by Caro LaFever
“No.” She shifted the flowers in front of her in a poor defense. “That’s not my name.”
His eyes never left hers. He went silent again.
“Who are you?” Her hands tightened on the tray.
“Are ye saying you’re not Ceri Llewellyn?” This time, his voice lifted slightly, but then it slid down at the end, in a hushed, quiet way.
A hushed, quiet threat.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose.
It was ever-so-slight, his accent. There was posh London riding over every vowel, and a bit of Oxford polish, too. Underneath, though, lay Scots. Pure Scots.
“Who are you?” she demanded, her voice rising, a counterpoint to his.
“Sir!” The call came from behind, strident and harassed. A short, portly man dressed in fine London clothes, too, came waddling across the garden pathway. Coming from the back end of the castle, not the wide swath of parking lot she and Will had installed the first year the tourists started arriving.
The castle.
The lights last night.
A man who might actually have a key to the castle. A key of his own.
Maybe she was dealing with a ghost besides Lady Aileen. Because now that she had a moment to think, this man standing in front of her had Will’s build, if nothing else. “Are you—?”
“Sir!”
The sir standing in front of her didn’t stir. Not one hair.
And that hair was a clue, too. Will’s beloved wife had red hair. Ceri had seen several pictures in the castle, and the one magnificent portrait he’d commissioned of his wife right before her death.
Freya Ross with her red-gold hair. A fiery blessing, Will had said with fondness.
This man had his hair pulled back, but his short beard and the hair she could see was all fire. All red-gold fire.
“Sir!” The portly man raced to the other man’s side, his round face flushed. “Ah!” He stumbled to a stop when he spotted her. “You’ve found her.”
“I don’t know.” His voice was so soft, so low.
She could have been lulled by the gentleness of it, if she hadn’t learned some very hard, fast lessons about men. She’d thought she’d left those lessons and those kind of men back in Wales. When she’d pulled her roots up and left for good, she’d thought she’d start a new life here, where no one knew her or what she’d been before.
“What do you mean?” The older man lifted his head, his eyes puzzled.
“She won’t confess.”
Confess.
Ceri dropped the flat of flowers onto the dirt-and-stone path. She hadn’t fought in a long time. Not since she’d arrived in Pictloch to be greeted with warmth. Not since she’d met Will and come under his protection. And not since she and Elis had been welcomed into Castle Ross and made to feel like family.
But that didn’t mean she still didn’t know how to fight.
“I want you to leave.” She thrust her trembling fists on her hips. “Right now.”
He didn’t move. His gaze never left hers.
“Wait, wait.” The portly man reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief to mop his forehead. “We’re here to offer you quite a sum of money.”
“Reid.” The other man swung his gaze from hers, making her feel as if she could suddenly draw in a breath. For the first time, his voice wasn’t soft or quiet. It was hard. Brutal and tough and abrupt.
Her heart hammered in her chest in a frenzied jitter.
“Yes, sir?” The little man jumped and his nose went red.
“Leave.” His gaze went back to her.
Her breath caught in her throat.
“Sir, it’s best I negotiate with—”
“Now.”
The portly man ran off as if a fire had been lit under his high-class shoes.
Four months. Four months had passed, and she’d thought Will’s predictions had come true. She’d thought she was free and that she and Elis were safe. She’d thought—
“I suppose I can’t make ye claim your name,” he said, his face impassive. “I certainly can call ye what ye truly are, though.”
She glared at him. For all the pain he’d caused his da. For all the silent pauses when Will looked like he’d lost his heart. For all the times she’d wished Elis could somehow replace what her friend had lost. “You’re Lorne Ross.”
“Aye. And ye,” he slid his hand back into his pocket, “are a gold-digger.”
Chapter 2
She wasn’t pretty.
That would be a word Doc would use. His friend and partner would roll his eyes and say the girl was as pretty as a picture. Hugh Brooks would also say she was sitting pretty. Lorne’s photographic memory immediately pulled up a shot of Doc’s mouth curling in a cynical grin.
But she wasn’t pretty.
In either sense.
Lorne had once spent quite some time observing females. As a child, his mum had fascinated him. She’d been very different than his da. Very different than her son. She’d cared about inconsequential things, and nattered on about nothing.
Yet, he’d loved her. Which had puzzled him, too.
Then he’d moved his study onto the girls in the local school. All their giggles and gossip. The way they swung their hair over their shoulders, the way they clutched each other close. He hadn’t understood them any more than his mum, and they hadn’t understood him, either.
He’d tried a few times. Tried to have an intelligent conversation about how mathematics was central to the universe and how computer coding could be exciting. The girls would look at him and smirk before giggling.
He’d decided he did not love all females. Just his mum.
Yet his study of females had continued at Oxford, and although he’d hoped for more, he’d come up with the same results. Some of the women he’d met in his classes had been intelligent, but then they’d morphed into entirely odd humans when he’d encountered them at the pub in the evening. They’d done the same thing—the swish of hair, the giggles.
Lorne had once told Doc females were not useful.
His friend had shot him a look and asked if he was gay.
He was not gay. He’d completed a study on that, too. His body demanded his attention in his morning shower every day, and he took care of it. The images streaking through his mind were always of naked females.
So, he was not gay.
He’d told Doc that.
His friend took it upon himself to introduce him to female after female. After a few minutes of conversation with Lorne, they’d all walked away. Every single one.
Doc had worried.
He had not.
There’d been too much to do to worry about an inconsequential thing like his cock. There’d been the computer code for their first video game, Celtae Warrior, to work on. There’d been the endless meetings with the investors, where Lorne would lay out the financials one more time. There’d been the explosion of business when they’d launched which hadn’t receded during the last five years, only grown.
When the money had started to roll in—first thousands, then millions, then billions—Doc had suggested this would be the key to Lorne getting a girl. That had made sense, yet something inside of him had rebelled. Something he couldn’t logically understand and thus, shied away from examining.
He no longer spent time studying females. He was too busy.
The female in front of him wasn’t worthy of study either, even if she was far more than pretty.
“Gold-digger?” Her voice lilted over the two words, giving them an exotic tinge. Her flyaway black brows rose, a dash of dark on her snow-white skin.
Welsh. He remembered. She’d taken her first victim in Wales.
“Are you sure?” Now there was a layer of husk on her words. And she did something with her eyelids. Suddenly, they appeared to be too heavy for her to keep them all the way open.
The air around him went hot.
Lorne blinked before dismissing the silly sensation and also the stupidi
ty of her question. He’d noted the intelligence in her eyes. She knew what she was. “I’ve brought my solicitor from London, in order to expedite the transfer.”
“The transfer?” Her body stilled, drawing his attention down. “What do you mean?”
She wore a simple, long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. The colors were muted, the clothes baggy. But nothing could cover the abundance. The rich curve of her breasts, the lushness of her hips. The T-shirt concealed any hint of her waist. However, he estimated it was slim because her legs were lean.
The Llewellyn woman was not fat. She was just lusciously female.
His da hadn’t stood a chance.
His da had believed in fairy tales, and happy-ever-afters, and people. His da never questioned a person’s motives. His da hadn’t ever taken a situation apart and analyzed the pros and cons before he acted.
William Ross had been alone and vulnerable.
Even though his son had tried.
Lorne had loved his father. Not with the puzzled fondness he’d held for his mother. No, his love for his da had been the one elemental part of him he’d known could not be evaluated and explained. It was the only thing in his life he’d accepted as is. Through his childhood, he’d tried over and over again to make his da see. See how much he honored him, and adored him, and wanted his approval.
His da had never seen. Not once.
But his son had tried.
“What do you mean?” the female before him asked again, her arms coming around her, tightening on her waist. The action pressed her breasts into prominence.
A sticky line of sweat popped out along the length of his spine.
He noted the physical reaction before pulling his gaze to hers once more. “A transfer of the property back to me.”
Her mouth dropped open.
That wasn’t a pretty mouth, either. The correct word, the only word, would be sensual. Her lips weren’t painted, yet he calculated the effect of red on them would be stunning.
If he was the type to be stunned by a female. Which he was not.
Still, he allowed himself to look away. Doc had once told him it was off-putting to their investors when his partner’s gaze never quite met theirs. That had been understandable. So Lorne had trained himself to look right into everyone’s eyes when they met and when they negotiated. Only when a deal was signed had he allowed himself the relief of focusing on things that didn’t surprise or confuse him.
Like people did.
The realization that this deal hadn’t been finalized, but he’d looked away, made a tight ball of anger surge in his chest. Before he could take it out and roll the emotion around in his mind, the female strode right into his personal space.
He stepped back.
Pouncing forward, she stuck out her aquiline nose at him. “There’ll be no transfer of anything, no matter how much money you offer me.”
There was too much to take in. The color of her eyes, the way she trilled her rs, the scent of her. Combined with lush femininity, her aggressive stance, and his unexamined anger, his formidable brain shut down.
He stumbled back this time.
This hadn’t happened to him in years, this panicked blast of sensations overwhelming him. He’d learned as a child to protect himself by isolating experiences into clean, clear incidents. At Oxford, he’d surrounded himself with his own clan, Doc and six other boys who understood how important it was to be quiet when a guy was thinking. At work, he stayed in his corner office and rarely intermingled with his employees. That was Doc’s job, along with schmoozing the press and being the face of the company. Lorne’s job was to keep creating code and keep an eye on the financials.
His job was not to deal with angry females who had sensual lips and abundant curves.
“Do you hear me?” She advanced once more, her mouth tight, her eyes flashing, her chest heaving.
Lorne Alasdair Ross heard nothing except the clamor in his head.
The only thing to do was to retreat.
So, he did.
He was very young. And he was very odd.
Ceri stood in the middle of her garden, and watched Lorne Ross march past the empty flowerbeds, across the long, green lawn, and into the old wooden back door of the castle. His shoulders were straight, his gait strong, his fiery-red hair, tied in a man-bun, a tight flag of resistance. None of him screamed what had just occurred.
He’d fled the field of battle.
She’d come right into his personal space and told him off. Close enough to him to catch the fine weave of his suit coat and the nasty, costly smell of his cologne. She’d taken in his wealth and power and her whole body had shook. But she hadn’t crumbled or become intimidated.
She’d won. At least, this round.
Apparently, though, he was here to get the castle back, so there’d be more rounds. Many more, and she couldn’t afford to lose even one. She stared at the castle’s back door as it slammed shut behind Will’s son.
Lorne Ross had moved right into the castle last night. He hadn’t given her the courtesy of realizing she owned the property now. He hadn’t served her with any papers, or approached her like a civilized person would. Instead, he’d marched onto her land and called her a really ugly name.
“Bugger,” she yelled across the garden.
Stupidly, she hadn’t changed the locks. Stupidly, she’d begun to believe Will’s prediction about his son’s disinterest. And very stupidly, she now found herself with two males encamped in her castle, one of them being the new laird.
The villagers liked their laird. They still held the ancient loyalty which was so out of place in modern times.
“Shite,” she muttered.
When Will had died, they’d all lined up with her in the church, and then at the gravesite. They’d all paid their last respects with appropriate sorrow. But behind the sad faces, she’d seen. Behind the forlorn voices, she’d heard.
They’d been excited for the new laird to come home.
“Drewgi,” she shouted her mam’s favorite swearword.
Yes, he was a smelly dog with his too-expensive cologne and his offensive arrogance. If he’d come home when he was supposed to, then perhaps she would have felt more kindly, and they could have come to an understanding. However, it had been four months—four months during which the villagers had come to accept her place as the new owner of Castle Ross.
They’d get excited again, though, if they found out he was here. She also couldn’t be sure the slimy Chief Inspector would enforce her rights against the new laird if she demanded he do so.
“Dammit,” she said to her flowers.
Best to not alert the villagers. Best to merely let the man and his oily solicitor stay at the castle until they’d made her their formal offer. Once she’d said no, they’d leave. Go back to London in their fancy clothes. Better to focus on getting these flowers planted and keep planning for the tours.
Wresting the heavy flat into her arms once more, she strode to the first flowerbed. As she dragged on her gardening gloves, she tried to push her rising anxiety aside. Yet, the thoughts and emotions still tumbled inside her, causing her to feel faintly nauseous.
Will would have been stunned.
She had no idea why his son would want to come here. He hadn’t spent a spot of time here in the five years she’d been in Pictloch, and certainly not since she’d moved onto the grounds. As far as she’d known, he’d rarely called his father on the phone more than once a year. From what Will had revealed, and Elis’s Google searches expanded on, Lorne Ross was a London billionaire through and through.
She had to admit to being a bit stunned, too.
Dropping the flat on the first raised flowerbed made of ancient granite, Ceri tried to force herself to focus on the planting. The daisies went in, bright slashes of yellow mixing in with the beginning sprouts of the white and orange daffodils. She spiked her spade into the cool, damp earth again and again, pushing him and his money and his accusation back and back and back.
Will’s son had pots and pots of money. Elis had let her know.
“He’s the creator of Celtae Warrior.” His lanky frame had drooped over her sofa in typical teenage languor, but his face had been filled with awe. “Everyone plays that video game.”
“I don’t.” Ceri had swirled a spoon in the potato soup she’d made for their dinner.
Her brother snorted. “You’re too busy with your herbs and stuff.”
“The herbs that are one day going to make my fortune.”
Another snort. “Not like Lorne Ross. He’s got this company in London—”
“How do you know that?” She turned to stare at him.
“There’s a thing called the internet, Sis.” He gave her an exaggerated sneer. “Ye might want to check it out sometime.”
So she hadn’t grown up with computers like he had. So what? Just because she preferred pen and paper to typing on a keyboard, didn’t mean she wasn’t as smart as her brother. “Whatever.”
“Whatever,” he batted back.
Her brother had developed a decided Scottish burr and an irritating teenage attitude. She supposed that was predictable, as he’d been at Gordonstoun for almost ten years, and she hadn’t been more than peripheral in his life for a long time. But it still hurt to hear not a drop of his heritage in his voice and it still stung when he treated her with disrespect. “I don’t honestly care what Lorne Ross does. He hurt Will and that’s all I need to know about him.”
“Aye.” Elis slumped further down in the sofa, his face going contemplative. “He is a genius though. And he’s got pots of money.”
That knowledge had swum in her head for a time in silent contemplation until after another fierce storm had ripped part of the castle’s lower shingles off. Worried about Will’s ongoing stress about his finances, she’d suggested his filthy-rich, genius son might want to help with the staggering costs of the upkeep to the castle and estate. Will had shot her down with the first and only flash of anger she’d ever seen in him.
She’d never mentioned his son in front of him again.