Her Brooding Scottish Heir. Ella Hayes
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corrected him about her name, forced a brief smile onto his own lips.
He pictured the curve of her cheek, those tiny freckles on her nose. The way the sun’s slanting rays had made her eyes shine. How delighted she’d been with the bothy—as if he’d opened a door for her straight into happiness. When she’d crouched to look at the wood burner he’d caught himself crossing a line—admiring the way her jeans moulded to her slender thighs, the way her waist nipped in, the rise of her breasts beneath the vest and waistcoat.
It had been a long time since he’d noticed anyone—really noticed anyone—and it felt like a little wrench inside. He was so used to the huge pain of losing his friend that most of the time he was numb, but this girl, the way she’d looked in the soft light of the studio, with her hair falling around her face and those eyes holding him... It had felt as if she could see right inside him, and he’d wanted to say something, but he hadn’t because he hadn’t known what it was he wanted to say.
Through the trees at the bottom of the hill, he could see the turreted gables of Calcarron House and he imagined his father in the study, pouring a dram to welcome him home. In the drawing room the girls would be sipping tall gin and tonics, with thick slices of lemon, and his mother would be checking her watch, wondering where he was.
He turned the key in the ignition. They were waiting for him, but he couldn’t go back right away. He wanted to go to the ridge, spend time with his memories...
‘Cor—mac!’
He heard his name being called and turned to see Milla running along the track towards him. He killed the engine, tried to read her expression as she drew near.
She slowed, then stopped, her voice a little breathless from running. ‘I’m so glad I caught you...!’ She was twisting delicate fingers into the hem of her vest. ‘There’s no water coming out of the tap. I was going to make a cup of tea, but there’s nothing. And no water from the bathroom taps either. Do you think you can fix it?’
He saw a glimmer of fragility in her eyes and sighed. ‘Honestly—I don’t know.’ He swung off the quad and tried to sound optimistic. ‘I’ll take a look and see what I can do.’
She looked grateful and he hoped her gratitude would be justified. In the Royal Engineers, water systems had been his speciality. He was adept at sinking boreholes and building waste water treatment systems, but he’d found that nothing could be trickier than tracing a fault in a domestic water system—especially this kind of system. He certainly wasn’t going to tell her that amphibians were a regular cause of blockages.
Inside the bothy, she hung back, shrugged an apology. ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea, but...’
Her incessant mischief amused him, but he couldn’t let it show. Since Duncan died, fun had become a luxury he couldn’t afford, so he just nodded and went to check the filters.
Sam changed the filters regularly, so it was no surprise to find that they were clean, but the water level in the canisters was low, which meant that the problem had to be somewhere between the tank and the bothy.
The tank was located up the hill and the pipe to the bothy was partially buried. It might take hours to find the problem, and with evening already advancing there were literally not enough hours left in the day. It would have to wait until tomorrow.
There was no question of letting Milla stay in the bothy without a water supply. She’d have to spend the night at Calcarron. It was the only solution he could offer.
‘You mean I’ll have to stay at Calcarron House?’
The disappointment he’d seen in her eyes haunted him as he nosed the quad down the hillside through clumps of flowering heather. He realised that staying at the house wasn’t exactly what she’d planned, but her reaction had seemed disproportionate to the inconvenience. Shooting parties paid a fortune to stay at Calcarron; surely she could try to view the experience in a more favourable light. It would only be for one night after all.
Yet when he thought about it now he realised that there had been something desperate in the way she’d overruled him about the safety thing. She’d hurried him out of the bothy and he’d assumed that it was because she didn’t want him around. But now he wondered if there was more to it than that. Perhaps Milla O’Brien wanted time away from the world.
If that was the case then coming to Calcarron would feel like an ordeal, not a pleasure. In some respects it was exactly how he felt himself.
He’d reached the old drover’s trail that led across the moors and stopped as a memory seized him. Two carefree boys, racing each other along the track, off to see the standing stones, or to scramble up to the ridge to make dens...
It was a lifetime ago. He could still feel his friend’s presence everywhere, but the images in his mind were smeared with blood now, blurred into memories of dust and death. It wasn’t that Duncan was haunting him. He was haunted by the guilt of living—because it should have been him who died, not Duncan.
Even this warm breath of late sun on his face and the sensation of wind in his hair felt too much like living, felt like a betrayal of his friend. What unknowable shift in the cosmos had carved out their fates that day? Why had he been spared? He’d often wondered about that, but his thoughts always tangled into knots.
Losing Duncan had stripped the joy from his life. Sometimes he tried to find solace in the thought that maybe fate had a higher purpose for him, but he didn’t feel special enough for such grand designs. If he took the opposite view, and believed that every hand he was dealt, good or bad, was completely random, then it seemed that there wasn’t much point to anything, and that scared him even more.
He hadn’t expected fate to deal him a wild card like Milla O’Brien. She unsettled him, and fascinated him, but it was a dangerous fascination.
After tomorrow, she wouldn’t be his problem any more. He had a busy week ahead and it was going to be hard enough to stay sane without those tantalising green eyes stripping away the veneer he’d so carefully applied since Afghanistan.
He accelerated along the track towards home. He knew his father wanted to talk to him about estate business, or rather, the business of him taking over the estate, but he wasn’t ready for that conversation. As the eldest son, his taking over at Calcarron had always been circled on his life map, but he’d never dreamed that that day might come so soon.
He loved this place, and he loved the prospect of being its caretaker sometime in the future, but not yet. He’d built a different life, a life he loved, and leaving it now—especially now—would feel like admitting defeat. It would feel like running away.
He let out the throttle and pushed on faster. Whatever happened, he had to keep his head and stand his ground. If he could make it through the week he’d go back and ask to be reassessed for active duty. The desk job was bleeding him dry. He needed to get back out in the field. He needed to do something that would actually make a difference.
‘You mean I’ll have to stay at Calcarron House?’
Milla was overwhelmed with disappointment and she hadn’t been able to hide it. He’d rescued her at the roadside, so she’d assumed he’d be able to rescue the water situation, but he had been adamant that fixing it would be a long process, although he’d been determinedly vague about the particularities, which had needled her.
‘But I don’t understand how water can suddenly just stop coming through a pipe...’
He’d shifted on his feet. ‘I’m sorry, Milla. I know it’s inconvenient, but there’s nothing I can do until tomorrow.’ He’d thrown her an awkward smile. ‘The house isn’t all that bad, and at least you won’t have to make your own dinner... There’s even a studio you can use—’ he’d run a hand through his hair ‘—if you want to work this evening, that is.’
She’d wondered why there was a studio at the house, but she had been too nettled to ask him about it. It had been all she could do to keep her emotions under control.
Cormac