Scotland to the Max

by Grace Burrowes

  Max nose-rubbed with Henry, who chortled and blew raspberries.

  “He slept through the night last night.”

  “Well done, young Henry. See that you make a habit of it.”

  “I woke in a panic and at first thought I was dreaming the sun had risen, because I hadn’t given Henry his three a.m. bottle.”

  Max gently lowered Henry to the playpen. “You are a good mom, Jeannie Cromarty. Henry is lucky to be your son.”

  Those words, so quietly offered, landed with the force of a blow to the heart. “Not everybody thinks so.”

  Max gave the fish mobile a push. “Millicent thinks if she gets her mitts on Henry, then Harry might come around more often. Harry ought to be ashamed of himself twice over for neglecting both his mother and his son, but that is not your problem. If I haven’t said it before, I’m saying it now: You are rescuing this project and me, Jeannie. Thank you.”

  He brushed a hand over Henry’s head, then sauntered out the door.

  “I’m going to cry,” Jeannie said to nobody in particular. She was rummaging in her desk drawers—no organizational skills evident there—for a tissue when Hugh came in.

  “Wee Henry, how’s life at the throbbing heart of all meaningful progress toward Scotland’s glorious future?” Hugh twirled a sprig of lavender under the baby’s nose, and a game of grab-and-snatch ensued. “Are you looking down in the mouth over our fearless project manager, Jeannie love?”

  “Max is not fearless.” But he was honorable. Too honorable. “Have you ever lost your heart to somebody impossible, Hugh?”

  His smile was crooked, his gaze bleak. “Every other week or so.”

  “Henry likes Max.”

  Hugh offered her a one-armed hug. “We all like Max, despite our best efforts to the contrary. For a Yank, he’s all right. Henry, you’re not to tell him I said so.”

  Hugh helped himself to a handful of fish-shaped crackers from the box on Jeannie’s desk and was out the door, his black work kilt swinging around his knees.

  Hugh was sweet, drop-dead gorgeous, a fine dancer, and charming, but he wasn’t Max.

  “You know what the worst part is?” Jeannie asked as Henry tried to pull himself up on the playpen’s netting. “Max would make a good dad. He’d make a wonderful dad, and when I’m around him, I feel like a good mom.”

  Also lonely, hopeless, and sexually frustrated, but a good mom.

  “Has Jeannie stolen your laptop?” Hugh asked.

  Did he have to look so damned delectable lounging in the doorway to the solar? Hugh used his toolbelt as a sporran, the leather riding low on his hips. The result was so casually sexy that Fergus wanted to punch something—or someone.

  “Jeannie and I keep redundant records. Maitland’s orders.”

  Hugh sidled into the room. He never moved quickly, and yet, his hands were seldom idle. He picked up a wad of paper Fergus had tossed in the direction of the trash barrel and lobbed it over his shoulder.

  Fergus took a folder to the filing cabinet rather than remain at his desk.

  “Now that you’ve been freed from the tyranny of your spreadsheets,” Hugh asked, “why don’t you join us on the shinty pitch of a Saturday?”

  “Because I don’t have a death wish.” Or a wish to spend hours pretending all that physical contact was in the name of one of the stupidest sports ever devised by frustrated man.

  “You’re not that slow,” Hugh said. “And you’re fairly accurate, considering you’re getting on in years. Will you at least come to the ceilidh this Friday?”

  “You’re in my light.”

  “I’ll take that for a no. When is the ordination?” Another wadded-up piece of paper went into the trash. “For surely I’m in the presence of a man contemplating holy orders. You don’t drink with the men anymore. You don’t bash heads on the shinty pitch. I haven’t seen you stand up for a dance in weeks. You must be composing sermons or praying for the souls of the damned.”

  “I’m the site manager,” Fergus said, shoving the file into the front of the drawer, “which means I’m kept busy. Maitland likes a safe, tidy, well-organized workplace, and the lot of slobs and layabouts we have on the payroll wouldn’t know a safety regulation if it pissed in their beer.”

  The Brodie Castle project had one of the finest rosters of talent Fergus had ever had the pleasure to supervise. The crews thrived on challenges, cooperated with the natural genius of talented professionals, and took pride in their work without being arrogant.

  “That Tina has us all prancing around in hard hats,” Hugh said, “taking our breaks, putting up our tools. I feel like I’m back at summer camp, though we at least don’t have to sing smarmy songs for our new safety officer.”

  Instead, Fergus was baying at the moon. He resumed his seat at the desk for the sake of his dignity, because Hugh in a serious mood was that irresistible.

  “When you are done handling every object on my desk, wasting your entire break, and otherwise entertaining yourself at my expense, do you suppose you might be on your merry way?”

  Hugh set down the stapler. “You’re in a foul humor, Fergus. Is your nose out of joint because Jeannie is having to sort out the shitstorm you made of the paperwork?”

  What the hell? “What would you know about it?”

  “I know she has the time sheets sitting on her desk, plain as day. I know she’s comparing purchase orders and deliveries. I know you finally have the time to get off your arse and see how the work’s coming for the glaziers, welders, masons, and electricians, but you never bother to chat up the carpenters. Why is that, Fergus?”

  Because the sight of you makes my hands itch. “Get out of my office, Hugh. You have work to do.”

  “If you have a problem with me, Fergus, then tell me. I consider you a friend, not simply the horse’s arse that struts around this site looking for slackers and lost hammers.”

  Hugh was leaning over the desk, his blue eyes glaring daggers at Fergus. Good God, the man was in a bro-pout, while Fergus had reached the limit of his self-restraint.

  “I said get out.” Fergus rose and got a hand around the back of Hugh’s neck, intent on shaking sense into him—or starting a proper brawl. Anything to avoid the questions in Hugh’s eyes.

  Hugh, though, simply stood still, eyes closed, neck arched into Fergus’s touch. His posture was that of a man in pain, though Fergus hadn’t grabbed him hard.

  “Did I hurt you?” Fergus asked.

  Hugh opened his eyes and heaved out a breath. “A delicate flower such as yourself would have to try much harder than that to put a mark on me, Fergus MacFarland.” He glanced around the room, at the door, and then at Fergus before stepping back. “But I ache, man. You touch me, and I ache.”

  The words were so unexpected, had they not been matched with a miserable, searching gaze, Fergus would have doubted his ears.

  Hugh propped his hip on the desk and took out his tape measure. “Say something. Drop me over the parapets. Laugh. Give me an awkward pat, tell me we’ll always be friends, and then never look me in the eye again. I know how it’s done, Fergus.”

  He drew out the metal tape, then squeezed the release so it snapped back into the case. Did it again, while Fergus’s world acquired new and brighter dimensions.

  He came around the desk so he stood in Hugh’s line of sight. “You ache… for me?”

  “No accounting for taste, is there?”

  The bravado in Hugh’s smile was heartrending. Fergus closed the door and stood before it. “Clearly, there is no accounting for taste, because I ache for you too.”

  The tape measure hit the floor. Hugh stared at it. “Say that again, please.”

  “I ache for you too, Hugh. Have for years.” Fergus kept his distance, because the moment was too lovely to be rushed.

  “So why are you standing clear over there by the door? Am I to sweep you off your wee feet?”

  His smile said he was contemplating exactly that.

  “Hugh, me lad, once
I get my hands on you, it will be some time before I turn you loose.”

  Hugh pushed away from the desk and swaggered—that was the word—across the room. “Feeling’s mutual. What are you going to do about it?”

  God, he smelled good. Sawdust, sweat, soap, and hope. “I’m going to lock the door.”

  Avoiding Jeannie in the Hall had resulted in a sort of torture for Max. He’d observed her closely enough to learn her routine—hers and Henry’s—and kept sufficient distance that their paths seldom crossed.

  His present strategy for avoiding her was to lurk in the portrait gallery, a room more than a hundred feet long. Max told anybody who asked that he was learning Brodie family history to incorporate into the final decoration scheme, but in fact, he was allowing Jeannie the run of the main kitchens.

  For two weeks, Max had impersonated a project manager for whom all was going well, and in fact, the work was gaining momentum. He’d neglected to take the long Scottish summer days into account when scheduling, and the men often arrived early and left late without recording every hour on their time sheets.

  They well knew that what summer gave with one hand, winter took with the other, as Dinty had said.

  Max wandered down the row of smiling, attractive Brodies. The family had had some rotten luck—one earl had died young as a result of a bad fall while hillwalking. Another had been killed in the trenches of World War I. For the most part, though, the Brodie family had thrived.

  “Good genes,” Max said to the third earl. He was a red-haired Victorian gent who’d shipped high-grade Aberdeen bulls all over the world and enhanced the fortunes of the next three generations of Brodies.

  “If this project goes well, then I can at least achieve security for Maura.”

  The earl seemed to smile upon that aspiration, but smiling was easy for him. He hadn’t had to put up with a pack of squirrelly investors whom Max suspected were up to no good. Pete Sutherland in particular had an unerring instinct for sticking his oar in at the worst moment, and Connor Maguire was a troubling unknown.

  Max’s phone chimed, a reminder that the kitchen was likely free of all lovely, tempting, off-limits Scottish women and their adorable offspring. He bid the various earls, countesses, barons, and their progeny farewell, took the stairs down to the ballroom, and made his way to the kitchen.

  “Timing is everything,” he muttered, for there sat Jeannie at the table, Henry parked in his booster seat with something fruity smeared around his mouth.

  “Hello, Max. We’re sporting our blueberry buckle facial mask tonight. The turkey compote was a great favorite, with only half the jar ending up in Henry’s hair.”

  Henry waved a sticky fist and brought it down on the table, like a Viking at his mead.

  “What did you have for dinner, Jeannie? I don’t see any turkey compote in your hair.”

  Beautiful hair, so soft and shiny Max had dreams about freeing it from whatever ponytail or braid Jeannie trussed it up in.

  “I hadn’t got that far yet. Henry took a late nap, and now our schedule is all at sixes and sevens.”

  “Is the project office too busy for him? We can set you up a space down here.” Please say yes. Please say you’d prefer to be where I can’t make fifty excuses a day to be in the same room with you.

  “Don’t be silly.” She did that thing parents did, running the spoon around the baby’s mouth to collect another load of food. “If I were down here all day, I’d spend most of my time running up the hill to check a delivery, grab a signature, or heckle one of the crew for a time sheet.”

  Henry opened his mouth, a hungry little Viking, and the blueberry whatever disappeared down his maw.

  “God made cell phones,” Max said, opening the fridge. “How about a burger and side salad? We don’t have buns, but there’s plenty of bread.”

  I did not just invite Jeannie Cromarty to share the evening meal with me. Henry was on hand to chaperone, some comfort.

  “You’d cook for me?”

  “Yes. You are turning the Brodie Castle project around so it faces in the right direction. If we’d tried to use those damned cinder blocks in place of quarried granite, the ghost of Auld Michael would have haunted me for the rest of my days.”

  “Supposedly, it’s Countess Brenna who has the slight temper. A burger sounds fortifying.” She used a damp cloth to clean the food off Henry’s face, an ordeal he protested with a squawk and a glower.

  “Am I working you too hard, Jeannie? I can hire you an assistant, but sometimes, teaching the understudy the job is just another inefficiency. How do you like your meat?”

  “Medium-well done. Mrs. Hamilton made a chocolate mousse. If you hadn’t happened along, that might have sufficed for my meal.”

  Mrs. Hamilton’s mother was one of the card-playing regulars down at the Earl’s Pint. Max had been introduced, but Dinty had warned him not to sit with the ladies. They regarded every pair of fresh ears as desperately in need of a complete recitation of Brodie family history.

  Max had learned to cook because Maura’s diet mattered. Not only did she need to watch her weight, she also needed regular good food to keep mood swings, headaches, junk-food binges, and acne from plaguing her.

  Because what plagued Maura very soon plagued everybody around her.

  Jeannie approached the sink where Max was running cold water over leaves of romaine. “You get a particular look in your eye when you’re thinking of home. Is your sister managing?”

  Max shut off the water. “No, actually. She’s being difficult. I’ve assured her every time we talk that I’ll be home this weekend, that she’ll have a whole day with me, at least, and I will tell her all about Scotland. She has become argumentative, secretive, and difficult. The staff warned me we’d face a difficult transition until Maura trusts that I haven’t abandoned her.”

  Jeannie took the lettuce and gave it a good shake. She stood close enough that Max could detect the lemongrass scent of her shampoo, which inspired him to breathe through his nose like a fool in love.

  “Some problems simply take time.” Jeannie laid the wet lettuce on a towel and folded the cloth over it. “You’re also worrying about your investors, aren’t you?”

  Max wasn’t going to do this. Wasn’t going to turn shared use of an enormous country house into an excuse to domesticate with Jeannie. But having made the offer to share dinner—where was the harm in that?—reason didn’t seem to be reasserting itself now.

  Couples chatted about their day, so did people who worked together.

  “I’m not worried about the investors, per se. They signed an employment contract with me that I more or less wrote. The trapdoors are closed, the cover-your-ass—assets—language on my side is in place. I wrote in safeguards that will stop any one investor from railroading me off the project. Where’s the—?”

  He found a bowl large enough to accommodate a pound of ground beef. Henry sat in his booster seat, playing with Bear-Bear, a teething cracker, and some dry cereal.

  “What sort of safeguards?”

  “Only the full board can let me go, by a proper vote, at a meeting on the record. If I’m let go for anything other than a proven cause, I get a sizable buyout. The usual.” He sprinkled salt, pepper, and seasoning over the meat, tossed in a raw egg, and mixed the result with both hands.

  Jeannie watched him, while Max tried not to watch her.

  “You do that with your hands?”

  “Faster. My hands are clean. Why?”

  “No reason.” She took to staring at the contents of the fridge, which she’d doubtless seen many times before. “Shall I toast the bread?”

  The toaster was on the opposite counter. “Sure, why not?” He started the meat cooking and laid a couple of place settings on the table, anything to keep moving someplace Jeannie was not.

  “Wine?” she asked, peering into the pantry, another landscape with which she was familiar.

  “Wah,” Henry replied, his cadence so conversational both adults stared
at him.

  “He’ll be yammering away any day now,” Max said. I hope I get to hear him.

  “He hears men’s voices all day long up at the castle. I think he likes that. I can’t drink a whole bottle by myself, so I’ll pass on the wine if you’re not interested.”

  Max could have guzzled a bottle of wine easily. “No wine for me.”

  Jeannie hummed as she made the salad, Henry tossed cereal in various directions, the meat sizzled, and Max’s heart broke. The only element of domestic bliss missing was the part where Max hugged Jeannie hello, Jeannie gave his butt a soft pat, and Max returned the gesture when she was busy tossing the salad.

  A future, in other words. A tacit expectation that they’d snuggle together when Henry went to sleep.

  “Are you making any progress with your site plan?” Jeannie set the bowl of salad on the table.

  “No, I am not, unless discarding options counts. I can link the Hall and castle with a tram or a covered escalator, but both are unsightly and expensive.”

  “What about an elevator? The castle sits higher than the Hall, and an elevator would seem to be the easiest solution. The Hall is all but built into the side of the hill, while the castle has cellars and dungeons that drop several floors below the inner bailey.”

  The burgers were done. Max got down plates and served up the meat, adding a sliced tomato for eye appeal—also because lycopene was good nutrition.

  “Dropping a pair of elevator shafts would mean blasting, and given the age of the castle, blasting beneath its foundation is taking an enormous risk.”

  “Have you found the siege well?” Jeannie asked, putting a little more cereal in front of Henry.

  “What’s a siege well?”

  “Back in the day, if you couldn’t storm a castle, catapult boulders through its walls, or sneak a sleeping potion into the well, then you laid a siege. Parked your whole army outside the walls and waited for the castle inhabitants to run out of food. Somewhere in the bottom-most dungeon, there will be a well that never ran dry, because a castle can go without food for weeks, but a lack of water would break the siege in a matter of days. What are you drinking?”