by Alyssa Cole
The term bawbag is a Scots word for “scrotum,” which is also slang for an annoying or irritating person.
She’d had only brief contact with the man who would soon be teaching her the ins and outs of Scottish swordmaking, so she couldn’t agree or disagree with that. They’d spoken briefly on the phone, once, and he’d kept the conversation to a minimum—at the end of the call she’d realized that he’d barely spoken at all. Her other correspondence had been with someone named Jamie McKenzie, who seemed cool or, at the very least, more interested in a two-sided conversation.
“Leaving me stranded at the station is pretty bawbagish, so I have to agree,” she said.
“Aye, this is going to be grand,” Kevyn said, then the car slowed and stopped just in front of what looked like a wooden telephone box, but blue and on steroids. Portia was fairly certain Reggie had dressed up as one of those things for Halloween the year before, with the words police box around the top; it was from a TV show she loved.
“Here we are, Bodotria Armory,” Kevyn said, hopping out.
Portia fought her way out of the backseat, struggling with the front seat that refused to push forward as Kevyn busied himself pulling her bags from the trunk—boot—of the car.
In the picture on the website, the building had looked charming, but in the early morning darkness with mist rolling in from the nearby bay and creeping over the cobblestone streets, it had a distinctly menacing air. It was Georgian neoclassical, if she was guessing correctly, three stories of perfect symmetry and imposing bulk. The gray sandstone was dark and grimy with age and moss grew in fissures between the stones. The windows were all dark, except for a circular Palladian window at the very top floor.
“There better not be any wives locked in the attic,” Portia muttered.
“Maestro Tav is single. No worries there,” Kevyn said cheerfully as he handed off her rolling suitcase. “I’ll wait for ye to get in, lass.”
“Thanks,” she said. Now that she was here, the entire plan seemed ridiculous.
Go to Scotland.
Make swords.
. . . ?
Prosper?
Her parents’ objections replayed in her head.
I could really use a shot or two, for fortitude.
No. A shot wouldn’t do anything but lower her inhibitions. She didn’t need to be fearless, or reckless. She was great at trying new things; it was the finishing that was the problem. Starting was her damn forte, something she had never failed at, and there was no reason to think she would this time. She inhaled deeply for fortitude and began walking toward the front door when a loud cry broke through the fog.
“Oh, stop it, you fucking tosser!” It was a woman, and she was mad or scared or both. “I said cut it out!”
Shit.
Portia’s suitcase clattered to the cobblestone and she looked around wildly, gaze landing on the giant blue box.
Police! Yes!
She ran to it and pulled at the door with all her might, but it was locked tight.
“Oh, those were decommissioned ages ago,” Kevyn said calmly, as if there weren’t a crime in progress. She’d heard the Scots were a levelheaded people, but this was a bit much.
The sound of renewed struggle reached her through the fog.
Portia didn’t think. She jammed her hand into her purse, rummaged around, and then took off toward the sound.
“Och. Wait!” Kevyn called out, but she was already around the side of the building and stepping through the fog into what seemed to be a courtyard. She heard a grunt and the sound of scuffling shoes, then saw movement in the fog. The courtyard was illuminated by a few dim lamps, and she could make out a woman with a crown of pink hair trying to fend off an attacker. He was large, broad-shouldered, and looked like he could bench-press both Portia and the woman at the same time.
The woman kicked out.
“Let go!” she growled.
The man laughed, deep and menacing. “Make me.”
Portia was paralyzed by panic for a moment, but she had taken self-defense courses. She had played this out in her head many times before, what to do if she saw someone being attacked, but she’d never had to act on those imagined combat scenes until now.
She took a deep breath, ran up—holy shit this guy was huge—and rammed into him with her shoulder, bouncing back a few feet from the force of the impact. The blow didn’t seem to faze him, but it got his attention. He turned toward her and had the nerve to look affronted.
His skin was tanned, surprising for all the talk of cloudy days and pasty British men she’d heard. His eyes were a distracting shade of hazel green beneath a fringe of salt-and-pepper hair, shorn on the sides and longer at the top. His face was that of a man too young to be going gray, though rough-hewn, with stubble darkening his jaw.
Portia blinked, and then she saw a flash of metal in his hand and his attractiveness became the last thing on her mind.
He had a knife.
Portia focused on those gorgeous green eyes, lifted her hand, and sprayed like he was a cockroach that had invaded the sanctity of her morning shower.
“What the bloody hell!” There was the clatter of metal hitting the ground and then the man dropped to his knees, the heels of his palms pressed to his eyes. He muttered a string of words Portia didn’t understand, but she was pretty sure that they were invective against her.
“She told you to let her go,” Portia said, feeling a strange light-headedness that was probably an adrenaline rush chased by pride—she’d just arrived Scotland and had already stopped a crime in progress. She was mentally composing the text message to her parents, some variation of See? I can be useful, when she felt a burning that had nothing to do with victory.
“Ow, ow, OW!” She dropped the spray and brought her hands to her eyes, too.
“Did you stand downwind?” the attacker asked. For a moment she thought he’d started crying, but the sound was in fact low laughter. He was laughing. At her. “You did. Oh, you bloody tosser.”
“Tav, are you okay?”
Through her tears, Portia could make out the woman she thought she’d saved run to her attacker and help him up. Her attacker named Tav.
Wait.
“Be a love and go get some milk, Cheryl,” he said, pulling himself to his feet.
“Did you just mace Maestro Tav?” Kevyn had arrived on the scene. Perfect. “Tav, did she? Oh, this is bloody brilliant.”
“Aye, she did. And herself,” Tav added. Tavish McKenzie. Her new boss.
She pressed her palms more firmly into her eyes, waiting for Cheryl to bring the milk or for the cobblestones to part beneath her feet, allowing the earth to swallow her. She’d just arrived in Scotland and had managed to assault the man who would be her boss for the next three months—and herself in the process.
Project: New Portia was off to a fantastic start.
Chapter 2
Tav sighed and removed the cold compress from his eyes, then leaned forward, his office chair creaking under his bulk as it followed his motion. On the other side of his desk, Portia sat with her eyes squeezed closed. He didn’t think she was suffering from the side effects of her attempt at superheroism, judging from the way her eyes occasionally fluttered open to peek at him, then slammed shut. Her whole face was scrunched, like she was caught in a rictus of embarrassment.
He would have pitied her if she hadn’t tried to burn his eyes out without so much as a “Good day.”
“I have . . . questions, but first let me explain something to you,” he said.
She peeked at him and tried to force a smile. It was more of a grimace, but that didn’t stop the realization that the apprentice Jamie had picked out for him was lovely, scrunched face, red eyes, and all. A bloody fool, to be sure, but lovely.
Her curly hair was a dark auburn, highlighted here and there with strands of wheat and honey. Her skin was golden brown, and a spray of freckles dusted her high cheekbones. She looked posh as fuck, too. Her shirt and trousers were obviously tailored,
perfectly accentuating her curves, and her luggage was on the high end of high end.
Tav imagined that her being wealthy and beautiful was likely related to her lack of common fucking sense. Problem was, common sense was in high demand at a place where one small mistake could result in slicing, stabbing, or burning yourself or others.
He exhaled deeply against his frustration. “If you are going to carry a weapon, and mace is a weapon despite that hot pink container you carry yours in, make sure you know how to use the bloody thing.”
She nodded.
“Had you ever even given it a test run before? Out in a park or something?”
She shook her head miserably. “I know you’re supposed to, but it seemed . . . dangerous?”
“Right. Next. You arrive at an establishment that’s home to a historical European martial arts training center, see two people fighting with weapons, and it doesn’t even occur to you that they might be sparring?” he asked. “Did you think we were having some kind of medieval turf war?”
Her eyes fluttered open again, her long damp lashes framing deep brown orbs. Jesus, why hadn’t Jamie chosen some tosser from down the pub with a face like a hairy ass?
Enough. You’re too old for this shite. It’s not like you’ve never seen a pretty face before.
“I didn’t see her weapon,” Portia said quietly, as if she hadn’t hurled herself at an armed man twice her size half an hour ago. “And I didn’t know about the European martial arts—or that it even existed, to be honest? It’s not on your website.”
If Tav didn’t know she was apologizing, he might have thought that was judgment in her tone.
“I heard someone in danger and I just rushed in without thinking,” she continued. “I tend to do that.”
“Save strangers?” he asked. “What are you, a vigilante?”
“No. Rush in without thinking. Or thinking I’ve thought, but . . .” She looked down at her hands and frowned. “Never mind.”
“We were practicing for an exhibition,” Tav explained, feeling a bit like an ogre as she sat hunched in her seat. “We do them from time to time to attract new customers and showcase the products. We also take part in competitions. Cheryl, my sister-in-law, can get a little feisty when she’s losing. You’ve got to be careful from here on out, though. You could have been seriously injured running at me like that.”
That was what got to Tav apart from the pain and the interruption to his day—he could have accidentally killed her if he’d been more poorly trained. Christ, what a way to start the day.
“I’m sorry,” Portia said again, her voice low and husky with fatigue. That full, dusky pink lower lip trembled a bit and her teeth pressed into it to still it. “This wasn’t quite how I envisioned the apprenticeship kicking off, but . . .”
She lowered her head so that she was glancing up at him through her lashes, with her pouty lips slightly parted, and something dropped in Tav’s chest like a hammer striking an anvil. She had Tav’s full attention, that was certain. And that was a problem.
Her gaze suddenly sharpened, pinning him. “. . . if you’d picked me up at the station like you were supposed to, I wouldn’t have accidentally sprayed you.”
Tav snorted back a disbelieving laugh. “You cheeky . . .”
He rummaged about through the books and bolts of steel on his desk, snatching up a piece of crinkled sandpaper and the ivory grip of the medieval dagger he’d been working on the evening before. He began sanding the blade slowly, deliberately, the comforting scrape of it distracting him from the fact that he’d apparently lost any and all cool he’d accumulated in his thirty-eight years of life.
He let her sit there in silence as he worked; in battle, sometimes it paid to wait before an attack, to let your opponent grow more unnerved as they anticipated your next move. He also didn’t know how to respond.
“So, you’re saying this is my fault then?” he managed, which was shite. He had forgotten to pick her up, but Jamie had forgotten to remind him to remember. Tav’s phone battery had died and he hadn’t bothered to charge it and . . . well, and then he’d started sparring with Cheryl, leaving Portia alone at the train station at a dodgy hour of the morning.
Portia took a deep breath and her long, delicate fingers flexed in her lap before she threaded them together. She was sitting all prim and proper, like she was a schoolteacher explaining why picking bogies in class was distasteful. “I’m merely pointing out that this could have been avoided. Leaving a guest waiting is impolite, even if it’s an employee.”
“You’re right, but I don’t think forgetfulness merits this,” he replied. He pointed toward his face with the hand holding the sandpaper. “I have to go teach the weans in a bit. I stink of turnt milk and I’m probably gonna give them nightmares, fuck’s sake.”
“Weans?” Her brows rose.
“We run a program for weans in the neighborhood.” Her head tilted, augmenting the confusion expressed by those dainty brows. “Wee ones. Children.” Recognition sparked in her eyes and he continued. “We run programs for neighborhood kids of varying ages. Gives ’em something to do besides hang around the park and get into trouble.”
And with the new police presence in the neighborhood, thanks to the influx of people they thought worthy of protecting, there was plenty of trouble to be found.
“This isn’t on your website, either,” she said.
“Because I’m not asking for a bloody medal for it,” he snapped. He had in fact received a medal for it, from a community group, but that was none of her concern.
“Letting people know it exists would be effective in extending the reach of the program, though,” she said. Her hand reached toward her purse, where her phone stuck out of a pocket, then she seemed to think better of it and returned her attention to him.
Tav wouldn’t admit that he already had more weans enrolled than he could handle. He couldn’t afford assistants other than Jamie and Cheryl, when they had time from their own busy schedules. The food he handed out, as well as clothes, school supplies, and other expenses that cropped up, were already stretching his meager bank account thin. All shite that was none of her concern. He’d figure it out. On his own.
He fixed her with a stern look. “You’re changing the subject.”
“Right. About the incident . . .” she said gingerly.
“The attack, more like,” he cut in.
She sighed. “Is there anything in the employee manual that covers this?”
Tav didn’t return the hopeful smile she laid on him—he wouldn’t be charmed. Not by someone who was going to be underfoot for the next three months. He was going to have to work in close quarters with her every day.
The back of his neck went warm.
“We don’t have an employee manual. I am the employee manual,” he replied brusquely, annoyed at his reaction to her. She was too young for him—he had at least a decade of age and an infinite amount of raw cynicism on this woman. And more importantly, she was off-limits. He refused to be that boss, using his employee roster as a dating pool. Given that his only other two employees were his brother and his sister-in-law, it would be particularly egregious.
And business ethics aside—Tav was done with relationships. He wasn’t the type to convince himself he didn’t believe in labels or just wasn’t a relationship guy or whatever knobs were telling themselves these days. He’d married young; he’d been a silly kid fresh out of uni and so besotted with his wife, Greer, that he hadn’t realized divorce was a thing that could exist in the perfect world they’d envisioned with each other.
He’d tried. He’d failed. He didn’t want to feel that awful, impotent guilt as his hopes and dreams for the future circled the drain ever again, and there was only one surefire way to avoid it.
“Oh. I just assumed—”
“Jamie is the one who set up this apprenticeship, lass. I had nothing to do with it,” he continued, ignoring the way her expression caved a bit at that. His younger brother had said it wou
ld be a clever way of bringing attention to the business and for Tav to finally get the help he needed, and Tav had gone along with it. He’d never been able to say no to Jamie, but then again, Jamie had never been one to ask unreasonable things of him. Until now. Expecting Tav to put up with Portia for three months was entirely unreasonable.
“He’s the one who contacted the newspapers to promote it, went through the applications that came in, and selected yours. I’d say it’s because you had a pretty face, but now I’m wondering if maybe he wasn’t just trying to find a way to aggravate me to death.”
Her tentative smile dropped then, and her brows raised in a way that was both delicate and dangerous. “I have an MFA from NYU and a master’s in art history from Columbia.”
“That’s n—”
She cut him off with an impatient swipe of her hand.
“I’ve interned at the Museum of Ancient Arts, the Museum of New York City, and several prestigious art galleries. I’m also quite confident I have the technological skills that you so clearly lack, judging from your crappy website and general lack of a web presence. I mean, honestly—Papyrus for the site’s header?”
“What?” Tav had no clue what she was on about.
She leaned forward a bit, holding his gaze. “Exactly. Perhaps Jamie didn’t make this clear, so I will. I’m the pretty face that’s gonna save your business for the low, low price of room, board, and a meager honorarium.”
Tav dropped the sandpaper and knife on the desk and stared at her, his hurt pride edging out his professionalism. “You can keep your American saviorism shite, lass. Bodotria Armory is doing just fine, so you can roll up that ‘mission accomplished’ banner and haul it over to someone who needs it.”
He gestured toward the door with his chin.
That wasn’t exactly true. Orders had dropped to the lowest they’d been in the armory’s ten-year history with no explanation. The rejuvenation of the neighborhood had been a boon, but it also meant higher taxes and the council breathing down his neck about the historical status of the building and the million repairs that needed to be done to get it up to code. His gaze tracked to where he had gestured, landing on the huge crack in the wall beside the door.