Rather than gawk, Megan ducked into the bathroom and used her travel toothbrush and Declan’s toothpaste.
“You’re having a fling,” she told her reflection. “It’s like a series of one-night stands, only less work because you and Declan have to pick each other up only once.”
Megan undressed and appropriated another of Declan’s plaid shirts from a hook behind the door. The wool bore his scent, and maybe a little of hay and grain, too.
A lovely bouquet, and unique to Declan MacPherson.
When Megan returned to the bedroom, Declan was naked before the bed, tossing plaid throw pillows into a big reading chair.
“My shirt has never struck me as sexy before,” he said, firing the last pillow at the chair. “I don’t believe I’ll ever wash that one again.”
Pure male beast stalked toward Megan, legs thick with muscle, flat abs, beautiful chest and arms. Megan’s heart rate climbed as Declan approached, and when he bent closer, this-is-gonna-be-so-much-fun banged hard against what-have-I-gotten-myself-into?
“Warm up the sheets for me,” he said, kissing her nose. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
And oh, his tushy… his magnificent, lovely, muscular…
“I’m losing it,” Megan muttered. “I’ve come to Scotland, and whatever fairies and elves and whisky demons they have here must have dragged me into the magic mountain.”
“Get in the bed, love,” came singing from the direction of the bathroom, the inflection heavily Scottish. Gate-tin-the-beid, luv. Water ran, the skinny cat came sauntering in the door, and Megan climbed—as in scrambled up—into the bed.
“Last one in’s a rotten egg,” she called, taking two condoms from the purse she’d set on the nightstand. The cat aimed a disgusted look at the pillows piled on the chair and half-climbed, half-leapt onto the hassock. “Does the cat stay?”
Declan sauntered out of the bathroom, a water glass in his hand. “The cat stays. You’re on my side. Obliging of you.”
“Obligin’ of yew,” Megan muttered. “You get more Scottish when your clothes fall off.” He got more something else too. Magnificently more.
Declan set the water glass on the night table and the bed dipped like a hammock when he settled in beside her.
“Alarm goes off at five thirty though, of course, you’re welcome to sleep in.” He threaded an arm under Megan’s neck, and just like that, she was cuddled against his side. “I’m all for a bit of foreplay, but you might want to bear the early start in mind when you’re arranging my schedule tonight.”
He was warm all over, the only softness in his tone of voice. He was teasing, probably.
“I get to arrange the schedule?”
“You’re the lady, and you’re my guest, so you get to arrange me. I suggest you be about it.”
Chapter Three
* * *
Dixie plucked a stray daisy leaf from Tony’s hair and tried to recall where she’d thrown her shirt.
“You going somewhere?” Tony asked, propping himself up on his elbow. He was all Michelangelo curves and tousled dark hair as he lounged on the work table, not a stitch on him.
“I’m cold,” Dixie said, picking up her jeans. A few unlucky daisies hadn’t made it back into the water bucket. She pulled her T-shirt over her head and rounded up the strays except for one with a bent stem. She clipped off the long end and tucked the daisy behind Tony’s ear.
“You upset, Dix?”
“Insane, maybe. We just screwed on the work table like a pair of bunnies drunk on mint, with five dozen innocent daisies looking on.”
And Dixie hadn’t felt this good since… forever. She sat on the table and lay back so her head rested on Tony’s flat stomach. His touch drifted over her features, his fingertips as cool and delicate as rose petals.
“Do rabbits get drunk on mint?” he asked.
“Peppermint is one of the oldest aphrodisiacs. I’ve told Megan she should keep some herbs on hand, not just the kitchen herbs, but the useful ones, too, right up near the cash register.”
Would Megan know the work table had been used after hours for something other than arranging flowers?
“Megan’s pretty focused lately,” Tony said. “Her plans, her dreams. I’m glad she’s happy.”
Tony was a good guy, and a fantastic lover. He deserved to be a happy guy, though. “Megan’s plans, Megan’s dreams, and Megan’s floral empire. You want your own shop, Tony?”
That slow, magic hand slipped down to cup Dixie’s breast through her T-shirt. “I want you, Dix. Already. Again. A lot.”
“Then let’s go to my place,” Dixie said. “You didn’t answer my question, Tony. Do you want your own shop?”
“Let’s get dressed. Anybody ever tell you that work tables are hard on a guy’s knees?”
They weren’t exactly comfortable for a gal’s back, but Dixie hadn’t cared. “We’ll keep some kneepads under the sink. See how long it takes Megan to ask about them.”
They finished dressing quickly, though Dixie hadn’t bothered with her bra. Before leaving, they stuck the daisies back in the cooler, cleaned off the table, put away the clippers.
Tony locked up, and they hung out between their cars just kissing like fourteen-year-olds for a few minutes. The evening was warm, sunset still an hour away. Dixie leaned into Tony’s embrace and decided to risk something at least as precious as Tony’s knees.
“I want my own shop someday, Tony. I want a place where organic herbs are front and center, right where everybody has to at least look at them when they’re standing at the register. I want books on the language of flowers. I’ve been sitting on a little nest egg I got when I turned twenty-one, and I know what I want to use it for.”
Tony’s hand swept her hair back in a slow, sweet caress. “I want to give classes in flower arranging. Nothing fancy, just the basics, enough to show off the yard flowers.”
Tony fell silent, but that he’d offer even a single wish was an enormous admission.
“We owe Megan,” Dixie said. “But we also work hard, Tony, and she doesn’t always listen.” She never listened, lately.
“If we stay out here another minute, I’ll be humping you on the hood of your car, Dix. We can’t just cut and run on Megan when she’s getting ready to open a second shop.”
“So we won’t cut and run. We’ll give her plenty of notice, and let her do the flowers at our wedding.”
***
One sodden night at the age of seventeen, Declan had found himself chasing sheep. His grandmother had shepherded sheep, a collie ever at her side. Between the woman and the dog, two hundred bleating contrary Highland crosses had been easy to control.
Declan had been alone when he’d come across the jailbreak, and they hadn’t even been his sheep. Spooked from a storm that had left the thigh-high hayfield sopping, and unused to their liberty, the sheep had ducked, dodged and generally behaved like livestock confronted with a human of questionable intent.
A semblance of order had begun to restore itself, no thanks to Declan’s efforts, when in the dark and damp, he’d charged straight into a hot electric fence. From wet jeans to damp sweatshirt, he’d lit up the night in a blue flash of pure, human startlement.
For two hours afterward, he’d been able to feel the ends of his own hair and hear his heartbeat in his head.
Finding himself in bed with Megan Leonard, and her wearing nothing but his favorite work shirt, was a comparable experience. One day, he’d been farming away, reminding himself not to miss the quarterly accounting appointment at the end of the week, the next, he was silhouetted against his internal sky, once again an aching blue flash of pure startlement.
And not entirely happy startlement. The sex would be great fun, the two weeks would go quickly, but then what?
Then shearing, then haying, then another quarterly meeting with the accountant, and fifty more years of same?
“You’re quiet,” Megan said, her hand drifting over his chest.
“I know the
tune,” Declan said, “I’m trying to recall the words. I like how you touch me.” Liked the gentleness and confidence of Megan’s hands on his body.
She straddled him, the tails of his shirt brushing against his thighs. He’d left the bathroom light on, mostly because he’d been in such a hurry to get back to the bed, but the light was helpful now. He was less likely to charge into hot fences when he could see that Megan’s expression held both wonder and caution.
“How about you let me touch you for a while, then?” she suggested. “I’ve delegated so much of the floral design at my shop that I forget what a sumptuous pleasure it is to work with my hands.”
Megan had wonderful hands. They traced Declan’s features, one by one, measured the breadth of his shoulders, brushed over nipples gone sensitive with wanting.
“Will you enjoy designing the wedding flowers?” Declan asked, undoing the top button of the shirt she wore.
Megan sat back—sat on him—hands falling to her sides as he undid another two buttons.
“For all I don’t like weddings,” she said, “I do like wedding flowers. Every couple is different, every bride is different. For each one, I want to do my best. I’ve given Tony most of the design work because that’s what a manager does when she wants her operation to grow. I’ve hired good people, and let them focus on what they do best.”
“While you do what?” Declan asked, resisting the urge to push the shirt off her shoulders.
“I pick up the endless, boring, tedious slack mostly, but right now, I do you, Declan MacPherson.”
She shrugged out of the shirt, and Declan’s meager store of pillow talk deserted him. When he touched his mouth to Megan’s breast, her hands wrapped around his head and held him closer. Her scent was like the greenhouse on a summer night—complicated, lush, enough to make a man stop and do nothing but inhale the joy of being alive.
He and Megan had kissed before, but this time when Megan brought her mouth to his, Declan’s whole body resonated with the taste of her. Peppermint and eagerness. He could spend hours simply learning that taste, and comparing the taste of her mouth to the taste of her elsewhere. He wanted to catalog her sighs and groans, wanted to learn what made her giggle, what made her shiver.
Megan glossed her damp sex over Declan’s arousal, a confident caress that had Declan reaching for a condom. He did not believe in tempting fate or taking unnecessary chances, not with his own future and certainly not with Megan’s.
She sat up, panting, her braid tickling the backs of Declan’s thighs. “MacPherson, I am not proud of myself. I’m usually a very patient woman, but it’s been a while, and I guarantee you, next time, I will have a smidgeon of womanly wiles, or whatever it is when a woman can at least demonstrate some—”
“There,” Declan said, flopping back against the mattress. “Dressed for the party, which resumes now.” When his thumb brushed up through Megan’s curls, he felt the electricity sing through her.
“I knew you were going to be trouble, MacPherson. Do that again.”
Because Megan was soon panting and whimpering and dancing over him with her hips, Declan could shove his own thundering desire aside and experiment with what trouble meant to her. She progressed from aroused, to managing, to demanding as he teased, kissed, and caressed. Her breasts were exquisitely sensitive, and Declan was fairly certain he could bring her off without even—
“You,” she said, taking Declan in a firm grasp. “Now.”
Just like that, she gloved him in her heat. The shock of it stilled him in every particular—hands, hips, breath, brain.
“A take-charge woman,” he managed. “I do adore a take-charge woman.”
And yet, having taken charge, Megan didn’t quite seem to know what to do. “Sometimes I gobble when I should savor.”
She expected him to decipher Delphic female pronouncements when his balls were on fire?
“So savor now, Megan. We have all night, and I’m not going anywhere.”
That was apparently the right thing to say. She subsided onto Declan’s chest with a sigh and let him set a lazy, getting-to-know-you pace, for an entire minute. Then she was back in the game, kissing him within an inch of his life, devouring his mouth as she became increasingly insistent elsewhere.
A stampede took place in Declan’s bed, a one-woman, desperate, unstoppable stampede. Declan held off as long as he could, drove Megan as high and as hard as determination and passion allowed, and then he fell with her into an endless, tangled darkness of pleasure and oblivion.
The recoil of an explosive joining reverberated through him while quiet descended in the bedroom. Six feet away, old Hughey purred loudly enough to wake the dead, while Megan breathed in counterpoint to Declan.
“MacPherson, I’ll make it up to you. The Scottish air must agree with me, or chasing cows, or something. I’m not normally so—”
Declan scrubbed his knuckles over her crown. “Yes, you are. You’re a determined, passionate woman, and that’s just lovely. I’ve been known to be determined myself. Life tromps over you otherwise, and you’re left with tired dreams and nothing in the bank.”
Though chasing those dreams could leave a man just plain exhausted.
“You’re passionate too,” Megan said, sitting up and unjoining them. She went straight to dealing with the condom, while Declan ached simply to hold her. “Your farm is a work of passion, and so was your grudge with Niall.”
“We have feuds here. A grudge sounds so petty.” Though a grudge fueled by grief was nearly impossible to set aside. The farm was a legacy, something so far beyond a mere passion Declan hadn’t found English words for it.
Megan climbed off the bed and headed for the bathroom, giving Declan his first glimpse of her entirely naked. He used tissues on himself, while water ran behind a closed door.
What had just happened? They’d had sex—good enough sex, for a first round—and then Megan had run off. Perhaps that’s how it was done: Sex that satisfied a bit more than self-gratification, a few shared smiles, and then on to the appointment with the banker.
“I get my ashes resoundingly hauled for the first time in memory, and I’m pouting,” Declan said softly. Hughey leapt onto the bed and began kneading the covers near Declan’s feet. “I’ve become petulant and impossible forty years ahead of schedule.”
The water finally stopped running, the bathroom light clicked off, and Declan felt the air shift as Megan swung the door open.
“Come cuddle up,” he said, because he half-feared Megan would steal his Land Rover and disappear to her little holiday cottage. They’d see each other next at the rehearsal, all sheepish smiles and awkward glances, and then he’d be putting her on a plane and telling himself he was relieved to see her go.
She deserved better than that, and so did he.
“I’m not much of a cuddler,” she said, climbing onto the bed. “I see we have company.”
“Hughey. Bastard refuses to die. He’s seventeen and never been sick a day, though he’s slowed down a lot lately. I swear my grandmother looks out at me through his eyes when I’ve been at the whisky.”
Which whisky was calling to Declan, as a matter of fact.
Megan tucked herself smack against Declan’s side and ran her toes up his calf. “Nighty-night, MacPherson.”
Nighty-night, MacPherson?
She patted his chest, rolled over, and tucked her bum against his hip.
Nighty-night, MacPherson?
Declan rolled too, so he spooned himself around the woman who’d just loved him within an inch of his sanity and then scampered off like a fractious ewe. Megan tensed at first, as if anticipating sexual overtures, but she gradually relaxed in his arms.
First base, to use an American analogy. Declan started with a caress to her shoulders, which were more tense than well-pleasured shoulders should be. He gradually eased around, so he could trace her features—lips, eyebrows, nose, chin.
Megan’s breath sighed against his palm as she slipped more deeply
asleep, and that had to qualify as second base of sort. Declan rubbed her scalp, her neck, her arm, and then came back to the pleasure of learning her features with the pads of his fingers.
Had he been any closer to sleep, he might have missed what his hands were telling him: The coolness of Megan’s cheek registered first, and then he realized that her cheek was also… a trifle damp.
***
The bed dipped, and Megan forced her eyes open. Hughey sat on the hassock like a skinny Egyptian cat idol, staring at her.
“The sun’s up, and that cat doesn’t look well,” she said. Declan’s scent was all over the sheets, and all over her. “He looks like Spats did right before he died.”
“Good morning to you, too, Meggie Leonard.”
How was a woman to think, much less form words, when that sexy burr was accompanied by the naked warmth of Declan MacPherson wrapped around her from behind?
“Greetings, MacPherson,” she said, wiggling to her back. “Did I imagine having this bed to myself for a while?”
Without him, the bed was too big, too cold, too… empty.
He stroked his fingers over her cheek, which stirred a half-asleep memory of the same caress. “I popped out to help Dundas with the milking. You needed your rest.”
Megan had needed something. Some of the fatigue she’d dragged onto the plane with her had abated.
“What time is it?”
Declan’s gaze shuttered, and Megan realized that he’d climbed back into bed with her when he had a zillion things to do.
“Half eight. The sun’s up early this time of year, so I pulled the curtains when I left. What have you planned for today?”
His tone said if she bounced off the bed, he’d let her go, no sulking or fuming. “I thought I’d start with a little morning awkwardness followed by a loss for words. If I get up to brush my teeth, will you still be here when I get back?”
He should have smiled, should have kept it light, but this was Declan MacPherson. “You cried last night, Meggie. We need to talk about that.”
Must Love Scotland (Highland Holidays) Page 14