“No,” he said. “I considered it, but it felt a bit . . . presumptuous.”
“I appreciate your restraint. But it doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy the wine now that it’s here.” She took a sip and gave a nod of approval. “I’m guessing by the fact we have no menus that it’s chef’s choice?”
“Exactly.”
Serena reached for the bread basket and spread butter garnished with pink salt on a dark slice. “This is pumpernickel, I think. Rather nice pumpernickel, actually. I’m typically not much of a fan. It’s usually too sour.”
“We get this from an artisanal bakery in Portree,” Malcolm said. “They supply us and a few other restaurants on the island, as well as their own store.”
“It’s very good.”
“So this wasn’t a horrendous idea after all?”
His insecurity was endearing, particularly considering how cocky and overconfident she’d thought him when they first met. “It was an excellent idea.”
He leaned back in his chair and studied her. “I’m curious. Why did you sell your interest in the hotel if you were just going to buy back in?”
Serena considered how much to tell him. “I know it’s hard to believe now, but after our father died, my brothers were at odds. Ian worked for Jamie, but they barely spoke to each other outside of business matters. If one said black, the other said white. As the third partner in the hotel, I was always having to play tiebreaker.” She shrugged. “I was more interested in maintaining my relationship with my brothers than I was in staying involved with the family business. Jamie offered to buy out my share to keep it in the family. Now neither of them really has the time to be as hands-on as they’d like, so Jamie asked me to buy back in. And here we are.”
“Here we are.” He smiled warmly, seeming comfortable just to look at her, even though she squirmed under the scrutiny.
“My turn to ask a question. My brothers said you were an engineer. What kind of engineer are you exactly?”
“That’s what you wanted to ask? You know you could have pulled my CV from the employment files a long time ago.”
“I thought about it,” she said, “but enough time had passed, and our relationship became not so strictly business, so it felt as if I’d be spying on you.”
“It’s a bit hard to explain, actually. I work with telescopes.”
“Telescopes? Like the ones you can buy for stargazing?”
“No, the space-based ones like the Hubble.”
She blinked at him. Of all the answers he could have given, she never expected anything so . . . technical. “How does one go about doing that for a living?”
He chuckled. “I’m not sure how most people do it. I went into it backward. I’ve always had a talent for figuring out how things work, especially if they involve power of any sort. I was the lad who was always trying to make an electromagnet out of car batteries and the like. I ended up getting a degree in electrical engineering and then going to work for an aerospace contractor, but I hated it. I’d always had an interest in astronomy, and I had a fair amount of programming knowledge, so when I learned there was work in the field outside of astrophysics, I decided to go back to school for a graduate degree in computer science.”
That was completely unexpected. She associated the hotel management and the repair skills with something more blue-collar, like mechanical engineering. But to find out he was somewhat of an academic? “So you quit your job and tended bar to support yourself?”
“Exactly. It was too hard to get my courses while keeping the day job.”
“I’m impressed. But I still don’t understand what that has to do with telescopes.”
“I am—I was—a software engineer for a space research institute at Johns Hopkins in Maryland. Basically I wrote programs that analyzed and interpreted the data that came back from the telescope so astronomers could use it.”
“So the whole time I was on about Dark Sky sites and star charts and all that, you not only knew what I was talking about, but you actually worked in the field. Why didn’t you say anything?”
Malcolm had the grace to look abashed. “You were so excited about it and you wanted to take on the work, so I didn’t want to burst your bubble. Would you have continued on if you knew I worked in astronomy?”
“Maybe not.” She sat back from the table. “But now I feel foolish.”
“You shouldn’t. Most of our guests want to know the best place to see Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper, not the algorithms scientists use to classify an object as a star or a galaxy.”
“That’s true,” Serena said with a little smile, “but I still feel somewhat at a loss. Scientific people are my natural enemy.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I read art history. Which, before you say it, I realize is the degree for people who don’t actually need to work for a living.”
“I gave up a high-paying job to look at star data and play with telescopes,” he said. “I hardly think I’m in a position to judge. Why art history?”
“I’ve always loved art, ever since I was a child. But fine art seemed just too—”
“Unemployable?”
Serena smiled. Somehow when Malcolm said it, it didn’t make her feel defensive. “Something like that. I was able to get an internship at the Tate Gallery in London after I finished university.”
“How does one do that?” he asked.
“Well, first one has to have a nearly useless degree from a very good university. And then one uses her family connections to call in favors to get a coveted position.” Voiced aloud, she realized how snobbish and privileged she must sound. At the time it had merely seemed sensible. “However, it was my qualifications that landed me a permanent position there, and then later a job managing artists at a rather prestigious gallery in Edinburgh.”
“So deep down, you’re an academic like me,” he said.
“I can’t tell whether you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
He laughed again. “It’s a good thing.”
“So why do you hide the fact that you’re obviously very intelligent? Why didn’t you say anything about all this?”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized they could be taken as an insult. But his eyes just sparkled as if her fumbling amused him. “I don’t hide my intelligence. I just don’t go on about my education.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you?”
A slight smile crept onto her lips. “You are very good at turning things around so I forget what I’m asking you. If you want a real answer from me, I expect you to answer first.”
Now he looked a little uncomfortable, which she found endearing. “I suppose I didn’t tell you because I wanted to know if you liked me for me, not just because you thought I had a suitably impressive collection of diplomas at home.”
She leaned forward, holding his gaze. “And once more you didn’t entirely answer my question.”
He thought for a long moment before he answered. “We are from completely different worlds, Serena. In yours, a good education is assumed—demanded even.”
“We both grew up here on Skye.”
“Except I moved away when I was eleven. And even then, you can’t compare our experiences here.”
“What happened exactly?”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “Before or after my dad emptied out the bank account and left us destitute?”
A mixture of horror and sympathy washed over Serena. She suspected that reaction was exactly why he hadn’t told her. “I had no idea.”
“How could you? You probably didn’t know that my mum used to clean this hotel either. But it still wasn’t enough to make ends meet. My aunt invited us to come stay with her in Glasgow and got Mum a job cleaning a hotel there. You see, she dropped out of school at fourteen to work her family’s croft, so it wasn’t as if she had marketable skills.”
“But she did what she had to do to support you and your sister. Tha
t’s admirable.”
“My sister was seven years older than me, and she stayed on Skye to get married,” Malcolm said. “So it was just me and Mum. And the place in Glasgow—well, the city usually gets a bad rap, but where we lived deserved its reputation. It wasn’t exactly a place you wanted to be seen as a bright and innocent lad, fresh from the country, if you know what I mean. I went to school and got perfect marks and spent my afternoons trying to not get my face bashed in.”
He told the story with a light tone, but she sensed the deep scars beneath the words. For a moment she could see beyond the swagger and the humor to the little boy who had been terrorized by bullies.
“I did pretty well until I won a science fair at thirteen and ended up in the paper,” he went on. “Couple of blokes waited for me outside my building and gave me a pounding I still haven’t forgotten. I was black-and-blue for weeks. Loads of stitches.” He pushed his hair away from his temple to show a jagged scar at his hairline, now faded to a silvery white.
She winced. “What happened then? What did your mum do?”
“Well, after she was done vowing to kill the delinquents—this woman who couldn’t have weighed more than seven stone dripping wet—she made me promise that I would lie low and avoid trouble. I hadn’t been looking for trouble in the first place, so this advice wasn’t exactly helpful.
“I was determined that my mum wasn’t going to fight my battles for me, so I found a boxing club and convinced the owner to let me train there in return for sweeping floors and cleaning bags and scrubbing toilets—whatever I could do. Mum worked two jobs sometimes, and my aunt didn’t care what I did, so I managed to keep it a secret. It didn’t take long for the owner to figure out what was going on. See, this bloke—Reginald—he’d grown up similarly in Glasgow, and he recognized a skinny kid with too little food, too much intelligence, and no supervision. So he started paying me a little. He just ‘happened’ to have extra food around when I came over from school, just ‘happened’ to be short a sparring partner for one of the more skilled lads.”
“It sounds like a movie,” Serena said, caught up entirely in the story. “Are you sure you’re not embellishing for effect?”
“I swear, it’s God’s honest truth. I got good in the ring pretty quickly, so the next time I was confronted, I didn’t run away. I stood my ground.”
“What happened?”
“I got my—ahem—tail kicked. Badly. I might have been good at boxing an opponent, but it’s a lot different when they don’t wear gloves and they bring their mates. When I showed up at the club the next day, I thought Reg was going to congratulate me on my bravery, and instead he laced into me like I’ll never forget.”
“Because you got cocky?”
“Because he wasn’t teaching me to be a street brawler. He was trying to keep me out of trouble and give me a chance to make something of myself.” Malcolm smiled. “My mum would probably have been horrified had she ever met the man, considering his vocabulary mostly consisted of four-letter words, and his idea of discipline was a sharp slap to the head, but he was the only one looking out for me at a time when I could have really gone down the wrong path. He told me I was too smart to be acting like a prat . . . except he didn’t say prat, of course. And if I really cared about my mum, I would go to university, find a good job, get her into a safer part of Glasgow. In short, he told me I needed to make good choices if I were to be a better man than my father was.”
“That’s some story,” Serena said softly. “Where is your mum now?”
“Well, I got her out of that tenement building that she hated so much and into a safer flat. I moved to America to work at the Space Telescope Science Institute, and while I was gone, she up and married a greengrocer.”
“Do you like him?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “I do, actually. He doesn’t care for me too much. But that might have something to do with the fact I told him I’d knock seven bells out of him if he ever hurt my mum the way Dad did. He took it to heart, I think.”
“Would you have done it?”
“In my twenties, without hesitation. Now, I honestly don’t know. Does that concern you?”
Serena studied him. Despite Malcolm’s rough edges, his physicality, there was still something calm and steady at the core that made her feel safe. “Not a bit. I’ve never thought of myself as a violent person, but if someone laid a hand on one of my kids, I don’t think I could be responsible for my actions.”
“It does change your perspective, doesn’t it? When I was just the uncle, I could get in trouble with Kylee. Drove Nic crazy. Now I worry about Kylee all the time.”
She knew exactly the feeling. After Edward died, she’d felt the weight of her responsibility double. She raised her glass and clinked it together with his. “To the part of being a parent no one ever warns you about.”
“Didn’t exactly come about how I expected it,” he said wryly.
“It never does.”
The first course of their meal arrived then, an exquisitely plated scallop starter that tasted as good as it looked. Serena took her first bite and then set down her fork with a sigh. “My brother is a genius.”
“No arguments here. But this dish is Chef Villarreal’s.”
“Really? Very impressive.”
“I think so too.”
The conversation turned to lighter subjects finally, recollections of the peculiarities of growing up on Skye, funny stories about her children and his niece, current television programs. And with each passing minute, Serena’s admiration for Malcolm grew. She had made so many misguided assumptions about him. He was intelligent, funny, well read. And he looked at her as if there were no one with whom he’d rather share his evening, that singular focus fixed with laser precision on her. She found herself talking too much, even though anytime the topic turned to her marriage or what came before it, she steered it away. There were some things she just wasn’t ready to tell him. He simply listened, refilling her wineglass and asking questions.
By the time he paid the bill and they rose to leave, the growing feeling of connection with him had become more unsettling than the ever-present current of attraction.
“Thank you for a lovely evening,” Serena said when they returned to the car park. “It’s been so long since I’ve had a good, uninterrupted meal in pleasant company, it feels like a holiday.”
Malcolm opened the car door for her. “The evening’s not over yet.”
“And you’re not going to tell me where we’re going next?”
“Oh no. But you’re welcome to try to guess.”
“I don’t think so,” she said slowly. “I’ll just sit back and enjoy the surprise.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SERENA COULDN’T BEGIN TO GUESS their destination until Malcolm turned off the highway down the neatly paved road that led into Kinloch Forest. The headlamps swept across the trees that crowded the drive, illuminating them in patches as they passed through the gate into the forestry area.
“Really?” she asked, unreasonably giddy at the prospect. “We’re going stargazing?”
He glanced over at her, the light from the car’s instrument cluster illuminating his pleased expression. “Indeed. Even in the village there’s too much light pollution to see anything. I thought you should be able to enjoy what you’ve put so much work into. Especially since we have only a couple of weeks of dark skies left.”
“I love this. We’ve been out only one night since we arrived. I was telling the kids the stories behind the constellations. Well, I was telling Em. Max never makes it much past the first few minutes.”
Malcolm smiled at her in the dark, something she felt more than saw, as he pulled into the dirt car park. “There’s a flat spot where we can sit up there—not that I need to tell you that. You literally wrote the brochure on it.”
Serena suddenly wished she had worn jeans and low-heeled boots, because even though the ground had dried out from an unaccustomed week without heav
y rain, the ground still sloped unevenly upward from the car park. She buttoned her coat while Malcolm went to the boot and began rummaging through the packed items.
“I don’t suppose you would mind carrying some things, would you?”
“Of course not. What have you got in there?”
He pulled out a picnic hamper and handed it over first. “Dessert, naturally. A couple of blankets—I wasn’t sure how warm you would dress, but I didn’t want to spoil the surprise. And this, which I will carry.” He pulled out a hard-sided case and a padded black bag that was shaped like the case for a hunting rifle, but shorter. It took her a second to puzzle through what they could be until she put it together.
“Really? You brought a telescope?”
He chuckled. “You are the first woman to consider that a positive. Not that we really need a telescope, but I thought it could be fun.”
“It is fun.” She slid the picnic hamper to the crook of her elbow and then took one of the blankets while he gathered the rest of the gear. Then he withdrew a torch fitted with a red filter—to preserve their night vision, she knew—and slammed the boot.
“Shall we?”
“Lead on.”
When they reached the flat-topped grassy area, he spread out one of the blankets. She lowered herself to the center of it, already chilled by the cold night, her breath puffing out in front of her. He knelt before her and draped the second blanket around her shoulders, then got to work assembling the telescope on its tripod while she rummaged through the hamper.
Besides the stainless-steel carafe of something she assumed was coffee or tea, it contained little paper boxes of all sorts of pastries: cream puffs, tiny individual almond cakes, mini lemon and fruit tarts, and what looked like chocolate truffles. “I like your style,” she said. “Which one do you want to try first?”
“I’ve already tried them all.” She sensed his smile in the darkness. “And by now your children probably have as well. What do you think Kylee had in her rucksack?”
“Oh no, poor Kylee. Giving those two sugar before bed practically guarantees they’ll be running circles around her.”
Under Scottish Stars Page 16