She came awake as the van pulled down the hill toward the parking lot. Ross was talking on the phone.
“Good. We could use your help getting my mum’s stuff to the cottage.” He hung up.
Rachel gently woke Hannah. “We’re here, sweetie.” She glanced around at the familiar site of the bluffs looming out of the earth at the back of the village, and how the small houses sat precariously at the edge of the ocean—a quaint row of dwellings daring the sea to engulf them.
Ross parked the van and jumped out to help his mother.
Rachel felt stiff from the flight and then the long drive to Gandiegow. She slowly climbed out and then helped Hannah.
As she reached in to grab her tote, something on the walkway caught her eye.
No. Someone caught her eye. It can’t be! Strolling toward the parking lot, he looked so much like Joe. Tall, broad, with dark hair. But where Joe’s hair had been kept short, the better to peddle pharmaceuticals, his cousin’s long hair blew in the wind off the ocean. Six years had changed him. His features were chiseled, and where an easy smile for her had once existed, a stony frown had taken its place.
But he was as beautiful as ever and Rachel stopped breathing. Maybe he was a manifestation. But he kept walking toward them, while the voice in her head shouted loud and clear, What is he doing here?
“Mommy, are you all right?”
For the life of her, Rachel couldn’t stop staring at the man she never thought she’d see again. They all turned to look at her.
When he got close enough, he nodded in her direction. “Ye’re back.”
How could he have no emotion on his face? She was dying here.
“Hey, Brodie,” Ross said. “Grab a bag from the boot.”
* * *
What in the blazes is she doing here? Brodie Wallace couldn’t believe his eyes. It felt as if Ross had sucker punched him in the stomach because he’d said nothing when they’d spoken on the phone. Yet here Rachel Granger was standing in Gandiegow’s parking lot. The woman who had ripped his heart out. The only woman he’d ever allowed himself to love.
He reached into the back of the van and pulled out a suitcase.
Six years ago, when she’d arrived in Gandiegow, he wasn’t the only one toppled by the instant attraction between them. He knew she had felt it, too.
He grabbed another bag.
His cousin Joe had brought her home to Gandiegow two weeks before their scheduled wedding. Brodie was taken with Rachel from the start, which was no surprise. He and Joe had always gone for the same type of lass. Funny, smart. Even as lads, they’d competed, and Joe had always won. Whenever Brodie found a girl, Joe would swoop in and steal her away. Brodie understood. Joe was a charmer with the gift of gab, and women couldn’t help falling under his spell.
Day in and out, Brodie tried to keep his distance from Joe’s future bride, but they had been constantly thrown together at Abraham’s house. In spite of this, they successfully danced around and avoided their feelings. But on the day of the wedding, he’d climbed up the bluff to hide out in the ruins of Monadail Castle while he cleared his head. When he arrived, though, Rachel was there, as if it was meant to be. She turned at his approach but didn’t budge from the stone ledge under the archway. He noted her tearstained cheeks and knew she’d been crying.
Cautiously, he’d gone to her and carefully lifted her chin so she would look at him. “What’s wrong?” But the question would prove fatal.
“Why didn’t I meet you first?” she cried, and threw herself into his arms, kissing him, and knocking him from his moorings. A tidal wave picked up his heart and slammed it against the rocks, changing his life forever.
That kiss and the way she’d looked at him had meant everything! For an hour they held on to each other, Brodie confessing to her that he’d never felt that way before. He knew it was love, but couldn’t voice it aloud until she called off the wedding. Which he was certain she would do. More certain of it than the snow on the ground, the tide in the ocean, and the blood in his veins. Rachel loved him as he loved her. But an hour later, she walked down the aisle, repeated her vows, and effectively tossed Brodie away as if he were nothing more than spoiled bait.
Grandda’s incessant warning coursed through Brodie again—Women can’t be trusted. Every man in their family had firsthand knowledge of the unfaithfulness of women—whether she was a wife, a mother, or a grandmother. Their male lineage could lay testament to the coldhearted dealings of the opposite sex.
Ross nudged him, pulling him back to reality.
“What?” Brodie’s voice sounded harsh to his own ears. He stared down at the luggage dangling from his arms.
Cait eyed him curiously as if he’d cast his line into a crosswind. “You and Rachel know each other?”
“Aye.” Brodie’s eyes fell on the little girl holding Rachel’s hand. The child gaped up at him. God, the girl has Joe’s eyes. Brown. Rich as the soil on Here Again Farm. It was the place Brodie had run off to when Rachel had betrayed him so he could suffer alone. He snapped his gaze away from hers.
“Brodie was best man,” Rachel said quietly, her voice cracking, “at my wedding.” She paused for a second, then added, “To Joe.” As if she was clarifying which wedding.
Had she married again? Brodie’s gaze dropped to her hand, and he hated himself for looking, because he sure as hell didn’t care. He didn’t care if she was married. He didn’t care if she was in town. He didn’t care if she disappeared altogether.
But there was no ring, and idiotic relief spread through his chest. He shouldn’t give a shit if she was taken or not.
When he glanced back at her face, her frown was matching his.
Good. Let her frown. He didn’t give a damn. She was nothing to him. Nothing. Just another heartless female.
He stalked away with the bags, not certain where he was supposed to drop them off.
As if Ross had read his mind, he hollered after him, “The quilting dorm. Thistle Glen Lodge.”
Thoughts pummeled Brodie like someone’s fists.
Aye. A heads-up would’ve been helpful. Why hadn’t Abraham, his own grandda, told him she was coming? Brodie didn’t need this monumental headache right now. He had his hands full with taking over Abraham’s fishing business, plus trying to nurse the old man back to good health.
Brodie wondered if he dropped the bags in the sea whether Rachel would leave. And take the kid with her. Maybe he should call Ewan and hightail it back to Here Again Farm. Or maybe Ewan’s cousin Hugh could use help at the wool factory in Whussendale. Anything to get out of town and away from her.
He took the bags to the quilting dorm, dropped them in the entryway, and didn’t return to the vehicle for a second load. Instead he headed home to have it out with Grandda.
As he opened the door to the cottage, he heard Abraham coughing, and Brodie’s fury disintegrated. He couldn’t roar at the old man. He owed his grandfather nothing but gratitude for first taking him and his mother in when Da died, and then for letting Brodie stay on when his mother remarried shortly afterward.
He found his grandfather nearly hacking up a lung in the kitchen while trying to pull down a mug.
“Here,” Brodie said. “Let me get the tea. You sit.”
Abraham nodded and coughed some more.
Brodie retrieved two cups, laid them on the counter, and stared out the kitchen window. Having Rachel in town was ripping open all his closed wounds—losing Rachel, Joe dying, and the guilt he tried to keep buried. Grandda never questioned Brodie as to why he hadn’t come back for Joe’s funeral. But just having Rachel over at Thistle Glen Lodge made Brodie want to give his grandfather that explanation now: I wanted to pay my respects to Joe, but I couldn’t bear to see Rachel again.
The kettle whistled, stopping the painful train of thought. Brodie poured water into the teapot and put the lid on.
<
br /> He turned to Abraham. “She’s here.”
His grandfather spun around, searching the kitchen with rheumy eyes. “Who’s here? Deydie?”
Brodie looked around, too, in case the old head quilter had miraculously appeared. But it was just the two of them. He settled in next to Abraham. “Joe’s widow has arrived.”
“What?” His grandfather looked truly confused. Then a smile stretched across his face, one Brodie hadn’t seen in quite a while. “So she came. Did she bring the babe?”
The girl was hardly a baby. “Aye.” Brodie stared hard at his grandda. “So ye really didn’t know she was coming?”
The old man rose, ignoring him. “If Rachel’s in the village, why isn’t she here right now?”
“She’s settling into Thistle Glen Lodge.”
Abraham’s eyebrows pulled together. “Nay. Ye know she has to stay here.”
“She wants to stay at the quilting dorm.” And I can’t have her here.
“Git over there now and tell her she’s staying with us.” Abraham might be a sick old codger, but when he wasn’t coughing, he could bark out a command as if he were the admiral of the fleet.
Brodie stared back at him for a long moment, but finally caved. If his grandfather hadn’t done so much for him his whole life, he would’ve argued.
“Fine. I’ll fetch them after you have yere tea.” Brodie poured the steaming liquid into their cups.
“Go now. I want to see the lassie.” Abraham started coughing, and for a moment, Brodie wondered if he did it to get his own way.
To stall, Brodie pulled out the to-go mug he took with him on the boat and filled it for himself. “I’ll bring her back,” Brodie said out of duty. Aye, that’s all it was . . . duty.
Once outside, he sipped his tea while making his way to the back of the bluffs where the quilt dorms sat—Thistle Glen Lodge and Duncan’s Den. Often the dorms were used as a place for visitors to stay, but sometimes it was full to capacity when a quilt retreat was going on. In those cases, a visitor was forced to stay in the room over the pub or with one of the villagers.
Brodie paused at the doorway of the dorm, steeling himself against seeing Rachel. There would be no repeat of the crazy attraction he’d felt before. He was over her. Completely. He had to be.
Automatically, Brodie’s hand covered his heart, the place where the tattoo artist had inked the blasted partridge into his chest the night after Joe had married Rachel. As the tattoo artist worked on him, Brodie had basked in his pain, remembering every detail of Rachel’s deceit, lest he ever forget how the American lass had broken his heart. While the needle dug into his skin, he tortured himself with how they’d kissed. How they’d clung to each other. How time had stood still, while a partridge had lingered nearby in the snow at the ruins of Monadail Castle. This was the reason he’d permanently marked himself. To remember the lesson he’d learned. One minute the partridge was there, and in the next it had flown away. Like Rachel. The problem with the bluidy tattoo, though, was every time he looked in the mirror, instead of remembering the lesson . . . he remembered the woman. The symbol of Rachel was embedded on his chest forever—a rash decision he wished he could take back—but even worse was that she was ever present in his thoughts and weighed heavy on his wary heart. As if it were yesterday and not six years ago.
He dropped his hand and knocked on the door to Thistle Glen Lodge. Running could be heard on the other side. The door flew open and the little girl stood there.
She cranked her head around toward the hallway. “Mommy, the man that looks like Daddy is at the door.”
Brodie nearly dropped his cup. He stabilized his hand, then shoved his free one in his pocket.
She gazed up at him, studying every inch of his face. “I have a picture of my daddy. Do you want to see?”
He didn’t get to answer. She grabbed his hand and tugged. He was too surprised to stop her from pulling him over the threshold. She towed him down the hallway to the living room. When Rachel saw him, she looked stunned, as if the little girl had dragged in a ghost.
“He wants to see Daddy’s picture,” the girl said.
“I never said—” Brodie started.
“Don’t worry about it.” Rachel gazed down at her daughter with a mixture of exasperation and love. “I never know what she’s going to do or say next.”
“What’s her name?” Brodie asked, for lack of anything else to say.
“Hannah,” the two females said together.
Hannah dropped his hand and leaned over her roller bag, unzipping it. “I wrapped my guzzy around Daddy’s picture.”
“Guzzy?” he said.
“The quilt I made for her,” Rachel answered.
“She made it from Daddy’s soft shirts.” The kid pulled out the guzzy, which was a patchwork quilt of different plaid flannels. She unwrapped the small frame and held it up to Brodie. “See.”
It was Joe. Not in jeans and a T-shirt as he had worn here in Gandiegow as a lad, but in a suit, standing next to a Volvo.
“Mommy says Daddy was handsome.”
The cold finger of betrayal pierced the tattoo on Brodie’s chest.
Hannah turned to Rachel, but thrust a thumb at him. “That makes him handsome, too. Right, Mommy?”
Rachel’s mouth dropped open as her cheeks tinged to a bright shade of red.
“Abraham wants you over at the house,” Brodie said abruptly.
At another time and in another place, he might’ve found the kid cute or funny. But she was Rachel and Joe’s kid, and there was nothing cute or funny about what was going on here. He was holding the picture of his dead cousin, and he was standing in the same room with the woman who had ruined him for all others. From the first moment of meeting Rachel, he’d known she was his soul mate. Aye . . . loving her as he had, and continuing to feel the effects of that love after so many years, was foolish. And inconceivable. How could a reasonable man such as himself be taken in so completely? But he had been . . . hook, line, and sinker. None of the lasses he’d dated before her or the few he’d forced himself to date afterward had ever captivated his heart like she had. Even seeing her now made him feel as if a winch strap had been tightened around his chest.
If Brodie had never met Rachel, he might be happily settled in this village. Gandiegow was filled with dozens of contented families; the village seemed to sprout them as easily as the summer vegetables in Deydie’s kitchen garden. But the second Joe married Rachel, Brodie could never see himself settling down and having a family of his own.
“About Abraham . . .” Rachel took the picture from Brodie and held it at her side, not looking at it. “I want to see your grandfather. Hannah does, too. We’re just going to settle in first. Maybe take a nap. It was a long flight.”
“Nay.” God, he didn’t want to do this. “Ye’ve got it all wrong. My grandfather wants ye to stay at the cottage. With him.”
Not me. Brodie needed to make that perfectly clear. He wanted her and her kid to return to Glasgow, Chicago, or Timbuktu. It didn’t matter. Everything about her made his blood pump faster, ruining the semblance of peace he’d had since returning to Gandiegow.
She stared from one of his shoulders to the other, as if he was too broad to fit in the cottage with them. “We’ll be much more comfortable here.”
As would I. “But old Abraham insists. He’s not well.”
Rachel chewed on the inside of her cheek. He’d forgotten she did that when she was worried. Six years ago, he’d caught her looking at him many times, gazing at him with yearning, and worrying the inside of her cheek. He’d known back then she wanted him, too. He would’ve bet the boat on it.
“I can’t stay there,” she admitted.
“Why?” he asked as if the question wasn’t filleting him, too.
“It would be too . . . hard.” She looked away. “Too difficult.”
/>
Tough shite. She didn’t know the half of it. She couldn’t possibly know the fresh hell she was putting him through.
He wouldn’t tell her either, or give her the satisfaction of knowing the pain she’d caused him when she’d walked down the aisle and pledged herself to Joe.
“Ye’ll do as Abraham bids.” He took the picture from her and handed it back to the little girl. “Put that away. Ye’re going to go see yere great-grandda.”
Chapter Two
Rachel studied the bookcase behind Brodie, focusing on the holiday garland instead of the man, and it took every bit of her concentration. The quilting dorm had been decorated with lights and a few Christmasy knickknacks, but no tree. Being in the hotel business, Rachel understood why . . . lack of space. A sizable lobby could accommodate a Christmas tree—actually several were at her hotel, the luxurious Winderly Towers in the heart of Chicago—but Thistle Glen Lodge was a converted cottage where floor space was at a premium.
Like her mother, Rachel had been raised in the Sunnydale Hotel, their small family-run business. Rachel had grown up cleaning rooms, delivering towels, and working on her homework while manning the front desk. Everyone expected her to take over one day. Yes, Rachel went to college for hospitality management, but with bigger dreams than running a mom-and-pop establishment like the Sunnydale. The first thing she did after registering for classes was to get a job at the Winderly, only a short train ride from the university. She loved the different climate—fast-paced with high-powered guests—and was promoted several times while working on her degree. When the Sunnydale burned down at the end of her final semester, Rachel felt guilty for being relieved. Faulty wiring had saved her from confronting her mother and telling her she had no intention of becoming the next proprietor of their hotel. That was . . . if she really could have gone against her mother’s wishes.
“Mommy!” Hannah exclaimed. The clothes from her suitcase was strewn about the floor, but Joe’s guzzy-wrapped picture was tucked safely back inside.
It Happened in Scotland Page 2