Some Like It Scot. Donna Kauffman
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birthday in viewing distance, she was finally daring to dream.
So what if, at the moment, it felt a lot more like a hallucination.
The idea should have terrified her, or at the very least caused a case of semi-hysterical giggles. Instead…it excited her. In a terrifying, semi-hysterical way. The kind that didn’t so much make her want to giggle as to throw up again, but she could work on that part. It was early yet.
She looked at Graham, who was still unknotting her veil. More likely he was simply politely leaving her to gather herself, and her thoughts. She appreciated both. She looked away from him and through her passenger window as her beloved waterfront hometown passed by in a blur. There was a slight prickle behind her eyes again. Nothing was ever going to be the same. Would she ever walk the docks there again? Eat ice cream at Storm Brothers? Chat up Dixon over at Waterbend? She might have issues with her family, but she loved her hometown. Deeply. In many ways, it was her only other true friend. She fought back the tears, but her deep sigh brought Graham’s head up.
“Ye’ve done the right thing, you know.” He said it with quiet confidence, as if she’d just carried on her entire internal debate out loud. It was exactly the kind of unquestioning support she needed. Except he was a complete stranger and had absolutely no idea the enormity of what she’d just done.
“I dinnae claim to understand what all you’re dealing with,” he said, as if reading her mind. “But you wouldn’t have been out in that garden, so angry and upset, if being inside and saying your vows was the right thing to do.” He tucked the netting in one hand and reached out with his other. “I know what I said, back in the chapel, must ha’e sounded like the rantings of a lunatic. I-I honestly don’t know where that came from. Heat of the moment, perhaps. I did mean what I said in the garden, though. I promise you, we’ll talk it all through, come up with a working plan, that does the best by both of us. You’ve my word on that.”
He laid his hand over hers then, and she wanted to yank it away, to tell him right then and there that while she might have agreed to things back in the chapel, she had no idea what she’d been saying either. Guilt took the place of the sadness of watching her hometown fall into the distance behind them. But she couldn’t let that undo her.
She’d thank him for getting her out of there, and make it worth his while, if there was any possible way to repay a man for saving her life. But she wasn’t going to Scotland with him. And she certainly wasn’t going to marry him. She’d just run from one arranged marriage.
She’d have to be crazy to even consider running toward another, regardless of the reasons behind it.
But she didn’t yank her hand away. Nor did she tell him any such thing. Instead she lifted her thumb and stroked the sides of his warm, strong fingers, guiltily allowing herself, for those few moments, to drink in his easy strength, his confidence.
He was both haven and shelter. He was on her side. It was wrong of her to take that shelter and not tell him the truth. She knew that. But she had no one else. Very soon she wouldn’t have him, either.
She’d already used up all the backbone she had in her for the day. Possibly a lifetime, comparatively speaking. It was purely about survival. She’d apologize for that, too. Later. As soon as they got to the airport and escape was in sight.
After all, she’d already left one man at the altar. How hard could it be to leave another at a ticket counter?
Chapter 4
“Thank you,” she told him. “For the support. I know you don’t understand why I’d even put myself in that situation. It’s—”
“Complex,” he finished. “That, I understand. We are oftentimes at the mercy of our duty to others. I’m no’ passing judgment, sitting as I am, on the outside looking in, anymore than I’d want anyone judging me.” He gestured between them, smiling. “Given the circumstances.”
She relaxed a bit further, and he was glad he’d cleared the air somewhat. After their rather dramatic exit from the church, changing the topic to the matter at hand—at least where he was concerned—wasn’t an easy task.
“I appreciate that. I-I should have never let it get that far.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Easier to say now that you’ve gotten away.”
“If I’d had the nerve, from the very start, to stand up to them, to stand up for myself. And Blaine. To just stand up at all, frankly. Life would have been different. And it wouldn’t have come to this.”
“Your grandfather, wasn’t he of any help?”
“Oh, he was my biggest motivator. And instigator,” she added, with a smile that was sad and affectionate all at once. “But I wasn’t like him. Or not enough like him, anyway. I didn’t relish the skirmishes like he did, didn’t enjoy the battle royale, much less the stormy aftermath of war. It didn’t even faze him. I think he actually enjoyed it. He used to say he could gauge his success by how many members of the family he’d managed to piss off, on any particular venture.”
“Business venture? Or family?”
“There is no separation between church and state in our McAuley clan. So family is business and vice versa. Same with the Sheffields. I’ve often thought it was amazing that we’d managed to live in separate households—us and the Sheffields, I mean—the way they micromanaged everything and everyone else. Their presence was constant, as if they were always in my backpocket. Or on my shoulder.”
“Sounds rather oppressive. Why didn’t you move out, get your own flat?”
She made a snorting sound, as if he’d asked why hadn’t she merely sprouted two heads. “Moving out on my own would have been tantamount to…well, what I did today. If a might less dramatic.”
“What about university? Did you go away to school?”
She sighed, but there was a smile on her face. “Best years of my life. I’d have gone for my doctorate if I thought they’d let me stay away another few years. I made it through one round of post grad though.”
“Did you ever think of no’ going back home? After you got your degree?”
“Every day,” she said with a dry laugh, then sobered. “But I wasn’t prepared to do that. To suffer the consequences. I loved the autonomy of being on my own, although, don’t get me wrong, they watched over me. Closely. Despite not wanting to go home to them, I did want to go home. To my home. I love Annapolis, love everything about it.”
His shoulders rounded a bit as he thought of Kinloch, and how much he loved it. And there he was, asking her to give up a place that was equally important to her. “Will you go back?” he asked. “I mean, when we’ve sorted things out, and you’ve had some time away after…you know.”
“I honestly don’t know. I can’t imagine not going back, so at some point, I’m sure I will. I just—I have no idea how all that will play out. Not yet.”
She was talking, and he heard every word, but his thoughts, not to mention a good part of the rest of him, were all caught up in the touch of her soft fingertips, stroking the sides of his not-so-soft hands. He wondered if she realized her hand was still touching his.
He certainly hadn’t forgotten.
His gaze was drawn to her slender fingers, tipped with perfectly shaped nails. His gaze fixed on the impression her engagement ring had made on her ring finger, and had him wondering how long she’d worn it. Her fiancé hadn’t looked like a bad sort. Quite the opposite, actually. Sort of like an affectionate puppy, eager to do the bidding of whoever would feed it.
If anything, she’d seemed truly heartbroken to leave him behind. So it wasn’t the fiancé she didn’t love, in some fashion, anyway, but perhaps what the marriage itself represented. She’d alluded to being in much the same situation he was in—which, quite frankly, made it all the more stunning she’d agreed to his offer. Of course,