Legacy of the Highlands

by Harriet Schultz

  Serge watched the girl appreciatively as she moved around the teashop, wiping tables that were already spotless with a damp cloth. Christ, he’d been without a woman for too long if he was lusting after a teenager.

  Mairi interrupted his thoughts. “Maybe you could tell him you’ve got Scottish ancestors. You don’t do you?”

  “I don’t think your uncle would believe that I’ve got a drop of Scottish blood in my veins, not with this face. My family’s lived in Florida for generations. I don’t know where we came from before that.”

  As he held up his part of the conversation, Serge considered how to best use Mairi’s familiarity with the Mackinnons. He might have to overlook their age difference after all and take her to bed. Women were always chattier when naked and well-satisfied.

  “I’m glad we met, Mairi.” Serge never took his eyes off hers as he extended his hand for a friendly handshake. When she put her small hand in his, he wrapped his other one around it and, like before, didn’t release her immediately. “This has been very, very nice, but I have to go.” He shot a boyish grin at her as he pulled on his still damp jacket and paid the check with a ten-pound note. The chatty girl was speechless when he told her to keep the change.

  Serge was sure that Mairi found him attractive. She obviously thirsted for a life beyond the Highlands and he could fulfill any dream she had thanks to his employer’s proclivity to spend money freely to get what he wanted. And Diego Navarro wanted Will’s murderer. In all the years he’d worked for Diego, Serge had never seen the man so focused on anything — aside from the hungry way he looked at Will Cameron’s widow.

  “Bye,” Serge said and waved to Mairi as he left the shop. She stood in the doorway watching until he was out of sight, and then sighed with regret as she reached in her apron pocket for her mobile phone.

  “Is that you, Uncle Jamie? Aye, it’s Mairi. Yes, I’m well. I rang to let you know that you’re about to have an interesting visitor...”

  Chapter 20

  Alex stretched lazily and yawned, then turned onto her stomach and tried to go back to sleep. A moment later her eyes flew open and her mind began to race, replaying in stunning detail what Diego and she had done.

  What got into me, she wondered, but one glance at the naked man sprawled on his back beside her was answer enough. Oh, yeah, Diego did. A smile tickled her lips in appreciation of the play on words before her mouth reversed into a scowl. Shit! This was wrong — very, very, very wrong. But like many things that are wrong, it had felt so good. She needed to think about it, dissect it, and figure out what to do, but that didn’t mean her eyes couldn’t roam up and down his magnificent body in a way they never could if he were awake.

  It was no surprise that Diego was a terrific lover, but Alex hadn’t expected his passion to come with the tenderness of soft kisses, gentle hands and questioning, soulful eyes. She was prepared to feel like she’d been fucked; what scared her was the realization that he’d made love to her. The last time that happened was…was. A solitary tear slid down her cheek. She hadn’t felt this sated, weak-limbed and cherished since the night Will had left their bed to buy ice cream only to wind up dead. And here she was, naked with another man only a few short months later! What’s wrong with me, she wondered. On the other hand, maybe what happened was a sign of something being right, incontrovertible proof that she hadn’t died along with Will. The devil and angel that she thought had retired their debates inside her Catholic conscience were at it again and she couldn’t decide which one to root for. She needed to talk to Francie.

  “I wish I could see inside that pretty head of yours. Your face has worn so many expressions in the last five minutes that I can’t tell whether you’re happy or sad or angry or something else altogether.” Diego was leaning on an elbow, his head on his hand as he watched her mental gymnastics.

  “Oh, you’re up,” she said stupidly.

  “It seems that way,” he responded lazily as both sets of eyes traveled to the obvious evidence that his body was indeed up and awake. Yet instead of sliding into her as he wanted to, he yanked the sheet up to cover their nakedness. “I’m sorry, Alex. I promised myself that I wouldn’t seduce you. The last thing I want is to add to your pain. It won’t happen again.”

  “You arrogant, cocky son of a bitch!” she shouted, as guilt shifted to anger. The sheet fell from her shoulders exposing her breasts as she sat up and turned toward him, but she was beyond modesty. “Do you think I had nothing to do with this? It was me who wanted this and it was me who made it happen. Me, Diego, not you! You were merely the instrument I used for my pleasure, not the other way around. This is the twenty-first century and I can choose a lover and then seduce him. So if you feel guilty take your conscience to the confessional. Ego te absolvo. Having sex with you may not have been the smartest thing to do, but I brought this on. And, goddamn it, I enjoyed it!”

  Could it get any better, Diego thought with delight. She wasn’t just capable of more passion than he’d dared to imagine, but he never knew what she would say or do next and that intrigued him. Too many beautiful women were boring, but not this one. He smiled broadly at her. “I’m glad you enjoyed our lovemaking, but no matter what you want to believe, Alessandra, it was I who did the seducing.”

  His gaze shifted to her breasts and Alex flushed as she recalled the sensations he’d awakened as he’d caressed them and the rest of her body with hands and mouth for what seemed like hours. Given another minute, she knew he would reach for her and, God help her, she’d do nothing to stop him.

  “Stop looking at me that way!” She grabbed a pillow to cover herself.

  “I can’t help it. You’re a beautiful woman and I’m a man who appreciates beauty.” His eyes never left her face as he spoke, but he didn’t touch her. “Know this, Preciosa. You have my permission to use me whenever you want as your — what did you call it? — your instrument of pleasure.” The smug expression he wore as he tossed her own words at her made her furious and her eyes shot daggers at him.

  “What?” he asked in all innocence. “Come on, Alex, don’t look at me like that. You called me your instrument of pleasure. I kind of like it.” With a self-satisfied grin, Diego got out of bed and nonchalantly walked his naked body to the closet to pull on a pair of well-worn jeans.

  Commando, Alex observed, but then underwear would spoil the line of the snug denim.

  “Truce?” His hair was tousled, there was a day’s growth of dark beard on his face, the fly on his jeans was halfway down and then there was that chest. How could she be mad at someone who looked so damn sexy first thing in the morning and who’d made her feel alive again?

  “Truce,” she conceded.

  His stomach growled loudly. “That sound means that I’m starving! Let me get in the shower first and then I’ll order up some breakfast,” he said. “While we eat you can fill me in on what John told you after you threw me out yesterday. We didn’t talk much last night, did we?”

  Alex chose to ignore his last remark. “Breakfast sounds good. Go shower,” she replied. Diego was right, of course. They had to put whatever this was behind them and focus on finding Will’s killer. She wrapped herself in a sheet and walked toward the suite’s living room to call Francie. Diego might strut around naked, but she didn’t want his eyes on her body the way hers had been on his.

  “Shit,” she muttered when the call went to voicemail. She’d have to wait to ask her best friend for advice.

  “Your turn,” Diego said as he emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips as he dried his hair with another. “What do you want for breakfast?”

  “A big pot of coffee and I guess I could force down a couple of dozen scrambled eggs. Bacon, too. Crisp. Some fruit. And lots of toast, buttered rye toast. Would blueberry muffins be too much? I’m ravenous.”

  As the shower washed away the residue of the night’s lovemaking, she tried to convince herself that Will would understand, but she also had no doubt that he’d tear Diego lim
b from limb. Yet for the first time since the murder, she knew, really knew, that she would be okay. Maybe not fine, maybe not great, but definitely okay. Hot sex must be good medicine, she concluded.

  By the time she’d dried her hair and dressed in the same outfit she’d worn to the hotel the day before, room service had delivered their food. Nothing smells quite so good to an empty stomach as coffee and bacon and her mouth began to water.

  Diego couldn’t wipe the smile off his face as he watched her pile food onto her plate. “Beauty, passion, intelligence and a healthy appetite — what more could a man want?”

  “You’re not so bad yourself, Navarro,” she grudgingly admitted as she raised the coffee cup to her lips. “Now can we eat?”

  In between bites, Alex filled Diego in on the Cameron family’s connection to Scotland’s Group of One Hundred, John’s money laundering, his misguided effort to protect Will by keeping him ignorant, John’s exposure of the splinter group’s terrorist plot, the arrest of Mackinnon’s son, and the price Will had paid for his father’s treachery.

  “I’m surprised to say this, because I’d love to blame him,” Alex said, as she pushed her plate away and undid the too-tight top button of her pants, “but by saying nothing John was only trying to protect Will. And don’t forget that he did save lives by exposing this group’s bomb plot. I really believe that if he had any idea of what those fanatics would do to Will, he would have kept quiet and somehow lived with his part in the deaths of hundreds of innocents. He made a stupid mistake and I feel sorry for him. This has destroyed him.”

  Diego listened patiently to Alex’s narrative as he wandered aimlessly around the suite’s living room. She was relieved that he seemed to have lost the previous day’s seething anger. Unlike Will’s steady temperament, Diego was volatile and could erupt without warning. Alex was curious to see how he’d react to John’s story. When he began to speak, his voice was calm enough, but as he got into it Alex could almost see his blood begin to boil.

  “I have no pity for him.” Diego stated. Alex watched in fascination as he ran a hand through his hair the same way Will used to when he was trying to figure out something difficult or complicated. “Cameron isn’t evil,” he continued, “but he’s a goddamned idiot who was in over his head. What does a smug, rich American like him know about fanatical nationalism and battles for political autonomy? Does he think this Scottish quest for country would be more gentlemanly than what goes on in the Middle East, Northern Ireland or half of Africa? He became a pawn in a high stakes game that he wasn’t even aware he was playing and Will paid for his arrogant naiveté with his life. Did Cameron think that by ratting them out, they’d go away and that would be it?” He stopped pacing and brought his fist down on the table hard enough to rattle the breakfast dishes. “My God! How could the man be such a jackass? Will wasn’t a little kid and he had a right to known about all of this. It might not have saved his life, but it would have made him cautious enough to stay out of dark alleys.”

  “Fucking hell,” Alex muttered. Would she ever stop blaming herself for telling Will about the shortcut through that alley? Although she’d accepted it intellectually, emotionally she’d never be able to convince herself that if Will’s killers hadn’t done it there, they would have carried it out someplace else. She sighed deeply.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” asked Diego.

  “Nothing. Everything. You know.”

  “Have you left out something that Cameron said?”

  If she told Diego that John thought she could be a target too he’d stay glued to her, a knight in shining armor. She was still bewildered that a group of radical Scots might want to harm her, but the threat had to be taken seriously or she could wind up dead too. It galled her to admit it, but she knew that Diego could protect her. The man carried a gun and was an expert marksman. He’d also told her that he often concealed a knife near his ankle. Serge had trained him well, but after last night, she didn’t think 24/7 togetherness was the smartest thing for either of them.

  “Well?” he interrupted her thoughts.

  “Okay, okay,” she said irritably. He‘d sensed she was holding back and would push until she told him the truth. She had no choice.

  “John said there’s a teeny, tiny chance that these people might want to retaliate against his entire family. I think that’s ridiculous. After all, I’m only a Cameron by marriage and this seems to be a blood feud. But John said he had to warn me. That was why he kept trying to contact me when I was in Miami. My guess is he wants to cover his ass and ease his conscience about not telling Will about all of this.”

  “And you think that’s nothing?” Diego retorted as his face flushed and his fist came down on the table again. “Come on, Alex, you’re smarter than that. Think about what we know. One of the men Cameron betrays is Mackinnon’s son. When you visit his shop, Mackinnon cozies up to you and Will as soon as he hears the Cameron name. Then this psychopath has Will carry a warning to his father. Now Will is dead. And you think you’re not part of this? Don’t underestimate these people like your idiot father-in-law did.” Diego walked to the window and attempted to regain his composure. He wasn’t mad at Alex, but at that imbecile John Cameron for bringing all of this on. For what seemed like the thousandth time, he wondered how he could carry the blood of such a stupid man.

  Diego’s words shook her. She’d had similar thoughts, but they hadn’t seemed ominous until they came from his mouth. “Do you really think someone might want to kill me?” she asked. In the days following Will’s murder, she would have welcomed a swift death, but not now. Not anymore.

  “Yes, Alex. I do,” he replied. His tone was gentle again, but he was worried. He was terrified of losing her. “When we left your apartment for the Ritz yesterday, do you remember seeing a bum staggering down the sidewalk near your house?”

  “No. All I could think about was our meeting with John, but I know who you mean. I’ve seen him around the neighborhood a few times since we came back from Florida. He seems harmless enough. Why?”

  “There’s something about him that doesn’t compute. He acts drunk, but he doesn’t have the vacant look of someone with a burned-out brain. I’m sure he was watching us. I’ll check him out, but until I do I don’t want you to go near him or any other strangers.”

  She sighed, resigned to the fact that Diego now saw himself as her protector. If that’s what he had to believe, it was fine with her. But she’d never responded well to orders and she wasn’t going to start now. “Speaking of home, I’m headed there now. I’ll see you later.”

  Diego blocked the door. “Wait,” he said, and unselfconsciously lowered his jeans to tuck in one of his infinite supply of perfectly tailored white shirts. Zipped and belted, he said, “I’ll walk with you.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she replied curtly. “It’s a gorgeous, sunny day. Look out the window; there are lots of people on the street so stop stressing out. And besides, I want to see Francie. I’ve hardly spent any time with her since I got back.”

  “Seguro, Preciosa. Of course,” he said, but her rejection stung. “Don’t forget we have a lot more to discuss and some decisions to make.”

  “Yes, I know, but I need a break from all of this international intrigue. I’m on overload and I have to digest it all. Some girl talk will help me feel less wired.” What she really wanted was Francie’s help in figuring out how to handle what she’d begun to think of as the “Diego Situation.” Their relationship had changed. He’d let her see into his soul and she knew she now had the power to hurt him. “We’ll do dinner. All right?” she suggested.

  “Sure. I’ve got stuff to do today too. Number one, I need to bring Serge up to speed on everything John said. He’s in Inverness and I want to know if he’s visited our friend Mackinnon yet. We’ll meet up later, and please, Alex, be careful,” he said, and drew her into an embrace that wasn’t so easy for either of them to end.

  Chapter 21

  At the precise moment that Diego
was wondering about his bodyguard’s progress, Serge was running his tongue up Mairi Graham’s soft thigh.

  “Mmmm,” was all she managed to say as his mouth hit its mark. This man really did know much, much more about shagging than the local boys, she thought, and then lost the ability to focus on anything other than what the brilliant American was doing to her.

  Serge’s training enabled him to separate his mind from his body with ease, so while Mairi moaned as he entered her and his hips moved with hers, he analyzed his visit to Mackinnon’s souvenir shop. He’d managed to scatter a few tiny voice-activated listening devices around the shop and also stuck a GPS transmitter under the fender of the old man’s rust heap of a car to track his movements. He hadn’t been able to shake off Mackinnon long enough to plant a motion-activated camera, but for some reason the guy had stuck to him like a leech, jabbering away, as he’d browsed through the crap that somehow appealed to people when they were far from home. The bug and GPS might not reveal anything useful about Mackinnon’s connection to Will Cameron’s murder, but it was a start. He’d lost the stomach for some of the more efficient, brutal ways he’d used to obtain information in the past, but remained adept at those techniques should they be needed.

  When he’d left the store, the girl was waiting for him. The unexpected often meant trouble, but she’d known where he was going when he’d left the teashop so he became alert, but not overly suspicious. Perhaps she’d decided that their age difference wasn’t a deal breaker after all.

  “I thought you might be wanting some company,” she began shyly. “A businessman so far from home and all...it must be lonely for you.” Serge, amused, nodded in reply.

  “Good, that’s grand then,” she said and moved closer to him. “So how did it go with Uncle Jamie? Did he share some of his business secrets with you?” she asked coquettishly as she took his arm.