocket knife, handing bundles over to a bemused Patrick. Natalie did not take too many flowers from any one spot, but in short order, Patrick was holding an armful of flowers that she reckoned would brighten the house nicely.
"Oh good, someone left a whole lot of jars in the cabinet here."
"I actually have no idea where those came from," Patrick said with surprise, and Natalie smiled.
"I'll just call it the house's gift to us, then. There's a good rule that you could learn from me, I guess. Sometimes, magic just happens."
She ran cool water into the jars and started filling them up with flowers, clusters of gold and violet that she then scattered throughout the guardhouse. In short order, she finished and looked around with satisfaction.
"There, problem fixed," she declared. "It was a little plain before, but now it's lovely."
She started to turn to Patrick to tease him about letting her decorate before she had even spent the night, but then he was pulling her roughly into his arms, kissing her soundly on the mouth and taking her breath away.
"Oh!" she said with surprise. "What was that for?"
"Because you are you, and that in itself is a magical thing," he said.
Chapter Twelve
"I know that I said I would get dinner for us, but you seem to have taken me off the beaten path," Natalie said after a walk in the forest. Patrick told her that the ruins were best explored in full day light, but there was plenty to see in the forest.
"I mean, I suppose I could see if the deer we saw would be interested in selling us some kebabs or something."
Patrick shrugged.
"I'm not too worried about it," he said, laying in some wood for the fire. "There's food in the refrigerator. This morning I sent the call up for the caretakers to make sure that this place was well-stocked.
Blinking in surprise, Natalie made her way to the refrigerator.
"Oh my…" she began. The refrigerator was huge and fully stocked, as promised. "I've changed my mind, this is perfect," she said. "I'll make us some dinner, how's that?"
Patrick shot a wary glance at her over his shoulder.
"I remember last week at work when you told me that you sometimes poured chili into a bag of crisps and called it a meal. How worried should I be?"
"First, walking tacos are a delicacy in some parts of the world, and second, that's just what I do when I only have access to a gas station. This is different. Trust me. I'll get us both fed. You just build up the fire."
Patrick shot her another suspicious look, but she was already pulling out some ingredients from the refrigerator. She couldn't stop herself from being slightly gleeful about everything she had to work with. She had scrounged meals out of far less in the past, and with this, she was going to be able to feed them very well indeed.
She decided that ‘simple but rich’ would suit the circumstances of their trip, and at the end of the day, most things were delicious when dressed in olive oil and herbs and then roasted. She pulled out a half of a chicken from the refrigerator, and found an assortment of root vegetables, carrots, beets and potatoes. The vegetables were tossed in olive oil and a few tablespoons of Italian herbs from a small jar, and then the chicken, rubbed down with the same, was laid on top. When it went into the oven, she turned back to the fridge, looking with an eye towards dessert. She wasn't sure that she was up to baking, but there was plenty of beautiful fruit to be had, so she simply cut it up into a bowl, sprinkled it with sugar and the juice of a lime and stuck it back into the refrigerator.
"I told you that I would get us fed," she said triumphantly, and Patrick smiled at her a little.
"You're quite domestic," he said. "I did
n't expect it after hearing about your love of travel."
Natalie sat down at the rough kitchen table, setting her phone's alarm to remind her when to take things out of the oven.
"I was told a long time ago that the best reason to travel was to find your home," she said. "I guess one of the things I've got going for me is that whenever I find it, I'll be able to cook and take care of things fairly well. My mother worked a lot while I was growing up, so if I wanted good food, I had to cook it myself. We were too poor for even the mixes and stuff like that, so I learned to make whatever we got from the food banks stretch out."
Patrick sat down next to her, and idly and naturally, he took her hand. She shivered a little as he traced invisible patterns over her palm, and she leaned against him a little. The fire was low at the moment, but it was warming up the guardhouse well. The warmth from Patrick couldn't be beat however, and she snuggled close.
"My mother did not cook," Patrick said thoughtfully. "She was from a well-to-do family that actually had a title, once upon a time. Her family didn't quite know what to make of my father, who had built a great deal of his own fortune. He was able to keep her well, though, and I believe that they were happy."
It seemed a little like a story from another time for Natalie. She could imagine a tall woman with Patrick's bright eyes, charmed by a man with Patrick's build and strength. She was glad that they had been happy for a time, at least.
"So did you learn to cook on your own?" she asked, and he laughed a little.
"Pet, I know how to grill meat, because a roommate taught me at university, and I know to boil an egg because it seemed a ridiculous thing for a man not to know. Beyond that, I am very reliant on the restaurants of whatever city I am in. Watching you cook is a little bit like magic. I've never been with a woman who has done so before."
She looked at him a trifle sternly.
"I really hope you don't mean that you expect women to cook for you?"
"No, you misunderstand. I do not expect anyone who is with me to cook. Cooking is done at restaurants. What you did is lovely."
