The emphasis she put on the word suggestions was a bit too cheerful. “Is this the condemned man’s last meal, Jeannie?”
“Of course not. We’ve supper and breakfast to get through.” She took a bite—not a nibble—of her sandwich.
Elias Brodie had warned Max that Scottish humor was different. “Every development project meets with resistance because change can be scary. That goes with the territory.”
“Change involves destruction,” Jeannie replied. “When change destroys what I’ve known and loved, Mr. Maitland, I’m not afraid, I’m furious.”
He’d finished his first sandwich. She offered him the plate that held seconds.
“Fruit for me,” he said, choosing a clementine. “Though the sandwich was very good.”
The brownies sat not a foot from Max’s elbow, looking gooey and delicious. He knew better than to indulge, because a hit of sugar on top of jet lag was just plain stupid. Then too, taste seldom matched appearance with pretty desserts.
“I’ll show you the paths before I leave,” Jeannie said, “and give you the number for my mobile.” She used a long “i” for mobile.
“I’ll need directions to this place, if the luggage guy is ever to find me.”
“Good point. I can leave those too, though it’s simple enough. Two miles past the village shinty pitch, you look for the fairy mound in the cow pasture on your left. Take the second right beyond that and turn off at the first lane. The sign is in Gaelic and nailed to the redwood stump.”
Her description was as casual as it was incomprehensible. “I deal well with maps,” Max said. “Diagrams, drawings, charts.”
“Right.” Jeannie picked up a small square of brownie. “Engineers love their schematics.”
True, but somehow not a compliment.
She gave the brownie her full attention. When she bit off a portion, she closed her eyes and chewed slowly, a woman in transports. For some reason, this reminded Max that once upon a long time ago, he’d enjoyed sketching. If the project went well, maybe he’d find time to send Maura a few landscapes.
Or he could attempt to sketch a few portraits. Jeannie Cromarty enjoying a brownie would make an interesting study. For the time it took to consume one brownie, she was a sybarite in jeans, flannel shirt, and battered running shoes. She gave off an air of tidiness, otherwise. A competence that included graciousness warmed just enough to count as genuine rather than professional. Max liked competent women if they pulled their share of the workload and didn’t play games.
He was fairly certain Jeannie did not like him, or didn’t like the notion of developing the castle, which amounted to the same thing. She was pretty—Viking-blue eyes, golden hair that brushed her shoulders, and a light, friendly voice.
Not a hint of flirtation, though, for all she was romancing that damned brownie.
“What will you do with yourself this afternoon?” she asked.
“Dump email and voice mail, do some more research on the financial ecosystem surrounding the castle, review the status reports that are supposed to come in every Friday at close of business.”
In Maryland, that had been easier, because close of business in Scotland was five hours ahead of close of business on the East Coast. Then Max had had plenty of time to take Maura out for dinner and, for a short time, put aside the whole week’s frustrations and challenges.
Maura would miss him—she had assured him of this repeatedly, which made calling her soon imperative.
“You’ve likely had one hour’s sleep in the past twenty-four,” Jeanie said. “Can’t that email nonsense wait?”
That nonsense was Max’s livelihood. “If I nap again, I won’t acclimate as quickly.”
“Right.” Jeannie patted his hand. “You have a year at least to acclimate, but why put off until Monday what you can accomplish by overtaxing yourself today?”
She rose and took her plate to the sink. Her comment hadn’t been judgmental so much as… a lament. For him, for all the fools who failed to have a life beyond the next project deadline. If the castle renovation went well, Max might acquire the luxury of sharing her perspective.
Perhaps she’d also been lamenting her own circumstances? This cottage, modest though it was, occupied a corner of the hospitality industry in a country that thrived on tourism. For the high season at least, Jeannie was likely kept busy.
“A hike by the river sounds like a good idea,” Max said. “I need to move, and the natural light will help get my circadian rhythm synced to local time.”
Jeannie ran water over her plate while Max ate his clementine and longed for a brownie that tasted as good as it looked.
“We can hike, or we can go for a daunder,” Jeannie said, “because it’s a beautiful day to stroll by a lovely river, and all those emails, voice mails, and reports will be there when the sun has set.”
Max brought his plate to the sink. “Along with a hundred new ones.”
“If a hundred people feel entitled to intrude on your peace in the space of an afternoon, Mr. Maitland, you need an assistant.”
She was… right.
She also smelled good up close, woodsy with a hint of mint. A scent to pipe into a designer hotel’s conservatory. Max passed her his plate and used his phone to make that note.
They tidied up in companionable silence, the brownies going into the bread box. Jeannie washed the dishes by hand rather than using the dishwasher, and Max got the job of shaking the place mats out on the deck.
“So the birds can enjoy the crumbs,” Jeannie said, tearing off a pinch of bread and crumbling it onto the place mat Max held.
Maybe wasting bread on birds was a Scottish good-luck custom. Max did scroll through his email and voice mail while on the back terrace and found nothing marked urgent. He’d cleared the decks in every possible regard to prepare for traveling, but to manage the development of a property was to live in a minefield, especially on Fridays.
Jeannie came out onto the deck and folded the place mats Max had draped over the rail. “Letting the folks back home know you’re safe and sound?”
“Making sure I have reception.”
“Let’s make sure you have a little fresh air.” She marched off down the steps and into the lovely, leafy forest.
Max jammed his phone into his pocket and followed her.
Scotland had been awarded the honor of Most Beautiful Country in the World, and Max Maitland was too busy checking his email to notice. Jeannie didn’t begrudge him a nap on the way from the airport, but to stand amid the lush greenery of Perthshire without even looking up…
She would not attribute such blasphemy to all Americans—some were nature hounds—but perhaps it was a failing of many engineers. Alas for Mr. Maitland, Jeannie was determined to steal some time out of doors, even if she had to drag him kicking and scrolling to the riverbank.
“Nobody knows how old these trails are,” she said. “They probably date back thousands of years, as long as the river has run in its present course.”
The Tayside forest was lovely in all seasons, but Jeannie hadn’t been on this path since last autumn. The summer version of the woods was busy with birds, squirrels, breezes, and the sound of the river. The scent was as beautiful as the greenery—verdant, fresh, earthy.
“That’s Niall’s property,” she said, gesturing to a rooftop peeking from the trees to the right. “Designed and built it himself. You and he could probably share a wee dram while sketching ideas on napkins and comparing the calculator apps on your phones.”
Mr. Maitland kept up easily. “Does your family include an engineer?”
Not anymore. “I’ve run across a few. Watch your step. We had a good rain on Wednesday. The ground can be boggy.”
“Are we in a hurry, Ms. Cromarty?”
Jeannie slowed her pace. “I haven’t come this way in too long, and I miss it desperately. The cottage is usually booked straight through the high season, and I never have time to enjoy the property lately.”
Neve
r had time to enjoy much of anything, other than an hour or so of reading before bed, until she fell asleep with the book still in her hands. Everybody said life after a divorce grew easier with time, but everybody had also said that Jeannie and Jack had been perfect for each other.
The quiet of the forest gradually overtook the breathless, never-on-time anxiety that had dogged Jeannie for months. Mr. Maitland did her the courtesy of remaining silent, meaning the whisper of the river going by and the occasional birdcall could sink into her weary soul and soothe the tumult.
The past year had been hard. The next year loomed as another bleak slog. Finances were an issue, exhaustion was an issue, as was the sheer boredom that came with—
Mr. Maitland halted. “Osprey.”
Jeannie shaded her eyes, but couldn’t make out any large raptors in the trees ahead. The osprey was white across the breast and head and banded brown elsewhere. Among the shoreline trees, they were nearly impossible to detect when still.
“Where?”
Mr. Maitland turned her gently by the shoulders. “The notch of that big oak, about thirty feet up.” He pointed over Jeannie’s shoulder, standing close behind her. “Mama’s serving lunch.”
What mamas did best.
“They stopped breeding here for more than a hundred years,” Jeannie said, getting out her phone. “But they came back, and the population is gradually increasing.”
She adjusted the zoom and snapped a picture. Not that the nest would be easy to spot even in a photograph. Still, an osprey family was a hopeful image, and she needed those. She put the phone away and stood watching the mundane miracle of lunchtime at the Osprey household. Mr. Maitland remained motionless at her back, and that was…
Nice, in an odd way. Jeannie wasn’t keen on his plans for the castle, she wasn’t keen on men generally, and she wasn’t keen on people who lived glued to their jobs. That Mr. Maitland would notice the birds, point them out to Jeannie, and appreciate them let her like him a little, nonetheless.
No harm in a little liking.
“Shall we go back?” Jeannie asked. “I could spend all afternoon tramping these trails, but I’m sure your email is calling you.”
And Jeannie was overdue to check in with Millicent.
“If you’d like to hike farther, I can find my way back on my own.”
She was tempted, tempted to simply sit and watch the river go by, something she hadn’t done in far too long.
“I’ve places to go, people to see,” she said, turning. “My time is not my—”
Never hike wearing trainers. Jeannie formed that thought as one foot slipped, her arms flailed, and she nearly went down amid the bracken.
Mr. Maitland caught her and drew her back against his chest. “Careful. The ground can be a bit boggy, I’m told.”
He was strong and utterly steady—solid, to use his word. For an instant, Jeannie nearly let herself lean against him, let herself feel again the security of a male embrace. By virtue of shoving and cursing, she got herself righted.
“My apologies. Shall we be on our way?”
She gestured up the path, and though she was blushing, and Mr. Maitland was smiling, he was gallant enough not to remark on her mortification.
So much for daydreaming. They returned to the cottage without further incident—Jeannie was very careful of her footing. She passed him the set of keys she kept for guests and emailed him the link to the directions on the cottage website.
“I’ll be along tomorrow morning about eight,” she said. “That will get you up to the castle well before noon. We can stop along the way for provisions, though Aldi’s delivers to the Baron’s Hall.”
“I have an international driver’s license,” Mr. Maitland said, accompanying Jeannie to the driveway. “Give me your phone.”
Was he daft or simply rude? “Why should I give you my phone?”
“So I can call myself, and then we’ll have each other’s numbers.”
Jeannie passed over her phone.
“What’s the plan if my luggage hasn’t caught up with me by tomorrow?”
“Explain to the nice people how to get to the castle. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Maitland. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen and call me if you need anything.”
Jeannie’s phone chimed to the opening bars of Parcel o’ Rogues. That would be Millicent, with a reminder that Jeannie had half an hour of liberty left.
“You need something,” Mr. Maitland said, frowning at Jeannie’s car.
“I beg your pardon? The black shows the dirt, I know, but—shite.” Shite, hell, and bloody damnation. This was the price of stealing forty-five minutes to walk by the river, the price for paying more attention to tulips than tires. Again.
Why couldn’t one day—just one, single day—go right anymore?
“Looks like a puncture,” Mr. Maitland, hunkering before the driver’s side front tire. “Slow leak. Probably picked up a nail days ago and haven’t noticed the loss of pressure. I can have the spare on in ten minutes.”
“No,” Jeannie said around the lump in her throat. “No, you can’t, because the bloody spare needs a bloody patch, and I haven’t had the bloody money to fix it.”
Changing a tire was one of the last, best bastions of male competence in a changing world, and Max relished the opportunity to solve a problem on his first day in Scotland. Tires were tires, and he had changed dozens.
He wouldn’t be changing this one.
“Can you have it towed?”
“Not soon enough.” She looked at the car as if a favorite pet had just flatlined. Despair, betrayal, and more upset than a bad tire deserved.
“The afternoon’s only half gone. Does Scotland close down at two p.m. on Fridays?”
She gazed at the surrounding trees with a far different expression than she’d turned on the ospreys. The woods were clearly no longer lovely, dark, and deep.
“The man who drives the tow truck, Abner MacShane, is the fiddler in the ceilidh band. They play every Friday night at the community center, so they rehearse on Friday afternoons at the pub. I won’t get Abner behind the wheel until noon tomorrow.”
Max needed to be at the castle by noon tomorrow. “No car rental in the village?”
“The nearest car rental is in Perth.”
“What about the architect over at Falling Waters—Neal?”
“Niall.” Jeannie brightened and got out her phone, then her expression dimmed. “Not home. He and his wife are forever going off to take in art shows.”
“Architects are different.”
Jeannie smiled at him, not in the sharing-a-joke way, but in the sharing-a-life-moment way. “That they are.”
“How far is the village?”
“Two miles, give or take.”
“Then I’ll just jog into town, pick up a spare, and bring it back out here. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.” Max geolocated himself on his phone, enlarged the map, and prepared to enjoy another couple miles of fresh air.
“You’d carry a spare all the way out here?”
“They’ll probably give me a donut. Do they know your car?”
Jeannie described the make, model, and year. “The man who owns the garage is Abner’s uncle, Dairmid MacShane. If you tell him I’m stranded here, he’ll likely give you a ride back. I’d call him, but if he’s busy, he’ll ignore the phone until Monday.”
“You might need these.” Max passed her the keys to the cottage. “See you in an hour or so.”
“I shouldn’t let you do this. I could call somebody.”
“And they might come pick you up, but will they fix your car?” Max understood and admired a self-reliant impulse. Jeannie’s reluctance to accept help was something more substantial.
“I might be able to get a truck out from Perth.”
“Which will cost you next week’s groceries. Whoever he was, Jeannie, I’m not him and I won’t leave you stranded here. My computer is in that cottage along with my only two pairs of clean undies and
my personal stash of protein bars. If that doesn’t prove I’ll come back, nothing will.”
Ah, a smile. A small, but genuine smile. “Next month’s groceries,” she said. “Be off with you, then, and mind the traffic along the road.”
“Save me one brownie.”
Her smile blossomed into a grin, and Max took off up the drive at an easy jog. He was at the garage in less than half an hour, much of that time spent on the phone with Maura. Despite his “Yank accent,” he made the situation plain enough and was soon back at the cottage, trading tools with Ewan MacShane—a gangly teenage motorhead—and putting on not a donut, but an honest-to-Braveheart spare.
“This one’s on me,” Max said, getting out his AmEx.
Ewan was about six foot three, reed-thin, freckled, and red-haired. “Keep your money, Yank.” He sounded like the wrath of the Highlands, when five minutes earlier he’d been merrily cursing the damned Germans who overengineer “every feckin’ ting.”
“Have I just committed a typical American blunder?”
Ewan wiped his hands on a rag. “Nah. Feckin’ Jackie MacDonald blundered. Left a good woman with a crap set of tires. What sort of rat-turd molly-balls weasel fart does that?”
The tires were far from new, though they’d probably pass inspection. Jackie MacDonald was apparently flunking on all counts. This pleased Max, for reasons he didn’t examine.
“Thanks for the help, then. Let’s get the spare and the tools put up.”
“Jeannie would rather owe us than a stranger,” Ewan said. “The Cromartys have their pride.”
“But if she owes you, then she’ll eventually find a way to repay you.”
Ewan scratched his nose while he considered this, getting a streak of grease on his cheek. “Jeannie’s a first-rate cook. Has a way with sweets.”
The way to an almost-grown-man’s heart…
“Wait here.” Max went into the kitchen, found the brownies, set one aside, and brought the plate out to Ewan. “Payment in full.”
Scotland to the Max: Trouble Wears Tartan — Book Three Page 18
