The Perfect Bargain

by Jessa McAdams

  “It’s but a wee bit of village here,” he offered. “Everyone knows everyone. And their people.”

  Sloane wondered what else “everyone” knew. “He’s helping me with a project,” she explained, hoping he wouldn’t think the worst of her. “But he said he had to go see about his brother’s farm.”

  “Aye, that’d be Owen.”

  She squinted in the direction of the pub, then looked back at Mr. Beattie. “Umm…” She took a step closer to the garden wall and said, “It’s all right, don’t you think? I mean…he’s not an axe murderer or anything like that, right?” She ended her question with a nervous laugh.

  “No, no’ an axe murderer, no’ Galen Buchanan,” he said matter-of-factly. “Good man, he is.” He began to rake again.

  That was comforting to hear. Sloane was actually more apprehensive than she’d realized. This was not like her, to trundle off with a man, especially one fairly adamant that she could never be his girlfriend. “That’s good to know,” she said, and laughed a little with relief.

  “He’ll do ye right.” Mr. Beattie looked up. “But ye best have a care ye donna light a fire you canna yourself put out.” He punctuated that with an emphatic bob of his chin before he resumed his raking.

  She didn’t know exactly what he meant by that, and she didn’t have time to figure it out. She happened to glance at her watch and noticed it was five to eight. “Oh no! I have to run. Good-bye, Mr. Beattie!” she called out and jogged down the hill toward the pub, her bags banging against her leg.

  Of course, there was livestock in the pub’s yard—goats this time. They bleated at her, butting up against her hands and legs as she moved through them to the entrance. “Get back, get back!” she shouted at them, and darted into the pub before the biggest one took a bite out of her backside.

  Galen was inside, pulling the blinds closed. He glanced at his wristwatch when she burst in. “Just in the nick of time.”

  “I’m never late,” she breathlessly informed him.

  “Why does that no’ surprise me?” He returned to the closing of the window blinds. He was wearing beat-up denims with visible holes in the back pockets and, she couldn’t help but notice, a sheen where the fabric had worn over his package. His T-shirt had Clachnacuddin emblazoned across the chest, and stretched tight over his pecs, shoulders, and biceps. Today apparently was not a shaving day. He was potent. So potent.

  He noticed her checking him out and said, “Might make yourself useful.” He nodded at the window in front of which she was standing.

  Sloane gathered her wits and pulled the dusty blinds shut, sneezing and waving her hand in front of her as she did. “A light dusting wouldn’t ruin turn of the century pirate den decor, you know,” she said, and coughing, turned around.

  Galen was watching her. He’d pulled on his jacket and had one hand braced against the bar, waiting. Come on, the dude was hot. Hot and sexy and…

  And he opened his mouth and ruined the moment.

  “What’s this?” he asked, his gaze sweeping down her cute denim jacket and her designer jeans, to her Uggs. “No Wellies?”

  “No what?”

  “Boots. Proper boots. Those are no’ boots for mucking horse stalls.”

  “Well, no,” she said drily. “Silly me, but I wasn’t expecting to be mucking anything when I flew over.”

  “Hmm.” He frowned at her feet, apparently disconcerted by her Uggs.

  “What about jeans? I wore jeans,” she said, pointing to her legs. “I should get credit for that.”

  His gaze dropped down. And lingered. And then he slowly lifted his gaze and said simply, “Aye,” in that deep, Scottish brogue, and Sloane felt herself flush like a fifteen-year-old girl.

  “As for the feet, we’ll have to see what Owen’s got lying about.” He grabbed up a duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Let’s go.” He bent down, grabbed her overnight bag, and walked to the door. He held it open for her, standing aside as she made her way into the sea of goats.

  “Where’s your car?” she asked as he locked the door.

  He turned and pointed to an old Jeep-looking contraption that appeared to have been put together from at least three different vehicles. He began striding for it, pausing only briefly to look back at her. “Are you coming?”

  “That’s your car?” she asked, hurrying to catch up.

  “My car is a motorbike. This is my brother’s farm vehicle.”

  At the car—truck—van, whatever it was, Galen tossed the bags into the open bed in back, and when he did, a large dog with muddied long hair popped up out of nowhere. Sloane squealed with surprise; the dog’s tail began to wag furiously and he strained to get a sniff of her, touching Sloane’s expensive shirt with its wet snout. Sloane swayed backward, away from the dog.

  Galen said something that didn’t sound quite like English and the dog gave Sloane one more sniff before turning around a few times and flopping down in the bed of the truck.

  “Is that your dog?”

  “Aye, that’s Molly.” He opened the passenger door for Sloane. “Ready?”

  No, she wasn’t ready. This was crazy. This was exactly the kind of thing her friends might do, but never her. She was always the one who tried to stop them from doing something like this.

  But all she had to do was imagine Paige’s fury when she discovered Sloane had lied about Jamie Fraser, and Sloane got in.

  The interior was dirty, and she gingerly placed her feet on the muddy floorboard as Galen cranked up the ancient vehicle. They began to rattle down the road, out of Gairloch. It was a slow go—the old vehicle had a stick shift that required a double pump of the clutch to downshift and shook like it would fall apart when he accelerated through the gears.

  Notwithstanding the rough ride, Sloane noticed the scenery begin to change. The road narrowed and the hills became steeper, rolling into each other until the last ones disappeared into the gray of the day. They made their way through vast swaths of what looked like untouched land, some of it purple with heather, some of it a greenish gold. They drove past small lochs, surrounded by lush greenery, and then into glens that looked barren save the endless dots of sheep in the distance.

  It was rugged landscape and it moved something in Sloane. She felt connected to the earth in a way she’d never felt on the concrete of Chicago. But she’d never seen the earth like this, raw and untouched.

  They had to stop twice in the first thirty minutes of their drive, once for sheep on the road, and once again for a farmer who was moving his cows from one pasture to the next. The farmer walking behind the animals lifted his stick to Galen and gave him a nod as he cleared the last of the bovines. Galen responded with a lift of two fingers, changed gears, and accelerated. The vehicle lurched forward.

  By the time they reached a smooth stretch of road, Sloane had been bounced and jolted every which way, but Galen seemed to think nothing of the jarring ride. He kept his gaze straight ahead. She rubbed her hands on her knees. “How long will it take to get there?”

  “An hour.”

  “I say we use the time to review some basic information.” She reached for her messenger bag and pulled out two folded papers. “I prepared a page for you, too.”

  “A page of what?”

  “Information about me.”

  He looked completely confused.

  “You know,” Sloane said. “So you’ll know at least a little about the girlfriend you’d never have.”

  “Ah, for the love of Christ,” Galen sighed heavenward.

  “It’s part of the deal,” she reminded him.

  “All right, then,” he said with a nod. “I should know why you donna have a boyfriend, or a husband, or a mate. Are you gay?”

  She laughed. “If I were gay, would I need a boyfriend?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe you belong to a weird religious order. Are you a nun?”

  “What? What is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  “One of my teachers was a nun. Sister Mul
haney. She wore a knot in her hair and sweaters in the summer,” he said, tapping his neck. “Like you.”

  “I don’t dress like a nun,” she said defensively.

  “No? Seems to me a lass wanting to snare a lad would unbutton her collar.”

  “I’m not trying to snare a lad,” Sloane said coolly, and unthinkingly touched the knot of hair at the base of her skull. “And do you have any idea how incredibly sexist that is? Some women button their shirts and some don’t, and it has nothing to do with their sexuality. I didn’t think I needed to be all dolled up to work. I mean, you sure don’t get dolled up to work.”

  “Aye, but that’s different,” he said cheerily. “I’m a man. And I’m no’ trying to woo a pretend girlfriend. I’ll say it again, then—a woman who wants a man best unbutton her collar and doll up a wee bit. We’re visual creatures.”

  “Please. I don’t want a man. Not every woman is looking for one, you know. Some of us have lives.”

  “Ah,” he said, nodding. “I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “You must be nursing a broken heart.”

  “No,” she said, realizing the moment she said it that the force of her no probably indicated it was true. She folded her arms across her belly. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I’m no’ the one casting about for a pretend boyfriend.” He glanced at her a moment, his gaze flicking over her, assessing her. “You’re bonny. Pretty eyes. What’s the matter with you, then, that you need to do this?”

  She did not like where this conversation was going. “Why does something have to be the matter with me? You don’t have a girlfriend. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Look around you, Miss Prim. I live in Gairloch. There’s no’ a lot to choose from, is there?”

  He had a point. Other than the redhead, Sloane hadn’t seen anyone who wasn’t old or married. “Did you grow up in Gairloch?”

  “Are you changing the subject?”

  “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

  “Two brothers.”

  “One lives out here, obviously. Where does the other one live?”

  “Ach,” he exclaimed and threw up a hand. “Will you natter all the way?”

  “If you’re my boyfriend,” she said, making air quotes, “I should know this.”

  “If you’re my girlfriend,” he responded, taking his hands off the wheel to make air quotes, too, “you would know I donna like to talk just for the sake of talking.”

  “Okay, then I’ll talk about me,” she said. “I’m an only child—”

  “No surprise.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Lass, it’s obvious, aye? You’re a wee bit spoiled, you know, like an only child used to having her way.”

  Sloane’s hackles were rising. First she was prim, and now spoiled. “And you’re basing that totally unfair opinion on what? The fact that I sit in your pub and use your wifi?”

  “Aye, that, and a few other things. Like how you came in the first time and complained about Harry.”

  “Harry? Who is Harry?”

  “Mr. Beattie’s old coo.”

  Sloane gaped at him. “That piece of leather has a name? It was standing in front of the door—even the Belgian bikers tried to move it.”

  “I happen to be quite good at sizing people up, and you, lass, are spoiled. Donna take it personally—it’s an American thing,” he said casually, as if that were a foregone conclusion.

  Sloane was indignant. “Watch yourself, Braveheart,” she said, poking him in the arm. “And anyway, how is that even remotely an American thing?”

  “It’s the way Americans view the rest of the world,” he said. “Americans think the Loch Ness monster exists, and that we all live in the Highlands in a Braveheart movie,” he said, with a meaningful look. Or, you all read Trainspotting in school and think we’re all on drugs. You think Scots believe in unicorns and our national pastime is the caber toss, and our calendars are manly men in kilts holding kittens.”

  “Is there really a calendar like that?” she asked, perking up. If there was, she’d be picking one up before she headed back to the States.

  All she got in response to that was an I-told-you-so look.

  “None of that is true,” she said with a dismissive flick of her wrist. “And there are a lot of preconceived, misguided notions floating around on your end, too, you know.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Like thinking we’re all spoiled. I bet you despise American football because you don’t get it. You think we’re rude and blame us for all the world’s greatest ills, like I personally know the Kardashians. You think American women are loose because you’ve seen every Hollywood movie ever made while eating American cheeseburgers, but you know what? You really don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know you’re an only child from a wealthy family, and you probably attended a prestigious college. You donna have a boyfriend and in fact,” he said, holding up a finger, “you’ve had only two, maybe three boyfriends all your life. You donna get along well with men because you donna understand them. They are a puzzle to you.”

  Sloane felt little fingers of truth crawl up her neck.

  “Ha,” he said, and slapped the steering wheel triumphantly. “I’m right!”

  “I didn’t say you were right!”

  “You’re too easy, you are. Look at it—you’re at the bloody end of Scotland trying to convince someone back home that you’re involved with a man. Now why would you do that? Because you’re scared.”

  She didn’t care to be so damned transparent to this man. Either he was a genius or everyone in Gairloch had figured her out. “Anything else?” she snapped.

  “Aye,” he said, smiling, so proud of himself. “You’re an overachiever.”

  “You don’t even know what I do. You don’t know what I’ve achieved or haven’t achieved, and why is overachieving ever a bad thing? I’d rather be an overachiever than an underachiever.”

  “I know, because you’re on holiday and you canna step away from your laptop for as much as a moment. It’s probably in your bag now, is it no’, even though I told you no’ to bring it. I bet you think you’ll get a wee bit of work done while I muck out the stalls.”

  He had no idea how close she had come to doing just that. “Actually, Mr. Know-it-All, it is not.”

  He laughed. “But you thought about it. Admit it.”

  She would admit no such thing. “Again, two can play this game,” she said smartly. “Here’s what I know about you. You work as much as I do. You don’t have a girlfriend because you can’t even commit to a daily shave, and you feel bad for the sweet redhead girl because you know how much she likes you.”

  “You donna know that—”

  “Oh yes, I do,” Sloane said. “You look at her like she’s the village spinster, and believe me, she sees it, too. You love your family—”

  “Everyone loves their family. Or at least parts of them.”

  “And you own a kilt,” she pressed on, “but you don’t want to say it because you don’t like to feed into the idea that all the men around here are Jamie Fraser.”

  “Who?”

  “Jamie Fraser, Jamie Fraser from Outlander on TV! Don’t pretend you don’t know who that is.”

  “I donna know,” he laughingly protested. “Do you honestly think I have time to sit about and watch the telly?”

  “Why are men so dismissive of romance?” she cried.

  “I’m no’. But if I have a moment, I prefer to watch football. So far, you’ve no’ said anything that couldna be said of every man in Gairloch.”

  “Oh yeah? Not every man in Gairloch has a chip on his shoulder. But you do,” Sloane continued, hitting her stride. “You believe you should have more support for the pub. You think it should attract more people, but you don’t have time to do anything but run the place. You know what else? You’re kind of a jerk.”

  She sat back, pleased with herself.

  �
�A jerk, am I? And why is that, Miss Prim, because I donna agree with your trickery? Because I believe honesty is better than deception and I donna know who James Fraser—”

  “Jamie Fraser.”

  “Who Jamie Fraser is?”

  That was exactly what she thought, Sloane realized. “You know what? This was a very bad idea,” she said angrily.

  “I tried to tell you, but you wouldna listen,” he said. He gave her a sympathetic smile. “Tell me the truth, lass,” he said, his voice softer. “What’s to come from this?”

  Sloane wasn’t about to tell him the truth and listen to him crow about how ridiculous she was and how right he was.

  “Come on,” he said and lightly tapped her knee with his fist. “Out with it. Tell me. I’m your boyfriend, remember?”

  Sloane slid her gaze to him. He smiled. It was a surprisingly soft smile. It was so fucking charming that, again, she could imagine panties melting right off the women he’d met in his life.

  And it certainly worked on her. She sang like the proverbial canary and told him everything.

  Almost everything.

  She told him about her friends, the Four Amigos, and about Adam. About how they’d met, how she’d fallen so hard in love, how she’d given up her own goals to follow him because she believed in what they would be as a couple. How she tried to be the woman he wanted, and how devastated she’d been when he’d abruptly broken their engagement and ended things.

  That seemed to startle Galen. “But why?”

  Sloane didn’t have the guts to tell him that. That Adam had said she was too uptight, a cold fish, too much work in the bedroom. I can change that, she’d argued. No, you can’t, Adam had said. It’s not in your nature. Her nature? What was her nature? Sloane didn’t know anymore. “I guess he had second thoughts. He wanted a different job, a fresh start. He wanted to date other people.”

  Galen glanced sympathetically at her. “For what it’s worth…he’s an eejit.”

  Sloane smiled. “Thank you. But you don’t have to humor me.”

  “I’m no’ humoring you,” he said in all seriousness. “Aye, granted, I think you’re foolish—”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “But I also think you’re lovely. Any man would be happy to be with you.”