by Elise Faber
The hurt of those memories—of Colin so angry, her so broken—helped shore up her resolve.
“Don’t say things like that,” she snapped and started to pop her earbuds back in. Her friends at home had filled her phone with a slew of romantic audiobooks and she decided that she much preferred fictional heroes at the moment.
At least if they broke their heroine’s heart, it was only once.
Colin had already broken hers twice.
She wasn’t looking for a round three.
But before she had the chance to insert the earbud, his fingers gripped her wrist. “Don’t ignore me,” Colin said, all high-and-mighty, all arrogant, rich Scottish duke.
Well, she wasn’t a little girl anymore, wasn’t a fresh-faced recent high school graduate taking a summer trip, wasn’t even a slightly disillusioned college dropout. No. She was more experienced, and at twenty-six, she knew she’d had enough of wealthy, powerful men.
“You don’t belong here.”
“If you were worth anything at all, your parents wouldn’t have disowned you.”
The memory of Colin’s words were bullets, stealing her breath as they shot forward in her mind to strike home.
She’d been so naïve, so stupid, so . . . completely in love.
And he’d destroyed her.
Twice.
What was the saying? Fool her once and shame on him, but fool her twice and shame on her?
Yeah. That.
Shame on her. For being a fucking idiot. For putting herself out there. For being a glutton for punishment.
“Let me go, Colin,” she said, yanking at her wrist until he was either forced to release her or make a scene. He chose to let go. Of course, he did. Because McGregors didn’t make scenes. They functioned in the background, skulking, stalking, waiting for the moment their prey faltered and they could pounce.
And to show her that he was still in control, that he was stronger than her and was only loosening his grip because he wanted to, Colin did it slowly, sliding fingertip by fingertip free, dragging them across her skin and raising goose bumps in their wake.
“I already did that once,” he said, putting his arm back onto his armrest. A lock of jet-black hair fell across his forehead as he leaned in to meet her eyes. “And it was the biggest mistake of my life.”
“Twice,” she whispered, her throat tight, her heart pounding. There was an invitation in his gaze. He would accept her. She could crawl into his arms, get lost in an embrace that once upon a time had protected her from anything bad in the universe.
Except with Colin, that peaceful, sheltered feeling never actually lasted.
His expression clouded and she might have said he looked confused. But Colin was never anything less than one hundred percent completely sure of himself.
That was why he’d broken her so completely the second time.
So, she ignored the invitation in his eyes, turned her back on him again, and tried to pretend that she didn’t feel like crying.
Her once-in-a-lifetime adventure was off to a brilliant start.
Chapter Three
Colin
She still smelled of vanilla and jasmine. Her head still fit perfectly under his chin.
Colin inhaled deeply, knowing that if someone caught him, he’d end up looking like a bloody idiot. It was worth it anyway. Cecilia’s scent hit him right in the gut, unfurling in his stomach and spreading through his limbs.
It smelled like home and also like his biggest regret.
She sighed in her sleep, turning over and nuzzling close, and her hair tickled his nose, just like it used to. God damn, did that make his heart ache. He’d searched for her after she’d left, spent a ridiculous amount of money trying to track her down.
And now she was in his arms again.
What was the American expression? A summer fling? They’d had two of them. Except, it hadn’t just been a fling for him. Not either time.
He’d given her a ring.
Had actually been heading to the altar when he’d discovered she’d run off with his best friend.
He’d been hurt and too angry for answers at the time. Then later, when that fury had finally calmed enough that he’d wanted those answers, his family had imploded, and he hadn’t been able to spare a moment for his idiotic emotional needs.
A month after CeCe had left him, his father had dropped dead, apoplectically screaming at a tenant for some perceived slight. And while Colin wasn’t terribly sad to see the old bastard go, he had been nearly sunk by the responsibilities of inheriting the multitude of McGregor estates and businesses. He’d needed to dive in, to streamline because the family was bleeding money and would have been out on their asses if he hadn’t taken the time to learn every detail of each of the companies before deciding which to sell and which to keep. It had taken years before he’d been able to breathe freely, but he was there.
And the deal with RoboTech further ensured that.
The McGregor coffers were secure. His family was safe. And . . . now what?
Or at least, that was what he’d been thinking before he’d sat down next to Cecilia on the plane.
Now his focus was clear and revolved around a certain waifish redhead with piercing green eyes.
Though he supposed waifish wasn’t the right term for her, not any longer. Six years ago, she’d still been a girl. Today Colin found himself holding a woman, still slender and petite, but full of curves that his hands itched to cup.
She sighed and shifted in the circle of his arms, and he knew that it wouldn’t be much longer before she woke. She’d slipped off about forty-five minutes after deliberately trying to ignore him again, but though her mind might be in favor of rejecting any interaction with him, her body seemed to have a different tack. As sleep had swept through her, she’d slumped against him, first her back then her shoulders and head, and then nearly all of her when he’d slid an arm around her to shift her into a more comfortable position.
Her head was tucked just beneath his chin, one arm wrapped around his waist, the other dangling between them and resting on the outside of his thigh.
Thank God it was on the outside, otherwise he might have embarrassed himself.
She shifted again, and Colin took one more inhale, knowing that she would hate both him and herself when she woke and found them tangled together.
The cabin lights flicked on, and CeCe breathed out slowly. She inhaled and he felt her breath catch through the cotton of his suit. Her back went stiff, her hand at his waist curled into a fist.
It was obvious the moment she was fully awake. Mainly because the second she was, Cecilia did her best impression of a cat being wrangled for a visit with the vet. She clawed at his chest, trying to shove herself back into her own seat, and in the process managed to both nearly unman him and catch a chunk of her hair on the buttons of his shirt.
“Jesus, woman,” he ground out, grabbing her hips to steady her flailing movements. She struggled, her elbow connecting with his midsection and then lower. Okay, that was enough. He pinned her against him, trapping those dangerous limbs between them. “I’d like to keep that part. Just hold still.”
“Let me go,” she snapped.
“Certainly,” he replied. “Or at least I will, once you’ve released yourself from my shirt.”
Finally, she stopped fighting him. “What?”
“Your hair is stuck . . .”
Fingers came up to feel her scalp, and she winced when she found the tangle. “Oh.”
“If you’ll allow me”—she snorted, and he ignored it—“I’ll release you.” But despite the tension in her frame, CeCe didn’t move as he gently worked the locks free. “There,” he eventually said, smoothing a hand down her head and tucking an errant strand behind her ear.
She lurched off him and back into her own seat. “Thanks,” she muttered and swept her hair up into some sort of intricate twist that exposed the back of her neck—
His heart stopped.
He reached
across the armrest and gripped both of her arms, fury suddenly filling every cell in his body. “What have you done?”
Where once there had been soft red tendrils, curls he’d loved twisting around his finger as he’d trailed kisses down her nape, now there was nothing but shorn locks, so short that he could see—
CeCe frowned. “It’s been six years. I cut my hair. Big deal.”
“Not the haircut,” he gritted out. “That I like. It suits you.” And it did. The bigger question was, “Why the fuck do you have another man’s name tattooed on your neck?”
Chapter Four
Cecilia
Cecilia froze at Colin’s question, struggling to comprehend, her brain still foggy from sleep.
No. Her brain was a mess because she’d woken up in Colin’s arms.
“Cecilia,” he said, and her fingers drifted up to the name tattooed just beneath her hairline.
She was unused to people noticing it, since she usually wore her hair down or in a low ponytail, but she’d just gotten her hair cut and liked the feel of the air hitting her scalp where the stylist had used clippers to trim it short. There was something about the way it felt . . .
Free.
She rolled her eyes.
Or so she’d thought.
“Who’s Hunter?” Colin snapped, dropping his hands from her arms, preferring, apparently, to glare down at her.
CeCe stiffened. Hunter was . . . well, he was special. The special-est—was that even a word?—boy she’d ever met. And she—
“I love him,” she said softly, not thinking what the words would mean to Colin, who couldn’t begin to understand her relationship with Hunter.
He was hers, but not.
Kind of like the man sitting next to her had been.
Colin made a noise very much like a growl and scowled at her. “You love him?”
It was truly a pleasure to make a man like Colin McGregor squirm. One might be frightened because he was huge, with arms like tree trunks, shoulders nearly twice the breadth of hers, brows dark black and yanked together, but Colin had never hurt her.
Not physically anyway.
And besides that, he couldn’t possibly begin to understand what her relationship with Hunter was.
She’d been part nanny, part mother, part sister, and all friend to the sick little boy before he’d gotten a heart transplant the previous year. Now, he was still a friend and a little brother and a son and . . . not hers. He belonged with Abby and Jordan. He had a family. He was happy and adjusted and finally, finally healthy.
But he would always hold a chunk of her heart.
“He’s eight,” she murmured. “Or rather, he’s nearly nine now.”
Colin stiffened. His eyes were wide, almost panicked, and it only took her a heartbeat to understand why.
“Your math’s off,” she said lightly. Because she understood with crystal clarity why he was so concerned. “If you’d knocked me up, we’d have a seven-year-old.”
They’d slept together eight years ago. For the first time. She internally sighed since it had also been the last time. But the crazed look in Colin’s eyes wasn’t so much because of Hunter or her tattoo or even whether or not she’d been pleased by the events (and yes, she had been, despite fumbling on both their parts). Instead, the terror was because he was worried she might have kept a child from him.
Rage filled her. Did he honestly think she wouldn’t have told them when they’d nearly gotten married? What would she have done after the wedding? Surprise! Here’s the two-year-old you helped create!
Fucking moron.
“Hunter isn’t mine,” she snapped. “Or yours either.” One earbud in. “He was just a boy I nannied for.” She shoved in the other. “And while your family may lie about information that could make or break another person, I would never do such a thing. You didn’t get me pregnant, Colin, and I thank God every day for that fact.”
“What?” His brows rose. “That’s not—”
But she didn’t hear the rest of his words because she cranked up her audiobook.
And heard all of one sentence before Colin plucked the buds from her ears and snatched her phone from her grip. He glanced down at the screen. “This rubbish comes in audiobooks now?”
Once the brogue would have sent warmth down her spine. Today that warmth was still present, though it was in the form of embarrassment.
Because the audiobook was about a Scot and an Englishwoman, the former stealing the latter away and teaching her all there was to know about pleasure and life in the Highlands. It was filled with kilts and beards, with sporrans and fabulous dresses and it was . . . so fucking embarrassing.
Once he’d been her Highlander.
She’d drooled over his kilt, admired his legs as he’d straddled his mount.
He’d shown her pleasure. A single night of glorious, soul-shattering pleasure before disappearing from her life for years.
“Give that back,” she hissed, but he merely ignored her and put one of the earbuds in and—horror of all freaking horrors—began to listen in.
A strand of black hair curled across his forehead as he turned his stare to hers.
His innocent stare. Except it wasn’t innocent. The man next to her was about as far from that sentiment as one could humanly be.
“Stop,” she snapped, extending her hand. “You’re not cute, and the guileless little boy eyes won’t work on me. Give. Me. My. Phone.”
“I don’t sound like that,” he muttered, but took out the earbud and returned her cell. “That is the most inaccurate genre of books I’ve ever come across. I can’t believe you still read—”
“I don’t care if it’s accurate or not”—she glowered—“but these authors do a ton of research, so I have faith in them. And plus, it’s fiction. I’m allowed to get lost in the story, just for the pleasure of it. Just because I enjoy it.” She stopped, chest heaving, cheeks hot. She hated when people judged her because of the books she read. So what if she read romance? The stories and writing were good, and didn’t everyone deserve a happily-ever-after?
Even if those HEAs didn’t always materialize in real life.
“If you want to really learn about Scotland, you should read a history book,” he said. “Or maybe a biography. Or visit.”
Her heart squeezed tight at the old argument they’d had on a regular basis. “I’ve read loads of history books,” she whispered. “And I did visit. Or don’t you remember?”
Blue eyes held hers. “I remember.” A pause. “All too well.”
Ouch.
She blinked before glancing down at her hands. “Yeah, well. I wasn’t exactly planning on this.”
“On what?” He turned to face her more fully, his elbow encroaching on her armrest, his scent teasing her nose, that damned lock of hair still falling across his forehead and making her ache to smooth it back into place. “On being trapped next to me for twelve hours?”
She shook her head. “On ever seeing you again.”
Chapter Five
Colin
The words were a physical blow to Colin’s gut. He knew CeCe was hurt. That he’d hurt her. But frankly, they’d hurt each other, and to actually hear her speak words like that aloud was brutal.
On what?
On ever seeing you again.
Like an idiot, he’d pressed her, and like a moron, he’d expected to hear something different. Some explanation for why she’d left him for his best friend. Why the woman he’d imagined spending the rest of his life with had betrayed him so deeply and abandoned him.
“Well, you nearly accomplished it,” he said. “Do you live in San Francisco now? Or was that just a stopover?”
She sighed. “Are we really doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Small talk.” Her words were like ice, little frosty bullets that threatened to wound. “Pretending to be old friends.”
His hold on his temper was getting decidedly more tenuous. He bent so his nose was nearly pre
ssed to hers. “You left, sweetheart. You left me. So, if anyone has a right to be pissed, it’s me. I needed you, and you fucking left.”
Her shoulders had risen with each of his snapped statements until they were practically covering her ears. He’d hated when she used to do that, curling into herself, protecting rather than fighting.
She’d done that, he remembered, far too often with his family during their engagement, after he’d won her back the first time. When they’d lobbed their quote, unquote friendly rejoinders her way.
And she’d done it that day on the cliffside eight years before when she’d declared her love for him and he’d panicked, before walking away from her.
But then CeCe dropped her shoulders, and her temper joined the party. “I left? I. Left? You—” Her eyes closed for a heartbeat, and he watched a deep breath slide through her lungs. “You know what? It doesn’t matter.”
It mattered to him. A whole hell of a lot.
But she was still talking, and he soaked up all the information he could.
“I live north of the city. I’ve”—she shook her head—“I was at loose ends for a while, but then I got the job as a nanny. Hunter is the sweetest boy.”
Her lips curved, teasing him, reminding him of how it had been to kiss that smile, to twine his hand through her hair, tug her close, and feel those lips against his.
“He got sick pretty young and needed a heart transplant. But he got one last year and—”
Colin touched her hand when she faltered and those green eyes went shiny with tears.
“He’s just so much better now. Healthy and running and . . . I just love him so much.” She sniffed. “But he doesn’t need me anymore, and so I’m”—she laughed darkly—“God, I don’t even know why I’m telling you any of this.”
“Except that maybe I understand what it’s like to be at a crossroads.”
CeCe froze and glanced up at him. After a moment, she murmured, “Yeah. I suppose you would.”
“How are your parents?”
