How could a man look philosophical, sexy, relaxed, and a touch sad while he ran a finger around the rim of his beer glass?
“Golf is a good teacher,” he said. “I don’t know as it’s the best teacher. Children are good teachers, too, as are the elderly.”
He’d misconstrued Julie’s meaning—or had he?
“It’s like this, Niall. I’m a lawyer, a very competent prosecutor, but if I don’t want to spend the next thirty years dealing with criminals and their charm-free, defense weasels, then I need to go after a judgeship. The logical progression is state’s attorney, master, judge, then appellate judge and so forth. Judges play golf.”
“Now that’s odd,” he said, taking a sip of beer as if wisdom itself came in a glass. “I was under the impression judges went cavorting about in black robes, hearing cases, and dispensing justice, but what would I know about the American courts?”
“Judges do that,” Julie said, “but they play golf to do their judicial politicking. I can’t keep up with the guys on the long game, but I can hang out at the country club, talk golf, and do well among the women. They’re learning to play golf too.”
The food was hitting Julie’s bloodstream, making rational arguments an effort and weighing each limb down with its own jet-lag induced cinder block.
What had she done with her caffeine gum? The stuff tasted awful, but it worked in a pinch.
“Are you ordering dessert?” Niall asked.
Dessert would mean squinting at the menu. Derek had said she looked like his fifth-grade teacher, Sister Mary Francina, when she squinted.
“Are you?” Julie asked.
“The sticky toffee pudding here is outstanding.”
If the fish and chips were any indication, the sticky-toffee-whatever would be heavenly. Also full of calories.
“Can we split one?”
Niall’s look was pitying. “Yes, we can split one, but when you’re all kitted out in your black robes, who will notice whether your figure is less than perfect?”
Her figure was less than perfect. Derek had said he “loved her anyway,” the bastard.
“Tell me about the courses we’ll play,” Julie said, because Niall’s question was rhetorical and those were permitted in oral argument.
“What are you looking for from the courses?” he countered.
A better score, of course. A better sense of how to play the game. Some exercise, if necessary.
“What do you mean, what am I looking for? I’m looking to up my game and cut my score.”
He ordered their dessert from a waitress who looked about sixteen years old—and infatuated with him—then took the last few swallows of Julie’s beer.
“We have nearly seven hundred golf courses in Scotland, which is more than four times the per capita ratio in the United States, and we’re a country the size of South Carolina. If it’s scenery you want, we have that. A windy game is easy to find. Par fives until hell freezes over, driving ranges until your arms fall off. Why golf, Julie? Why golf in Scotland?”
A growing sense of disorientation made concentrating on Niall’s question difficult. This was how a witness felt after two hours of hostile cross-examination. Reckless, loopy even.
“I should not have had that beer,” Julie muttered.
“You didn’t come to Scotland simply for the golf.”
Fatigue, a good meal, and the vagaries of the post-divorce emotional roller coaster conspired to hide Julie’s self-restraint from her mouth. She’d never see this guy after she got back on that plane in two weeks, so she tucked a serving of fresh, cold honesty between courses of his lunch.
“I came to Scotland because I am ashamed, Niall, and so damned pissed off I couldn’t trust myself in the courtroom any longer.”
The waitress chose that moment to approach with what looked like bread pudding slathered in a glaze redolent of whisky, topped with ice cream that had flecks of real vanilla in it.
Niall pushed the dessert across the table to Julie. “Not bad reasons for coming to Scotland. We know a lot about shame and rage here. Makes for interesting golf. Dig in. You’ve earned it.”
***
Badgering a woman when she was exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and far from home sat ill with Niall, but if Donald didn’t get over his snit, then Niall’s next two weeks would be spent with Julie Leonard, her moods, and her damned scheduled itinerary.
Niall did not have two weeks to waste on some American lawyer’s judicial ambitions, but for a woman trying to recover her dignity, he’d make some time.
“Shall I order a dessert for myself?” he asked.
Even enraged, Julie Leonard knew how to properly respect a sticky toffee pudding.
“You’re trying to put me in a food coma,” she said, skimming her spoon into the caramel whisky sauce blending with the melted ice cream. “It’s working.”
Simple fatigue was working, but a woman who didn’t know when she was famished probably wouldn’t know when she was exhausted.
“I owe the game of golf a great deal,” Niall said. “Took it quite seriously for years, and gained a lot of perspective as a result. One thing I learned: The Coo is an excellent place to refuel an empty belly.”
Julie pushed the best part of the dessert to Niall’s side of the table. The ice cream was half-melted, the sauce had thoroughly soaked into the bread, and good whisky perfumed the lot.
Niall picked up his spoon, though Julie’s wistful expression suggested he was about to devour all her hopes and dreams.
“You’re sure you don’t care for any more?” he asked—which was naughty of him. Julie Leonard wasn’t the sort to change her mind.
“I had ten bites. Ten bites is my limit with a dessert.”
No wonder Julie was enraged, if she never finished her treats. Niall dug in, ignoring the fact that she watched him eat dessert the way the women among gallery groupies had watched his backside.
Good food shouldn’t go to waste. Good women shouldn’t either, but a man couldn’t take on every challenge life threw at him.
“The Ladies’ is to the left of the bar if you’d like to freshen up while I finish this,” Niall said. “We’re still an hour or so from Dunroamin Cottage.”
Julie fished around in the depths of her bag, a shapeless black canvas sack that screamed pragmatism on the outside, and likely lacked any sense of organization on the inside.
“I changed some money,” she said, extracting a worn brown billfold that might have spent twenty years crammed into Uncle Donald’s sporran. “I agreed to this meal, and I agreed to split the dessert, though I know the exchange rate fluctuates, and I’m not clear on how the tipping—”
The woman was absurd, and endearing. Niall closed his hand over hers before she could start waving bills around.
“Keep your money, Your Honor. Scotland is a hospitable place, and you barely touched this dessert.”
Julie Leonard’s hands were cold, but her smile was astonishingly warm. Brilliantly warm, in fact, and bashful to the point of transforming her from a brisk, brittle, business traveler to a lady whose short game might be intriguing. With a single expression, she conveyed pleasure, surprise, mischief, and even a sort of dignified capitulation to Niall’s generosity.
“Thank you,” she said. “I can’t recall the last time somebody bought me lunch.”
The last time she’d allowed somebody to buy her lunch?
Niall saluted with his spoon. “You’re welcome. Give me a few more minutes with my pudding, and we’ll be back on the road.”
She daintily blotted the smile away, rose, and moved off to wash her hands ten times, or inspect the location of the fire extinguisher. Americans were odd that way. Niall should probably have insisted she drink water after the long flight, though that would have been a sacrilege with the Coo’s fish dinner.
Niall finished every bite of the pudding, paid the bill, and went outside into a spring day gone a trifle chilly.
Scottish weather wasn’t burdened with a
n overdeveloped sense of reliability. Gray-bellied clouds clipped in from the east, and the breeze bore a damp warning, while the sun still stabbed down in golden shafts between the overcast to the west.
Julie Leonard came through the front door, her cell phone in hand. She turned and snapped a picture of the Coo, or of its boxes full of red geraniums and some yellow flower Niall didn’t recognize.
“That was good food,” she said, marching over to the car, “and we’re still inside my margin for flight and baggage delays. If we arrive at the cottage within an hour, and the driving range isn’t—Why are you looking at me like that?”
He was smiling at her, at her determination, at her silly schedule, at her dutiful compliment for the quality of the meal, and her complete lack of awareness of her surroundings.
“Are you to drive us the rest of the way, Julie?”
She had her hand on the car’s door handle, then realized what country she was in. The passenger and driver sides were reversed in Britain compared to what she was used to in America.
“No, thank you. No driving for me,” she said, scooting around to the other side of the car. “I’ll probably make that mistake every time we go somewhere.”
“Because you’re focused on where you’re going, not where you are,” Niall said, opening the door to the passenger’s side. “You can’t play golf like that, not on a good course.” The best golfers knew how to play from where they were to where they needed the ball to go. For a time, Niall had been among them.
Julie settled in, buckled up, and heaved out a sigh. “You have to practice law like that, always three moves ahead of opposing counsel, getting ready for cross-examination while the witness is still fielding questions on direct, like a chess match. I hate chess.”
Then why make your living at it?
“An ability to plan ahead is an asset. Do you still want to take photos of the flowers in the village?”
“Yes.” She tapped at her cell phone, possibly checking the time in two different zones an ocean part. “No. Let’s keep moving.”
Niall buckled up, vaguely disappointed with her reply, though they’d see lots more flowers. His nearest neighbor, the dratted Declan MacPherson, grew flowers as a form of horticultural revenge.
On what or whom, Niall had yet to fathom.
In any case, Julie Leonard would see other, more impressive flowers in the next two weeks, though Niall nearly told her that rain would wreck the rest of her afternoon’s plans. She struck him as a woman who’d endured a fair amount of disappointment already, so he kept the weather report to himself, and let her figure it out when the first fat drops splatted against the windshield.
Chapter Two
* * *
One of the booby traps awaiting any litigator was the surprise witness, the credible purveyor of unexpected truth who, without warning, turned the entire case on its head.
Julie hated surprise witnesses, and she hated more that at Niall Cromarty’s prompting, she’d testified against herself.
I came to Scotland because I am ashamed, Niall, and so damned pissed off I couldn’t trust myself in the courtroom any longer.
Shame following a divorce based on adultery was as predictable as it was irrational. Julie’s domestic relations attorney, Jane DeLuca, had assured her of this. People who’d been cheated on felt ashamed. Jane had also suggested Julie get in touch with Jane’s in-laws, and go vacationing in Scotland.
“What are you plotting over there?” Niall asked as they tooled through more green, lovely, wet, countryside.
“It wasn’t supposed to rain here today,” Julie said. “I checked before the plane took off, and checked again when I landed.”
“Scottish weather isn’t to be trusted, except to be untrustworthy.”
“Apparently so.” Exactly like a husband.
Niall fumbled around behind the seat—his arms were that long—and produced a bottle of water.
“Probably a good idea to hydrate,” he said.
“Thanks.” Julie took the bottle and unscrewed the microscopic, environmentally responsible cap just as the car hit a pothole. Water splashed over the thighs of her jeans.
“Sorry,” Niall said. “Tissues in the glove box.”
He sounded genuinely contrite, suggesting his survival instincts were in good repair.
“It’s only water.” But a smarter woman would have seen the pothole up ahead. A smarter woman would have held the bottle in front of her, not over her lap. A smarter woman would not have blurted out revelations that proved her to be an embittered fool.
“Will you drink the water, or merely glower at it?” Niall asked.
He was Scottish, in his vowels and consonants, in the inflection that didn’t quite rise as high at the end of the question as an American’s question would.
Julie took a cautious sip and recapped the bottle. The rain went from a gusty shower to a steady downpour, turning the countryside into a blur of green fields, big trees, and grazing livestock.
“Fairy hill there on your right,” Niall said as they passed a sheep pasture. The center of the field was a bump on the landscape, a tree-covered mound where a half-dozen pale sheep and two shaggy red cows had gathered under the foliage.
“What’s a fairy hill?”
“Could be nothing more than an artifact of some glacier, could be a prehistoric burial mound. The farmers tend to leave them in peace, and the animals benefit from the shade. Why do you want to leave the courtroom, Julie?”
Even the surprise witness—especially the surprise witness—was subject to cross- examination.
“I don’t plan to leave the courtroom. I’m a good prosecutor, and I make decent money. A judge works in a courtroom, too, and makes even better money.”
Niall slowed the car as they passed through another flower-bedecked, white-washed, stone-sturdy village. Nobody was on the sidewalks except a fluffy white Scottie dog trotting along in the rain as if he were late for the municipal meeting he was supposed to chair.
The dog knew where he was going, while Julie was abruptly adrift.
“Do you enjoy your work?” Niall asked.
“It’s meaningful.”
She’d said the same thing to her father, as he lay in the bed the hospice people had so kindly set up in the living room for him. He’d scoffed, and told Julie meaning and joy weren’t supposed to be strangers.
“Golf isn’t meaningful,” Niall said, “but it saved my life. The game, not the show that can obscure it. Meaning alone can make a cold bedfellow and a poor drinking companion.”
Amid the fatigue, disorientation, and anger crashing around inside Julie like luggage loose in the backseat of an SUV, she endured the realization that Dad would have understood Niall.
Liked him, even.
Which, perversely, only made Julie more irritable. She checked the road ahead, saw no potholes, and took another swig of Highland Spring.
“Golf is a game,” she said. “How can it save a life?”
“Golf sorts you out. You walk onto the course, thinking you’re fit, rested, familiar with the terrain, and ready to give it your best. The course tells you that you’re resentful, tired, arrogant, and trusting the wrong people. You have to listen to the game, though.”
He said this easily, neither mocking himself nor preaching.
“I want to improve my game, Niall, not resolve family of origin issues.”
He turned the car down a lane that ran between big trees, bracken, and grassy shoulders full of ferns and rhododendrons not yet in bloom.
“Those are some big-ass pine trees,” Julie said, which again conflicted with her image of Scotland as all windswept crags and misty beaches. This was the woods in spring, the canopy a lush green, no landscaped paths or convenient benches disturbing nature’s designs.
“We have redwoods to go with our oaks and maples. The first managed forestry in Europe happened in Scotland, and where we can grow them, we take our trees seriously. Behold, your home away from home.”
A small dwelling sat in the middle of a clearing. Somebody had decked the porch with buckets of blue, yellow, and white pansies, and the trees seemed to lean slightly toward the cottage, as if imparting friendly gossip as they grabbed a spare ray of sunshine.
“More fairies,” Julie said, though she was so tired, and abruptly so dispirited, that what came out of her mouth no longer made sense.
Niall got out of the car, so Julie did likewise, shoving the tightly capped bottle into her shoulder bag. The air was cooler than she’d anticipated and the wet spots on her jeans cooler still.
“In we go,” Niall said, hefting Julie’s suitcase from the backseat. “Place should be unlocked.”
The place was isolated. Julie could see no other dwelling, no other driveways, no signs of human habitation at all. A squirrel hopped from one branch to another, precipitating a shower of raindrops on the cottage roof.
For all the woods were gloomy, and Julie’s mood gloomier still, the bright pansies, the chattering squirrel, and the fact that nobody had to lock the front door created a sense of welcome.
“Come in out of the rain, Your Honor,” Niall said, moving off amid the boulders and ferns between the car and the porch steps. “We’ll brew you a pot of peppermint tea, scare up some scones, and have you—”
Julie trailed after him, but as if somebody had shoved her hard between the shoulder blades, she stumbled, and would have gone down but for crashing into Niall Cromarty.
His reflexes were such that he caught her, one-armed, and broke her fall against his chest.
“Mind your step, Julie. The wet leaves and muddy ground can be treacherous.”
So could marriage and criminal prosecution.
Julie intended to stand up straight, plaster a clumsy-of-me smile on her face, and march into the cottage, wet jeans, aching head, wrecked schedule and all. Then she’d put down her rage, exhaustion, and even her dignity for just one damned hour.
“Julie? Are you all right?”
Niall’s second arm came around her. Julie gave up trying to muster some self-discipline and surrendered herself to his embrace. She didn’t know him, but he smelled good, he was sturdy, and in two weeks, she’d never see him again.
Must Love Scotland (Highland Holidays) Page 2