“Surprise,” he said, and he was so close she could feel his breath on her face. Feel his heat. Sense the magnetism his body created.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
The smile cracked open even wider. “You look incredible.”
“That’s what my ‘holy shit’ was for. Only about you. So ladylike, I know.”
The Society president’s voice crackled through the ballroom, and Shea turned to see the heavyset man leaning into a microphone onstage. “Good evening, everyone, my Scottish brothers and sisters. If you’ll all take your seats, we’ll begin the ceremony and festivities before dinner is served.”
She swiveled back to Byrne, who was nodding at her table. “Looks like I’m staying for dinner. What’re we having?”
“I brought Willa,” she said dumbly, then found her friend at the edge of the ballroom, dragging a tall chair over to the bar, where a twentysomething male bartender was eagerly watching her settle in.
Byrne noticed Willa, too. “Mind if I take her place?”
“Are you kidding?”
Shea and Byrne sank into their chairs simultaneously, knees facing each other. He wouldn’t stop smiling, wouldn’t stop looking over her face and body in a way that made all her nerves come alive at once.
“I was wrong,” he said, leaning in close, “you don’t look incredible. You look delicious. I want to eat you.”
She gasped just as a giant blast of bagpipes sounded from the ballroom doors. A parade of twenty pipes filed down the aisle and made a circle on the dance floor, serenading the crowd with a rousing, perfectly timed tune. She couldn’t hear Byrne even if she wanted to, but he wasn’t saying anything. He wasn’t making a face or otherwise indicating his displeasure. He merely gave her a nod of support.
When the pipes ended, the musicians filed back out, the ensuing applause died, and a kilted man holding a giant silver platter appeared. He walked down the aisle and placed the platter in the center of the long, decorated table. Shea had to turn around in her seat to watch, and she felt Byrne move closer behind her, his chin hovering just above her shoulder.
“What in the world is that?” he whispered.
Shea had to giggle as she looked at the smooth, round, gray blob sitting ceremoniously in front of everyone. “Haggis,” she whispered back, having to turn her head and finding his mouth electrifyingly close to hers. “Sheep innards cooked with a bunch of other stuff inside a sheep’s stomach.”
Oh, she so loved the faint choking sound that came as a reply.
At the table, the kilted man raised both hands over the haggis and closed his eyes.
“Are we about to pray to a sheep’s stomach?” Byrne said in her ear. God, he was so close. So very close.
She tapped a finger to her smiling lips. “Just listen.”
“‘Address to a Haggis,’” the man intoned. “By Robert Burns.”
And then he recited from memory a lively poem Shea knew all too well. So did everyone else, and the whole room laughed and cheered and raised glasses during specific parts. When he was done, Byrne applauded with the rest of them and asked, “Did I hear him call that thing the ‘great chieftain of the sausage race’?”
She laughed. “You did.”
“Well then.” He whipped his napkin off the table, stuffed it behind his black bow tie, and took up his fork and knife. “Let’s dig in.”
* * *
The haggis was strange—like bland, browned ground beef. Only not. The bagpipes were almost too loud to be properly heard, which was a good thing. The wine was divine. And Byrne was sitting next to the most beautiful woman on the planet.
She sparkled alone, but in that dress she was . . . hell, he didn’t know. A star? A supernova? Long and tight and gold, the dress fit her like it had been painted on.
It had taken just about all his willpower to not grab her when he got his first good head-to-toe. His body actually ached from restraining himself from touching her during dinner. It had been a helpful bonus that their tablemates were fun and interesting and were getting steadily drunk, making them even more fun and interesting. He zeroed in on them, setting aside, for the moment, everything he came here to tell Shea.
But after dessert appeared on the china and two new musicians took their place onstage, he knew the night was drawing to a close. He and Shea had gone the whole evening avoiding the giant elephant in the room that was his bold bid on the Gleann farm.
“There’s dancing now.” Shea tilted her face to him, one of the only direct looks she’d given him all through dinner. All that white-gold hair swung over her shimmering dress. “You don’t have to stay. I can’t believe you stayed as long as you have already.” She folded her napkin and placed her fork upon it. “I can’t believe you came at all.”
All he could do was smile at her because the musicians—an older male fiddle player and a much younger female cellist—started in on a heartrending, gorgeous tune that captured the entire ballroom’s attention. Even the servers paused in their duties. Byrne listened, rapt, enjoying it far more than the deafening screech of the earlier pipes. A glance at Shea revealed her eyes glistening with emotion, and even though Byrne had never met her grandfather or had visited Scotland, he knew the music brought back the past for her.
The second song picked up the pace considerably, with the fiddle player tapping a foot, the audience clapping in time. The first few dancers made their way to the dance floor, which had been cleared of the haggis table. Byrne rose, straightening his jacket and making sure the purse thing—the sporran?—was where the guy at the rental shop had told him it should be.
He held out a hand to Shea. “Dance with me?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You dance?”
“No, but I seem to have found some confidence. Must be the kilt.”
Her eyes flicked appreciatively downward. Then they glanced almost fearfully to each side.
Byrne frowned. “Did anyone say anything to you tonight? About the pictures?”
“No. No one.”
“Will dancing with me in any way compromise the Amber or the farm or the distillery?”
Something shifted on her face as he brought up the elephant, but she wiped it away. Squared her shoulders. Good girl.
“No,” she said.
He thrust his hand closer and smiled. “Then dance with me.”
Silent trumpets heralded victory when her soft hand slid into his. He led her to the dance floor and pulled her body against his. She resisted for only a moment, glancing around to confirm that not a single person in the whole place cared, and then she relaxed.
The other dancers—couples and singles and little girls twirling their party dresses—were moving quickly, but Byrne chose a slow, swaying rhythm and stuck to it. Stared at Shea’s beautiful face.
“Why didn’t you call to tell me you were coming?” she asked.
“Didn’t know I was until, oh, noon or so. And by then I knew you’d be running around getting ready, and the idea of surprising you seemed far too appealing.”
“Where’d you find a kilt at the last minute? And one that fit at that?”
“It was surprisingly easy. The rental place said it’s the Black Watch tartan, whatever that means.”
“It means you look hot in it, is what it means.”
He picked up his step and gave her a little turn, if only to disguise his grin. She felt like sunshine in his arms, and she smelled like heaven. But there was still a little bit of resistance in her, and he could feel the farm and their disagreements like a wedge between them. He had to make that wedge disappear.
Bringing their clasped hands between their bodies, he looked into her eyes and said, “I really haven’t liked being apart from you these past five days.”
Her brow furrowed and her body stiffened.
“And in that time,” he pressed on, “I realized w
hat I did to you that day I got back from South Carolina, after the shit with my apartment. You really were reaching out to me, trying to help me in your way—”
“Yes, I already told you that.”
“—and I pushed you away. Set space between us. Well now I know how that feels and I hate it. I feel like crap for ever doing that to you. I’m very, very sorry.”
Her eyes softened and her lips parted on a sigh that smelled sweetly like the chocolate torte they’d just eaten. “I’m sorry, too.”
“And I was a bit of a jackass. Letting my emotions take hold like that, when my anger and frustration had nothing to do with you.”
By the look on her face, he could tell she was as relieved to hear the apology as he was to say it.
“So I’ve decided”—he stopped dancing, stopped moving, and concentrated only on her—“that I really don’t want anything to come between us again. A stupid toy train or a great big farm up north. Nothing. Everything you said to me about Alex and new beginnings was true. I was too raw to hear it before, but now I get it. It’s time to let my shame go. I’ll pack it away with my little brother when he goes off to jail. I won’t be ashamed of my past anymore, and I’ll release my dream of buying my family land or a house or anything like that, and focus on something new. I’ll let that go, but I don’t want to let you go. We’re too good together.”
“We are,” she whispered. Even under the joyful, upbeat music, and the laughter and shuffling of dancing feet, he heard her.
He pulled her closer, sliding his free hand around her lower back.
“I’m not Bespoke Byrne. I’m not Rugby Byrne. I’m Shea’s Byrne, and it’s the best person I’ve been in years. Maybe ever.”
She went absolutely still. But underneath his fingers where their clasped hands pressed to her breastbone, he felt her heartbeat kick up.
“The other day when I came by with the papers,” he said, “I forgot to tell you something. I told you all the rational reasons why you should take the farm, but I didn’t mention the most important. I should’ve told you then that I did it because I love you.”
Her eyes shimmered again, like they had when she’d been entranced by the music.
“I’m in love with you, Shea,” he repeated, because he wanted to.
Removing her hand from his, she slipped her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him. Embraced him tightly. Clung to him. Her face was a warm, teasing pressure on the side of his neck, and the silk of her skin below her ear made him dizzy. He smiled against her and clung right back.
“I love you, too,” she said, and he tightened his hold.
They stayed that way for a very long time. Long enough the song changed again, to something romantic and sad at the same time, the singles drifting from the dance floor to be replaced by couples.
A whole new life opened up before him, and he shivered with the most luminous kind of contentment.
As the long, low notes of the fiddle ribboned around the ballroom, he finally allowed himself to let Shea go, stepping back to take her face in his hands.
“Is that a ‘yes’?” he asked. “About the farm?”
The glow on her face faded.
“Byrne, I . . .”
He sensed her retreating again, and this time he let her go.
“I still don’t know,” she said. Then she looked away, and it was like someone had plunged him into shadow after having stood in the blazing desert. “I just don’t know. And you’re . . .”
Her words drifted off but he understood. “I’m confusing you.”
“No. Not confusing. I know where you and I stand, but there’s still a lot for me to sort out outside of that. But you’re kind of all entwined in it, and it makes for a complicated puzzle. Like, what if the distillery fails? What would happen to us? And what if . . . what if we fail? How does that work with the property? It’s just a lot, Byrne. A whole hell of a lot.”
“I understand.” The distress on her face bothered him greatly, and he leaned forward to plant a soft kiss on her forehead. “Why don’t I leave? I thought my coming here, saying what I had to say, would make things a little easier, but apparently that’s not the case.”
How could he have thought that? Feeling love was one thing, but declaring it was something else entirely. The difference between a hill in Wisconsin and the Swiss Alps.
“No, you don’t have to—”
He nodded. “Yes. I think I do. I should, anyway.” As he dragged a thumb down one soft cheek, he realized that she was letting him. She was allowing him to touch her like this in front of all these people. “You know how I feel, Shea. I’ll be here regardless of your decision. How about you call me when you know. Either way.”
She sandwiched one of his hands between hers. The way her fingers stroked over the back and made gentle circles in his palm sent tiny shocks of happiness and worry through his system.
“Just a little more time,” she said.
He sighed, disconcerted over how wobbly it sounded. “A little more time.”
As he slowly backed away, he couldn’t help but recall how difficult these past five silent days had been without her, and he hoped that her “a little” wasn’t equivalent to his “a lot.”
Chapter
23
On Monday, Shea didn’t even need the alarm to wake up. At five a.m. her eyelids popped open and stayed there. She hadn’t been awake this early since college, and even that could be debated. She lay there for a good hour, staring at the slowly rotating ceiling fan, trying to will herself back to sleep until the eight o’clock alarm she knew was coming, but all that kept flashing across her brain were reminders of where she was supposed to be that morning.
Supposed to be, but not necessarily wanted to be.
The meeting at Right Hemisphere was scheduled for nine thirty at Whitten’s Midtown headquarters. And she still wasn’t sure if she was going.
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she once again took the stack of Byrne’s papers from her nightstand and stared at it like it would suddenly morph into a crystal ball and give her all the answers.
Seeing Byrne’s name on the papers made her think of him, of course. Made her remember his thick rugby legs in that kilt, the firmness of his broad shoulders underneath the stiff Prince Charlie jacket, the accent of the bow tie at his throat.
The sound of I love you on his lips.
Sinking her head into one hand, she blindly threw the papers back onto the nightstand. The doubts about the farm she’d voiced at the Scottish Ball were still very real inside her.
Allowing him to do this for her—even without strings, without any sort of ownership in the distillery—would create a rather thick link between them when their relationship was still so new.
Then there was Whitten, whose offers had the potential to be the icing on the cake. The way to finance everything else, if she accepted the farm. The funds she needed . . . with the stigma of Right Hemisphere and all the bouncy-boobed, spray-tanned images that came with it.
Yawning, groggy, she padded over to the kitchen and stabbed on the coffee maker. Looked like she’d be awake for the next couple of hours as the pro-con arguments waged war inside her head, so she might as well caffeine up.
On her third cup of straight black, she sat in the deep windowsill that overlooked the street and watched her little corner of the city come alive. A little over a half hour until the window to catch a cab uptown to Right Hemisphere would close, and she still hadn’t made up her mind whether or not she was going.
Her phone, sitting on the edge of the coffee table, buzzed so dramatically to life that it jumped off the wood and thunked to the rug. Her immediate thought? Byrne.
He’d done exactly as he said he would Saturday night at the ball, and had left her standing there alone in the middle of the dance floor to stew in her indecision and her want f
or him. In the end he’d done the right thing, because as soon as he left, she stopped thinking along the lines of an insipid Disney princess and realized that just because they felt the same way about each other, didn’t mean that allowing him to buy her that farm would bring about eternal sunsets and rainbows and perfect sex and a trouble-free relationship.
On the flip side, Byrne wanted nothing to do with the distillery, unlike Lynch. Who was to say that the distillery would ever pose any kind of threat to what she and Byrne had?
When the phone hummed indicating a text message, she dove for it like she was a desperate bridesmaid at her last single friend’s wedding.
The words on the screen instantly made up her mind about whether or not she was going to meet with Whitten.
In two seconds she was dashing down the hallway and throwing on the shower. In three minutes she was back out and clean—the fastest shower in the east—and wrapping her wet hair into a bun. She pulled out of her closet a pencil skirt, a fabulous top that could have been bespoke it fit her so well, and all her best jewelry.
As she did the awkward high-heeled jog to the corner to catch a cab, she realized she was only one minute late, by her previous timeline. Whitten would wait for her. He had to.
The cab pulled up in front of the black and silver mid-last-century office building, and she threw money at the driver. On the top floor she was guided by an assistant down the hallway toward the open door of the conference room. She realized she wasn’t one minute late, but fifteen, and worry seeped into her system that Whitten and his staff would count her as a no-show and move on to other work.
Still, when she turned into the conference room, it was nearly filled.
Whitten was there, sitting at the far end of the table. So was Linda Watson, looking as serious as ever as she poked at a tablet computer. A couple of younger guys and another woman about Shea’s age all looked up as she entered. A projector cast a square of white light on the far wall, and to the right there was a large dry-erase board set with all colors of markers. The table was filled with paper and pens and drinks and food. Fuel for a marathon brainstorming session.
The Good Chase Page 31