by Anna Durand
"You've got some nerve coming here," Jamie said. "Catriona will be here for the games, you know."
"I assumed as much."
Jamie moved closer, hoisted herself up on her toes, and tipped her head back to glare at Alex. "So will my brothers."
Her tone transformed those words into a threat.
Alex was not impressed. "I look forward to finally meeting them. I'm sure we have a lot to talk about."
"There won't be talking. There will be blood." Jamie whirled on me, thrusting a finger in my direction. "How could you bring him here?"
"I thought it was about time everyone buried the hatchet. We're all adults, and Alex isn't the devil incarnate. He's a friend."
Jamie squinted at me, her lips pursed, and growled just like her brother Rory. "Fine. Have it your way, but mark my words, you will regret this once Cat gets here."
"We'll see."
Gavin took his wife aside and calmed her down with hushed words I couldn't make out and several long, lingering kisses. Jamie agreed to give us a tour of the castle, though she refused to speak to Alex. Cat was her sister, and I couldn't blame her for being upset. But Serena had been right. Alex and Cat needed to confront the ghosts of their past and lay them to rest once and for all.
Jamie and Gavin showed Serena, Chase, Alex, and Chase's grandparents around the castle while I made my way through the garden to the door hidden behind a flowering bush. I shoved the old wooden door open and marched onto the green. The grassy area offered a perfect place to hold any sort of festivities anyone might want to have. It had hosted Highland games several times. The first games held here had been for a singular purpose. Rory had wanted to force Gavin to break free of his past and finally commit to a life with Jamie, and nothing cleared a man's head like hurling tree trunks.
Would caber tossing be on today's schedule?
The answer was yes, which I found out a few minutes later when more of my cousins arrived. The Three Macs—Lachlan, Rory, and Aidan—arrived with Iain and their respective wives and children. The women and bairns went inside, though Iain's daughter, Malina, would've complained if I'd called her a bairn out loud. She was fourteen, after all. Chase might like having another teenager around.
My four cousins cornered me against the wall.
And every last one of them wore a kilt. No one had told me this was a plaid festival. Wearing kilts meant caber tossing was on the agenda.
They should've known better than to try intimidating me, but then again, I rather doubted they had any hopes of accomplishing that.
Iain, the always calm cousin, leaned against the wall near me, arms folded over his chest. He aimed his famous Buddha smile at me. His wife had named that expression after the Buddha. Until we'd met Rae, the rest of us had simply called it Iain's smile. He never got upset about anything, at least not the way some of my other cousins did.
Lachlan, the oldest of the Three Macs, folded his arms over his chest too. His younger brothers, Rory and Aidan, did the same.
I leaned back against the wall but felt no compulsion to cross my arms. "All right. Have your say."
Rory smacked his fist into the other palm. "You brought the British Bastard here."
"No, I brought Alex Thorne."
"Why would you do that? Unless you're itching for a skelping."
"Go on and try that," I said, staring right into Rory's eyes. "I'd love a good laugh."
Iain pushed away from the wall and moved to stand beside me, though he spoke to the Three Macs. "Let's not turn this into a medieval battle, eh? The lasses won't be impressed by the three of you getting battered to a bloody pulp by Logan. And besides, you should really leave that for Catriona to do."
Lachlan squinted at Iain. "You're assuming we can't take Logan."
"Aye, Lachie, that's right. I'm assuming the facts."
I somehow kept my impassive expression when Lachlan scowled at Iain over his use of the hated diminutive Lachie.
Aidan lowered his arms. "Iain's right. Logan would fair trounce us in a fight."
The rest of my cousins raised their hands in surrender.
Everyone who'd gone inside the castle walls began to pour out through the garden doorway. My cousins wandered off to find their wives, and I waited for Serena to emerge. She was the second to last person to walk onto the green, and she came up alongside me.
Alex walked out last.
When he saw the Three Macs, he stopped.
They saw him too, and rounded on him in unison, stalking toward him like a line of Celtic warriors determined to corner the enemy. All they needed was blue face paint, since they already had the kilts.
"You've got nerve," Lachlan said. "Showing your face at a MacTaggart family gathering."
Alex raised one brow. "How do you know who I am? We've never met before."
"Jamie rang Rory to warn him you were here, and Rory rang me." Lachlan raked his slitted gaze over Alex, and his lip curled. "You are the only one here I don't recognize, and the only one who's dressed like a Sassenach."
"How exactly does one dress like a Sassenach?"
Aidan chuckled darkly. "Ye wear posh clothes and prance around like a numpty."
"He's not wearing a kilt," Rory said. "That's how we know he's a Sassenach."
Alex Thorne might have been a Sassenach, an Englishman, but he was hardly dressed like a moron. Not that I knew how morons clothed themselves.
I grasped Serena's hand. Together, we headed toward the disaster in the making, aka Alex Thorne, and positioned ourselves next to him.
"Kilts are the litmus test, ye say?" I asked. "Well, ahmno wearing one either."
Lachlan rolled his gaze toward me and sighed. "You're family, Logan. We forgive you for neglecting to dress appropriately."
More MacTaggarts had arrived while my cousins had cornered me, right before they ganged up on Alex. He didn't seem perturbed by their display of Scottish machismo, or by the throng of cousins and other relatives swarming the green. I spotted my parents and my sisters, along with the parents of the Three Macs. Iain's parents were here too, but Evan's mother and father had flown to America to see their new granddaughter. They would miss whatever battle seemed destined to take place here.
We might give Robert the Bruce a run for his money today. The Battle of Dùndubhan might prove more vicious than the Battle of Bannockburn, but unlike that historic fight, there would be no victor here. One Englishman against a horde of Scots? Alex had no chance of leaving the battlefield without blood being spilled.
"So, you're siding with the British Bastard," Rory said to me. "Are you wanting a beating, Logan?"
"No one will beat anyone today." I took a moment to consider my cousins, and an idea came to me. "You lot believe in second chances, don't you? Your wives gave you another go even after you fucked up badly. Rory, Emery took you back in spite of everything you put that poor lass through with your daft marriage of convenience idea. Lachlan, you told Erica you could never love her and then you walked out on her, but she forgave you. Iain abandoned Rae for thirteen years, and she took him back. So before you start planning a royal rammy, remember you lot aren't much different than Alex."
My cousins aimed their best cold stares at me, but theirs couldn't compete with mine. I was about to strategize how to take them out one by one when they exchanged glances and nodded.
"That's a fair point," Lachlan said. "But we're not the ones you have to convince."
Fate seemed to have a twisted sense of humor today, because at the precise moment Lachlan spoke those words, the crowd separated to let a solitary figure pass. Even the Three Macs moved aside.
Catriona halted a few meters from Alex.
She looked him up and down, her face impassive but her eyes glinting with the fire of fury.
Everyone had fallen silent, turning the green into the eeriest stretch of grass in Scotland. No one moved. We all watched Cat to see what she might do.
"You bastard!" she shrieked, and bolted
for Alex, roaring like a she-demon.
He didn't move, though his eyes widened a fraction.
Cat was considerably shorter than Alex, but she'd accounted for that. She swung her fist back and punched him in the gut.
My God, the lass was strong.
Alex gasped, doubled over, and stumbled backward two steps.
Then he straightened, cleared his throat, and faced her again.
He was going to let her punch him a second time. Had the man gone barmy? Catriona was on a rampage.
She pulled her fist back for another blow.
When she swung out, he caught her fist.
Cat howled.
"Now, now," Alex said in a sarcastically patient tone, "let's behave like adults, Catriona. Did you honestly expect I'd let you hit me again? One punch, I deserve. Two is a bit much."
She kicked him in the shin.
He winced but held on to her fist. "If I let go, will you promise to end the violence?"
"No, you bod ceann, I will not." She tried to wrestle free of his hold, but he was the stronger of the two. Her wild fury had dwindled to a simmer, but her face was red. "How do you expect me to feel when you turn up in my country? You had me arrested."
"No, I didn't. The police arrived at the wrong conclusion, but that's hardly my fault. I got you out of jail, didn't I?"
"You're a bloody liar, that's what I know. Didn't I tell you not to come within five hundred miles of me?"
He shrugged one shoulder, giving the illusion of being unaffected by his reunion with Catriona. "Logan invited me. Why don't you lay one on him, Cat?"
She veered her attention to me, baring her teeth. "You did what, Logan?"
"I invited Alex, like he said. Don't you think it's time you and Alex bury the hatchet? You've been hating him for years. Letting go of the past might be good for both of you."
"Now you're a bloody therapist?" She jabbed a finger in the air in my general direction. "I will deal with you later."
She seized Alex's arm and dragged him through the garden door, then slammed it shut.
Iain tipped his head to the side, peering at the garden door. "Donnae ye think someone ought to keep an eye on those two? A murder would dampen the mood during the games."
"Serena and I will do it," I said. "I'm the ersehole who brought Alex here, so it's my responsibility to thwart a murder."
I guided Serena toward the garden door and pushed it open with a gentle shove. It made a noise when it popped open, but the pair arguing in the garden wouldn't have heard it.
They were going at it like mortal enemies.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Serena
I spotted Alex and Catriona near the arbor. They were arguing, but not screaming at each other, their words hard to make out from this distance away and with lots of greenery between us and them. Logan led me over to the side, behind a well-manicured hedge that camouflaged us. We could see the couple through a gap between the hedge and a flowering bush.
"We're eavesdropping?" I whispered.
"No, we're the emergency referees. If necessary, we'll intervene."
Cat kept jabbing her finger into Alex's chest. He threw his arms up, then spread them wide when he bent to level their gazes and said something that made her squeeze her eyes shut.
"What the fuck do you want from me?" he shouted loud enough that his voice echoed off the walls of the castle compound.
"Nothing!" she shouted back.
I snuggled closer to Logan. "Wow, these two have a lot of passion."
"Yes, you were right."
"Was I? About what?"
Beyond the hedge, Alex shoved both hands into his hair, head bowed, shoulders caving in. Catriona wiped at her eyes with the hem of her shirt. Her lips moved, but I couldn't make out the words.
"You were right," Logan said, "about them. They're still in love with each other."
"I thought I hated you, but I didn't react to you the way she does to Alex. Whatever he did to her must've been a doozy."
"An enormous doozy, from the looks of it."
Cat said something that made Alex lift his head and scowl at her. She hurried out of the garden, onto the green.
He shambled over to a concrete bench and collapsed onto it. With his elbows on his knees, he let his head fall into his raised hands.
I glanced at Logan. "Should we..."
"No, leave him alone. He wouldn't want to be consoled."
"That's such a guy thing to say." I gazed at his profile, suddenly struck by a realization. "You love this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Even eavesdropping on your cousin and her ex-lover makes you come alive. Spying is in your blood."
He jerked his head to look at me. "I'm not a spy anymore."
"Yeah, I know. You quit MI6."
But maybe he shouldn't have. Was I holding him back? If we hadn't gotten involved, would he go back to that life? He wasn't happy in his new job. Maybe I was making excuses to end things because the thought of losing him any other way terrified me, but his boredom with his current job was real. And I still could not shake the chilling fear that we wouldn't be together for long.
So, I distracted myself.
"We should talk to Alex," I said. "Come on, the poor man is miserable. Catriona has her brothers and sisters to help her, but Alex only has you and me."
Logan groaned, making an exasperated face. "Fine. We will talk to Alex."
He clasped my hand, leading me out from behind the hedge.
Alex raised his head and screwed up his mouth.
Near the bench, we stopped.
"Did you enjoy the show?" Alex asked.
"We couldn't hear what you said," Logan told him. "Speak up next time."
I slapped his chest. "No teasing. Can't you see he's in pain? Alex, we wanted to make sure you and Catriona didn't do anything stupid, like bludgeon each other to death with garden trowels."
He turned his gaze up to the heavens. "This is perfect. While Cat tells everyone out there what a vile bastard I am and gets drowned in sympathy, I have you two to tell me to buck up."
"We're not telling you that. We want to make sure you're okay."
"I'm right as rain. A good sucker punch is exactly what I needed today."
Logan squeezed my hand. "He's fine. Let's leave him be."
"No, he is not fine." I yanked my hand free of his and sat down beside Alex. "It's not hopeless, you know. What's broken can be mended."
He gave me a look that epitomized sarcasm, humor, and self-loathing in a way only this man could've pulled off. "You're a lovely woman, Serena, but being with Logan has turned you into—what do the Scots call it?—a bampot. Catriona despises me."
"You two had a rip-roaring argument. That kind of passion doesn't come from hate. It comes from repressed desires and fear."
He held perfectly still for several seconds, his gaze on me.
Logan gave me an exasperated look, which I ignored.
Alex made an irritated grumbling noise that matched his hand gesture. "Cat doesn't want me anymore. She'd sooner tear my balls off, grind them into paste, and shove it down my throat."
"Logan and I thought we hated each other," I said. "It was only recently that we took a hard look at ourselves and realized the antagonism was a cover, and we were fighting the inevitable out of fear. Logan told me once that passion and hate often go hand in hand. What he didn't understand at the time, what neither of understood, was that desire can be disguised as hate."
"I'll take that under advisement."
Logan shook his head, his mouth twisting into a half-suppressed smile. "He means he thinks you're full of shit, and he's going to ignore everything you just told him."
Alex adopted a look of totally convincing feigned innocence. "I have no idea what you're talking about. I always listen to advice, especially when it comes from a beautiful woman."
"You're a liar, Alex. It's who you are. But you ought to know by now you can't fool m
e."
"No, I never could. Which begs the question of why you take the jobs I offer you."
Logan shrugged. "I like a challenge."
"You like a mystery. You're a spy, Logan. That's who you are."
A lump hardened in my throat. Logan was and always would be a spy. Even Alex understood that. But Logan would give up what he really wanted to make me happy. Which was worse? Losing him to resentment because I made him take a boring job, or losing him in the most permanent way imaginable because he went back to his old life as a spy?
Those scars on his back...
I swallowed hard, but the lump wouldn't budge.
"Let's go out there," Logan said, nodding toward the garden door, "and see if things are as bad as you think."
Alex nodded and got up, running his fingers through his hair. "I ask only one favor of you two. If one of Cat's brothers kills me, make sure they don't cut me up and have me for dinner."
Logan sighed and shook his head.
The three of us walked back out onto the green, where the rest of the MacTaggarts were busy setting up for the Highland games.
Rory and Lachlan approached us. They each held small packages wrapped in plain brown paper.
Lachlan offered his package to Logan. "You'll need a kilt to compete in the games. We thought you might've left yours back in America."
"I did." Logan accepted the package and unwrapped it. He held up the kilt made from the blue-and-green tartan of the MacTaggart clan. "Thank you."
Rory held out his package to Alex. With a sly and slightly feral smile, he said, "We let Cat pick one for you."
"Hmm, that sounds rather dangerous." He removed the brown paper and held up his kilt. "Ah well, at least she still has a sense of humor."
The kilt was fashioned from pink plaid, and it had sparkly flowers sewn onto it.
Logan narrowed his gaze on Rory. "How did you happen to have a pink kilt large enough for a man to wear?"
"Catriona made it for me as a joke. I handed it off to Gavin, because apparently Jamie loves to see her husband in ridiculous outfits."
Chase came running up to us, grinning like it was Christmas morning and he'd gotten the life-size space shuttle he'd asked Santa to bring him. He held up his own kilt, in the MacTaggart tartan. "Look, Mom, Lachlan made me an honorary MacTaggart. I get to compete in the games. Isn't that wicked awesome?"