She was… right.
She also smelled good up close, woodsy with a hint of mint. A scent to pipe into a designer hotel’s conservatory. Max passed her his plate and used his phone to make that note.
They tidied up in companionable silence, the brownies going into the bread box. Jeannie washed the dishes by hand rather than using the dishwasher, and Max got the job of shaking the place mats out on the deck.
“So the birds can enjoy the crumbs,” Jeannie said, tearing off a pinch of bread and crumbling it onto the place mat Max held.
Maybe wasting bread on birds was a Scottish good-luck custom. Max did scroll through his email and voice mail while on the back terrace and found nothing marked urgent. He’d cleared the decks in every possible regard to prepare for traveling, but to manage the development of a property was to live in a minefield, especially on Fridays.
Jeannie came out onto the deck and folded the place mats Max had draped over the rail. “Letting the folks back home know you’re safe and sound?”
“Making sure I have reception.”
“Let’s make sure you have a little fresh air.” She marched off down the steps and into the lovely, leafy forest.
Max jammed his phone into his pocket and followed her.
Scotland had been awarded the honor of Most Beautiful Country in the World, and Max Maitland was too busy checking his email to notice. Jeannie didn’t begrudge him a nap on the way from the airport, but to stand amid the lush greenery of Perthshire without even looking up…
She would not attribute such blasphemy to all Americans—some were nature hounds—but perhaps it was a failing of many engineers. Alas for Mr. Maitland, Jeannie was determined to steal some time out of doors, even if she had to drag him kicking and scrolling to the riverbank.
“Nobody knows how old these trails are,” she said. “They probably date back thousands of years, as long as the river has run in its present course.”
The Tayside forest was lovely in all seasons, but Jeannie hadn’t been on this path since last autumn. The summer version of the woods was busy with birds, squirrels, breezes, and the sound of the river. The scent was as beautiful as the greenery—verdant, fresh, earthy.
“That’s Niall’s property,” she said, gesturing to a rooftop peeking from the trees to the right. “Designed and built it himself. You and he could probably share a wee dram while sketching ideas on napkins and comparing the calculator apps on your phones.”
Mr. Maitland kept up easily. “Does your family include an engineer?”
Not anymore. “I’ve run across a few. Watch your step. We had a good rain on Wednesday. The ground can be boggy.”
“Are we in a hurry, Ms. Cromarty?”
Jeannie slowed her pace. “I haven’t come this way in too long, and I miss it desperately. The cottage is usually booked straight through the high season, and I never have time to enjoy the property lately.”
Never had time to enjoy much of anything, other than an hour or so of reading before bed, until she fell asleep with the book still in her hands. Everybody said life after a divorce grew easier with time, but everybody had also said that Jeannie and Jack had been perfect for each other.
The quiet of the forest gradually overtook the breathless, never-on-time anxiety that had dogged Jeannie for months. Mr. Maitland did her the courtesy of remaining silent, meaning the whisper of the river going by and the occasional birdcall could sink into her weary soul and soothe the tumult.
The past year had been hard. The next year loomed as another bleak slog. Finances were an issue, exhaustion was an issue, as was the sheer boredom that came with—
Mr. Maitland halted. “Osprey.”
Jeannie shaded her eyes, but couldn’t make out any large raptors in the trees ahead. The osprey was white across the breast and head and banded brown elsewhere. Among the shoreline trees, they were nearly impossible to detect when still.
“Where?”
Mr. Maitland turned her gently by the shoulders. “The notch of that big oak, about thirty feet up.” He pointed over Jeannie’s shoulder, standing close behind her. “Mama’s serving lunch.”
What mamas did best.
“They stopped breeding here for more than a hundred years,” Jeannie said, getting out her phone. “But they came back, and the population is gradually increasing.”
She adjusted the zoom and snapped a picture. Not that the nest would be easy to spot even in a photograph. Still, an osprey family was a hopeful image, and she needed those. She put the phone away and stood watching the mundane miracle of lunchtime at the Osprey household. Mr. Maitland remained motionless at her back, and that was…
Nice, in an odd way. Jeannie wasn’t keen on his plans for the castle, she wasn’t keen on men generally, and she wasn’t keen on people who lived glued to their jobs. That Mr. Maitland would notice the birds, point them out to Jeannie, and appreciate them let her like him a little, nonetheless.
No harm in a little liking.
“Shall we go back?” Jeannie asked. “I could spend all afternoon tramping these trails, but I’m sure your email is calling you.”
And Jeannie was overdue to check in with Millicent.
“If you’d like to hike farther, I can find my way back on my own.”
She was tempted, tempted to simply sit and watch the river go by, something she hadn’t done in far too long.
“I’ve places to go, people to see,” she said, turning. “My time is not my—”
Never hike wearing trainers. Jeannie formed that thought as one foot slipped, her arms flailed, and she nearly went down amid the bracken.
Mr. Maitland caught her and drew her back against his chest. “Careful. The ground can be a bit boggy, I’m told.”
He was strong and utterly steady—solid, to use his word. For an instant, Jeannie nearly let herself lean against him, let herself feel again the security of a male embrace. By virtue of shoving and cursing, she got herself righted.
“My apologies. Shall we be on our way?”
She gestured up the path, and though she was blushing, and Mr. Maitland was smiling, he was gallant enough not to remark on her mortification.
So much for daydreaming. They returned to the cottage without further incident—Jeannie was very careful of her footing. She passed him the set of keys she kept for guests and emailed him the link to the directions on the cottage website.
“I’ll be along tomorrow morning about eight,” she said. “That will get you up to the castle well before noon. We can stop along the way for provisions, though Aldi’s delivers to the Baron’s Hall.”
“I have an international driver’s license,” Mr. Maitland said, accompanying Jeannie to the driveway. “Give me your phone.”
Was he daft or simply rude? “Why should I give you my phone?”
“So I can call myself, and then we’ll have each other’s numbers.”
Jeannie passed over her phone.
“What’s the plan if my luggage hasn’t caught up with me by tomorrow?”
“Explain to the nice people how to get to the castle. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Maitland. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen and call me if you need anything.”
Jeannie’s phone chimed to the opening bars of Parcel o’ Rogues. That would be Millicent, with a reminder that Jeannie had half an hour of liberty left.
“You need something,” Mr. Maitland said, frowning at Jeannie’s car.
“I beg your pardon? The black shows the dirt, I know, but—shite.” Shite, hell, and bloody damnation. This was the price of stealing forty-five minutes to walk by the river, the price for paying more attention to tulips than tires. Again.
Why couldn’t one day—just one, single day—go right anymore?
“Looks like a puncture,” Mr. Maitland, hunkering before the driver’s side front tire. “Slow leak. Probably picked up a nail days ago and haven’t noticed the loss of pressure. I can have the spare on in ten minutes.”
“No,” Jeannie said arou
nd the lump in her throat. “No, you can’t, because the bloody spare needs a bloody patch, and I haven’t had the bloody money to fix it.”
Changing a tire was one of the last, best bastions of male competence in a changing world, and Max relished the opportunity to solve a problem on his first day in Scotland. Tires were tires, and he had changed dozens.
He wouldn’t be changing this one.
“Can you have it towed?”
“Not soon enough.” She looked at the car as if a favorite pet had just flatlined. Despair, betrayal, and more upset than a bad tire deserved.
“The afternoon’s only half gone. Does Scotland close down at two p.m. on Fridays?”
She gazed at the surrounding trees with a far different expression than she’d turned on the ospreys. The woods were clearly no longer lovely, dark, and deep.
“The man who drives the tow truck, Abner MacShane, is the fiddler in the ceilidh band. They play every Friday night at the community center, so they rehearse on Friday afternoons at the pub. I won’t get Abner behind the wheel until noon tomorrow.”
Max needed to be at the castle by noon tomorrow. “No car rental in the village?”
“The nearest car rental is in Perth.”
“What about the architect over at Falling Waters—Neal?”
“Niall.” Jeannie brightened and got out her phone, then her expression dimmed. “Not home. He and his wife are forever going off to take in art shows.”
“Architects are different.”
Jeannie smiled at him, not in the sharing-a-joke way, but in the sharing-a-life-moment way. “That they are.”
“How far is the village?”
“Two miles, give or take.”
“Then I’ll just jog into town, pick up a spare, and bring it back out here. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.” Max geolocated himself on his phone, enlarged the map, and prepared to enjoy another couple miles of fresh air.
“You’d carry a spare all the way out here?”
“They’ll probably give me a donut. Do they know your car?”
Jeannie described the make, model, and year. “The man who owns the garage is Abner’s uncle, Dairmid MacShane. If you tell him I’m stranded here, he’ll likely give you a ride back. I’d call him, but if he’s busy, he’ll ignore the phone until Monday.”
“You might need these.” Max passed her the keys to the cottage. “See you in an hour or so.”
“I shouldn’t let you do this. I could call somebody.”
“And they might come pick you up, but will they fix your car?” Max understood and admired a self-reliant impulse. Jeannie’s reluctance to accept help was something more substantial.
“I might be able to get a truck out from Perth.”
“Which will cost you next week’s groceries. Whoever he was, Jeannie, I’m not him and I won’t leave you stranded here. My computer is in that cottage along with my only two pairs of clean undies and my personal stash of protein bars. If that doesn’t prove I’ll come back, nothing will.”
Ah, a smile. A small, but genuine smile. “Next month’s groceries,” she said. “Be off with you, then, and mind the traffic along the road.”
“Save me one brownie.”
Her smile blossomed into a grin, and Max took off up the drive at an easy jog. He was at the garage in less than half an hour, much of that time spent on the phone with Maura. Despite his “Yank accent,” he made the situation plain enough and was soon back at the cottage, trading tools with Ewan MacShane—a gangly teenage motorhead—and putting on not a donut, but an honest-to-Braveheart spare.
“This one’s on me,” Max said, getting out his AmEx.
Ewan was about six foot three, reed-thin, freckled, and red-haired. “Keep your money, Yank.” He sounded like the wrath of the Highlands, when five minutes earlier he’d been merrily cursing the damned Germans who overengineer “every feckin’ ting.”
“Have I just committed a typical American blunder?”
Ewan wiped his hands on a rag. “Nah. Feckin’ Jackie MacDonald blundered. Left a good woman with a crap set of tires. What sort of rat-turd molly-balls weasel fart does that?”
The tires were far from new, though they’d probably pass inspection. Jackie MacDonald was apparently flunking on all counts. This pleased Max, for reasons he didn’t examine.
“Thanks for the help, then. Let’s get the spare and the tools put up.”
“Jeannie would rather owe us than a stranger,” Ewan said. “The Cromartys have their pride.”
“But if she owes you, then she’ll eventually find a way to repay you.”
Ewan scratched his nose while he considered this, getting a streak of grease on his cheek. “Jeannie’s a first-rate cook. Has a way with sweets.”
The way to an almost-grown-man’s heart…
“Wait here.” Max went into the kitchen, found the brownies, set one aside, and brought the plate out to Ewan. “Payment in full.”
Ewan took the plate, upended it, and used the cellophane to wrap up the batch. “With interest. You’re all right, Yank.”
Not a single brownie would survive the two-mile journey back to the garage, which Max considered chocolate well spent. When Ewan’s Land Rover went bouncing back up the lane, Jeannie not only had four functional tires, she had an inflated spare as well.
Max at first thought she might have gone for another ramble along the river, but he spotted her phone on the coffee table.
Three missed calls from somebody named Millicent.
He found Jeannie in the office, fast asleep, a quilt pulled over her, her worn running shoes beside the bed, socks draped over them. The heel of one sock was going thin, the toe of the other had a hole.
In sleep, she wasn’t as formidable, and she was deeply, entirely asleep. A novel with a cowboy on the cover—Luckiest Cowboy of All—was open faceup beside her pillow. This was not a catnap, but much-needed slumber.
Jackie MacDonald had apparently worn out more than Jeannie’s tires.
Max decided to give her another thirty minutes. He set the cowboy aside, took the ergonomic office chair, and brought the computer purring and glowing to life.
Jeannie was warm and relaxed, which made her aware of how little true relaxation she’d had lately. On some level beneath conscious thought, she knew that this version of “I must get up” was less urgent than the usual varieties. She’d been dreaming of a cowboy named Jace who had looked suspiciously like Max Maitland.
And that dream had been the farthest thing from a nightmare, but this was not the Prairie Rose Ranch.
Mr. Maitland sat at the computer, the wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose making him look sexy, dammit. Smart and slightly rumpled, a man who spotted nesting ospreys and could solve a flat tire with common sense and a little effort.
That effort had been beyond Jeannie. She’d longed to put in a good five miles along the river, but knew she hadn’t the energy. Instead, she’d left a message for Millicent—slight delay, see you before supper—and resigned herself to being humble and grateful for help when help was needed.
She’d managed half a chapter of Jace and Carlene’s second chance romance and then awoken with a man in her bedroom for the first time in months. Mr. Maitland was utterly, entirely focused on his work, tapping the keys with deft efficiency, moving a fancy mouse that he must have brought along in his carry-on.
Jeannie inventoried her emotions for any hint of attraction to Max Maitland and found… some. A hint, a mere pilot light of interest, which was more than she’d felt for any male in the past year. Maitland was in Scotland to wreck the castle, in Uncle Donald’s words, which meant Jeannie’s path might cross his from time to time.
She decided to be encouraged by that pilot light—not that she’d act on it—because surely noticing that a man was attractive was a sign of normalcy? Though here she was, dozing away the afternoon ten feet from the computer, and Mr. Maitland seemed oblivious to her presence.
Which was… fine.
He glanced at his watch—who wore a watch these days?—and swiveled his chair to face the bed.
“You’re awake.”
“Barely. What time is it?” And where was her phone?
“Going on four.”
Jeannie was sitting on the edge of the bed, reaching for her socks in the next instant. “Is the car fixed?”
“It cost you a batch of brownies, but yes, the car is fixed, and you have a trustworthy spare as well, compliments of Clan MacShane.”
Jeannie yanked on a sock and heard a ripping sound. “Thank you, more than I can say.” She was gentler with the second sock, which already had a hole in the toe. “Have you seen my phone?”
He tossed her the phone, but she wasn’t quick enough to catch it. “Millicent is trying to get hold of you, but I figured she could wait another thirty minutes.”
Three messages was not good. “I left her a message telling her I’d be late. She hates it when I’m late.”
“I suspect you’re late about twice a year. Tell her thanks, it won’t happen again, and chill the hell out. Tires go flat.” His tone was so, so… pragmatic.
So ignorant. “You don’t understand. Millicent doesn’t understand.” Jeannie got her shoes on, folded up the quilt, and began rehearsing her groveling.
A slow leak, could happen to anybody…
The garage was busy…
Band rehearsal…
Millicent would have sympathy for none of it.
Mr. Maitland trailed Jeannie down the steps and to the front door. “You’ll be back tomorrow at eight?”
“I absolutely will,” Jeannie said. “I am charged by no less person than the Earl of Strathdee with getting you up to the castle, where you can start to wreak your havoc on the ancestral home.”
“My magic.” He came out to the terrace with her, and it occurred to Jeannie he was walking her to her car. Jack had done that, for the first few dates. She suspected Max Maitland would do it for his wife even after thirty-five years of marriage.
There were good men in the world. Jeannie knew this—her cousins were good men—but beyond them, she hadn’t seen firsthand evidence of much masculine virtue. Perhaps she’d been too upset with Jack to allow herself to see it, because Jack had also seemed a fine fellow at first.
Scotland to the Max: Trouble Wears Tartan — Book Three Page 16