by Lizzie Lamb
There was an eruption from the library and all heads turned as Ruairi raised his voice. ‘Gap year? You’ve been on a gap year since you left school two years ago. If you don’t take up your university place this autumn I’ll find you a job on the estate. Mucking out the stables, driving the guns over to the butts, painting fences if needs be. And before you ask, there’s no way you and Cat will be flying down for the Notting Hill Carnival this year. I think the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has had quite enough of you.’
He came out of the library followed by a chastened Isla. She rushed past them, dashing tears from her cheeks and openly furious that they’d overheard Ruairi get the better of her. Murdo made as if to go after her but Ruairi laid a hand on his arm and shook his head. Fliss wondered as Isla ran up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door, what bound Murdo and Isla together.
‘Leave her, Murdo. She needs time to cool off and think over what I’ve said.’
He rubbed his hands over his stubble, stretched his arms above his head and yawned. A gap appeared between the waistband of his kilt and the bottom of his rugger shirt. Fliss traced the line from his taut abdomen to where a sprinkling of dark hair disappeared below his belt. She sucked in an extra breath at the thought of where that tapering line led to, feeling suddenly very hot. Catching her look, he pulled down his shirt and straightened the leather sporran over the front of his kilt.
‘Is there a problem?’ he asked Murdo, looking directly at Fliss as if her name and problem were synonymous.
‘Well, now that you mention it. There is,’ she cut in before Murdo had a chance to answer.
High colour stung her cheeks and stole along her décolletage because she knew he’d seen her checking him out. He was standing so close that the rough wool of his kilt grazed along the sensitive skin on the side of her hand and she dragged it away, as if scalded by the contact. Furious with her reaction to his nearness, she decided that anger was the best defence against raging hormones and wild imagining about what lay under his kilt.
‘How dare you send someone to pack my belongings and - and dump them by the front door without so much as a by your leave?’
‘I was simply helping you on your way,’ he replied, using the same calm, there, there, dear tone that had infuriated Isla earlier.
‘Helping me on my way?’ She spoke in italics and her voice rose in a shriek. ‘It’s been decided, then - I’m leaving Tigh na Locha?’
‘It seemed the most sensible arrangement, given the circumstances,’ he said, cool and in command.
‘Circumstances? I take it you’re referring to last night.’
‘What about last night?’
The sharpness in his tone showed that he wasn’t as cool about the whole episode as appearances might suggest. But she couldn’t decide whether he was mad with her for - as he believed, lying over her identity; or, with himself for having fallen for a honey trap. Either way, it was clear he didn’t want to be reminded of his moment of weakness, or how easily he’d been duped into holding her in his arms.
‘Well?’ He waited for her answer. Fliss took a deep breath, from what she’d observed of Ruairi Urquhart, she needed to be composed and in control if she was going head-to-head with him.
‘What I have to say to you is best said in private. Not in front of …’ she nodded in the direction of Murdo and the girl. There had been too many witnesses to her cringe-worthy moment in the garden and she had no intention of repeating the experience.
‘Your scruples do you justice,’ he said, his eyes darkening to sapphire as he gave her a shrewd once-over. And Fliss knew in his eyes she was nothing more than an amoral chancer who’d used her charms to compromise him and so safeguard her job. It was a reputation unfairly won and she had no intention of leaving without setting the record straight.
‘I dare say I’m as principled as you.’ Her unequivocal look was designed to remind him how he’d flirted with her on the path, held onto her ankle longer than was necessary and had gathered her into his arms - when he could just as easily have guided her to a bench. She hadn’t forced him to kiss her, had she? It took two to tango - or in this case, dance the Highland fling, and she wanted him to admit it.
‘Remind me never to come to you for a character reference,’ he said dryly.
‘In case you doubt my integrity, why don’t you search my bags for the family silver?’ Impulsively, she upended the contents of her holdall onto the flagstones and tossed the empty bag at his feet.
The jumbo box of tampons which had been tucked in amongst her underwear burst open, scattering tampons everywhere. Ruairi looked at the white paper cylinders littering the hall floor as if they were radioactive. One of the tampons rolled as far as the log basket before ricocheting off it and heading back towards him like a heat seeking missile. It finally came to rest by the toe of his boot.
Plainly, that was a bridge too far.
‘We’ll continue this discussion in private,’ he said, his lips set in a thin line. Holding her firmly by the elbow, he half-escorted, half-dragged her through the hall towards the library.
Furious at being manhandled and crimson with mortification at the sight of her sanitary protection scattered all over the floor, Fliss cast a helpless look at the young maid. The young girl scooped up the tampons and pushed everything back into the holdall before zipping it up. Fliss had a sinking feeling that the incident with the tampons would pass into legend and be recalled long after she was back in London, flipping burgers.
She resisted the childish impulse to snatch her elbow out of Ruairi’s grasp. But once they were in the library and standing before the partners’ desk, she looked down at her elbow and then slowly up at his face.
Getting the message, he released her.
Chapter Sixteen
‘I’m sorry if my touch offends you,’ Ruairi said, although his expression suggested the opposite.
‘Not just your touch, if we’re being totally honest,’ Fliss replied. She’d show him he wasn’t the only one with issues to resolve and matters to put right.
‘I doubt you know the meaning of the word, Miss Bagshawe.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ she demanded, her face flaming.
He guided her towards a faded turkey rug in front of the desk and indicated that she should stand there. Furious at being manhandled for a second time, she sidestepped the rug and took up position on the neutral ground of the polished floorboards.
‘Last night’s performance,’ he jerked his head towards the rose gardens, visible through the library window, ‘was worthy of a BAFTA.’
‘A BAFTA?’ She had the uncomfortable - and frankly ludicrous feeling, that she’d been summoned to the headmaster’s study to explain her behaviour. Time she seized the initiative, asked a few questions of her own and let him know that she was no pushover. As she considered what to say next, he walked over to the partners’ desk and picked up a cheque book and pen. ‘First of all,’ she began, putting her points in order, ‘you’ve got it all wrong. You’ve got me all wrong.’
‘I don’t think I have.’ He leaned against the edge of the desk and riffled the pages of the cheque book. Then, with the pen poised over a blank cheque, gave her a contemptuous look. ‘I think I’ve got you bang to rights.’
Now she got it!
The luggage in the hall, the blank cheque waiting to be written, were cues for her to exit stage left - with a month’s salary in her handbag in lieu of notice. Well, if he thought she was leaving Kinloch Mara with her piece unsaid, he’d seriously underestimated her.
‘Explain what you meant earlier by not just my touch.’ He caught and held her gaze, making it plain that women didn’t usually find his touch repellent.
‘I meant that you’ve insulted me by implying that my collapse in the rose gardens was an act to secure my position as Mitzi’s manager. Is that what you really think? What you all think?’
His eyes ranged over her - from her newly washed hair, past her bare legs in summer s
horts to her feet in their delicate sandals. His scrutiny was offensive and almost certainly designed to provoke her into saying something unguarded. She looked down at her painted toenails and saw how, in his eyes, they summed up the difference between them. The hardworking laird, wearing what looked like his second-best kilt, frayed rugger jersey and scuffed boots - and the grifter on the make, with her fashionable summer clothes and hard-edged city girl gloss.
She was angry; not just with him, but with her traitorous body and the way it remembered the touch of his fingers across her ankle, his lips against her hair, his whispered words - and wanted more. She dismissed the memory and the feelings it evoked, knowing his version of events went something like … She’d arrived in Wester Ross to scam Mitzi and Angus, but upon meeting the Laird, had decided that he was the bigger prize and blackmail was a more profitable venture.
‘And didn’t you fake it?’ He drew her back to the here and now and it sounded as if the answer actually mattered to him. Then the calculating look was back in place. ‘Why else would a girl like you leave London unless it was to further her career as a gold-digger? You have the floor Miss Bagshawe.’
A girl like you. He invested such contempt and scorn into the phrase that Fliss winced. Seeing the distrust in his eyes she knew it wasn’t going to be easy to make him revise his opinion of her. But she would give it her best shot. When she left here it would be with her head held high and with him admitting he was all wrong about her.
‘I came here to do your family a favour. Yes, a favour,’ she repeated as his mouth quirked sardonically. ‘Then I find out that there’s no job. There doesn’t even appear to be a therapy centre. I fainted in the garden because we banged heads and I was tired and emotional. That’s it.’
‘Okay, Miss Bagshawe, let’s assume for a moment that you had no idea who I was.’ His wolfish smile - which she would probably have found sexy under different circumstances - showed his scepticism.
‘Yes. Let’s …’
He registered her sarcasm and looked towards the door as though he itched to wrench it open and throw her off his land. A vein throbbed at his temple, indicating that he found her continued presence in his house aggravating and annoying in the extreme.
‘I think that we were both carried away last night, but for different reasons.’
‘Oh, really?’ Fliss resented the implication that while he’d acted the gentleman and rescued a fainting guest, she’d seized the opportunity to compromise him - accuse him of assault, even - and use it as leverage to extort money from him.
‘The time difference, fireworks, whisky on an empty stomach. I wouldn’t normally,’ he paused, searching for the right word, ‘act like that. Especially not with …’
‘… staff?’ she prompted.
‘A guest,’ he corrected.
‘For the record - neither would I.’
‘No?’ His disbelief was insulting.
‘I fainted. You caught me. End of.’ She gave a ‘whatever’ shrug, affecting an air of nonchalance. But this time she hung back, waiting for him to give some hint of what was going on in his head before she spoke.
‘I think,’ he said carefully, ‘we both acted rashly. I’ve had all night to think about it. Jet lag,’ he explained, as if to make plain he hadn’t lain awake thinking of her. ‘I’ve reached the conclusion that the best solution for everyone is …’
‘… that you sack me.’ Fliss launched a pre-emptive strike. ‘The last twenty four hours have been a nightmare. And that’s the honest truth. Take it or leave it.
‘Sack you?’ Fliss was so beleaguered that she didn’t register the query in his voice.
‘But you can’t sack me,’ she ploughed on, ‘because I don’t work for you. I’m employed by Mitzi and Angus.’ She rifled through her leather tote and brought out her contract which was cracking along the folds from the number of times she’d read it. Smoothing it out, she used two paperweights to flatten it on the desk by his left hip. ‘And Mitzi won’t be able to sack me, because …’
She was about to say because I resign, when he cut across her.
‘Because you’ll sue for wrongful dismissal and make a tidy profit out of her? Out of all of us,’ he concluded, implying that they’d finally reached the crux of the matter.
‘Got it all figured out, haven’t you?’ She took an angry step towards him and then checked herself. He might look every inch a highland landowner but he thought and acted like a barracuda. Standing this close to him, she could see where his thick dark eyelashes were paler at the tip, the sunburn beneath his stubble, the strong brown arms that had caught and held her safe. Then, as he leaned forward his body’s sweet scent undercut by his aftershave pulsed towards her, taking her back to last night. And, in spite of everything, she couldn’t deny her reaction to him. Or that she wanted to be back in his arms, kissing him until they were both dizzy.
Then the voice of reason cut in and reminded her that he was about to have her run off his land and thought her little more than a scheming opportunist. It was the douche of cold water her overheated senses needed and made her realise that her untrammelled response to him was more dangerous than anything he could say, or do.
‘I’ll tell you what I’ve figured out - your Lairdship - I’m the injured party here. I’ve travelled to this godforsaken corner of the UK; almost bankrupted myself and sublet my flat. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find and hold onto a decent two bedroom flat in Pimlico? Of course you don’t – you’ve got your mini-mansion in Elgin Crescent to fall back on every time you fancy a trip up to London.’
‘You seem keen to make assumptions about me,’ he cut in.
But she wasn’t listening; she was on a roll and couldn’t stop. ‘Now I’m going back to London to start job hunting - in the height of the summer, in the middle of a recession - fighting students for every vacancy that comes up.’ He looked almost sympathetic for a moment but then his expression became shuttered, closed up. ‘I wouldn’t have lost my job in the first place if …’
Whoa. Too much information.
‘Don’t stop, things were just getting interesting,’ he prompted. But she clamped her mouth shut; she didn’t want him to learn the exact circumstances of her hasty departure from Pimlico, or to make things worse for Cat and Isla.
‘I demand compensation,’ she said, steering the conversation away from Elgin Crescent. She’d hoped to leave Kinloch Mara with her reputation restored, some compensation for her wasted time and with him put firmly in his place. Instead, she’d just confirmed what he’d suspected all along - she’d taken a punt in coming up here, and they’d be well shot of her.
‘At last … How much is it going to take to get rid of you?’ Ruairi opened his cheque book and reached behind him for a pen. Unaccountably, his words cut her to the quick and made tears prick her eyes.
‘How much do you usually pay?’ She wanted to hurt him, make him feel as wretched as she did at that moment. So she pushed him a little harder: ‘What’s the going rate, in your experience? Something tells me I’m not the first woman you’ve had to pay off.’ She knew no such thing of course, but it pleased her to deflect his poisonous dart back at him.
She hardly recognised the creature that she’d become this morning - defiant, rebellious and provocative. But she couldn’t back down now. She had to get her hands on the cheque, tear it into a thousand pieces, throw it back in his face and walk out of Tigh na Locha with her head held high.
But he wasn’t finished with her – yet.
‘Difficult to say,’ he drawled. ‘Sleeping with the Laird isn’t a procedure we usually employ when interviewing staff.’ Unfazed, he started to fill in the cheque. Fliss didn’t know whether to feel triumphant because her ruse was working or dejected because he thought her capable of extortion. ‘But don’t worry, you’ll get every last penny owed to you. I’m sure you’re not the type to give anything away for free.’
He wrote the cheque, signed it and tore it out of the book; even
from her topsy-turvy viewpoint Fliss could see that the amount was substantial. It was plain he wanted her off the estate and out of his life - lock, stock and therapy table, and with no chance of her ever returning.
‘Just ring for a taxi so I can leave you and this place behind,’ she said in what she imagined was a fair imitation of a gold-digger’s harsh voice.
The cheque was within reach of her fingers now; all she had to do was snatch it from him, rip it up and wipe the cynical I know all about women like you look off his face.
‘My pleasure. You’ll be pleased to know that this godforsaken corner will be as glad to see the back of you, as you are to leave!’ He opened the flap of his leather sporran and brought out some loose change. ‘Here. I’ll even throw in the tip for the taxi.’ She ignored his outstretched palm and the crumpled notes nestling there. All that mattered was the cheque …
‘Ruairi. Come in,’ a voice crackled into the silence. Putting the cheque book down, he reached for the walkie-talkie on his desk.
‘Ruairi. Over’
‘I think we’ve caught those poachers. Can you drive over to the sea loch? Over.’
‘On my way. Over and out.’ He clipped the walkie-talkie to his belt and pushed himself off the desk. ‘I’m sorry to delay your departure, Miss Bagshawe. We’ll complete this - transaction - when I return.’ It was pretty clear he thought she’d take the cheque and run, because he folded it up and put it in his sporran. Obviously, the Laird of Kinloch Mara regarded catching poachers a top priority, whereas sacking unprincipled therapists came just above cleaning out the septic tank and drenching his sheep for worms.
Hoist by her own petard, Fliss was forced to stay in role until the final curtain call. But was she capable of bringing this BAFTA winning performance to a successful conclusion?
‘What about my cheque. And the taxi?’ she persisted.
‘Are you so desperate to leave Tigh na Locha?’
‘As desperate as you are to see me go.’