Scottish Swag

by Cristina Grenier

  “Niall Drummond wants to see you. He’s in town for a few days, and wants to meet to brainstorm ideas for getting past his family.”

  Jill looked at her sharply. “If you ask me, he wants to see you for reasons that have nothing to do with this project. Anything you care to tell me?”

  Willa Mae had come to Creative Legacies with an impeccable reputation, and after two years in her dream job, she wasn’t about to let anyone, not even the man she couldn’t keep out of her dreams, from messing things up. She kept a cool expression on her face, though she was boiling inside.

  “Anything like what, Jill?” she asked, feigning innocence. “I can’t imagine why his lordship would need to see me again. Everything I told him a month ago you know. Why can’t you handle it?”

  “I didn’t say I can’t handle it, Willa Mae. I’m sure you know me well enough by now to know that if I wanted to, I could have taken this one and left you with the Peterson strip mall deal.”

  Jill’s voice was sharp with reprimand, and Willa Mae cringed. Her boss was an older woman with a reputation for being hard-nosed and abrupt, but Willa Mae loved working with her. She didn’t want her to be upset.

  “Yes, I know, Jill. I just don’t understand why he would need to see me again? Hasn’t he discussed any of this with you?”

  Jill walked around her desk to lean her hip against the front of it. Where Willa Mae was only of average height, Jill was barely five feet tall and thin as a rail. In her six inch stilettos she was tall enough to make others notice her, and her elegant attire and sharp mouth made her a standout. Now, though, she was in her stockinged feet, her arms crossed over her flat chest.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing going on between you and the earl, Willa Mae?”

  Jill looked keenly at her, and Willa Mae managed not to squirm like a schoolgirl in trouble.

  “I’m sure,” she insisted. “I was only there for a couple of days. What could possibly happen in that amount of time, Jill?”

  The older woman stared at her unblinkingly, and then sighed and threw up her hands. “I was in love once,” she said, taking Willa Mae by surprise.

  Everyone knew that Jill Meyer had never married, and at fifty-eight, a number she was proud to own, she most likely never would. There had never even been a whisper about a man, so this confession was a shock to Willa Mae, who didn’t know how to respond to the confidence. She looked back into her boss’s eyes and waited.

  “He was a soldier. Fine hunk of a man. The first time I saw him, I fell head over heels in love with him. He and my older brother were friends, and he had come over for dinner one evening, while he was on break from college. I loved him to the ground he walked on. He could do no wrong in my eyes.”

  Willa Mae could hear the wistful note in Jill’s voice as she remembered, and she wondered suddenly if she would end up in the same place in her fifties. Shaking her head, she focused on what Jill was saying.

  “He was five years older than me. There was never a real chance between us, but I was determined to have him.” She smiled wryly, glancing at Willa Mae for a moment before turning away again. “Looking back, I can see that he was just humoring me. I was fresh out of high school, barely a freshman in college. He was an officer fresh from West Point. We dated, and then he was deployed. I got his ‘Dear Jill’ letter before his first tour abroad was over. Everything he said in it was true, except for one thing. He said that what I felt for him wasn’t real, and that he knew I’d find a man who would show me what real love was.”

  She huffed out a sad laugh. “He’s a big wig in the Army these days. Married with three sons, all in the military, and a gorgeous wife.”

  “Why do you say he was wrong about how you felt?” Willa Mae was curious.

  Jill looked up for a moment, and Willa Mae saw that her eyes were suspiciously bright. “Because I knew from the first minute I laid eyes on him that he was who I wanted to be with until the day I died.” She stopped speaking and swallowed. “And nothing has changed about that.”

  Willa Mae felt her own eyes prickle in sympathy. She didn’t want to end up like Jill, sad and lonely, pining for a man who would never love her, and who would go on to live a happy life without her.

  “Why did you tell me this?” she asked, needing to take her mind off the possibilities for long-term spinsterhood in her future.

  “Because I think Niall Drummond is interested in you,” Jill said, straightening and going back behind her desk to sit in the chair she had boosted up so her true height was disguised. “And because I think it’s time you spent some time on yourself. You work too hard, and you’re almost attached at the hip to this company. I’m the only one who should be married to Creative Legacies. I don’t want my employees to be so occupied doing my work that they have no time for themselves.”

  Willa Mae opened her mouth to protest, but Jill cut her off with a question.

  “When was the last time you went on vacation?” She looked expectantly at Willa Mae, whose continued silence made her smirk in triumph. “Exactly my point. You have been with this company for four years, and not once in those four years have you taken more than a day or two off. Why, Willa Mae? Why?”

  What possible answer could she give Jill? She had not seen any reason to be away from work for more than a day or two, when she was feeling under the weather, or just exhausted. Vacations should happen with other people, not by yourself, and Willa Mae had no one…and that, she realized, was the reason. She was alone, and lonely.

  “I…I don’t really need to be away,” she said, stumbling over her words. She wasn’t about to admit to her boss that she was a pathetic thirty-one-year-old woman with no one in her life.

  “Everyone needs to be away, Willa Mae, at least once a year.” Jill was tapping a pen on the desk pad as she spoke. Suddenly, she threw it down. “I have an idea. Why don’t you take a couple of weeks off starting tomorrow? You can talk to Niall today, then take off and spend some time getting reacquainted with the Willa Mae whom I met four years ago…bright-eyed, eager, full of life.”

  Willa Mae frowned. “I’m still all those things now,” she protested.

  “I beg to differ,” her boss said. “You have no zest anymore. I need that Willa Mae back, because I won’t always be running things here.”

  Willa Mae looked up sharply. What the hell did that mean? It sounded almost as though Jill was planning to leave…and pass on the mantle to her. What the hell? She wasn’t ready to be anybody’s boss. She had just begun to master the job she was in. There wasn’t time to become boss lady as well.

  “When Dane takes over, he won’t care if you’ve taken a bathroom break, never mind a vacation. Make the most of the time I have left here.”

  Dane was Jill’s business partner. When her words penetrated the haze of Willa Mae’s panic, a hysterical laugh escaped her.

  “What’s so funny?” Jill asked, back in boss mode.

  “Nothing, really. I was just…I just thought…never mind.” She swallowed her silly giggles and straightened her shoulders. “When am I supposed to be meeting with Ni…the earl?” She hoped Jill didn’t notice the slip of her tongue on Niall’s name, especially given her earlier denials of anything between them.

  Jill pierced her with a searching look, but said nothing more than, “He’ll be here in an hour. Take him out to lunch on the company’s dime. Answer all his questions. Soothe his ruffled feathers. Make him glad we’re still his developers. Send me a report of the meeting.”

  “I’ll get right on it, Jill,” she said, rising to leave. She had just opened the door to exit when Jill called her name.

  “Willa Mae.” When she turned to look, Jill said, “The vacation isn’t a suggestion. It’s an order.” A short pause, and then she added, “Maybe you can take Niall with you. Show him the parts of America that you love.”

  Shit! Jill had heard her slip of the tongue. Avoiding her boss’s eagle stare, she left her office and went to the much smaller one she occupied. Her desk was s
cattered with papers — she had been doing some hard copy filling when Jill had summoned her — and she felt little interest in returning to the task. But she was sufficiently OCD that she knew she would finish it before Niall showed up. What a mercy that she had chosen to wear a business suit today, instead of the pretty linen dress she had first put on? She didn’t need him ogling her, and that dress would have given him a lot to stare at.

  She hurriedly finished the filing, and went to the ladies room to freshen her makeup. Walking back to her office, she tried to decide where to take him to lunch, and walked in without really looking around her. Only once she was in the room did she see the man in her thoughts sitting in front of her desk, one ankle draped elegantly across the other knee, looking entirely too good in a gray pin-striped business suit.

  “Oh!” She backed up in surprise, then stayed where she was in the doorway, looking at him warily. “Good morning. I didn’t expect you for another…” she looked at her watch, “…fifteen minutes.”

  “Shall I go away and return in fifteen minutes, then?”

  Already with the teasing, she thought. It was much too soon for that.

  “I didn’t say that,” she snapped. “I’m not quite done yet.”

  “I’ve nowhere else to go, lass,” he said, clasping his hands over his belly. “I can wait.”

  Willa Mae willed herself to move around him to her desk, which was free of clutter. She turned to her laptop, thankfully with the top up, though she had to wake it and enter the passcode for the screen she had been on to pop up. The report she had been preparing was done, and just needed to be sent to Jill and Dane. She did that quickly, aware all the while of Niall’s eyes following her every movement. His gaze heated her skin and doubled her heart rate. How was it that a whole month had passed and she was still brought to this jelly state after five minutes in his company? And what would she be like after a couple of hours spent exclusively in his company?

  Taking a deep breath, she powered down her laptop and took her pocketbook from the bottom drawer of her desk.

  “Are you ready for lunch?” she asked, rising to her feet.

  “Whenever you are, my lady,” he replied, rising as well. “Where are we going today?”

  “There’s a great little Irish pub a couple of blocks down from here that’s open for lunch. They make the best Irish stew hands down. I thought I’d take you there. It’ll be crowded, but not so much that you won’t enjoy your meal.”

  He gave her a knowing smirk, as though he knew she had chosen the restaurant because it would prevent him from making a move on her. She knew that he found her attractive, and if her own reaction to him was anything to go by, that attraction had not waned. She saw no reason to give him any way past her carefully constructed walls. She wasn’t a green girl…this kind of insta-lust was unacceptable, and she refused to act on it.

  Walking ahead of him, she waited until he had closed her door before heading to the elevator.

  “Will you be back after lunch, Ms. Jamison?” Clare Grayson, Jill’s secretary, asked the question too innocently for Willa Mae’s liking. Why was everyone suddenly so interested in her non-existent love life? She knew she had been ordered to go on vacation, so she shook her head.

  “No, Clare. I’ll send you and Jill the report in email, as she requested.”

  “Have a good time!” Jill said, waggling her brows impishly and shaking her fingers at them as they walked away.

  Willa Mae rolled her eyes, refusing to respond. Clare chuckled amusedly as the elevator stopped on their floor and Willa Mae walked in without looking back. “Bye Willa Mae!” Clare’s parting words floated to her as the doors closed, and she sighed. These older women would be the death of her, but she loved working with them. They were her family in the city.

  Those thoughts reminded her of the conversation in Jill’s office, and she shuffled from one foot to the other as she tried to rid herself of the discomfort of knowing that she was lonely and scared of her feelings for an almost stranger who was also her client. The only place where lust was more than lust, as far as she could tell, was in romance novels, where women fell for men at first sight, and never looked back. She didn’t know anyone in her life for whom that scenario was ever true. Not even her boss, poor lady. She refused to end up like Jill, which meant she couldn’t let these feeling for Niall become anything more. She had to resist them, and him.

  They walked to the pub, and were seated almost immediately. The lunch crowd was thinner than usual, but there was nothing Willa Mae could do about it now. She ordered her favorite Irish stew with a Guinness and Niall followed her lead. Neither spoke, and Willa Mae realized she was ravenous, having missed breakfast. When she had demolished half the food in her plate, she swallowed some of the ale and then said,

  “So, what seems to be the trouble, your lordship? I hear there’s a fresh challenge from Angus?”

  Niall wiped his lips on his napkin and nodded. “Yes. He has managed to rally enough attention from a few members of the local village board that they are in the process of deciding on a date when the full council will meet to discuss, and he hopes vote on whether or not the castle should be given a license to operate as a guest house.”

  “Can they stop it from happening?”

  Technically, they can, because we do need ordinances to permit us to do upgrades to the property. As a private home, those upgrades would be fairly inexpensive to pay for. As a business, however, the permits skyrocket in value, and the limitations increase exponentially.”

  Willa Mae frowned. “But surely the board members can see that in the end the short term financial gains they make with the new, more stringent terms will be more than made up for in the long term with new jobs and increased as well as repeat business for the village?”

  “I can’t say I know how this will go, if it does manage to get as far as a vote, but Angus is more interested in slowing the process as much as he can, in the hopes of losing my contractors and miring the proceedings in enough controversy to make any prospective new bidders think twice about getting involved.”

  “Does he think that he can wear you down into giving in?”

  Willa Mae didn’t know Niall well, but even she could tell, from their few encounters, the he was as bullheaded as any alpha male she had ever known. Given the animosity between him and his family, she didn’t see him backing down, just because he so badly wanted to stick it to them.

  “Apparently he has my mother’s full support.” He sighed and had a sip of his drink.

  “Realistically, what can they do to stop you, Niall?”

  He considered that while he ate another mouthful of food. “They can sue me.” When she looked at him in shock, he said, “The estate was bequeathed to us as a private residence. To turn it into a business might be going against the spirit of the will, and if there’s such a clause, they can use it to stop me.”

  “And how likely is that to happen?” It sounded like a very serious action to take, to try and get someone to buy out a family member.

  “It might very well happen,” he said, “especially if the village board refuses to vote on what is essentially a private matter.”

  Willa Mae’s eyes widened, and her mouth opened in shock. “What on earth are you going to do about it?”

  Niall shrugged, as though he wasn’t particularly worried. “If they force me to, I’ll respond with the financial proof that they cannot manage the estate’s finances without significant infusions from me. None of them knows that most of the money for the upkeep of the estate is mine. Our combined inheritance is more property than money, and without money we would have lost the estate years ago. It’s my infusion of cash that’s been keeping it afloat all this time. Now I just want a return for my investment. I’m a businessman, after all. And I’m not prepared to keep dispensing charity to anyone without seeing some kind of return, especially as they’re doing nothing to help keep it going.”

  “I’m so sorry, Niall,” she said, genuinely fee
ling for him in the predicament he found himself in. “Even when family is a pain, they’re still family, and I’m sure it must be distressing to you.”

  She couldn’t imagine being at war with her family in such ugly ways. How did he keep it together? He hadn’t been shy about showing his displeasure at their rudeness to her, but he hadn’t gone wild on them while she was around, and he had still been civil to them. Now he was talking about the tangled state of his family’s affairs as though it were just another complicated business deal. She shook her head. She knew she wouldn’t be able to withstand the pressure if she were in his shoes. She’d have snapped long ago, and the rift would have been insurmountable.

  His eyes trapped and held hers, and then he smiled, and his dimples sank like wells into his cheeks. Willa Mae hid her gasp in a cough. He had such a gorgeous face…if he kept smiling at her, she was likely to say something stupid. She looked away.