Almost Jamie (The Jet City Kilt Series) (Volume 1)

by Gina Robinson

  Cary motioned us to follow him. I signaled the guys. They jumped up in unison. Somehow we made our way through the disappointed women to the private room.

  Cary asked Connor for a selfie and grabbed Mark to be in it. Connor graciously obliged them.

  "We're going to print it and hang it over the bar to draw the ladies in," Mark said.

  "Well then, you'll need my autograph to go with it, aye?" Connor grabbed half a dozen cardboard coasters with the distillery's logo on them and signed them with a flourish. "You know, tomorrow at Comicon my signature is worth eighty dollars. And you have to have already scheduled an appointment for it. I'm sold out, you see." He winked at them. "Use the extras here however you like. For promotion or to raise a little extra cash for yourselves."

  Mark and Cary were beside themselves.

  "Get us your finest scotch," Connor told them. "And another round of kilt lifters for my new mates. Don't forget my twin here. Put it on my tab." He grinned as we took a seat around the private table.

  I hesitated as I prepared to sit. The pleats in the back of my kilt wouldn't behave. I didn't want to sit my bare ass on the cold chair.

  "How the hell do women sit in skirts?" I put my hands on the pleats on my butt and held them in place while I sat like I was a delicate lady.

  "You'd make a terrible drag queen," Dylan said.

  "And a butt-ugly lady." Jeremy shook his head.

  "Look how dainty he is, boys," Cam said. "Are you going to sit like a lady, too, Austin, dear? Keep your legs together. We don't want to give the ladies ideas." He gasped and, eyes wide, covered his mouth with his hand.

  Jeremy intercepted me as I got out of my chair to take a playful swing at Cam.

  Connor laughed. "Ladylike! That's rich, man. But hell no. A kilt isna a skirt. You sit like a man in it. Watch. I'll show you how it's done."

  He scooted back from the table, stood, and sat again, looking manly in the fullest as he sat. He fell into the chair with his back pleats behaving. He leaned back in the chair and spread his legs wide, as confidently and proudly as if he was wearing jeans, with the extra fabric of the kilt falling between his legs covering the family jewels.

  "Your posture is the same as if you're wearing pants. Nothing changes. No dainty legs together. Let the fabric of the kilt do its job, man." He gestured to me to give it a try.

  After several attempts, and much mocking from my friends, I got the hang of it.

  The noise from the bar drifted in, but it was quiet enough to hear conversation, even with a game playing on the large TV hanging overhead.

  Connor turned to me. "Thanks for saving me. I can't go anywhere without attracting attention. Curse of the trade." He laughed. "It probably wasn't a good idea to tweet I was out drinking here in Seattle. Not a picture, certainly. They found me out. My lady fans are smart. And conniving. They sniff me out everywhere I go. I've often said the government should hire them as spies."

  I laughed. "I'm sure Mark and Cary thank you. They've been trying to get women into this place since they opened. Women bring in the men. The men bring in the money."

  "Well, glad I could help, then," he said. "They seem like nice fellows." He nodded toward the guys. "Your mates have been telling me all about your dating app. And your plans to play Jamie at Comicon tomorrow." He put on a stern, serious look. "If I may say, your Scottish accent is terrible."

  The guys elbowed each other.

  I laughed. "That's because it's American."

  "Aye, well. It won't do for the Sinclair." He nodded. "The ladies are very particular and protective of Jamie. You don't mess with your portrayal of him. Not even me. I live in fear of getting it wrong. Fortunately for you, I'm a highly trained acting professional."

  He nodded and knitted his brow, but beneath he bubbled with mirth. "I've been coached by some of the best dialect coaches in the business. I played an American once. Englishmen many times. And even an Aussie and an Irishman. Not a hint of my brogue came through. I won a Globe." He encouraged me with a gentle wave of his fingers. "Hit me with your best Scottish accent."

  "I warn you. I've been watching your performances and practicing." I gave it a shot.

  Connor shuddered comically and shook his head. "I give you points for trying, but you're murdering the accent. You sound like—well, I don't know quite what you sound like. A mishmash of accents from all over Scotland." He paused. "I'll teach you how to do a general, generic sort of Scottish accent. Stick with it and you won't embarrass yourself too bad."

  I nodded.

  "Did you hear the way I pronounced murder?" he said. "I don't roll my Rs like a Spaniard. It's not murrrrderrrr. That's a common mistake and gives you away.

  "We Scots roll our Rs just once. It's called a tapped R. Listen, then repeat after me—murder."

  Rolling an R only once wasn't as easy as it sounded. It took several tries, and much laughter from my friends, before I started to get a semblance of the right sound.

  "And if you get an R before an L," Connor said, "you get an extra syllable. Gir-l."

  Mark arrived with the latest round of kilt lifters and a bottle of scotch. The more we drank, the funnier the lesson got.

  Pool and pull sounded like the same word. Connor could put on any accent he chose, suddenly sounding British or American at will. We laughed with him until we were wiping our eyes and our sides hurt. Then he moved on to coaching me in the intricacies of playing Jamie specifically—the cock of his head, the set of his shoulders, his smoldering look.

  "If you master the smolder, you'll have the ladies in the palm of your hand, mate." He nodded. "It's the key."

  He even coached me in the way he swung his sword in battle as Jamie. Highlanders fought a lot of battles. They were always fighting someone. Most often on the moors.

  By the time the lesson was over, we'd all become good pals, or mates, as Connor liked to say. And verra drunk.

  "So you all are dating experts?" Connor said.

  I raised an eyebrow. "Who told you that?"

  The guys laughed it off.

  "You developed a dating app," Connor said, looking confused.

  "Yeah. But as we said, it's about locating other singles. From there, it's up to the daters. We offer no advice. We're just trying to up people's odds and at-bats. The more you swing at the ball, the more likely you are to connect.

  "We're more like dating rejects, ourselves," I said. "Until recently. But we're learning. Ashley, our matchmaker, has not only prettied us up, but taught us some of the finer points of the dating game."

  He was curious about the matchmaking process and how we ended up using a matchmaker's services. We told him our story and explained the process to him.

  "Well, I envy you the freedom to date who you please," Connor said, turning suddenly serious.

  "Oh, come on!" Jeremy said. "You're dating Sam Roberts—"

  "No, I'm not." Connor's expression was dead serious.

  That shut everybody up.

  "You're not?" Dylan said into the stunned silence. He looked disappointed.

  Connor shook his head. "The PR people for the show would like you to believe we are. So they spread rumors about. And encourage any gossip that we are.

  "We have rare onscreen chemistry that's admittedly hard to find and impossible to fake," he said. "That fuels the rumors. But it's a professional kind of chemistry, if that makes sense."

  "Wow," Jeremy said. His face had fallen.

  "Don't get me wrong. Sam's a lovely woman. Loads of fun to be around, too. I like her very much. We get along great. She's almost like a sister to me."

  Cam raised an eyebrow, looking exceptionally skeptical.

  Connor laughed. "You're thinking of our smoking sex scenes, aren't you? And wondering how we can be naked with each other like that while I'm thinking of her like my sister?"

  He shook his head at us laymen. "If you were on set during filming, you'd see just how that could happen." He took a breath. "But, much as I like and admire Sam, the sexual
chemistry in our private lives isn't there. And doesn't look like it ever will be.

  "No, I'm dating someone else. Someone I love deeply and am committed to. And would like to be more committed to, if you get what I mean." He finished the last of the scotch in his glass. "We've been keeping it under wraps. Secret. Waiting for the right time to go public. When it won't affect the show's ratings or upset the fans too much. The ladies like to either think of me as Jamie with Sam, or imagine me with them playing the role of Elinor in their fantasies."

  "Damn," Dylan said. "That's harsh."

  "Aye. Well." Connor pushed back in his chair. "I won't be waiting forever to declare my love publically." His expression became fierce, like Jamie in warrior mode. "First opportunity I get. First diversion that comes up, I'll grab it. I keep hoping Sam will go public with someone first. Let her take the heat for being the bad guy who doesn't love me." He laughed. "Unfortunately, she's not involved with anyone right now. Not seriously."

  He paused, good humor restored, and leaned toward us. "You wouldn't happen to know anyone I could fix her up with, would you?"

  I thought the guys were going to jump out of their chairs vying for the chance. There was a lot of chest puffing and posturing going on.

  Dylan gestured to the four of us. "Together the four of us make up Seattle's Hottest Bachelor."

  Cam and Jeremy nodded their agreement.

  "Named by a poll taken by Seattle's local evening entertainment show when our billionaire friend Lazer Grayson announced he was off the market. It's a great honor." Dylan winked, and his tone was half jokey.

  None of us could really believe we deserved the honor. We'd been geeks too long to feel like the object of anyone's fantasies. In our minds, we were just coding nerds.

  "I have a few qualified volunteers to take her off my hands, then, I see." He liked their reaction. "I should warn you, she's a spitfire. Very opinionated. And whoever wins her affections will be a villain of the most heinous kind. With millions of angry female fans on his case. He'll take a public beating on Twitter and the like. It will be a verbal bloodbath of the literal kind you see on Jamie."

  His gaze went from man to man. "What do you think now? Any of you man enough for the job?"

  My friends postured playfully, but they'd lost their bravado. Getting a beautiful woman's attention was one thing. A feisty actress was out of our league. And none of us were wild about the spotlight. Or controversy. Seeing Lazer's love life play out in public had pretty much cured us of any desire for the same.

  "Aye." Connor nodded. "I've scared you off, I see. There's the rub. I speak too plainly. Well." He sighed. "I'd like all of you to meet her just the same. When I tell her all about my night out, and these kilt lifters full of scotch and Drambuie—because what goes better with scotch than more scotch?—and you mates, she'll be sorry she missed it for a few winks of beauty sleep."

  He paused again, thinking. His face lit up. "Come to our panel tomorrow and meet Sam."

  The four of us froze, not speaking. We'd been having such a good time hanging with him. Connor was a fun guy. We all liked him tremendously. If he lived here, he'd be welcome to be one of us. None of us wanted to offend him. But he obviously had no idea what he was saying.

  His suggestion not only put a crimp in our Comicon plans, it was the complete death knell of them. We may as well have just shot them and put them out of their misery and stayed home. Four days of fun and dreams down the drain.

  The entire goal of Comicon this year was to meet the father of the Comicon community, the unparalleled star, Stan Lee. He was in his nineties. Any Comicon could be his last. We were running out of time to check this off our bucket list.

  His autographing sold out within minutes of Comicon registration. Even though the four of us had gotten on to buy tickets the minute registration opened, we'd been locked out.

  Our last hope was to see him in person on the panel he was giving. On the main stage. Right after Connor's, which was also on the main stage. The usual format at the panels was to have a Q&A session. The lines to the mic would form quickly. With any luck, one of us could muscle our way far enough up the line to get to ask Stan a question.

  According to the Comicon app, Stan's panel was the most popular and most scheduled event of the entire con. Thousands had already scheduled it. The line would be the longest and form the earliest of any at Comicon. That was the problem. The line would form at least three hours early and there was no reserved seating.

  We already had a plan for how to get into line as far up as possible, even though Jeremy and I had to give a workshop in the block two hours prior. It involved Dylan and Cam saving us a place and covert techniques to sneak us in after our workshop. Place saving was frowned on.

  They cleared the main stage audience after each panel. If all of us were in the Jamie panel, there would be no one to stand in line for Stan Lee.

  "We'd love to," I said, seeing our out. "But we're giving a cosplay workshop, Tips and Tricks for Cosplay Weaponry." Smart of me to mention the title. Connor could look it up to see I wasn't lying. Hopefully he wouldn't notice we weren't all presenters.

  "It's just an hour before your panel. The Jamie panel is going to be way too popular." I pulled out my phone and brought up the app. "Look here. You already have over a thousand signed up to attend. By the time we get out of our workshop, we'll be too far back in line to get in."

  I felt the guys relax. Cam shot me an admiring look. He would have given me a thumbs-up if Connor hadn't been watching us so closely.

  The other guys murmured their agreement with me, looking regretful.

  Connor's laugh boomed. "Mates! Don't look so glum. No problem. I'll give you all some of my VIP passes. They're for friends and family." He scoffed. "Who do I know in Seattle? Only you four." He looked around the table, smiling at each of us. "Who else would I give them to?

  "They'll get you right to the front of the line, and assure you seats in the front row. And—this is a big bonus, the best—you'll get to party with Sam and me at our private gathering. The food is supposed to be good and the booze will flow." He was clearly enjoying himself as he made light of his fame.

  "Are you sold yet? Because I'm not done. The pass includes our eighty-dollar autographs and the fifty-dollar photo op with each of us." He slapped Jeremy, who was nearest him, on the back.

  I thought Jeremy was going to cough.

  "I thought those VIP passes sold out months ago," I said, weakly, as the guys shot me looks of wrath and daggers.

  "Oh, aye," Connor said. "They did. But I can invite anyone I please. You four are it. I'll leave your names at will-call so you can grab your VIP passes. Bring a lady guest each if you like." He winked. "It makes no difference to me. I have plenty of passes."

  Problem solved, he grabbed the bottle of scotch on the table and refilled everyone's glasses.

  I glanced apologetically around at my friends and raised my glass in toast. "To diversions."

  We sure as hell were going to need them.

  Connor grinned. "Diversions and true love."

  Chapter 4

  Blair

  It was sprinkling lightly when Beth dropped me off in front of the convention center to the impatient blare of car horns behind us.

  Pardon me, impatient Seattle traffic. If you can find an easy way to get out of the back seat of a car wearing yards and yards and yards of heavy dress and huge panniers, which are really nothing more than saddlebags, then I'm all ears. Seriously.

  And how did being hippy and having saddlebags become fashionable way back when? French fashion designers have, apparently, been cruel since before the French Revolution. It was probably part of the reason the peasants revolted.

  I was about to. Even my delicate French heels with the pointed toes were uncomfortable. And I was looking forward to standing on my feet for three bloody hours. All this apparently for fun. As my aunt had told me since I was little, It takes a little pain to be beautiful.

  Beth and I had
been up since five twisting and cajoling my hair into the elegant period French updo to match Elinor's. My hair was heavy on my head, full of pins, and pulled almost tightly enough to give me a headache. I felt for Sam, having to go through this every day on the set. This and the corset were going to be the death of me.

  Despite all the discomfort, I felt lovely. Like a fairytale princess. And just as excited and eager as when I was six.

  "Leave your coat in the car, Blair," Beth said. "You won't want to carry it around all day." She glanced at me in the rearview mirror. "I'll bring it back when I pick you up."

  I nodded.

  "But take your umbrella," she said. "I don't want you getting water stains on your dress, even in the short distance to cover. That's delicate, easily stained fabric. I don't want it to end up like the first princess dress I made you."

  Yeah, that was a painful disaster. I defied Beth and insisted on eating spaghetti while wearing the dress at a friend's house for play. And, naturally, got it on the dress. Which was dry-clean only, though little Blair didn't know that. Not wanting Beth to see what I'd done, I decided to wash the dress myself. In the utility sink in the laundry room. Because she'd hear the washing machine. Six-year-old logic.

  Anyway, it ruined the dress. And made it stink so badly we had to hang it in the garage in the desperate hope it would look better dry. Nope. I cried and cried over that dress.

  "Don't worry," I said. "I learned my lesson a long time ago."

  She nodded. "The umbrella should fit in your bag."

  I let her mother me like I was six again. It could have been annoying, and yet it showed her love. It was her way of participating in the day as much as she could. She was just as eager for Comicon as I was. I had instructions to remember every single thing about the day and get as many pictures and as much of the panel on video on my phone as possible.

  I shrugged out of my coat, popped my umbrella open as I held it out the door, and got out of the car as elegantly as I could manage. Which wasn't very. I managed to make it past a crowd of costumed people to the covered area and the doors without getting wet at all. I folded my umbrella.