Scotland to the Max

by Grace Burrowes

Ah, a smile. A small, but genuine smile. “Next month’s groceries,” she said. “Be off with you, then, and mind the traffic along the road.”

  “Save me one brownie.”

  Her smile blossomed into a grin, and Max took off up the drive at an easy jog. He was at the garage in less than half an hour, much of that time spent on the phone with Maura. Despite his “Yank accent,” he made the situation plain enough and was soon back at the cottage, trading tools with Ewan MacShane—a gangly teenage motorhead—and putting on not a donut, but an honest-to-Braveheart spare.

  “This one’s on me,” Max said, getting out his AmEx.

  Ewan was about six foot three, reed-thin, freckled, and red-haired. “Keep your money, Yank.” He sounded like the wrath of the Highlands, when five minutes earlier he’d been merrily cursing the damned Germans who overengineer “every feckin’ ting.”

  “Have I just committed a typical American blunder?”

  Ewan wiped his hands on a rag. “Nah. Feckin’ Harry MacDonald blundered. Left a good woman with a crap set of tires. What sort of rat-turd molly-balls weasel fart does that?”

  Jeannie’s tires were far from new, though they’d probably pass inspection. Harry MacDonald was apparently flunking on all counts. This pleased Max, for reasons he didn’t examine.

  “Thanks for the help, then. Let’s get the spare and the tools put up.”

  “Jeannie would rather owe us than a stranger,” Ewan said. “The Cromartys have their pride.”

  “But if she owes you, then she’ll eventually find a way to repay you.”

  Ewan scratched his nose while he considered this, getting a streak of grease on his cheek. “Jeannie’s a first-rate cook. Has a way with sweets.”

  The way to an almost-grown-man’s heart…

  “Wait here.” Max went into the kitchen, found the brownies, set one aside, and brought the plate out to Ewan. “Payment in full.”

  Ewan took the cellophane-covered plate, turned it upside down, and used the cellophane to wrap up the batch. “With interest. You’re all right, Yank.”

  Not a single brownie would survive the two-mile journey back to the garage, which Max considered chocolate well spent. When Ewan’s Land Rover went bouncing back up the lane, Jeannie not only had four functional tires, she had an inflated spare as well.

  Max at first thought she might have gone for another ramble along the river, but he spotted her phone on the coffee table.

  Three missed calls from somebody named Millicent.

  He found Jeannie in the office, fast asleep, a quilt pulled over her, her worn running shoes beside the bed, socks draped over them. She’d doubtless assumed he’d prefer the master bedroom. The heel of one sock was going thin, the toe of the other had a hole.

  In sleep, she wasn’t as formidable—and she was deeply, entirely asleep. A novel with a cowboy on the cover—Luckiest Cowboy of All—was open faceup beside her pillow. This was not a catnap, but rather, much-needed slumber.

  Harry MacDonald had apparently worn out more than Jeannie’s tires.

  Max decided to give her another thirty minutes. He set the cowboy aside, took the ergonomic office chair, and brought the computer purring and glowing to life.

  Jeannie was warm and relaxed, which made her aware of how little true relaxation she’d had lately. On some level beneath conscious thought, she knew that this version of “I must get up” was less urgent than the usual varieties. She’d been dreaming of a cowboy named Jace who had looked suspiciously like Max Maitland.

  And that dream had been the farthest thing from a nightmare, but this was not the Prairie Rose Ranch.

  Mr. Maitland sat at the computer, the wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose making him look sexy, dammit. Smart and slightly rumpled, a man who spotted nesting ospreys and could solve a flat tire with common sense and a little effort.

  That effort had been beyond Jeannie. She’d longed to put in a good five miles along the river, but knew she hadn’t the energy. Instead, she’d left a message for Millicent—slight delay, see you before supper—and resigned herself to being humble and grateful for help when help was needed.

  She’d managed half a chapter of Jace and Carlene’s second chance romance and then awoken to find a man near her bed for the first time in months. Mr. Maitland was utterly, entirely focused on his work, tapping the keys with deft efficiency, moving a fancy mouse that he must have brought along in his carry-on.

  Jeannie inventoried her emotions for any hint of attraction to Max Maitland and found… some. A hint, a mere pilot light of interest, which was more than she’d felt for any male in the past year. Maitland was in Scotland to wreck the castle, in Uncle Donald’s words, which meant Jeannie’s path might cross his from time to time.

  She decided to be encouraged by that pilot light—not that she’d act on it—because surely, noticing that a man was attractive was a sign of returning normalcy? Though here she was, dozing away the afternoon ten feet from the computer, and Mr. Maitland seemed oblivious to her presence.

  Which was… fine.

  He glanced at his watch—who wore a watch these days?—and swiveled his chair to face the bed.

  “You’re awake.”

  “Barely. What time is it?” And where was her phone?

  “Going on four.”

  Jeannie was sitting on the edge of the bed, reaching for her socks in the next instant. “Is the car fixed?”

  “It cost you a batch of brownies, but yes, the car is fixed, and you have a trustworthy spare as well, compliments of Clan MacShane.”

  Jeannie yanked on a sock and heard a ripping sound. “Thank you, more than I can say.” She was gentler with the second sock, which already had a hole in the toe. “Have you seen my phone?”

  He tossed her the phone, but she wasn’t quick enough to catch it. “Somebody named Millicent is trying to get hold of you. I figured she could wait another thirty minutes.”

  Three messages was not good. “I left her a message telling her I’d be late. She hates it when I’m late.”

  “I suspect you’re late about twice a year. Tell her sorry, it won’t happen again, and chill the hell out. Tires go flat.” His tone was so, so… pragmatic.

  So ignorant. “You don’t understand. Millicent doesn’t understand.” Jeannie got her shoes on, folded up the quilt, and began rehearsing her groveling.

  A slow leak, could happen to anybody…

  The garage was busy…

  Band rehearsal…

  Millicent would have sympathy for none of it.

  Mr. Maitland trailed Jeannie down the steps and to the front door. “You’ll be back tomorrow at eight?”

  “I absolutely will,” Jeannie said. “I am charged by no less person than the Earl of Strathdee with getting you up to the castle, where you can start to wreak your havoc on the ancestral home.”

  “My magic.” He came out to the terrace with her, and it occurred to Jeannie he was walking her to her car. Harry had done that, for the first few dates. She suspected Max Maitland would do it for his wife even after thirty-five years of marriage.

  There were good men in the world. Jeannie knew this—her family included many good men—but beyond them, she hadn’t seen firsthand evidence of much masculine virtue. Perhaps she’d been too upset with Harry to allow herself to see it, because Harry had also seemed a fine fellow at first.

  “I’m sorry to dash off,” Jeannie said, “but I really must go. Thank you.” She went up on her toes and kissed Mr. Maitland’s cheek. Two years ago, anybody would have described her as affectionate. She offered him a quick buss as a gesture of hope that someday she might again be described that way.

  His smile was a little puzzled. “You’re welcome. See you tomorrow.” He opened the car door and stepped back.

  In her rearview mirror, Jeannie saw him as she drove off, a tall, good-looking man amid the lovely forest, making sure his hostess was safely on her way. She held off until she’d driven through the village, but then she reached for the ever-
present box of tissues and let a few tears fall.

  Max had already enjoyed his third cup of coffee on the front terrace when Jeannie’s black Audi puttered up the drive. The birds left their perches overhead, an enormous rabbit lolloped into the ferny undergrowth, and a squirrel that had been chittering nineteen to the dozen went silent.

  The Audi could use a tune-up, something Max had been too tired to notice the day before.

  Jeannie stepped out of the car and arranged her sunglasses as a sort of hairband. “Mr. Maitland, good morning.”

  “Morning.” Max’s body wasn’t sure it was morning, but the sun was up, therefore, morning it must be.

  “Has your luggage arrived?”

  “Not yet. Last night, I was told the suitcases had made it as far as London, and I’ll be contacted today regarding further attempts to deliver them. Shall we be on our way?”

  “Too much peace and quiet here for you?” Jeannie asked.

  Too much Beatrix Potter. “I’m anxious to see the castle.” Anxious to get to work turning it into a profitable venture.

  She opened the front door to the cottage, poked her head inside—Max had washed every dish he’d used and put it away—then pulled the door shut and locked it.

  “Did you sleep well?” she asked.

  “I was comatose.” Max pulled open the passenger’s side door, though in his American brain he’d been prepared to find the driver’s seat on that side of the car. A tiny waving fist stopped him.

  “Who is that?”

  In the Audi’s back seat, an infant occupied one of those impossible-to-get-your-kid-out-of, designed-by-NASA devices. Cute little guy with perfect baby mini-Chiclet teeth, a drooly smile, and big blue eyes.

  “That is wee Henry.”

  Four little words could convey love, pride, protectiveness… and resignation. “Your son.”

  “My pride and joy. Shall we be off?”

  Max set his backpack on the seat beside the baby and gave the kid a finger to grab. “Morning, Henry. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Buh.” Said with much kicking and bouncing.

  “Buh to you too. You’re the reason your mom had to abandon me here in the forest primeval yesterday, so behave yourself.”

  “Buh-buh-buh!”

  “It’s a guy thing,” Max said, taking the front seat and buckling in. “He who makes the manliest grunt wins. Will he fall asleep?”

  Jeannie started the car, then paused with her wrist draped over the wheel. She made a nice picture, sunglasses back on her nose, ready to take charge of the day.

  “He will nap, then he’ll be up all afternoon, and there’s no telling whether that means he’ll be up all night, or he’ll sleep for twelve straight hours. Henry is not a predictable child. Have you children of your own?”

  Ouch. “I have not been so blessed.”

  She gave him an odd, pensive look, then turned the car around and navigated the lane.

  The baby explained a few things—Jeannie’s fatigue, her lack of funds, that subtle sense of an organized woman coming slightly unraveled.

  “So where in the hell is Harry MacDonald, if that’s his only begotten son in the back seat too?”

  Henry blew a raspberry.

  “Please watch your language around Henry. If his first word is something vile, my cousins will never let me live it down.”

  Max thought that’s what cousins were for, not that he had any. “My apologies. Where in the Sam Hill is the kid’s father?”

  They turned onto the two-lane road, then passed the odd hump of earth in the pasture that was probably the fairy mound.

  “I will kill whichever gossiping MacShane made you privy to my business,” Jeannie said. “Henry’s father and I encountered an irretrievable breakdown of our marriage.”

  The breakdown had doubtless started right about the time Henry had become more than a gleam in his daddy’s eye. Jeannie’s carefully matter-of-fact tone suggested the breakdown was extending into the parenting phase of the festivities.

  “Henry’s father is an idiot.”

  They tooled through the village, then had to slow to a crawl as a herd of noisy sheep poured across the road. An old guy in wellies, complete with a deerstalker hat, a shepherd’s crook, and a pair of border collies, manned the gates.

  “You call Harry an idiot,” Jeannie said, picking up speed again. “What about the woman who married him, tried to start a family with him, and then didn’t contest the divorce when he took off?”

  “That woman is smart enough to give up on a doomed project. Tell me about the castle.”

  Max had already read everything written about the Brodie family seat. He’d seen more pictures, drawings, graphs, and charts regarding the castle than he’d seen online advertisements offering to cure erectile dysfunction, but he wanted to change the subject. Jeannie’s situation was her business, and he should not have been asking nosy questions.

  Lest she start asking nosy questions that could lead nowhere.

  She rattled off dates relevant to the castle’s history—mostly battles—and names all starting with “Mac,” unless the name was Brodie or Logan. The land they traveled through rolled with agricultural confidence right up to a line of high, craggy hills to the northwest.

  “That’s the Highland Line?” Max said.

  “The very one.”

  Max liked geology, and Scotland was the birthplace of the modern science of geology. Appropriate, because some of the oldest rocks on earth had been found in Scotland. Rocks were still very much in evidence. Every village and widening in the cow path they drove through consisted of stone houses of one sort or another. Stone walls separated pastures, stone bridges crossed the numerous rivers and streams. No wonder the Romans had been tantalized by this place.

  “Henry’s asleep,” Max said after Jeannie had spent twenty minutes regaling him with the castle legends in which the first earl, “Auld Michael,” and his lady, Brenna, figured prominently.

  “And I’ve nearly put you to sleep again. Aren’t you interested in love stories from long ago, Mr. Maitland?”

  “Seems to me, a guy coming home from ten years at war, raising seven children with the woman who waited for him, and turning his castle into the center of a livestock-exporting business is more family history than a fairy tale.”

  Though happy family history, if the ten years of war and separation were conveniently ignored.

  “If you’re to make a go of your venture, you’d better be able to present that story as something more than simple history. The old people say Michael and Brenna can still be seen on soft nights, kissing and canoodling on the parapets.”

  Oh, fer the love of baby bunnies. “You think that sort of horse… horsepucky will bring people to the castle?”

  “The castle has been a wedding destination throughout its history. I was married there.”

  And look how that turned out. “Business conferences are a lot less hassle than weddings. All the businesspeople want is good coffee, reliable internet, and functional tech. None of this bride’s retiring room, rose petals on the dance floor, or Uncle Bob getting tipsy.”

  Jeannie gave him a look that Maura sometimes turned on him: Men. Or perhaps that look was unique to Max, but it apparently translated internationally.

  The terrain shifted, becoming mountainous, and the road narrowed and twisted accordingly. Henry woke up and began to fuss.

  “He’ll settle in a minute,” Jeannie said.

  He did not settle. His fussing became crying, then wailing.

  “That contraption he’s sitting in might be pinching him,” Max said.

  “I paid a fortune for that contraption. It’s not pinching him. He’ll settle.”

  He did not settle. His little face turned bright red, tears coursed down his cheeks, and Max went nuts.

  “Pull over,” he said. “Please.”

  “And then he won’t settle,” Jeannie retorted.

  “He’s not settling. If he’s half as stubborn as his mothe
r, he won’t settle until he’s conquered Scotland for the he—sheer cussedness of it.”

  The nearly raised voices inspired Henry to howling. Jeannie found a lay-by to pull into—Scottish roads were too damned quaint by half—and Max got out and opened the back door.

  “What in tarnation is all this noise about?”

  The baby paused, his expression putting Max in mind of a disgruntled cat.

  “Your poor mama needs to concentrate on her driving, and I need to form a positive first impression of Scotland. You are not helping.”

  Henry wiggled and fussed. Max knew that wiggle, knew that fuss. He’d seen it too many times not to recall what it meant.

  “You have a diaper bag?” he asked Jeannie.

  “Just because I drove around with a flat spare for a few days… Of course I have a diaper bag.”

  From the back of the car, Jeannie retrieved a voluminous robin’s-egg blue shoulder bag sewn in some sort of nonstick fabric that would likely still be the same color a million years after its internment in a dump.

  “You intend to change my son’s diaper?”

  “I intend to arrive at Brodie Castle with my hearing intact. You think I can’t change a diaper?”

  She passed over the diaper bag. “Best of luck. He kicks.”

  Max fished out the necessities, used his jacket to protect Henry from the car hood, changed the wet diaper, and handed Jeannie her kid.

  “Make sure I didn’t tape his loincloth on too tight.”

  “You didn’t,” she said, kissing the now smiling baby’s cheek. “I changed him right before I picked you up.”

  Max shrugged into his jacket and stuffed the supplies back into the bag. Jeannie had even packed resealable plastic bags for dirty baby wipes.

  “I’m told he’s not predictable.”

  “Neither are you.” Jeannie gave the baby another kiss, and Max’s insides did a funny hitch.

  He put the diaper bag away and closed the back hatch. “He probably didn’t mind his wet diaper so much as he knows that Mom doesn’t typically drive around with strange guys. He was putting me through my paces.”

  Jeannie’s smile was sweet and genuine, not the professionally gracious smile she’d turned on Max before, not the slightly ironic version she’d served him with lunch.