But first things first. She found a door marked Office and entered. Inside was a large room filled from floor to ceiling with shelves displaying well-dusted trophies, cups, and ribbons. Pictures of dogs—oil paintings, water-colors, and photographs—papered the walls, leaving hardly any space bare. A carved and battered desk that Toni was certain belonged on the Antiques Roadshow stood squarely in the center of the room, and behind this, stooped over a ledger book, sat the quintessential Scottish laird.
His elderly face was lean and ruddy and fierce. A spider’s web of tiny veins mapped his beaky nose, and bristling white brows stood out like shelves above his little piercing blue eyes. Thinning white hair lay smoothly across a freckled, domed head. He silently mouthed numbers from the ledger he pored over.
With a start, Toni realized he hadn’t noticed her entrance. She cleared her throat noisily. He glanced up and then, seeing her, popped to his feet.
He wasn’t very tall. The sports coat he wore—tweed, of course—had leather patches at the elbows, and his trousers bagged at the knees as though he spent a good deal of time kneeling in them.
“Aye?”
He actually said “aye” as an inquisitive! Toni nearly sighed with pleasure. She held out her hand, extending it over the desk. “Hello. I’m Toni Olson, and you must be Donald McGill. It’s so nice to meet you.” Her hand hung unaccepted in the air. The fierce blue eyes were staring at her blankly.
“Mr. McGill?”
“You’re Tony Olson?”
“Yes. Oh.” She suspected the reason for his pole-axed expression. ‘Toni. Short for Antoinette. You were probably expecting a man?”
“Bloody well right I was,” the old man exploded, taking Toni aback. “I thought you were a man, and I was having a hard enough time with it as it was, but now that you’re a woman…” He trailed off, shaking his head.
“Now that I’m a woman, what?” Toni asked, a deep fear beginning to take root
“Well, a deal’s a deal no matter what, I suppose,” the old man muttered, ignoring her remark. She didn’t press the matter. For a second there she thought the old man was going to renege on their deal.
That couldn’t happen. She’d already made a down payment of half the price of the dog, and her check had already been cashed. That, along with the cashier’s check made out to Oronsay Kennels that she carried in her purse, had effectively wiped out her bank account. Even her credit card was maxed out, run up to the hilt with the presents and things she’d purchased over the last two weeks.
“Thank you,” she said. “Now, if I might see him.”
“Aye,” McGill groused sullenly. “Soon enough fer that. You need to know some things about the beastie before you go carryin’ him off to yer Minna-Soda.”
“Of course.” She must play this cautiously—not give him any excuse to back out of their deal. She sat down on the only other chair in the office. “What can you tell me about Blackie?”
“Well, first off, he’s no kennel dog. He’s been treated like a prince by some that ought to know better since the day he was whelped. No concrete runs for him, ye ken. Ye’d break his heart if you put him in solitary, and that’s all it is, tha damned kennels with their chain links and not a dog to keep company with. Such cruelty is solitary confinement, as sure as you’re standin’ here. A dog’s a pack animal. He craves companionship as much as you or I.”
Toni, who’d worked with dogs all her life, was in complete agreement, but she couldn’t help the prickle of resentment that crept up her spine at his belligerent tone, or the fact that he was lecturing to her even after they’d had a fair amount of correspondence on this very subject. Unless he thought she’d just been acting agreeable in order to purchase the dog.
“As I told you,” she said, “I have no intention of putting him in a kennel. He’ll be living in my house. Probably sleeping on my bed.”
“Yer naught thinkin’ of tryin’ to make him a lady’s pet, are you?” McGill asked suspiciously. “‘Cause he’s no pet. He’s a working dog,” he cautioned sternly.
“He’ll work, all right. Five or six times a day at least.”
That impressed McGill. He peered at her as though suspecting she was lying. “That’s a fair day’s work. Unless you mean by work a few exercises.”
“No,” Toni replied. “I mean work. As in ‘work for his kibble.’”
“I dinna know Minnesota had so many sheep.”
Toni laughed. “Oh, it doesn’t. At least not that I know of. But geese it has in spades.”
“Geese?”
“Yup. Big Canadians. They’re everywhere, a plague on Minnesota’s landscape. Every golf course and every park, every stretch of grass by any bit of water, is ankle deep in—”
“You’re gonna use Grand International Champion Nolly’s Black to chase geese off golf courses?”
McGill erupted from his seat Toni stared at him. His face and throat were violently red. His jowls quivered His hands clenched and unclenched into white-knuckled fists at his side.
“Yeah…” she said slowly, worried the old duffer was going to keel over.
“Over my dead body!”
Exactly what she’d been thinking.
The fire engine red had morphed into a sort of magenta color, and his neck was swelling up alarmingly, like a bullfrog’s.
“Take it easy,” she said, standing. “You might pop something if you go on like this. Listen. Is there someone I can call—”
“I’ll be fine just as soon as you leave here, miss! So please do so. At once.”
She studied him narrowly. As soon as she realized he wasn’t going to explode, she considered his words. She didn’t like them. Not one bit.
“I’m not leaving without my dog.”
“He isn’t yours, yet, lassie.”
“I have a signed contract. You’ve deposited my money in your bank, and I have a cashier’s check here with your name on it. In my book, that makes him mine.”
“Well”—he slapped his hands palm down on the desk, leaning over it and thrusting his red, angry face into hers—“we’re in Scotland now, Missie, and what is or isn’t in your book don’t matter here.”
“Oh?” she asked quietly.
Toni was normally very easygoing, but the same tenacity that had allowed her ancestors to endure near Arctic winters now surged forth. She had bought this dog. She had scraped and saved and sacrificed in order to buy this dog. She wanted this dog. And by God, she was going to have this dog.
She had contracts to honor. Plans she’d spent a year devising. Two lovely young border collies waiting to be made mothers by a Scottish stud.
She laid her hands on the desk and shifted her weight forward until her eyes were on a level with McGill’s, inches from his face. They both understood the rules in this game: Don’t blink.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to discount my book if I were you, Mr. McGill. Your government sure won’t, and it might prove a costly mistake if you do. In fact, I guarantee it. Now, if you don’t hand over my dog, I’ll sue your Scottish ass as quick as you can say Bonnie Prince Charlie.”
He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Such foul language! I never hoped to hear a lass—”
“Can it, McGill,” Toni said curtly. “Let me make myself even clearer. I have a plane ticket with reservations for one dog to be transported from this country to mine, and that ticket is nontransferable and nonrefundable and confirmed for three days hence. Come hell or high water, Mr. McGill I intend to be on that plane. With my dog.”
His brilliant blue eyes narrowed on her. “You don’t understand. This dog, Miss… Miss Olson, he’s not just any dog. There’s been a Nolly’s Blackie with the clan for near two hundred years, and every generation carefully accounted for and recorded in that very book.” He pointed at a heavy, battered-looking leather tome sitting in a place of honor in the middle of the bookshelves.
“Why, there are heads of state sitting on thrones today who don’t have a pedigree as fine and unblemish
ed as his. And you want to use him, a Grand International Sheep-herding Champion, the distilled essence of the perfect sheepdog, valiant, bold, Nolly’s Black to”—he sputtered, the red flooding his cheeks once more—“to… chase geese?”
Toni’d heard the arguments before. While she too believed that a working dog not only should but must work in order to be happy, she was just as sure that to a herding dog, what it herded didn’t make a damn bit of difference. She’d seen Border collies herd ducks, sheep, geese, and if those weren’t available, children, and always with the same intensity and desire.
Unfortunately, their human handlers were far more prejudiced.
“Believe me, he’ll adore chasing geese, and they present some pretty unique situations, you know. They swim, and we have lots of lakes, so that he’ll have to—”
“He won’t ‘have to’ anything!” McGill’s attempt at reasonableness had apparently ended. “He’s not going with you. I’ll write you out a repayment check right now, and you’ll be off. I’m sure you’ll be able to find some poor daft herder who’ll sell you his dog for a tenth of what you were going to spend on Blackie.”
“Am going to spend on Blackie. You don’t seem to understand. I don’t want’ any dog. I want Nolly’s Black. He’s going to be the basis for—”
“For what?” sneered McGill. “For a Grand International Goosdierding Champion?”
There was no sense talking to him. It wasn’t that he couldn’t understand. He wouldn’t.
“Please go get my dog, or I will be forced to call the local authorities.”
That chased the sneer from his thin lips. “Now you don’t want to do that, miss. I’m sure we can come to some sort of an understanding. I have a fine young—”
“My dog, Mr. McGill,” she said loudly. “Now, please.”
“If you’ll just listen to reason—”
“Look. I’m giving you until the count of five to leave this office and go get me my dog. If you don’t, I’m going to dial 999.”
He pressed his lips tightly together and marched around the side of the desk. He was small but nasty, and the fact that he had to crane his neck to glare up at her didn’t decrease his ferocity. She quickly back-stepped as he stomped past, stopping halfway through the door to turn and glare at her.
“Ye’ll not take exception to me havin’…” He stopped. Whether his lips were trembling with rage or some other deep emotion, she couldn’t say. He hitched his chin up proudly, and continued. “Ye’ll not mind me havin’ a bit of a farewell with me lad, would ye?”
Her anger abruptly dissolved. How in God’s name could she refuse? She wasn’t heartless. The reminder that she was taking this man’s dog from him hit her with almost physical force. She could only guess what it would mean to her if some stranger were to come and take her dog away.
“Of course,” she gasped, suddenly abashed. “Of course! You say good-bye to him. Take as long as you like.”
“It’ll be a spell. Blackie… he’s up to the castle.” The old man wiped the back of his knuckles across his eyes. “The… the only home the dear little fellow has… has ever known!”
And with a sound like a sob he swung around, slamming the door behind him, leaving Toni to watch him trot, head bowed with the strength of his emotions, past the window. She gulped, feeling like a villain, and wandered over to the wall to read some of the framed newspaper clippings.
It took her a good half-hour to finish reading them, and another to leaf through the photo album and studbook. By the time she’d finished, she was feeling less like a villain and more like a victim. McGill was certainly taking his own sweet time with his good-bye. A person could be halfway to Fort George in the time it was taking him to…
Suspicion hit her like a sledgehammer.
No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. She hurried outside. The rain had stopped, but a bracing wind had replaced it, pushing the clouds overhead.
“McGill!” she hollered. “McGill!”
The dogs in the kennel, up for a bit of afternoon sport, baiked encouragingly.
“Mc! Gill!” She ran around the side of the building. The van stood where she’d left it, and farther along the Volvo still immodestly exposed its engine. Thank God for that. She hurried back the way she’d come and headed up the path she’d seen McGill take. Maybe the old guy was really still up there, sobbing into Blackie’s ruff.
Close up, the castle lost a lot of its charm. Someone was obviously working on a major renovation, and she could see why. Rubble might look quaint from a distance, but it smelled bad up close. The damp stone scattered about the unrepaired section smelled unpleasantly organic and stale. On the other hand, the newer section looked too new. Why, no one had even bothered to take the windows’ e-rating stickers off.
She banged on the newly hung door. Nothing. She banged harder. A voice shouted for her to come in.
She eased open the door and stepped inside. It was a disaster. A painter, a carpenter, and a fast food delivery-man had obviously had a gigantic brawl in this room, because the evidence of all three professions was scattered across what she judged just might some day become a kitchen floor. She pulled her fascinated musings back to the matter at hand.
“McGill!” she shouted. “McGill, where are you? I want my dog! Now!”
She heard the sound of booted feet approaching from the other side of a closed door across the room. She lifted her chin. No more screwing around.
The door opened. He stood backlit against the bright light, tall and lean and broad-shouldered and gorgeous. He was wearing jeans this time, and damn if he didn’t look just as good in Levi’s as he had in a kilt.
Her eyes grew round. Her jaw grew slack. Her heart started racing as she remembered with exacting detail the shape and texture of his mouth.
His brows dipped in a scowl. So much for their happy reunion.
“McGill left about an hour ago,” Devlin Montgomery said. “Now, what’s this about a dog?”
3
It didn’t take an advanced degree in engineering— which, by the way, Devlin had—to figure out what had happened. The van’s fuel tank cap lay alongside a half-empty bag of sugar by the back tire. That coupled with the fact that McGill, Blackie, and an ancient Land Rover—according to Dev, the only other vehicle the kennel owned—had vanished told the story; Blackie had been dognapped.
“Your manager has stolen my dog!”
Dev frowned, unwilling to trust his eyes. He’d spent the previous evening on the rugby field muffing every other play he’d been involved in until finally his teammates had permanently sidelined him. He hadn’t cared.
He’d spent the hour thinking about her: her round American accent, the naughty-nice quality of her grin, the way her blush tinted her skin, the Caribbean sea color of her eyes… but mostly her response to their kiss; the way her breasts had flattened against him, the tip of her tongue meeting his.
He’d gone to sleep fantasizing about her, awaking aroused and uncomfortable, cursing himself for an idiot but nonetheless spending the day hanging about waiting for a call that hadn’t come. He’d thought about driving in to Strathcuddy, but was afraid that if he did, she’d call while he was en route, and he’d miss her altogether. But now she was here, demanding he hand over his dog.
“Listen,” he said, having a hard time getting fantasy and reality to jive. “McGill wouldn’t steal Blackie. Any more than he’d sell him. Blackie isn’t even his to sell. He’s mine.”
“Yours?” She’d shed the atrocious “Sassy Lassie” T-shirt and was wearing something soft and pink that accented the highlights in her hair. The color in her cheeks was a delicate woodland bramble rose, and—
“Well?”
“What? Oh. Yes. Mine. I hand-raised him. I trained him. I even ran…” Dev trailed off as he met Toni’s eye.
“Who the hell are you?”
“I thought you didn’t like bad language?”
“Some situations warrant it,” she said crossly.
Wha
t had happened to the sloshed hero-worshiping, or rather Braveheart-worshiping, lass of yesterday? Oh, yeah. She’d sobered up. And looked to be paying a penalty for yesterday’s frivolities, too, if the dark circles beneath her blue eyes were any testament.
“Now who are you?”
“Devon Angus—”
“Who are you?”
“I, ah, I own the castle.”
Her amazing eyes widened. “You’re the laird?”
He hated to kill the soft light of grudging adoration dawning on her face, but he couldn’t pose as something he wasn’t. “Down, Lorne Doone. There is no laird, at least not officially. Hasn’t been for generations. It’s more a tourist come-on nowadays, and I don’t have anything to tour.” He waved his hand around.
“But if there was a laird, would you be it? Or your father?”
He snorted. She was tiptoeing around a case of Highland worship. He’d seen the signs before, mostly down at the local pub when the tourist bus came through. But while his mates weren’t averse to using Robert Burns’s more lurid prose to their advantage when they encountered an attractive tourist, Dev never had. However, looking at Toni Olson, he was willing to make an exception. “My dad, I suppose.”
“And McGill is… what? A trusted family retainer,” she breathed. Then, as though caught with her pants down, she scowled fiercely.
“I guess so.” McGill had run the kennels for his family for the past forty years, as had his father before him. And McGill was certainly trusted and excellent with the dogs. It was the making money part that McGill had trouble with, which was why Dev was here, fixing up one of his family’s decrepit castles and hoping to make a go of the kennels.
The Montgomerys were bright and charming, but earlier generations had also been notoriously impractical. Consequently the family had as many failing businesses as they had varied ones. His generation couldn’t afford such dilettantism.
He could see in Toni’s face her struggle to sublimate her rising rapture—Scandinavian practicality versus American romanticism.
My Scottish Summer Page 3