by Willa Blair
Ian sighed. “She won’t listen.”
“Ye must!”
“She told me not to darken her door—”
“She’s not thinking straight. You surprised her…damn it, I warned you about this. Once she has a chance to think it over, she’ll realize you really care for her and the twins—”
“It won’t matter. She’ll never trust me again. You were right, I should have told her weeks ago.”
“Baron, this is too important for your hurt feelings, or hers.”
“Important to whom, Caitlin? To Lara? Not at all. To you and me? Aye. To posterity? Well, that’s up to Lara now.”
“Not if you reason with her.”
“When she left here, she was in no mood to reason.”
“Then give her a chance to breathe, and some time to think, then come over and kiss her senseless. My God, cousin. We’ve got more family history in our hands than anyone has seen in over two hundred years. You can’t just let that go.”
Ian’s temper flared and he snapped, “Aye, I can. And I have.”
“Eedjit!” Caitlin exclaimed and cut the connection.
Ian hung up the phone and dropped his head into his hands. Caitlin was right. He was an idiot. He’d lost his mind. He’d wonder where his sanity had fled to, but he knew the answer. To Cairn Dubh, in the arms of a certain bright-eyed lass with two irresistible twins and the ghost of a prized Scottish deerhound.
Who obeyed him. Acknowledged him as its laird.
Fergus had convinced Lara that he had a right to be there. When he’d admitted he might have more of a claim than a mere ghost’s acknowledgement, he’d frightened her more than Fergus had. She thought everything they’d shared had been a lie.
If only he’d told her the truth up front. He’d dug himself quite a hole—deeper than the one where Fergus lay. Now he had to figure out how to climb out of it, win the woman he loved, and if there was an honorable way to do it, claim his heritage. Or give it up forever. The only thing that mattered was Lara.
He lifted his head and stared out the window at the snowflakes drifting by. His jaw dropped. The woman he loved…his heart did a little somersault in his chest. Aye, he did.
He’d never told her.
Before he knew it, he was on his feet. The answer couldn’t be that simple. But it was a place to start.
If she’d listen to him for just five minutes. Caitlin was right about this, too—he’d crawl if he had to. He’d do whatever Lara wanted, whatever it took to convince her he meant it when he said he wanted to be with her. He wanted her. Angus’s decision had denied him the chance to run Cairn Dubh’s restoration and learn what he could from it. He’d accepted that, until Lara had given him a second chance. He still wanted that chance, but he wanted Lara and the twins more. All the rest was a bonus. Generations had lived without the answers held in that estate. He could, too.
****
Lara couldn’t believe the nerve of the man. She’d just gotten home from driving aimlessly around in the snow, all the while nursing her sense of betrayal into something monumental, and wondering what to do next and how to tell the twins, when someone knocked on the door. She answered it, only to find Ian standing on the front portico.
“I thought I told you not to come here again.”
“I was hoping we could talk some more before ye have to fetch the twins. I—”
“I think you said quite enough already.”
“I love you, Lara. I never told you, and I should have.”
She gripped the edge of the door, in shock. The urge to slam it in his face made her step back while she fought to process what Ian had just revealed. “You do not. You’re just trying to get control of what we found here.”
Ian dropped to his knees before her.
Lara swallowed her shock and stared down at him, still poised to shut him out.
“You do no’ have to marry me,” he told her, his voice deep and his tone sincere. “No’ ever. This place does no’ ever have to be mine. The only thing I canna live without is you. Alex and Amy, too. Wherever ye go, I’ll go with ye. Back to California, if that is what ye wish. It does no’ matter to me where I am, as long as I’m with ye.”
She could not have heard him correctly. “You would leave here? Leave all this?”
“To be with you? Aye.”
Lara didn’t know what to say. She needed time to think. “Ian…get up, for God’s sake. I just got home from driving around, talking myself into hating you.” She reached for his hand and hauled him to his feet, suddenly awash in dismay when her hand chilled from contact with his. Hers went cold any time her emotions got too strong. He hadn’t been out in the snow very long. He must be overwrought. His chilled skin convinced her, as much as any of his words, his emotions were fully involved, and he meant what he said. “Come inside. If you stay there much longer, you’re going to look like a short snowman the twins built in front of the door.”
“If this is the only place you’ll listen to me, I don’t mind,” he insisted and bent his knees, prepared to drop onto them again.
“Yes, you do. Besides, we already have one ghost. Fergus doesn’t need you for company in the netherworld.”
Ian straightened and brushed the snow from his shoulders and out of his hair. “Thank you.”
Relief eased a weight she hadn’t realized she was carrying when he followed her inside and closed the door. “If you’ll lay a fire in the library, I’ll make tea and we can talk.” Tea would ease the chill in both of them.
“Whisky?”
“You know where it is.” And a wee dram, as the Scots said, would warm them, too, and maybe melt some of the ice that had formed between them today.
By the time she got the tea ready, she had regained her equilibrium. Ian had a cheerful blaze going in the library hearth and two short drams of whisky on the side table. To her surprise, Fergus stretched his translucent length across the hearthstones in front of the fire. Ian shrugged when she glanced his way and gave her a slight shake of his head. So he hadn’t summoned the hound—if he could. Did Fergus know what they were going to discuss? What was at stake for both of them? All of them, she amended. The twins, too. Even Fergus, she supposed. He’d waited a long, long time for a laird to return to Cairn Dubh. Maybe Ian wasn’t the laird he knew, who’d prized Fergus enough to have that painting done, and who’d left him behind to guard his keep. But Fergus didn’t seem to mind.
She set the tea tray on the whisky table and poured, doing her level best to ignore the ghostly presence. She was pleased to see her hands didn’t shake. She wouldn’t say she was accustomed to Fergus, but after Halloween night, she’d accepted him. He’d alerted them, held the robber at bay, and protected the twins until she and Ian could get to them. She wondered if one could be grateful to a ghost. And would the ghost sense it?
She took a seat on the opposite end of the couch from Ian. They sipped their tea silently. Fergus appeared to be asleep in front of the fire. Did ghosts sleep? There was so much she didn’t know. About everything. Maybe she should go where things were familiar.
“Perhaps it would be best if the twins and I went back to California.”
Ian sloshed some tea over the back of his hand and swore.
Fergus opened one eye, then stood and took a step toward Ian.
Lara held her breath. What would Fergus do?
“I’m all right, laddie,” Ian assured the ghost, setting his mug aside and wiping the back of his hand with the other, then pursing his lips and blowing across it to cool it.
Fergus sat, watching Ian for a moment as if making sure he was really okay, then returned to the hearth and stretched out.
Lara shook her head. The ghost had shown concern for its laird? What next? She couldn’t believe she could be so calm about his presence, much less that he would interact with one of them. But then, Ian was the laird he’d waited for all these years.
“Why?” Ian asked.
His question pulled her attention back to him. For
a crazy moment, she thought he was still speaking to Fergus and wondered how the ghost would reply. She struggled to recall what she’d said to elicit his question. Oh yes, going back to California. Ian pursed his lips and blew across the back of his hand again while she’d ruminated, and she recalled the last time those lips had been on her. She loved Ian’s kiss, his touch. He’d awakened feelings she’d thought gone forever with Angus. But loving Ian would be complicated. She nodded at the apparition on the hearthstones. “Him, for one. I’ll sell Cairn Dubh to you.”
“You know I can’t afford it, or I would have bought it before now.” Ian’s tone was dry as dust.
She realized she’d just forced him to admit something no man wanted to admit. “Then I’ll give it to you. The gold we found should be more than enough to let you keep it.”
Ian went so still she feared Fergus would react as if he was in danger. Fergus did raise his head and stare at Ian, then her, then back at Ian, but he settled down again.
Lara released a breath.
So did Ian. “You can’t afford to do that. And the gold belongs in a museum. Or a trust. Or something…I still can’t afford the taxes and upkeep. My business is successful, but not to that level.” So much for the vaunted male ego.
His honesty cheered her. Painful though it had been, they’d had a breakthrough at his office. Despite their defensiveness, walls had come down between them. They’d both admitted their feelings for the other, though Ian had done his best to shield her from his. To make her think he didn’t care. Which, once she thought about it, told her he did care, a lot. In his office, at that point, she hadn’t been able to deal with the rawness of the wound he’d inflicted on her, or the extent of the lie he’d been living the whole time he’d been with her. She’d walked out, and she regretted doing that. But she’d had time to calm down and think about everything Ian told her, and how he’d said it. She just wasn’t quite ready to let him know yet.
“So if the twins and I go back to California, you’d really come with us? Give up everything you have here? Your business? Your friends and family? Cairn Dubh and its ghost?” She shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”
“’Twould no’ be an easy thing to do, but I would. Ye mean too much to me, Lara. Nothing here has ever made me as happy as being with ye and the twins.”
His thickened accent told her he was feeling the strain—and letting her know it. She owed him the same courtesy he’d finally shown her—her honesty for his.
“I don’t want to go back to California,” she admitted. After setting her mug aside, she reached for the whisky and handed a glass to Ian. “I don’t want to give up Cairn Dubh to anyone but you.”
Ian watched her like a cornered hound, wary and yet, at the same time hopeful. “I hear a ‘but’ coming…”
Lara sipped the spirit, swallowed, and coughed. Ian waited while she got her heart and her throat under control. It was time to lay her cards on the table, “No, you don’t. I won’t give Cairn Dubh to anyone else. I don’t want to lose you, Ian. I want you here, with me. In any way you can accept.”
Under his furrowed brow, Ian’s eyes were wide. “I want that, too.”
“You know you get more than me in the deal.”
“I ken it. I love the twins.”
He loved the twins, but he’d never told her he loved her until today.
“I love ye, too. I want to spend all of my life with ye, Lara, but only if you wish to. I won’t have you think I’m trying to take anything from you. I’m not. I’ll sign anything ye wish, give up any claim, past or future.” He set his glass aside and leaned toward her, held out his hand, then pulled it back and clenched it, as if he’d thought better of reaching for her. “There’s so much I want to give you. And the twins. I can’t compete with your wealth, but I can—I do—love all of you.”
“They’ll be teenagers in a few years,” she warned him.
“We’ll deal with them…together.”
“You’ve already got them under your spell.”
“What about their mother? Is she under my spell, as well?”
Lara sighed and gave him the first smile she’d managed since they’d argued in his office. “Yes. I am.”
Ian got off the couch, knelt before her, and took her hands in his.
“You’ve really got to stop doing that,” she told him with a nervous laugh.
“I love you, Lara. What can I say or do to make you believe me? I want to wake up with you each morning and go to bed with you each night. I want to help you raise the twins. I want to be a father to them. I ken I canna replace Angus, but I want to be the best father I can for them.”
“You’re a brave man, Ian Paterson…or should I say Macaulay?”
“Paterson will do,” he told her and lifted her hands to his mouth. He dropped kisses on the back, making fire race up her arms to her heart. “Will ye have me, lass? Anyway ye wish.”
His dark hair gleamed ruddy in the firelight. Over his shoulder, Lara caught Fergus watching them with wide, dark eyes. Ian had protected the twins. She couldn’t ask for more proof he cared about them—even loved them. He’d faced a robber and a ghost, all at once. He’d be a good father to them, and to any other children they might have.
She met Ian’s soulful gaze. In this light, his eyes were as dark as Fergus’s, wide with anxiety…and hope. He offered her a future she never would have anticipated when she and Angus moved here. Oh, Angus, if only you could know I’m not alone anymore…and that we’re loved. Her glance strayed to Fergus for a moment. And protected. You just wouldn’t believe how. She lifted a hand to Ian’s cheek and trailed her fingers down it, then smiled as he caught her hand and kissed her fingertips, never taking his gaze from hers. She was ready for the future and everything it would bring.
“Marry me, Ian. I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“Ach, Lara, do ye mean it?” he murmured, eyes blazing. Then he leaned forward to claim her mouth in a soul-searing kiss. “I will,” he finally answered. “I can’t imagine my life without ye in it.”
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him off his knees and onto the couch, needing to feel his heat, his weight, his desire, with her entire body. Ian obliged, stretching out on top of her and kissing his way down her throat.
“Wait!” she called and glanced toward the fireplace, where Fergus was now standing.
Ian took her meaning. “Back to yer byre with ye, laddie. This is just between my lady and me.”
Fergus disappeared.
“That’s a neat trick,” Lara observed, her voice breathy with need. “Now we’re alone, my laird…”
“Aye, my lady. Aye!”
Epilogue
When she looked through the entrance to Cairn Dubh’s renovated, but as yet unfurnished great hall in the old wing, Lara gasped. She’d never imagined it so full of people.
Ian had worked steadily to put in plumbing and power, and to finish the areas visitors would see on their way in, including the ground floor hallway and powder room, the main stairs and the first floor powder room and hallway leading to this grand space. He’d also finished a new master suite on the upper floor. Lara had enjoyed shopping to furnish it. The furniture had arrived last week, and the new curtains had been hung just yesterday.
Through the great hall’s sparkling newly installed windows, she could see brilliant sunshine and the bright green of springtime leaves bursting from the trees, in contrast against the blue sky. He’d found an artist who could copy and extend an old wallpaper pattern she adored, so while the walls were plain white, the ceiling glinted with medieval illuminations of fanciful beasts, including the occasional deerhound, and colorful flowers picked out in gilt. Deep moldings, painted white and accented with gilt, adorned the tops of the walls and the medallions above the crystal chandeliers. They were lit and the bulbs added to the sunlight passing through them, painting rainbows on the walls. She couldn’t imagine a more colorful and magical scene.
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br /> Though the registrar would officiate today, this would by no means be the same as the small ceremony she’d attended with Ian for Blane and Cassie. More of their friends, and hundreds of people she’d yet to meet, stood to either side of the room. They formed a wide center aisle she would traverse to reach Ian, who stood at the opposite end, next to the registrar, in full, resplendent, Highland dress—deep red plaid kilt, white-furred sporan decorating the front, sghian dubh tucked in his boot, and all. Blane stood on his other side, flanked by Alex, who looked quite uncomfortably Scottish in his specially made wedding kilt in the blue MacLaren tartan.
Amy and Caitlin waited opposite the registrar, ready to stand with her. Both wore frilly white blouses. Caitlin wore a long plaid skirt matching her cousin’s tartan, and Amy wore a long plaid skirt matching her brother’s kilt.
Lara couldn’t help noticing they gave the room a subtle but fitting touch of red, white, and blue.
Then Fergus moved out from behind Ian and sat in front of him, as if challenging her approach.
Lara’s belly twisted, making her swallow. Could anyone see him? Ian hadn’t flinched and the crowd stayed calm, so Fergus must have made himself visible only to her, much as he had to the twins after Ian first opened this wing. From somewhere off to her side, a harp started playing the tune she’d chosen for her entrance. It gave her the courage to take the first step. She nearly stumbled when Fergus stood and moved to stand next to Alex, who also seemed unaware of his presence, at the end of the row of males flanking Ian. She took that to mean all this was okay with their friendly ghost. He’d merely been making sure she saw him. She gave him a quick nod of acknowledgement, then turned her attention to keeping her feet under her and her focus on Ian.
His smile drew her like the sight of Fergus drew her twins. As she neared the front of the hall, someone reached out a hand. Becky! Next to her, Cassie wore the blue scarf that had been Lara’s wedding gift to her. Lara squeezed her hand and kept going. She wondered what Ian would think when he noticed the length of ancient Macaulay plaid Caitlin had found in a chest in the second floor’s hidden room and draped across Lara’s torso. She’d pinned it at the shoulder with a clasp shaped like a cluster of berries. Lara just hoped the fabric would hold together long enough to get through the ceremony.