***
Niall had been asking Julie a question with his mere kiss, though Julie was damned if she’d been able to puzzle out which question, much less the answer to it.
Was she interested in some vacation sex?
When was the last time she’d been kissed for the sheer joy of a kiss?
Why had Niall’s sweet, simple kiss left her aching inside, as if an entire ocean stood between her and her dreams?
What were her dreams?
That question she could answer: a Circuit Court judgeship. Inside work, no heavy lifting, as her father had said, though from him, the pronouncement had been unflattering.
Nearly pitying.
“That’s where I’ll be staying for the duration of your visit,” Niall said, as the forest trail wound past a modern stone, glass, and wood edifice that at once stood out from the surrounding trees, and fit with them.
“You’re not far from me,” Julie said. Niall was still holding her hand, in fact.
“My home is a couple of miles up the river, but my cousin Liam is off on his honeymoon, so I’m tending to the dog and cat.”
“And tending to the American?” Julie didn’t want to be on the same list with the dog and the cat, didn’t want to be another obligation, but she’d paid handsomely for this trip, and expected it to pay handsome dividends in the judicial sweepstakes, too.
She was relieved that Louise Cameron, another attorney who’d once practiced in Damson County, Maryland, had taken a honeymoon with her Scottish husband.
“We’ll see what we can do with your golf game, Julie,” Niall replied, “but what happens off the links won’t be part of your infernal schedule. You’re on holiday, aren’t you?”
Was she?
The woods were gloomy and damp, but Julie’s mood was brighter for having been kissed. Maybe she was on holiday after all.
“I want to work on my game, Niall. That’s why I came to Scotland.”
The river to their right murmured along, rain having turned the waters muddy and the scent of the air verdant. Julie could not recall when she’d walked this slowly with another person before.
“You mentioned something about rage and shame,” Niall said as Julie’s cottage came into a view a few minutes later. “You’ve nothing to be ashamed of. I didn’t kill Belinda, and your ex-husband is an idiot.”
“How long did it take you to figure that out? The part about not killing Belinda?” Derek was handsome and charming, and Julie felt like an idiot—for marrying him, for losing him.
Niall held back a dripping branch of damp, gauzy, new oak leaves. “A few years. Declan’s hostility helped, because he made me confront accusations nobody was making aloud. Your former husband was an ass before you married him, and he’ll be an ass until the day he dies.”
The very dispassion with which Niall pronounced sentence made his opinion more credible.
“He was a persistent ass,” Julie said. “Nobody had pursued me like that before. Derek decides he’s entitled to something, and then he gets it. Derek decided his father approved of me, so Derek proposed until I accepted.”
The cottage looked serene, snug, and happy in its little clearing. The pansies added splashes of color, and the fat black cat sat on the porch, his fluffy tail wrapped around his front paws.
“I played a lot of golf to prove a lot of people wrong,” Niall said. “To prove I wasn’t a quitter, that I didn’t expect everything to be easy, that I could be self-sufficient. Somewhere along the way I fell in love with the game.”
Julie had not fallen in love with the practice of law, though she’d certainly been infatuated with Derek.
“You’re suggesting I’m going after a judgeship to impress my ex?”
“Motives are seldom that simple,” Niall said, a diplomatic dodge. “If you go after a judgeship, it should be because that’s what you want.”
Another display of diplomacy: Did Julie want Niall? For the two weeks she had in Scotland, did she want that kind of intimate companionship? Unlike Derek, Niall wasn’t making any effort to sweep her off her feet.
Which made Niall far more trustworthy.
“You were Neal Cromarty when you played professionally,” Julie said. “I did a search on ‘Niall Cromarty,’ and the search returned Neal instead. Why did you quit?”
Niall led her up the porch steps and to the swing that sat outside the front door. The porch was covered, and thus the swing was dry, as was the Black Watch plaid afghan folded along the top.
Niall draped the afghan around Julie’s shoulders, then tugged her by the wrist down beside him. His arm rested across her shoulders, and while rain dripped from the trees, and the cat hopped up on the porch railing, Julie came to a realization.
Beneath the shame she felt over Derek’s rejection was a loneliness that had haunted her entire marriage. She ought to have paid attention to that loneliness, because even when intimate with her husband, she’d still been aware of it.
She let her head rest on Niall’s shoulder. “Am I not supposed to ask about your golf career?”
“Nobody has asked me why I quit competing. I’m considering my answer.”
He was warm and relaxed, nothing in him quivering to be away from her, or to be noticed acting as her doting swain.
God, did Julie loathe doting swains.
“I gave up the sponsorships and stopped competing in part because I love the game of golf, not the game of being a professional golfer. I also love my family, and had won and earned enough to settle down here where I can watch my nieces and nephews grow up.”
A simple explanation for what had to have been a hard choice. “No children of your own?”
He gave the swing a push with his toe. The cat tried to jump onto the swing, missed, and fell to the decking in a heap of indignant black fur. Niall scooped the beast up with one hand, set the cat in his lap, and that easily, a contented rumbling ensued.
“Children require a stable home,” Niall said, “and that means I need a source of income. I teach, of course, and I’ve written articles and done clinics, but I need eighteen holes to put my course on the map. Competition here is fierce, and I’ve designed a course that will—”
The cat booped his chin.
“Your dream is to pass golf along to others,” Julie said. “A good dream, if you love the game.”
While Julie wanted what? A judicial pension and a sedentary life?
The cat settled down to kneading Niall’s thigh, which Niall gently dissuaded. “I want security, too, Julie. I’m Scottish, and we manage our coin judiciously for good reasons, but this valley is the perfect place for what I envision.”
He’d not leave Scotland, in other words. Not follow an American lawyer to Maryland for any reason. Julie ought to be relieved.
Niall did, however, see children in his future, while Julie… The dream of a judgeship had apparently paled amid the damp Scottish woods and honest conversation.
So had Julie’s shame and even some of her rage. The rest of Julie’s life was soon enough to pursue that black robe. Right now, she was cuddled up to an honest, healthy, man who let a cat boop him on the chin.
A man whose kisses were as tender as they were unexpected.
Julie snuggled closer to Niall, hooking a leg over his knees. “I wish you the best with your golf course, Niall, but what will you do about Declan and his granny’s will?”
***
Every man—every person—should carry into old age at least one memory of a lazy hour spent kissing and cuddling on a porch swing. Black Douglas had never purred more loudly, and Niall’s jeans bore permanent claw marks.
His heart was not unscathed either.
He made plans to take Julie to a driving range in the morning, made sure she had supplies on hand for a decent evening meal, then let her shoo him down the path to Liam and Louise’s fortress of artwork among the trees.
Liam’s house had always been pretty, but marriage to Louise had made an art history professor’s personal a
bode welcoming too. Helen, their shaggy, aging deerhound-mastiff, woofed gently at Niall in greeting.
“I do enjoy a woman who’s subtle about her desires,” Niall informed the dog as he let her out into the backyard. He also apparently could develop a fondness for a woman who would be getting on a plane in two weeks without looking back.
“Though I’m not entirely comfortable with that idea either,” he said to Helen as she went sniffing among boulders and ferns. “Too much like tour groupies and the old Niall. Didn’t care for him very much, after a while.”
Nobody had cared for that Niall, though once he’d started winning, everybody had wanted to have their picture taken with him. Declan’s continued hostility had been nearly welcome in its genuineness.
While Helen inspected the same stumps, rocks, and bracken she’d patrolled for years, Niall heated some leftover lasagna and brought it out to the back steps. Julie had been insistent that she wanted the evening to herself, and Niall had accepted an opportunity to consider the day’s developments.
“Why is it,” he asked the dog when she’d finished her patrol, “that the same day a pretty, smart, and fierce woman kisses me into a witless stupor, Declan announces that he’s found the damned will and intends to attack nearly all I hold dear?”
Helen put her chin on his Niall’s knee, turning a patch of the denim damp. Niall didn’t finish his lasagna, though Louise was a formidable cook. Worry began to supplant the rosy good cheer left by Julie’s kisses.
He washed his dishes, flipped on Liam’s state-of-the-art office computer, and started searching Scottish land record archives—then took a detour to do a search on a certain American attorney who would soon be flying out of his life.
***
“I like that golf has a dress code,” Julie informed Black Douglas as he watched her braid her hair. Douglas had chosen to remain on the bed, the same bed he’d shared with Julie for most of the night.
“The courtroom has a dress code, too,” Julie said, “though not everybody observes it. Judges wear exactly what you have on.”
Unrelieved black and an inscrutable look, though some lady judges wore a white lace collar too.
Douglas popped off the bed, stropped himself against Julie’s chinos once, then went strutting on his way, tail held high. Julie made the bed—Julie had been the bed maker in her marriage—and was debating whether to switch her phone off when it rang.
Not Derek.
“Julie here.”
“I trust you slept well?”
Niall, his voice a touch deeper, maybe for not yet having had coffee. Perhaps he was running late, but the driving range wasn’t going anywhere and the morning was sunny.
“I did sleep well. Douglas did too. I’ll be ready in five minutes,” Julie said. She had to start over on her hair, because for golf, she wore it French-braided into a chignon, the same as she did for the courtroom.
“I’ve run into a bit of a problem,” Niall said. “Jeannie called, and she’s been asked to interview for a job on short notice. She’s quite particular about who watches the baby, and nobody else is available.”
Julie dropped to the bed. “You’re standing me up for a baby, Niall? Have you ever changed a poopy diaper?”
His silence was interesting. “It can’t be very complicated.”
Neither was a bad marriage.
“I’ll come with you,” Julie said. “We can hit the driving range when Jeannie’s finished her interview. When the baby naps, you can lecture me about golf.”
“I could ask Donald—”
“And leave that helpless infant to your clumsy efforts with a diaper pin? Cromarty, accept help when you need it. I won’t tell Donald you’re afraid of the diaper pail.”
“I’m not—”
Julie would rather change dirty dipes with Niall than hit the driving range with Uncle Donald. Perhaps that realization was dawning on Niall.
“We can discuss Scottish land records,” Niall said. “Declan’s granny figured prominently in my nightmares.”
Julie stuffed her golf shoes in her black bag, slipped into a pair of slides, and grabbed a sweater from the closet. “Meet you out front in five, dude. Bring your clubs.”
Chapter Four
* * *
“I have lost my heart to a blue-eyed charmer named Henry,” Julie said, lifting the fat, smiling baby up above her head and adding to Niall’s increasing store of available nightmares.
“If you drop that baby, Julie Leonard, I shall kill you, even if you are a lawyer, and Jeannie will kill me. Then the authorities will come after her, and the child will be left to the dubious mercies of my family for the balance of his upbringing.”
Niall had meant the warning half in jest. It hadn’t come out that way. Damn Declan’s granny for putting him off stride.
Julie lowered Henry and snuggled him against her shoulder. “This is your first solo with this baby?”
“Yes, and it will be my last if any harm comes to that child. Jeannie said he goes down for his nap around ten-thirty and it’s nearly eleven. Shouldn’t he be tiring?”
“We’re new people,” Julie said, patting the baby’s back. “New people always interest a happy baby. You talk golf and I’ll cuddle with my squeeze. You can put us both to sleep.”
She took the rocking chair while the grin Henry aimed at Niall was positively gloating. Put her to sleep, indeed.
Niall stretched out on the couch, a hopeless indignity because the couch in Jeannie’s rental was about two feet too short.
“What golfing topic would you like me to address?” he asked, wedging a pillow behind his head.
“When did you decide to focus on golf professionally?”
A prosecutor’s question, but also the question of a woman whose expectations, about marriage, career, and herself, were falling to pieces.
“While I was at uni,” Niall said. “I’m not stupid, but the only place I felt alive was on the links. My grades were adequate, and the classes that had something to do with golf or golf courses were great fun, but the rest was…”
“Going through the motions,” Julie said, kissing the baby’s cheek. “Doing the next expected thing because it is expected, and you haven’t planned anything else because you’ve been so busy living up to expectations.”
The picture she made with wee Henry was sweet and right, somehow. “Do you want children, Julie?”
She had the knack of handling a baby, and Henry, who did not take to everybody, had claimed Julie for his own the moment she’d held him. Jeannie had seen that, picked up her purse, and disappeared for her interview without a backward glance.
“I thought I wanted children,” Julie said. “I have cousins, too, and friends from college, law school, and grad school. I’ve been around a lot of babies and toddlers. In my work, I handle delinquency cases, and those poor, clueless, hopeless kids—”
Niall knew a little about those poor, clueless, hopeless kids. The ones born holding low cards with no hope of exchanging them. What could an adult who’d been dealt all the aces in the world offer to doomed youth?
“I do a golf camp for kids each summer,” Niall said. “I learn a lot about the game from them, and some of them keep in touch.”
Henry gave up a contented sigh, the sound startling for its unequivocal surrender of all thoughts, cares, worries, or ambitions. In one gusty breath, the baby conveyed utter trust in the woman who held him, and in life’s goodness.
“Keep talking,” Julie said. “You’re serenading him to sleep. You can’t teach children golf in one week.”
“Golf is probably like the law. You don’t conquer it, you surrender to it. The complexities are unending, the possibilities and anomalies fascinating, the folklore a living body. I’m reminded of one of those screen savers that keeps repeating, though at the same time it’s never the same image, only the same pattern.”
“A fractal,” Julie said. “My father loved them. History is like that too. You can’t study Scottish history wi
thout studying English history, then Norse history, then French history, then—Henry’s asleep.”
Niall was wide awake, even as he lay relaxed on the couch. He never talked about golf with anybody. He instructed, he lectured, he demonstrated, he wrote, he critiqued, he analyzed.
Maybe he wasn’t talking about golf with Julie either. “I’m not trying to teach the children golf, I’m trying to teach them what golf taught me.”
Julie rocked the baby slowly, the picture of complete, unified contentment. “Which is?”
“That we’re all still learning, all the time. That nobody has a faultless swing under all circumstances, that we can all improve, and the joy is in the striving. Once that lesson sinks in, you can dream again. It’s not about the big tournaments or the lavish sponsorships. It’s about wrestling the most interesting dragons, day after day, until gradually, you tame them, or make friends with them—I’m spouting nonsense.”
Julie said nothing. Just rocked slowly, cuddling the infant, eyes closed.
A buzzing came from her purse, which sat across the room on the kitchen counter. She rose and passed Niall the baby so smoothly, Henry didn’t wake.
“I should turn my phone off,” she muttered. “Back home, the day isn’t even into business hours yet, and some fool lawyer is probably wondering why they can’t find a case file—crap.”
She stared at her phone screen as if it were the dirty diaper Niall had changed an hour ago.
Don’t go. Niall assumed a crap uttered with that much disgust meant Julie had received a text telling her she had to leave Scotland and get back to Maryland.
Steady on, Cromarty. You just met her, she is leaving soon, and you’re an idiot.
Julie tossed her phone back in her bag. Though she wore chinos and a polo shirt, her posture was tense, her hair swept back from her face to reveal a fierce set to her jaw, a hard light in her eyes.
Must Love Scotland (Highland Holidays) Page 5