“I know. But he’s just such a . . . such a man.”
“I know,” Emma said. “One more thing. I hate to point out the obvious, but how do you expect to get pregnant if you just cut Dominic off?”
“Oh, shite,” Claire sobbed. “I’m so tired. I wasn’t thinking.”
“I know. Come. You need to have a lie-down.” Emma guided Claire down the hall. “I’ll get you a cool washcloth for your forehead and you’ll get some rest.”
The master bedroom had nothing but a full-sized bed and a dresser in it. Emma pulled back the covers and tucked Claire in. She found the loo, prepared a washcloth, and took it back to her.
“I’m glad ye’re here with me,” Claire said.
Emma brushed back the hair on her friend’s face. “Me, too. You rest. I’ll go downstairs and see what I can do to get the kitchen cleaned up for later.”
“Thank you,” Claire said. “I don’t want to see Dominic right now.”
“I know.” Emma left the bedroom but didn’t immediately go back downstairs to the restaurant. She grabbed a quick shower to clean up from her long travels and to wash any residual dog-blanket smell off her, too. Afterward, she stared out the window into the cloudy sky, combing her hair and wondering what she’d gotten herself into. She wasn’t a marriage counselor anymore. How exactly was she going to keep some distance and still be there for Claire?
Emma did a double take. In the center of town was a ship’s mast. A ship’s mast? She gave it a closer look. No, it was the white steeple of the church, jutting above the other roofs. It hadn’t caught her eye before, but it did now. It stuck out.
With Emma’s faux pas all over the Internet, her family would be even more in the limelight—and not in the fashion to which they were accustomed. Emma gazed upon the white steeple in the center of Gandiegow again and cringed. She was just like the steeple; she stuck out, too.
* * *
Gabe stood behind the restaurant’s counter and poured himself a cup of coffee. “Well, that killed the lunch crowd.”
Dom made a noncommittal grunt as he finished picking up the last dirty dish.
Gabe wiped off the counter. “I don’t want to sound like a hen, but do you want to talk about it?”
“Hell, no.” Dom shrugged his massive shoulders into his coat and snatched up the list. “I might as well get to Inverness and pick up the supplies now. Put a sign on the door when you leave. I should be back by three or four.”
“Aren’t you going to tell Claire that you’re going?
Dom glared at him from the doorway. “Stay out of it, Gabe.” He slammed the door behind him.
“If only I could.” Gabe wrote up a ticket, put money in the register, and grabbed two of Claire’s scones. When he turned around, Emma was standing there with her hands on her hips. Her hair looked perfect—down, damp, and wavy—and she was wearing a white blouse and blue jeans. Tight blue jeans. This woman was a combination of uptight professional and hot lay.
“How long has this been going on?” she demanded.
He glanced down at his plate. “I assume you’re not talking about my scone habit.”
“Did you know about their problems before you came here on holiday?”
He grabbed another plate, put one of his scones on it and laid it on the counter beside his. “Sit. I’ll get water on for your tea.”
“So, you knew and didn’t warn me that Claire and Dominic were warring?” She glared at him. “Aren’t you going to answer my questions?”
He grabbed a bag and put the scones in it. “Even better. Let’s go where we can discuss this in private.” He glanced up to gesture toward the flat on the third floor, like Claire might hear.
“Fine. I’ll go grab my coat.”
While she went back upstairs, he washed up the plates, put his coffee in a to-go cup, and put a sign on the door that the restaurant wouldn’t open again until dinner.
When Emma came back down, she had a frown on her face. “I hadn’t given it any thought before, but where are you staying? Is there a hotel or something in town?”
“Nay. I’m at the doctor’s quarters.”
“Hmm. That was nice of the doctor to share his place with you.”
“Aye.” He’d tell her, but not this minute. “Come.”
They took the path behind the restaurant and walked away from the sea, toward the bluff. Between the red postbox and a small cottage with a blue door sat a two-story cottage known as the doctor’s quarters. The downstairs was dedicated to caring for patients, and the upstairs was the doctor’s flat. Gabe opened the front door and pointed for Emma to take the steps.
She looked toward the surgery. “Is the doctor not seeing patients today?”
“He was away overnight.”
She looked around the entryway. “This is cozy.”
“Aye.” The walls were dark wood paneling, the floors dark wood, too. The cottage was more than a hundred years old and suited Gabe.
She pointed to the adjacent wall. “What a beautiful quilt.”
“Yes.” The quilt depicted trees and cottages in varying green and brown prints. The women’s guild from his father’s church had made it for him when he’d finished medical school.
“The handwoven rug?” she prodded, pointing to the earth-tone rug that had been here when he moved in.
“Not now,” he said. What am I? A blasted interior decorator? He pointed up the stairs. “The kitchen is that way.”
She glanced around once more. “I love this place. It feels like a home.”
He shook his head. “And you’ve only seen the entryway.”
“I don’t believe in vibes, but if I did, I think the doctor’s house has good ones.” She spun around and sauntered up the stairs.
“At the top, to the right.” He followed behind, doing his best to concentrate on the steps instead of her gluteus maximus.
“When does the doctor get back?” she asked.
“He’s back,” Gabe said. “Emma, I’m the—”
A man burst through the front door. “Doc, are you in?”
“What is it, Ramsay?” Gabe said.
Emma’s mouth fell open. For a moment he enjoyed her shock. He hadn’t planned to deceive her, but it sure entertained the hell out of him to pull the Scottish wool over her eyes. Especially after she’d made him feel so uncomfortable a few minutes ago.
Gabe headed back downstairs, with Emma following.
Ramsay held his arm up with a fishhook sticking out. “You said to come to you if we got injured instead of taking care of it ourselves.” He frowned. “Well, here I am.”
“Good.” This was progress as far as Gabe was concerned. The townsfolk had pretty much shunned him so far. All because he wasn’t their bloody precious Doc Fleming. They blamed Gabe for Doc Fleming’s decision to retire to the south of France with his sister and her family. So to have one of the fishermen come here to the surgery, yes, it was progress.
“Go through,” he said to Ramsay. “Emma, I won’t be long.”
She nodded but shot him a look that said he was in for a helluva lecture when he got upstairs.
Gabe took care of Ramsay. It was an easy fix. He clipped the end off the hook and pulled it through. Ramsay didn’t need stitches, but a thorough cleaning, a bandage, and a tetanus shot were necessary. “It was right of you to come, Ramsay. You don’t want to end up with lockjaw.”
“Can I get back to the boat now?”
“Aye, but keep that wound dry. I don’t want you to get an infection.” Gabe sent him on his way and went back to Emma upstairs. He found her in the parlor, inspecting his pictures.
He pointed to one of them. “That’s Dominic and me when we were ten. We were a couple of hellions. My father gave up on us at some point and concentrated on his parishioners instead of trying to wrangle us.”
She
set the picture back down and lit into him. “So, the doctor let you stay here, huh?”
“Sorry about that.”
“How long have you been Gandiegow’s doctor, anyway?”
“Three months.” It had been the longest three months of his life. He’d never imagined the Highlanders would treat him like an outlander. He was a Scot from Edinburgh, dammit. How ridiculous could they be?
“So, you came before Claire and Dominic? You’re the reason they moved all the way up here?”
“Nay. They were set to come, and then this position opened up. Dom talked me into it.” The two of them were closer than brothers, always living near enough to see each other several times a week. When Dom and Claire took work in Glasgow, Gabe had found a position in one of the suburbs. “Doc Fleming, the old physician, insisted I come sooner rather than later.”
“I see.”
He wondered that Claire hadn’t told her about him coming here—it was a hit to his ego that she hadn’t. He assumed he had been discussed often, but apparently not as much as he liked to think.
“Let’s go sit in the kitchen and have our breakfast. Well, lunch now.” He pointed the way and followed her. She sat at the small dining table while he put on a kettle for her tea.
“When was the last time you saw Claire?” he asked.
“I came to Glasgow last summer for her birthday. I stayed a few days with her, saw Mum for a day in London, then flew back to LA. But we talk all the time.”
“But since they moved here six weeks ago?”
Her frown deepened. “No, we haven’t spoken. Work hasn’t been going well for me.”
“It’s good ye’re here now, is all I have to say.”
“How bad is it?” she asked in her clipped British accent. “When did it all start?”
“Not long after they arrived,” confessed Gabe. “It was like Claire being back in Gandiegow made her, I don’t know, made her baby crazy. Like it had to happen now—or else.”
“She’s always been baby crazy,” Emma said. “That’s nothing new. But she does seem frantic. Which is new.”
Gabe gazed at her in earnest. “Now that you’re here, you can help them. You’re the expert.”
Emma thrust out her hands. “No. No, I can’t.”
“You’re a marriage therapist and Claire’s best friend.”
Emma flinched as if burned. “But—”
He sat across from her and reached for her hand to prove how important this was, but at the last second, he pulled back. “If you hadn’t come now, you can be sure that I would’ve been calling you soon to come fix them.”
The kettle whistled and Gabe rose to finish her tea. He looked over and saw Emma chewing her lip.
“Emma,” Gabe encouraged, “it has to be you. I had some psychiatric training in my medical rotation, but that’s it. You, though, you’ve been doing it full-time now for how many years?”
“Three.” She sighed heavily, like it’d been a hundred.
“Well, then, it’s settled. You’ll take care of them and that will be that.” He set a teacup in front of her.
“You have no idea why I’ve come to this remote part of Scotland, do you?” Her voice had an edge to it like she was teetering pretty damn close to hysteria.
“To see Claire?” he answered cautiously.
“To hide out.” She hung her head for a moment, then looked back up at him. “I’m the laughingstock of marriage counselors everywhere. Or their greatest shame, would be more like it. I guess you didn’t see my debut on YouTube. I’m a washout. Unless, of course, Claire and Dominic are planning a divorce. Then I’m their girl.”
“What are you talking about?”
She told him about the video and how she’d come here to regroup. Finally, she finished with the bad news. “I mean, what I’m trying to say is, I can’t help. I’ve given up the profession.” She looked down at her feet and mumbled, “I just haven’t told my parents yet.”
Gabe poured the tea for her and pushed the sugar bowl closer. He’d seen Eleanor Hamilton, Emma’s mother, on television more than once. He was no prude, but Eleanor’s blunt talk about sexual positions, styles, tools, and toys was enough to put him off sex. And he liked sex a lot. Emma’s father, Dean Castle, had accolades from countless movie stars. But Gabe had read his books and thought his techniques for saving relationships came down to a lot of manipulation and mind games. He wondered what Emma must have suffered through as a child with such infamous parents.
Gabe caught hold of Emma’s arm and forced himself to ignore her soft skin. I have to make her understand. “Dominic and Claire can’t get a divorce.” He was surprised how forceful his voice sounded. He hated to admit even to himself how much he relied on Dom and Claire’s marriage working. He wanted Dom to be happy; his foster brother had had such a hard time of it. And Claire makes Dom happy, dammit. Gabe had never met two people more in love, more in sync, more perfect for each other. Their relationship was the reason he’d turned his own life around. The reason he’d reformed himself from badass to choirboy. It had taken him a lot of years, but he wanted what they had. He wanted a partner. He wanted someone to come home to every day. He wanted love, too.
The way he saw it, if Dominic and Claire Russo couldn’t make it, no one could.
“If I get involved, they will most certainly get divorced,” Emma emphasized again. “I have a real knack for finishing off relationships.” She gave a bark of laughter, as if she’d made a terrible joke. “My track record for helping couples stay together sucks, to use a vulgar American term.”
She’d let her guard down. She certainly wasn’t talking like the haughty debutante he’d thought her to be. She looked up at him with hopeless eyes.
He squeezed her arm. “We’ll just do the best we can.”
“You aren’t listening,” Emma said desperately.
She straightened then, as if remembering whom she was speaking with—Go Get ’Em Gabriel, as she’d nicknamed him at the wedding. “Fine. I’m taking Claire’s side,” she said tersely. “Why can’t she have a baby?”
“I never said she can’t . . .” Gabe fumbled. “But it has to be a mutual decision. And Dominic says—”
Emma stood and tried towering over him by putting her hands on her hips. “It’s not fair for Dominic to hold his sperm hostage. If Claire wants a baby, she should get to have one. End of story.”
Gabe stood, as well, and showed her who towered over whom. “It takes a couple to raise a child, Emma.”
“Come into the twenty-first century, Gabriel,” she replied. “Fathers are optional.”
He got angry, ready to deliver a sermon she wouldn’t soon forget. Fathers optional, indeed.
She thwarted him, though, by turning on her heel and marching out of his kitchen, leaving him with nothing but his anger and her lukewarm cup of tea.
* * *
As Emma stomped down the stairs, she heard Gabriel swearing, his brogue thick and his words harsh. Good. She felt bloody proud about putting his big Scottish arse in its place. Of course, unlike her mother, she didn’t really believe that fathers were optional. It just felt good to tick him off.
The dull headache at the base of her neck got incrementally worse. The headache had first surfaced when Claire slammed the pot against the wall; Gabriel had made it worse by forcing her into an impossible situation. Penned in from all sides.
She made her way back to the restaurant and upstairs to the flat. Claire wasn’t there, which was just as well. Emma needed a few moments alone to pull herself together. She paced the floor, going over it in her head. She’d always prided herself on being Claire’s yes-friend—loyal, supportive—what every woman needed. Yet something wasn’t right.
She went to the desk in the corner and sat down, putting her head in her hands. She looked down. A ledger lay open. She sucked in a breath.
There it was in black-and-white—red, actually Dominic’s side of the story. She shouldn’t snoop, but she’d been thrown in the middle of it, almost like the pot hitting the wall.
The restaurant stood on shaky ground, the negative numbers stacked up against it. A bad shipment of meat. The last quilting retreat canceled due to bad weather, meaning no tourist pounds. Not enough revenue coming in on a regular basis. Claire and Dominic’s livelihood hung in the balance and tipped precariously toward no return.
This definitely isn’t the time to have a baby.
Emma’s stomach turned on her. Maybe she should’ve eaten more than a nibble of a scone. Or maybe she should’ve gotten all the facts first before making any declarations. A short time ago, she’d assured Claire that she was on her side. And now?
And now . . . Emma didn’t know.
* * *
Gabe hiked to the top of the bluff to blow off steam. Emma and her idiotic idea that fathers were optional. What a crock of shite.
Gabe hated to think where he might’ve ended up without his own father. His mother had died when he was only a babe. Only recently had he realized what his father had gone through. His da had been all—father, breadwinner, spiritual leader for his church. Gabe hadn’t missed his mother, never knowing her, but maybe he wouldn’t have been such a handful if she’d been around. He felt terrible for what he’d put his da through. Gabe had always believed Da’s flock had come first, that he saw Gabe as an inconvenience, but lately he’d gotten a clue. His da had done the best he could—and it had been pretty damn amazing. Look at how when Dominic’s ma passed away, Da took Dom in, too. Hell, his da deserved sainthood. Later today, he’d call and tell him so.
Gabe turned the corner and headed toward the cemetery, which overlooked the bay. He pressed on, trying to keep the thought of Emma from wedging itself back into his mind. She was so damned attractive, acting as if she didn’t have any idea. With her green eyes, cinnamon hair—There it is again: cinnamon—and her rocking-hot body. The damnedest thing was that the society-girl thing she had going on turned him on, too. He rolled his eyes at his own imaginings and pushed her out of his mind again.
Meet Me in Scotland Page 5