“Sorry. The queue was ridiculous. But you’ll never guess who I bumped into.”
Zoe knocked back the shot Isla had bought her by way of an apology and shuddered. “Who?”
“Connor MacRae. Ethan’s brother.”
Zoe’s eyebrows raised. “Did you speak to him?”
Isla frowned. “Yes, but I got the feeling he didn’t really want to talk to me. He was acting weird, kind of cagey.”
Zoe shrugged. “Maybe it runs in the family.”
Isla sighed, and knocked back her own shot, swiping one hand across her mouth afterwards. “Oh, who cares? Are you ready to dance?”
*
Bass pumped up through the soles of Isla’s feet, her body vibrating to the rhythm of the music. Lights strobed overhead, illuminating Zoe’s face in front of her, grinning wildly her arms in the air, her body swaying.
“We should do this more often!” Zoe shouted over the music.
Isla nodded, her eyes closed. She was drunk and sweaty, and the floor beneath her shoes was sticky, but for the first time in weeks she wasn’t thinking about anything, and it was bliss. She’d had enough wine that her inhibitions had fallen away, but not so much that she couldn’t hold her rhythm, and she let the music guide her, truly dancing like no one was watching.
A prickle of unease ran down her spine. Or were they?
Isla slowed, twisting one way and then the other, expecting to find a pair of eyes turned in her direction, but in the dark club, under the blinding strobe light, she was at a disadvantage. Anyone could be watching her from the edges of the room, and she wouldn’t be able to see them.
Zoe leaned in, her hands cupped around her mouth. “What’s wrong?”
Isla shook her head. “I don’t know. I thought someone was staring at me…”
Zoe laughed. “I should think so, in that dress.”
Isla smiled at the compliment but she suddenly felt very exposed in the middle of the dancefloor. The track changed, and Isla caught Zoe’s attention.
“Bathroom break?” she shouted.
Isla led the way off the dancefloor, ducking and weaving between gyrating bodies, murmuring excuse me’s and apologies, and all the time feeling like she had a giant spotlight angled over her. She was grateful when they made it into the dim corridor and joined the predictably long queue that snaked towards the women’s bathroom.
“Is something wrong?” Zoe’s brown eyes were slightly unfocused but full of concern.
Isla shook her head. “Just a bit tipsy, I guess, and tired. It’s been a busy couple of weeks.”
“Hmmm.” Zoe didn’t sound convinced but she didn’t argue.
The queue shortened, and Isla jammed her foot inside the bathroom door to prevent it slamming shut in her face.
“You know what you need, don’t you?” Zoe said.
Isla looked back and saw a mischievous smile playing across her friend’s lips.
“What?”
“A distraction.” Zoe gave an exaggerated wink, and the meaning behind her words became patently obvious.
Isla rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
But Zoe wasn’t willing to let it drop. “You know I’m right.” She caught Isla’s eye in the mirror above the sinks as they washed their hands.
Isla shook her head. “I know you’re drunk. And so am I.”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “Alright, Mum. One last dance before we go?”
Isla’s head and feet were suddenly throbbing, and outside the safety of the crowded bathroom, she felt on display once more. She waved Zoe on. “You go, I’m going to get some water.”
The bar was mercifully quiet, and Isla got served immediately. She was swigging water from a plastic bottle when a voice spoke from the shadows.
“Worked up a thirst?”
Isla spluttered in surprise. Someone was sitting at the end of the bar, a man in dark clothing. He had his back to the wall, and his face was cast partially in shadow. Isla’s eyes flickered to the barmaid, who had moved on to serve someone else, and then back to the shadowy figure.
“Excuse me?” Isla said.
“I saw you dancing.” He smiled, and his teeth flashed.
Was he the reason her skin had started to crawl? Isla took a step backwards. “Do I know you?”
“I don’t think so, but I’m hoping that could change. I’m Joshua.” He held out a hand for her to shake, and Isla stared at it.
When it became obvious she wasn’t going to take it, he let it drop. And then he unfolded himself from his stool and stepped into the light, and Isla wondered how she could have been afraid of him.
He was young, probably closer to Zoe’s age than hers. Clean-shaven, with red hair and nice teeth. An embarrassed flush covered his cheeks.
“I’m sorry. I’m not very good at this,” he said.
Isla frowned. “At what?”
He gave an awkward shrug. “Trying to chat you up.”
Isla laughed at his honesty. “No, you’re not. But in your defence, I’m not very good at being chatted up, either. Honestly, I’m not sure you could have picked a worse person or time to try.”
Joshua grimaced. “You’re spoken for?”
“No,” Isla said automatically. “But…”
But what? She was hung up on a guy - a client no less - who’d made it clear he wasn’t interested? Or rather was interested, but ‘couldn’t’, for reasons she didn’t fully understand?
“It’s complicated,” Isla said.
Joshua raised his fair eyebrows.“Sounds like you should be drinking something stronger.” He gestured to her half-empty water bottle. “Can I get you something?”
Isla glanced sideways at him. “I thought you were bad at this?”
Joshua laughed. “I’m a fast learner.”
Isla hummed sceptically. “Well, thank you for the offer, but no, I’m fine.”
Isla watched as he ordered himself a beer. He was polite to the barmaid, he wasn’t bad looking. No alarm bells were ringing, now that he was no longer skulking in the shadows, but she wasn’t feeling anything else either. Other than tired.
Joshua turned back to her. “So what is it that you do?”
Isla scrunched up her nose. He couldn’t have picked a worse topic. “I’m an antiques expert.” Her voice cracked, hoarse from shouting over the deep, reverberating bass.
“Oh right, where do you work?”
“Just a small company. You wouldn’t have heard of it.”
He didn’t press, and Isla began to get the definite sense Joshua was less interested in where she worked than in what she looked like underneath her little black dress.
“What about you?” she asked, more to be polite than because of any real interest.
“I’m a dentist.”
That explained the teeth. Isla smiled politely, not knowing what to say.
“So, this complicated situation of yours...does it prevent you from getting coffee with someone?” Joshua leant forward, looking up at her from beneath his ginger lashes, his expression hopeful. “Only I know a great little place around the corner…” he trailed off, his blue eyes twinkling.
Fast learner, my arse, Isla thought. She was pretty sure the false start was all part of his routine. “Could you excuse me a minute?” Isla slipped from her stool.
Joshua looked thrown, but he nodded. “Of course.”
“Ladies,” she said sweetly.
A frown flickered across his face. Of course, he must have seen her walking out of the bathroom not twenty minutes ago...oh well, let him think she had bladder issues.
Isla ducked into the bathroom corridor, and out of sight of the bar, but she didn’t join the queue for the ladies. Instead, she weaved directly through the middle of it, excusing herself to a giggling hen party that she had to push between. She kept going down the dimly-lit corridor until she reached the cloakroom. A bored teenager in a polo-shirt stood behind the counter, popping her chewing gum and scrolling through her phone. Isla flashed her a quick smile and took
a seat on the bench opposite, pulling her phone from her bag.
The tiny, sober, part of Isla’s brain screeched at her that this was a very bad idea, but she was already dialling.
Twenty One
Ethan woke with a start, his body jerking awake before his brain could catch up. He bit down on his tongue, tasting the familiar metallic tang of blood, and cursed quietly, pushing himself upright.
It took him a moment to recognise his surroundings, feeling the worn leather beneath his hands, Ethan realised he must have dozed off in one of the armchairs in the study. Flashes of his nightmare still skittered through his mind, and it was a few minutes before he realised what had woken him, and by that time the ringing had stopped.
The phone. He pressed his watch, which told him it was one-thirty in the morning. Ethan got to his feet, instantly alert. Who the hell would be calling him at this time?
No sooner had he thought it, than the shrill ringing began once more.
Ethan lifted the receiver. “Hello?”
“Ethan?” Her voice sounded hoarse, and there was a lot of background noise, but still, he knew who it was at once.
“Isla? What’s wrong? Why are you calling so late?” Ethan’s mind began racing at a hundred miles per hour, conjuring one terrible scenario after another, but there wasn’t a single one in which he could imagine her calling him.
“I just needed to speak to you.” Isla hiccuped.
Was she drunk? “Where are you?”
“In a club, in Edinburgh. I saw Connor.”
Connor? Ethan frowned. That’s why she was calling? “Connor’s with you?”
“What? No. I don’t know where he is now.”
Ethan bit back a sigh of frustration and pinched his nose between his finger and thumb.
“I saw him in Bar Twenty Two earlier,” Isla clarified. “He was on a date.” She hiccuped again on the word date, and Ethan felt his sense of alarm fading. He sank down into the desk chair.
“Good for him. Any reason why you thought I needed to know that information urgently? Why you couldnae’ve waited until Monday to give me that crucial piece of gossip?”
“That’s not why I called,” she said. “I called because there’s some guy at the bar here trying to pick me up.”
Ethan’s stomach plummeted and he stood up automatically. “Are you okay?” He knew he was repeating himself, but he had to be sure.
“What? Yes, I’m fine.”
Ethan ran a hand through his hair. This conversation would probably be easier if he hadn’t just woken from another nightmare. He took a couple of deep breaths.
“Are you on your own?” He began to pace, but the phone was corded, and it yanked him back towards the desk. He grunted in frustration.
“No, I’m with Zoe. She’s dancing.”
“Do you need someone to pick you up?” Ethan asked, and then he remembered that Ryder had said he was going out, so he couldn’t even offer her that.
“No,” Isla said.
Ethan sat back down. “So then...why did you call?”
“He asked me if there was a reason.” She spoke quietly, so quietly that Ethan almost had to ask her to repeat it. “A reason why I shouldn’t go for coffee with him,” she said. “Can you think of any?”
“I can think of about a hundred,” Ethan said between gritted teeth.
“Like what?” Isla murmured.
“The fact he could be a psychopath, for starters.”
“He’s not a psychopath, he’s a dentist,” she argued.
“First of all, those arenae mutually exclusive,” Ethan said. “In fact, they probably pair quite well. So you’ve talked to him then?”
“A bit.” She sounded guilty, although Ethan wasn’t sure why. He wasn’t sure why the conversation was happening at all.
“Is he still there?”
“He’s waiting at the bar.”
“And you came to call me?”
“Yes.”
Ethan knew her answer should set alarm bells ringing, that this was dangerous territory for both of them, but all he could think was that she’d called him. In the middle of the night. Her need for him slicing through his nightmare, jolting him back to reality.
“Why me?”
“To ask if there was a reason.” Something in her voice made Ethan sit down when he wasn’t even aware he’d stood up again.
“Aside from the obvious?”
“Aside from the obvious,” she repeated.
Ethan let out a long long slow breath. “Okay, here’s one. Don’t.”
“Don’t? Don’t isn’t a reason.”
“Consider it a request then.”
Isla breathed in sharply but didn’t say anything, and for a few seconds, Ethan worried she’d hung up.
“Isla?”
“I’m still here,” she said. “So you’re saying don’t?”
Ethan twisted the phone cord in his hand. “I’m saying please don’t.” He tried to keep his voice low, and even, tried not to let his emotions show. Of course, she could do whatever she wanted, and he shouldn’t care either way. But he did.
“Zoe thinks I should. She thinks it would be good for me.”
Ethan’s hand tightened around the phone cord. “And do you let Zoe make all your decisions for you?”
“I don’t let anyone make my decisions for me,” Isla snapped.
“So why are you calling me then?” The words came out harsher than Ethan intended. He could feel his control slipping like it did whenever he spoke to Isla. All the emotions he worked so hard to push down rushed to the surface, with nowhere to go but out of his mouth.
“I thought you might care, that’s all.” Isla sounded drunk and tearful.
“I do,” Ethan said softer now. “That’s why I’m asking you not to.”
“As what- my client?”
At the reminder of what he was to her - at what she should be to him - Ethan tipped his head back and bit back a groan. “No,” he said carefully. “Not as your client.”
“As a friend?”
“I dinnae have friends,” Ethan said.
“Well, what then?”
Ethan could tell Isla wouldn’t let-up until he gave her something, but he didn’t know what it was she wanted from him, or how to give it to her over a crackly telephone call from a nightclub. A frustrated growl escaped him. “You want to fuck this guy Isla? Go ahead and do it. It’s not my place to stop you. You want a reason not to fuck him? I’m giving you one.”
“You don’t want me to?” she asked quietly.
“No,” Ethan admitted, softer now. “But it’s your decision, not mine. Do you want to?” He held his breath as he waited for her answer.
“No,” she said eventually.
Ethan squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw, resisting the urge to invite her over. Better him than the dentist, right? But no, that wasn’t true...he was far more of a danger to her than any random guy in a club. As much as he hated to admit it.
“Ethan? Are you still there?” Her voice crackled down the line.
“Aye. I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Things I probably shouldnae,” Ethan admitted.
There was a pause, and then Isla’s words spilled out in a rush. “I wish you were here. That it was you talking to me at the bar, you with me on the dancefloor…”
Ethan’s breath left him in a whoosh. “Isla, I cannae-”
“I know,” she interrupted him. “But we’re just talking, right?”
“Aye,” Ethan agreed, but it didn’t feel like ‘just’ anything. He ran a hand over his face.
“I never thanked you,” she said. “For last night. For saving me.”
Ethan frowned. “I didnae save you, Isla. Ryder was the one who found you, who carried you back to the castle, who drove you home.”
“There’s more than one way to save a person, Ethan. You were the one who talked to me, who kept me conscious, who undressed me in front of the fire...right?
That was you?”
Ethan swallowed at the memory. “Aye,” he croaked.
“I knew it was. I had the memory of hands on my skin, and I knew they were yours.”
What he said next suddenly seemed very important, and Ethan chose his words carefully. “Isla, I swear...I wasnae taking advantage.”
“I know,” she said.
“I would never-”
“Ethan, I know.”
He exhaled slowly.
“But, what if I wanted you to?” she said.
Ethan almost groaned, swallowing the noise down as it rose in his throat. “Isla-”
“I know you want to.” She said it quietly, without ego. She was stating a fact, not gloating. And it was a fact. He did want to. He couldn’t remember ever wanting something so much.
“Aye,” he admitted.
“So, then why-”
“I amnae any good for you, Isla. You must see that. You deserve more. You deserve better.”
“Isn’t that my decision?”
“Yes, but-”
“Then I want you.”
Her words knocked the breath from his lungs. He’d known it, ever since the study, ever since he’d heard her breath quickening as he bent his head towards her. Before that, even. But to hear her say it…already his body was responding. Oh god. It had been so long since he’d wanted anyone, anything. He’d forgotten the torment, the urgency. He imagined what he would do if she was there with him, but that only made it worse. He felt himself grow hard, and let his head fall back against the chair.
“Ethan?”
He swiped one hand over his face. “I want you too, Isla but what happened to ignoring it?” This felt impossible to ignore. Impossible to bear.
“You forgot about ‘or’,” Isla said.
“Or,” he repeated. One syllable, so many possibilities...none that he should entertain, even for a minute.
“Or we let it happen. Trust ourselves. Trust this.”
But Ethan didn’t trust anything, least of all himself, and she shouldn’t either. “Isla-”
There was a sudden increase in the background noise down the line. “No. Oh, okay. Sure…” It was clear that Isla was talking to someone else. “Ethan? I’m sorry, I have to go.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes, fine.” But she sounded awkward and uncomfortable, and Ethan knew whoever she was talking to was listening.
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