“Can we hit a few of those long, hard drives tonight?” Julie asked, leaning in to kiss Niall’s cheek. The kiss was beginning to get ideas when Julie heard boots stomping up to the table.
“Is that any kind of example to set for the lad?” Declan asked, lifting Henry from Niall’s shoulder. “Carrying on in public like a pair of minks.”
“A kiss on the cheek does not make me a mink,” Julie said, bussing Declan’s cheek—and inspiring a redhead’s glorious blush.
“Americans,” Niall said, taking a sip of beer. “A friendly bunch. Did Morag dance you under the table, MacPherson?”
Declan took a seat, the baby cradled in his arms. “That she did. Me and half the pipe band. Woman is on a tear about something.”
“Her divorce is final,” Niall said. “Jeannie’s too.”
“I’d heard about Jeannie. Their husbands are fools. This is a good baby. He must take after the distant MacPherson ancestors whom he shares with me.”
Was Declan a little drunk, or had the dancing settled something in him, too?
“Thank you, Declan, for helping deal with my ex,” she said. “I had no idea he’d follow me here, much less make a nuisance of himself.”
Declan ran his nose over Henry’s cheek, which made the baby giggle and wave his arms.
“Midgies are a nuisance. That fellow was simply an ass. Cromarty is an ass too, but he’s a Scottish ass. They’re the best kind. When shall you have a look at the will, Julie Leonard?”
Niall paused mid-reach for his beer. “MacPherson, I was simply pulling the twit’s chain. I’ll not expect you to—”
“Bugger your expectations. I’ve been thinking.”
“Whyever would you take up such a peculiar habit this late in life?” Niall muttered.
The dancing was apparently over, because people were rearranging the tables, returning them to a restaurant pattern, except for the corner opposite the hearth where chairs were now organized into a circle. A woman was tuning a harp, and another had a recorder of some sort to her mouth.
“Listen to Declan, Niall,” Julie said. “You should listen to each other, rather.”
“I liked you better when you were kissing me, woman,” Declan said. “Niall, you and I need to get our differences settled. If we leave it to the lawyers and bankers and historical societies, this baby will be old and gray and nothing will be resolved, but we’ll both be bankrupt. Either the will is authentic, and I have an easement or claim of some sort on half your golf course, or it’s not, and there’s an end to it.”
“And you’ll take Julie’s word for what the will says and whether it’s authentic?” Niall asked. “I’m on mink-kissing terms with the lady, Declan. Think carefully about what you’re offering.”
Declan stared at the baby, while Julie couldn’t fathom Niall’s expression.
“Julie is a friendly sort. She kisses a lot of people,” Declan said, kissing the baby. “So do I. The way I see it, because Julie has succumbed for the moment to your feeble charms, she’ll bend over backward to be fair to me, and maybe a little bit more than fair. She’s leaving soon, which means this won’t drag out. I’ll abide by her decision if you will.”
An odd feeling uncurled in Julie’s middle, part satisfaction, part terror. “Declan, are you proposing to let me informally arbitrate your case, even though Niall and I are involved? Niall, are you comfortable with this?”
Niall’s answer was swift, his smile sweet. “I trust your integrity, Julie Leonard. I’d rather have you thrashing through this for us than some expensive expert from Edinburgh. Declan has a point—time is money, for my golf course, for his farm.”
“Jack MacNicklaus agrees with me,” Declan said to the baby. “History is made, there’s hope for your uncle, lad. Let’s go find your mum and see if she’s handing out kisses tonight too.”
He sauntered off with the baby, while in the corner, a harper began playing a lullaby.
“After the dancing comes the musician’s session,” Niall said. “Declan will get out his fiddle and play such music as will make you want to weep. Can I get you another beer?”
I trust your integrity, Julie Leonard. Not an instant’s hesitation, no manipulation, no lurking agenda.
“No more beer for me, thanks. I can walk back to the cottage if you’d like to stay for the music, Niall.”
He rose and draped an arm around her shoulders. “I’ve been coming to these gatherings since I was a small boy, but opportunities to be with you are fast disappearing. You promised me some time this evening, Julie. Are you withdrawing that offer?”
She could. She could tell him that having been given responsibility for the fate of his dream meant she couldn’t be intimate with him. A judge had to be impartial and free of even the appearance of conflict of interest.
She wasn’t a judge, yet, and all parties had waived her conflict of interest.
“The will says what it says, Niall, if it’s even a will. I don’t want to waste an instant of the time I can share with you. Declan doesn’t expect that of us in any case.”
“He’s tired, too,” Niall said, walking Julie toward the door. “Tired of his grief, maybe tired of that damned farm.”
As they walked out to the car, a fiddle joined the harp, a slow, sweet farewell to the day and its cares, a reminder that very soon, Julie would have to bid farewell to Scotland, and to Niall.
Even without the fiddle’s sweet notes, that thought alone was enough to make Julie want to cry.
***
The room was dark, Declan lurked against a back wall, and Niall had taken a stool next to Julie. He’d left her alone with the document for half the morning, and she apparently hadn’t moved.
“The paper is in remarkably good shape,” Julie said, moving a light over delicate writing. “We’re lucky it wasn’t stored in a basement or an attic, where the changes in temperature and humidity can wreck the paper. We’re also lucky it was stored flat.”
She focused with an intensity Niall hadn’t seen from her, not on the golf course, anyway.
Though in bed…
“Is it a will?” Niall asked.
“I’d say yes, off the top of my head, but I’ll need to study it awhile longer. The ink has faded over time, and that helps authenticate the document. We’re also lucky it wasn’t framed, because the framing materials can acidify the document further and even accelerate the foxing.”
“Foxing?” Declan asked, shoving away from the wall and standing at Julie’s other side.
“These rusty-colored spots,” she said. “Cleaning a document this old can be bad for it, but we can work on these spots in the margins, at least.”
More hours Niall would not spend with her. “We just need you to authenticate it and figure out what it says, Julie. Prettying it up can wait.”
She didn’t even look up, she was so enthralled with that damned will. She wore white cotton gloves, and to Niall, they looked better on her than a judge’s black robe ever would.
“C’mon, Cromarty,” Declan said. “Let’s find a chip shop, and leave the lady to do her job.”
“Get me a sticky toffee pudding,” Julie said. “But don’t bring the food in here. Alfred will kill you, and I’ll help him bury the evidence.”
Niall let Declan pull him into the sunshine of a Glasgow day, the noise and bright light jarring after the quiet of the restoration studio.
“How did she find this place?” Declan asked, taking off down the street.
“Friend of her father’s,” Niall said. “Guy worked with Julie’s dad back in the States. They wrote papers together. Do you know where you’re going, MacPherson, or will we find the nearest chip shop by wandering around all afternoon?”
“We’re in Scotland, and a chip shop shouldn’t be that—what are you doing?”
Niall tapped the screen of his phone. “Best chips in Glasgow, two blocks that way.”
A nice day for a walk, fortunately.
“I’ve been thinking,” Declan said.
“I’ve warned you about thinking, MacPherson.” But what else did the man have to do when his day was spent on a tractor or with the beasts?
“We put Julie in a bad spot,” Declan said.
No, we hadn’t. Declan had made a suggestion, and Niall had been the one to let matters get to their present pass.
“Julie will be fair and honest, Declan. We’ll reach the right conclusion without wasting a lot of time and effort.”
They walked along about half a block. Declan wore a black work kilt with a leather sporran, Niall wore jeans. Such a pretty day, and he’d rather be sharing every moment of it with Julie.
“Her fairness and honesty could well cost you your damned plans, Cromarty. You’ve nowhere to expand if you don’t build across the river, and I’m not about to sell you half my farm. Can you imitate minks with the woman who wrecked your life?”
“I will ask Julie to marry me, regardless of the outcome with the will.” Niall had realized this as Julie had slept in his arms only hours ago.
“She steals your dreams, and you ask her to marry you. How does that work?”
Carefully, if it worked at all, but Niall wasn’t the only one whose dreams mattered.
“I want to expand the golf course, Declan. The entire valley will benefit, I’ll benefit. Jeannie’s little cottage has a good reputation, and everybody who’s stayed there from the States knows an American golfer. Five years from now, we could be hosting—”
“You should try thinking sometime, instead of dreaming, Cromarty. You’re telling me if Julie Leonard’s analysis of that will gives me a claim on how you use the land, and I shut down all these expansion plans, you’ll just march the lady up the aisle, no hard feelings?”
“Nobody will ever again march that woman where she doesn’t care to go. She came here determined to have a judgeship. I want her to know she has other choices.”
“Well, that’s all right then,” Declan said as they waited for a light to change. “I was prepared to cost you the woman you love, or thought I was. Seems that won’t be the case, and my inconvenient sense of decency won’t plague me on your behalf.”
They found their fish and chips shop, right across from a sweet shop that had a version of sticky toffee pudding. Niall ordered two of those, told Declan not to snitch from either, and took off on another, more important errand.
***
“Mind you, I’m not eating this in your holy of holies,” Declan said, passing a paper bag under Julie’s nose then setting it on the table. “I’m simply reviving the patient. You’ve been in here for more than three hours, Julie Leonard.”
“Where’s Niall?” she asked, straightening carefully. Restoration work was hard on the lower back. She’d forgotten that.
“He went on some frolic and detour. So do I get to tell him what to do with his golf course?”
Declan’s casual tone was contradicted by tightly crossed arms and broad, hunched shoulders, as if, quite possibly, Declan didn’t want to own half of Niall’s property.
“If I had come to a conclusion,” Julie said, rubbing the back of her neck, “I’d tell you both at the same time, but I haven’t. I’ve read the entire document, and made a holographic copy, but I need more information. I wish this studio had been free sooner.”
Declan opened the paper bag and passed it under Julie’s nose again, and sticky toffee heaven nearly made her light-headed.
“He loves you, you know. Niall does,” Declan said, peering into the bag.
“You are awful,” Julie replied, shoving off her stool and snatching the bag away from him. She loved Niall, too. Very much. “My plane takes off the day after tomorrow.”
“He’s giving you a choice,” Declan said, trailing after Julie as she left the restoration room. “Letting you choose between the courtroom and what you just did in there with the magnifiers and lights and such.”
“You got two spoons,” Julie said, crossing the hall to a conference room and sitting down.
“Niall bought two servings. One for you and one for me.”
“And none for him?”
“I’m hoping none for him. His golf course will make good pasture, at least. He’ll get the lady this time, though, and nothing else. I like that. Last time he turned his back on the lady, but he got the big career.”
“You’re wrong, Declan,” Julie said, tugging off her gloves. “About this time and last time. Besides, how can Niall possibly want the woman who might very well see his life’s work snatched away?”
Declan slid onto a chair at the conference table, opened the cardboard container that held one of the desserts, and dug in.
“I suggest you ask Cromarty that very question,” he said around a mouthful of pudding. “His answer is a surprise to him, and a pleasure to me. Aren’t you hungry?”
“I’m saving mine to share with Niall.”
Declan smiled, the first purely sweet smile Julie had seen from him. She set down her lunch-cum-dessert, knowing he’d not touch it.
She waited outside in the sunshine for Niall—hungry, but not interested in food.
At least she knew she was hungry, and what and who she was hungry for. Niall came sauntering along about fifteen sunny, pleasant minutes later, his expression relaxed.
“All done, then?” he asked, taking a seat on the stoop beside Julie. Glasgow wasn’t a skyscraper city, so sunlight found the streets easily. Flowers liked it here too, and the restoration shop favored geraniums in its window boxes.
This would not be a bad place to come in to work, not bad at all, compared to a criminal courtroom.
“Done for now,” Julie said. “Declan is guarding the bread pudding. I don’t have an answer yet.”
“Then I won’t ask you for one.” Niall kissed her, a lazy, sweet, not-a-care-in-the-world kiss.
“You’re kisses get better and better,” Julie said, resting her forehead on his biceps. “I’m leaving the day after tomorrow.”
Niall’s arm came around her shoulders. “You must do what makes you happy, Julie. I’m counting on you doing what makes you happy.”
Would Niall say that, if he knew that, so far, the will showed every appearance of leaving much of the golf course property to Declan MacPherson?
***
Julie had made love with Niall with the sort of desperation that suggested she was still planning to use her plane ticket back to the States. Over a breakfast of cheese omelets and toast, she’d been quiet but composed, and when Donald came by at eight a.m., she’d been ready to join him for a traipse along the river.
“I’ve studied the walking trails, and the map of the valley, and the will,” she said. “I need to figure out a few more details, and then I’ll meet you and Declan for lunch at the Hare.”
Niall was not invited on this outing, in other words. “I’ll tell MacPherson.”
Donald—spry as a mountain goat—went jaunting off with Julie, and a morning stretched before Niall empty and quiet. He considered spending an hour at his own driving range and discarded the notion. In his present mood, he couldn’t have hit a melon with a Sasquatch driver.
So he sat on the porch swing and dreamed. When Declan showed up, Niall moved over and made room for him on the swing.
“Julie Leonard leaves tomorrow,” Declan said, giving the swing a push with his boot. No mud or manure on that boot today. “Jeannie confirmed it.”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t bugger this up, Cromarty. When I run sheep over your golf course, you’ll need a good woman to sort you out. Julie watches you the way… the way I watch my crops and my ewes and heifers. She has plans for you.”
Spring was a beautiful season. Golfing in spring was the best, the most joyous.
“I have hopes for Julie, too.” Though hoping was scary, when a man had limited himself to mere planning.
Declan tipped his head back, eyes closed. “Lindy never looked at you the way Julie does.”
Ach, well. Finally. “I’m sorry, Declan. I’m sorry, a
nd I wish that all could have gone differently.”
The breeze murmured through the trees, the pansies fluttered cheerfully.
“I might run cows over your fairways. Nothing makes my girls as happy as good, green grass.”
“I might build my clubhouse where your greenhouses are,” Niall said, because the civilities had to be observed. Julie would be proud of them, though.
Niall was proud of them, and that felt good.
“Let’s walk down to the Hare, have a wee nip,” Declan said, getting to his feet, “in anticipation of my victory over Cromarty greed and disregard for the environment.”
“A wee nip sounds good,” Niall said, rising. “Several wee nips, in fact, to celebrate the expansion of an environmentally responsible business that occupies a respected place in Scottish culture and can work marvels for the local economy.”
Declan waited for him at the bottom of the steps. “Or we could just get drunk for the hell of it.”
“As long as we understand each other, MacPherson.”
***
“I don’t understand this,” Julie said, dropping onto the bench. “We’ve been up and down this river, paced off the metes and bounds on both sides, walked half of Declan’s farm, and most of Niall’s nine holes.”
“Care for a nip?” Donald asked, coming down beside her. “All that tramping about gives a man a thirst.”
Julie took the proffered flask, not for the first time. The stuff got better the more she sampled it.
“When you don’t have the evidence for a criminal conviction, you don’t waste the court’s time putting on a case,” she said, passing Donald the whisky. “If you have the evidence, you go forward and do the best you can.”
“Here I thought we were sitting on some old tree trunk, and you tell me we’re in a court of law.”
“I’m a prosecutor, and I could well become a judge. I deal with evidence, and the evidence isn’t adding up.”
The bench they were sitting on was a single tree trunk, one of such enormous proportions that somebody had merely cut out a quarter section and propped the remaining three-quarters longwise beside the river.
“I’d heard something about your judicial aspirations,” Donald said, capping the flask and tucking it away. “Judges do important work.”
Must Love Scotland (Highland Holidays) Page 9