by Elise Faber
Which was too damned close to home, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself from finishing it, from crying at their trials, and then sighing in contentment when they’d finally found their happily-ever-after.
CeCe reached for the book, wanting to get it far away from Colin. Frankly, she wanted to chuck it out the window, but since that was probably sealed shut, she’d settle for it to be shoved deep down into her tote bag, never to been seen by steely blue eyes again.
The book’s cover was smooth beneath her fingers, that soft, almost velvet-like feel that some paperbacks had.
The spine was in good shape, hardly creased, but then again she was very careful with her books in general.
Not the point, at the moment, yet a nice distraction nonetheless.
But the distraction wasn’t to last because the moment she caught a whiff of his scent, woods with a hint of whiskey, she was ensnared.
Enraptured.
Entranced.
Her hand slid from the book to Colin’s chest, resting lightly as she shifted her position so her knees were next to his shoulder. And she studied the man, truly looked at him for the first time in years.
Not quick glances before avoiding his gaze, dodging old memories and pain. Not a flick of her eyes then away because he was so beautiful and hot and sexy and . . . overwhelming.
She really looked at him.
And noticed the changes in his face, the faint wrinkles around his eyes, the beard covering his cheeks and chin. It was a deep black, but there were a few gray hairs here and there. Enough of the silvery strands that for the first time she stopped to wonder all that Colin had been through.
She’d been so wrapped up in what happened to her that she hadn’t stopped to consider him.
Wow. So that was what guilt felt like.
Snorting at herself, she turned her eyes back to Colin. A curl of hair had slipped over his forehead, and she smoothed it back before starting to stand.
“You’re in dangerous territory, sweetheart,” came his rumbling, sleep-laden voice, hand snaking out to wrap around her wrist.
“C-Colin,” she stammered. “I j-just—”
“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Or rather whiskeyed.
Holy entire bottle of the amber concoction, Batman.
“You’re drunk,” she said.
He shook his head, goofy smile on his face.
“You smell like you took a bath in a distillery,” she told him, slipping her wrist free of his grasp.
He tilted his head in the direction of his armpit and wrinkled his nose. His face fell.
That puppy dog expression had always been too much for her. The need to comfort him was compulsory and impossible to resist. “Yours is still my favorite smell in the world,” she blurted.
Then wished she’d kept her damned mouth shut because it revealed way too much.
The last bit of sleep slipped from Colin’s eyes. They sharpened, and she quickly stood.
“I should ask why you’re in my room, but I’m not going—” Her breath hitched when his hand went to her ankle, rough fingers tracing gently on the bare skin there. She cleared her throat. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Want company?”
Her heart clenched and her . . . well. Suffice to say that she had a lady boner.
He was fully clothed, touching one of the most innocuous parts of her body, and she had a serious moisture problem.
Which he could probably see since she was standing almost directly over him.
His fingers slipped higher, tracing little circles along the back of her calf, her knee, teasing at her thigh.
“I-I—”
He leaned up onto one elbow and those fingers slipped higher, until one tip slipped under the elastic of her underwear.
Just the tip.
She giggled.
She couldn’t help it. Bec, Abby, and Seraphina had corrupted her.
They were bad influences, especially because they would have encouraged her to . . . well, encourage Colin.
And she wanted to. Really, she did. Forget the past in that moment. She had a sexy Scot with his finger in her panties and she was wound so tight that it wouldn’t take more than a brush of said finger to send her toppling.
But he was drunk.
“You’re going to say no,” he murmured, slipping more of his hand under the elastic and cupping her ass with one rough palm. “I know you are.”
She nodded. “I’m going to say no.” Then added in a mutter meant for her ears only, “Not that I want to.”
Except apparently not quiet enough because Colin’s lips curved and his free hand came up, cupping her other cheek. “I can make you feel good,” he said and she knew he could. He had.
But. He. Was. Drunk.
“Climb into the bed,” she said, pushing his hands down and out of her underwear.
He scrambled up to his feet in a movement way too fast for someone who was inebriated. His arm slid around her waist and his mouth was on hers before she had a chance to realize what she’d said.
She’d meant for him to climb into bed. By himself.
Except she was there. With him. Surrounded by his scent, pressed into the mattress by his bulk. His lips were teasing hers open. His tongue was tangling with hers.
And fuck did it feel amazing.
Thirteen
Cecilia, eight years before
* * *
She was in a pub. A real pub. It felt a little dangerous, a little naughty. After all, she was only eighteen. Yes, Cecilia understood that she wasn’t really doing anything wicked since the drinking age was eighteen in Scotland rather than the twenty-one it was at home, but she couldn’t help feeling very grown-up and adult.
Until she actually took a sip of a pint.
Blegh.
Beer was disgusting.
She set the glass on the table—she’d try to choke down a little more later since it had cost her close to ten pounds—and pulled out her journal.
Her visit to the cliffs and the gorgeous castle beyond had been the stuff of dreams.
Complete with a gorgeous Scottish hero.
Of course, he’d been a surly Scottish hero, but the world wasn’t always fair.
Her lips curved into a smile at the memory of the man, a few years older than herself, given his build—bulky rather than the lanky leanness of boys her age. Instead, his shoulders had been wide, his waist narrow, and his thighs had threatened to burst the seams of the riding pants he’d worn.
Yup. He’d definitely been yummy.
Though unable to control a horse, apparently.
Which was a definite strike to her fantasy.
Still, she pulled out her sketchbook and stack of pencils. His looks alone warranted at least one page in her journal.
Right after her drawing of the cliffs, but just before the one of the stained glass window from the castle that had stolen a piece of her heart.
She started with the man’s boots, since she’d seen those first—black but coated with mud—and worked her way up, only stopping briefly to thank the waitress who brought her food.
Fish and chips, not haggis. Because while she considered herself to be adventurous, she wasn’t quite without fear of offal.
Offal. Awful.
The two were just too similar in her mind.
So she’d stuck with something closer to her comfort zone. Though honestly, it was the first time she’d ever had fried fish.
Her dad didn’t like fried food, and so she hadn’t been allowed to eat it.
No fries. No chicken nuggets. No donuts.
“That stuff will kill you,” he’d said.
Yeah, it could. But so could living in a stifling environment where every decision, every piece of clothing, every essay and math problem, every stroke in her hundred meter race was broken down and criticized and remarked upon.
She could always get better. There was always something to fix.
&n
bsp; Which wasn’t bad in theory. Unfortunately, without a single sentence of praise, “having a growth mindset” was a little challenging. In her parents’ quest for her to always be better, she wasn’t allowed to misstep.
Mistakes were unacceptable. Despite the saying, there was nothing to be learned from them.
When she’d gained five pounds after getting her period, her mother had panicked about her curves. She’d gone from a double zero to plain old size zero and had been on the verge of obesity . . . at least according to her parents.
And—
CeCe sighed because this was so not the point and also because . . . frankly, she was beyond tired of wasting her energy worrying about what her parents said and did and threatened. She had three weeks left in this gorgeous country and she wasn’t going to fritter away any more of her time, already precious and sorely limited, thinking about them and all of the various hurts they’d caused.
This was a new beginning.
She was going to hold on to it tightly with both hands.
So, boots. With mud stains and strong muscular thighs and a rakish lock of black hair slashing across an unlined forehead.
“You know, pints are better when they’re actually consumed,” came a masculine rumble.
Or rather, slid a masculine rumble. As in it slid down her spine, curling deep in her belly, dipping between her thighs.
She froze, one hand resting on the basket, about to grab a fry and deliver the delicious “friedness” to her mouth.
But it was him.
Tall, dark, ridiculously handsome . . . and that sounded like a cheesy line from a movie, but he was there. Her cursing Scottish hero was sitting across the booth from her.
“What are you drawing?” he asked, extending one hand as though to tug her sketchpad in his direction.
CeCe slapped her palm down on the book, thankful that her drawing didn’t yet have a torso, and turned it to the previous page that showed a far safer scene of the cliffs. “I’m not done yet,” she murmured. “But I like to make sketches of the things I’ve seen rather than keeping a journal.” A shrug. “Sometimes a picture can spark a thousand words in your mind. It’s like I look at this”—she ran a finger over the jagged outcropping of rock in her drawing—“and I remember the wind whipping through my hair, freezing cold and cutting through my T-shirt. I remember the hills being so green that it was almost unbelievable. It’s so different from home and more beautiful than I could have imagined.”
Her eyes drifted up, saw that his jaw had dropped open, and his eyes . . . well, they were unreadable.
Idiot.
She clamped her mouth shut, cutting the words off and leaving the air filled with awkward silence.
And she’d take verbal diarrhea for one thousand, Alex.
“Uh, never mind,” CeCe muttered, flipping the cover over to close her sketchbook and shoving it into her backpack. He was staring at her as though she were a specimen under a microscope, some strange phenomenon never before witnessed by human eyes.
“What’s your name?” he asked and she felt her cheeks heat. The question may as well have been, “What species are you?”
Because surely not human was implied.
“Cecilia,” she muttered and then soothed her embarrassed soul by shoving a handful of fries into her mouth.
Eating your feelings definitely wasn’t overrated.
Eat like a lady!
Her mother’s voice blared through her mind, and CeCe silenced it by picking up a piece of fish and taking a giant bite. She chewed and swallowed, watching the man as he continued to stare at her.
Ugh. She wasn’t a flipping sideshow exhibit.
“Like what you see?” she asked testily.
“Yes,” he said simply.
She melted, absolutely melted when he said that three-letter word. As though it were fact, as though there weren’t any strings. And frankly, to not have strings wasn’t something that she’d ever experienced.
“Yes?” she asked once she’d chewed and swallowed. Because she might have been stuffing her face but she wasn’t a total lost cause.
“You’re beautiful,” he said and shrugged.
As though the statement was a simple fact.
When she knew she wasn’t beautiful. She was legs and sharp angles, not curves like her friend Stacy, and she definitely didn’t have boobs like Helen. CeCe was straight. Boys didn’t notice her and men certainly didn’t.
“What’s your name?” she asked, her tone now the one laced with wonder.
“Colin McGregor,” he replied and gently wove his fingers with hers, not caring that they were greasy from the fries and fish, and when he brought her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the back of it she lost her heart.
Cecilia Thiele, quite simply, fell in love.
Fourteen
Colin, present day
* * *
Cecilia was wrapped tightly against him, pressed firmly against his chest, her legs intertwined with his. Colin moaned and pulled her closer, leaning down to press a kiss to the valley of her breasts.
Then frowned.
Her skin wasn’t as soft as he remembered, her curves not as lush. It was almost as though she weren’t—
His eyes shot open when something tightened around his neck.
He blinked, searching the space around him, abruptly aware of the cold bed. The linens were soft for a hotel but rough when compared to his woman’s skin. And they might have been wound around him but they were decidedly unlike CeCe’s curves.
The room was also dark.
Colin cursed and sat up, tearing away the cotton sheet that had somehow become wrapped around his throat.
He saw the clock and cursed, seeing that he’d slept the day away.
And Cecilia was gone.
He knew that in his bones.
“Fuck,” he muttered, trying to sift through his sleepy mind, trying to understand how he’d come to wake alone when last he’d remembered Cecilia had been beneath him on that very bed.
His eyes lit on a note faintly illuminated by the clock and propped onto the bedside table. A little bottle of water and some aspirin were positioned next to it.
* * *
Thanks for the lift. Drink the water and take the aspirin. I imagine you’ll wake with quite a headache.
Have a nice life,
CeCe
P.S. Don’t worry, I paid up the room for another day. Take care.
* * *
Colin grunted, starting to crumple the note before stopping and instead carefully folding it and putting it into his pocket. “Have a nice life,” he muttered, getting out of bed and ignoring the pills. He wasn’t a child any longer, and he didn’t have a hangover. Yes, he might have drunk a little more than normal the previous night, but he’d been in full possession of his abilities.
Except somehow you fell asleep with the most beautiful woman in the world in your arms, you arsewipe, his brain conveniently reminded him.
Because yes, there was that. He’d had Cecilia in his arms, pliable and warm and delicious and . . .
That was the last thing he remembered.
So maybe he was slightly out of practice in the whiskey-bingeing department.
Sighing, Colin reached into his satchel and pulled out his phone, checking his emails and sending a text to his assistant to clear his schedule for the foreseeable future.
This was why he’d trained his COO and CFO. So he could have a life.
And he intended to finally have one.
Which was why he called his other assistant—the one who specialized in remembering birthdays and selecting the perfect arrangement of flowers for his mother. Joanne had been around the McGregors for decades and had been managing his life since his father died.
She’d also loved Cecilia.
“Joanie,” he said. “I have a problem that doesn’t involve an artistic arrangement of lilies. Or well, it might involve them. If she likes those, which I can’t remember—”
&
nbsp; “She?” Joanne asked.
He pulled on his pants, pinning the phone between his ear and shoulder. “I’m getting Cecilia back.”
“Finally,” Joanne said, and he could almost hear her smile through the airwaves. “But, Colin dear, it’s yellow daffodils that she adores. Though, I don’t think flowers are going to mend—”
“I don’t need flowers,” he said. “Though I’m sure I will at some point,” he added, filing CeCe’s preference in flowers away. “For now I need you to ready my plane for a flight to Finland.”
“Ohhh.” Joanne’s breath slid out on a sigh. “The northern lights. Colin, that was always her dream. It’s so romantic.”
“Except she left without me.”
He heard Joanne’s teeth click closed. “Okay, that’s less so.”
Colin snorted. “I agree.” He rattled off the name of the resort he’d seen on the brochure that had fallen out of her bag at the airport. “I need a flight as close as possible to there.”
“And a room?”
“No,” he said. “I’m hoping she’ll take a poor sod in out of the cold.”
Joanne huffed. “I wouldn’t be so sure, my dear. After what you and your family did to that poor girl—”
Colin’s gut tightened. “What Joanie? What did we do?”
A pause. “You were too drunk to remember?”
“I was drunk for weeks,” he reminded her.
She sighed and the silence stretched between them. “The plane will be ready in two hours.” Another sigh. “But, Colin, if you don’t want your arse to be frozen solid in Finland, I would be prepared to get on your knees and beg.”
Fuck.
“It’s that bad?” he asked.
“My boy,” she began before clearing her throat. “It’s not good.”
He opened his mouth to press for details before clamping it closed. The person he needed to discuss this with was Cecilia.
The person he apparently needed to beg for forgiveness was Cecilia.
Colin shoved his feet into his shoes and hoped there wouldn’t be any snow on the ground because his damn slacks weren’t the least bit waterproof.