“Have you two talked about it? What you’ll do?”
Kira laughed. “We’ve talked about talking about it, but with this case he’s working, we’ve barely had time to say hello and keep current on what’s happening day-to-day. He’s due home later today, so perhaps this evening.” Though, if their brief phone call last evening had been any indication, it was doubtful either of them had talking as the foremost thing on their mind. Had Shay not been interrupted by yet another business intrusion, she might have had her first ever experience with phone sex.
“I’ve got to run,” Tessa said. “Let me know what happens and we’ll make plans. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the new year!”
“Okay, that’s good,” Kira said. “You sound . . . happy, Tessa. Remind me to give that husband of yours a big hug when you get back. I owe him.”
“I am,” Tessa said, sounding like the young girl Kira had gone to boarding school with again, which was a miracle in and of itself, given how broken Tessa had been when she’d first arrived on Kinloch. “And give your man a hug, too . . . and hold on, Kira. I saw the way he looked at you. He is your man. Just . . . hold on to him.”
“I plan to,” Kira said, and they disconnected just as a rap came on the cottage door.
Kira scrambled out of the kitchen chair and almost tripped over herself to get to the door. Shay wasn’t due back until later and, by now, he usually just knocked once to let her know he was there, then entered on his own. Still, she scrambled.
She realized she was still in nightgown and robe, but didn’t care. Having gotten an idea for the basket design she was weaving in the wee hours, she’d risen early and dived right in. Besides, she’d been too restless to sleep without Shay next to her.
She held her robe closed with her fist, and opened the door. Then clutched her robe more tightly at the sight of a liveried footman, standing on her doorstep. “I—I’m sorry, can I help you? Are you lost?”
“Kira MacLeod?”
“Aye, that’s me. What’s this—”
“I’ve been sent with an invitation. If you’ll be so kind as to read it, miss, and give me your reply?”
“I—what is this all about?”
The man, in full powdered wig and gloves, no less, made quite the show of handing her a crisp, white envelope. She couldn’t quite tell if he was merely staying in character . . . or if he simply was a character.
She broke the seal and opened the envelope, then slid out an engraved invitation. She read it out loud. “The pleasure of your company is requested at No. 23 on the North Road, this evening. Half past six. Requested attire . . . Anything you don’t mind being torn off your—” She stopped, suddenly realizing whom this was from . . . and that she was reciting things out loud to the footman that perhaps she’d ought not to. She cleared her throat and finished reading in silence, her heart already pounding, then looked back at the footman. “I’ll be there. I—what I mean to say is . . . I accept the invitation.”
“Quite good, miss,” he said, and actually sketched a sharply delivered bow that the Queen would approve. “I shall be round to pick you up at quarter past the hour.”
“You’ll—you’re picking me up?”
“Aye, miss.”
Kira was grinning now. “Okay then. Oh, let me get you a tip, hold on.”
The man looked as horrified as if she’d suggested she might be stripping naked right there in her doorway. “That won’t be necessary, miss. I’ll ring at quarter past six.”
“Thank you,” Kira said, and watched him bow again, then make his way down the walk. She craned her neck to look around to the side lot, to spy what he was driving, half expecting to see a carriage and team of horses, but a viciously cold wind chose that moment to whip past the open doorway, and she ducked back inside and shut the door.
She turned and leaned back against it, and read the note again, then held it against her chest. Then she might have danced a little jig. Just a small one. Twice. She wanted to dash to grab her mobile and call Shay straight away to find out what was behind all this, but he’d clearly set a plan in motion, and she was willing—quite willing—to play along.
“I guess I’d better go see what outfit I won’t mind never wearing again.” She skipped to her bedroom.
When the footman rang again, precisely at quarter past six, Kira was already in her long, black wool coat and slim heeled boots. She grabbed the handles of the gift bag she’d put on the front table, and followed the footman outside. No carriage awaited, but there was a sleek black town car. She couldn’t recall that there was anyone on Kinloch who drove a town car that Shay might have hired out for the evening, but that didn’t really matter.
What mattered was that Shay had finally invited her to his home. And he was doing so in style.
Chapter Nine
Shay paced the length of the floor of his cottage, surprised he hadn’t worn a groove in the rug by now. He’d checked the champagne at least a half dozen times, to make sure it was chilling properly, and the food he’d had ordered and delivered was all arranged perfectly in chafing dishes. Music played, candles were lit.
And it all felt so ridiculously over the top. It had seemed like a good idea when he’d planned the whole thing from Edinburgh. What must Kira have thought when she opened the door to a liveried footman? He’d fully expected to hear from her, asking a dozen or more questions, but all he’d received back was her formal acceptance. And he’d felt too big the fool to ask the footman what her mood had been after reading his note. Too much? Would she think he was making a mockery of what was very important to her? It was the last thing he’d intended.
“Och, and bloody hell.” He and Kira had started things off in such a different manner from the norm. He’d never really had the chance to court her, to date her. They’d sort of moved straight onward into a full-on relationship that . . . well, that was blissful heaven, actually. But he’d wanted to do something special for her, and he’d wanted to reassure her, show her in a way that could not be mistaken, how much he wanted her here. Their discussion in his steam-filled jitney had truly been a turning point for him. In many ways. This week, while in Edinburgh, his mind had been, of course, on the case at hand, but it had also been on Kira. Relentlessly. In fact, the two had gone in tandem. He’ d—
His musings were mercifully interrupted by a sharp rat-a-tat on the door.
He strode to the front door and swung it wide just as the footman was stepping back to allow Kira to step up.
“Hullo,” she said, her eyes twinkling.
“Hullo,” Shay said, and his heart clicked right into place. Just as it always did, every time he saw her. And he knew he’d been silly to worry about anything. In fact, he knew he could stop worrying—about everything.
“Come in,” he said, realizing they were both staring at each other. “Please.” He stepped back to let her pass, then quickly took care of the footman. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”
The man smiled and sketched a light bow. “My pleasure, sir. Milady is quite charming.”
“Thank you. I think so, too.”
“Have a good evening,” the older gentleman said, then stepped back.
“I hope to,” Shay said, then closed the door and turned to find Kira slipping out of her heavy coat. “Here, let me help you with that.”
“Wait,” she said, and handed him a small, handled bag. “Here, take this first.” She laughed as he frowned at what looked like an unwieldy pile of sticks, protruding from the tops of the tissue paper stuffed inside the gift bag. “Some people bring wine, I bring baskets.”
He took the bag and set it down. “Let me help you with your coat.”
“Bag first,” she said. “I want you to see it. I’ve been dying to show it to you; then I realized, when I finished, it was yours all along.”
He pulled out the basket and disentangled it from the tissue paper. It was an unwieldy, unusually shaped form, combining hard willow twigs and richly dyed waxed linen; there were bead
s and other raw materials. It was earthy, wild. Barely tamed, was the phrase that came to mind. “It’s stunning,” he said, and meant it. “I dinnae know how you look at all these bits and pieces, and imagine something like this.”
She ran her fingers over the patterning. “I wanted to work with really different materials that were almost completely at odds with each other, things you couldn’t imagine in the same, woven pattern, that when bound together, would form something truly beautiful.” She looked up at him. “Kind of like us.”
He smiled then. “Thank you.” His tone was equally heartfelt. He was truly touched. “No one has ever . . . made me anything. It will mean a great deal to me, Kira, every time I look at it.”
“Good,” she said, her smile bright. “That was my hope.”
He set it on the entryway table. “I’ll need to think on where I want to put it.” He helped her out of her coat and she turned around to face him. He took in her shiny hair, curled and pulled back from her face, specially for the occasion. And her dress was silky and sexy and form-fitting and . . . “You look so incredibly lovely, and I—come here,” he said, and all pretense of a civilized little dinner flew straight out the door as he pulled her into his arms. “God, I’ve missed you.”
Kira had slid her arms around his neck, but he felt the extra squeeze at his heartfelt proclamation. “It’s so good to hear you say that. I did, too. I suppose it should get easier as we get used to it.” She eased back in his arms so she could look up into his eyes. “But I don’t sleep well at all anymore when you’re not next to me. I keep reaching for you in my sleep. How silly is that?”
“No’ so silly. I don’t sleep well, either.” He drank in her smile, her brilliant, sparkling eyes, and the love and trust and adoration he saw there. He’d spent a lot of time thinking on that, on whether he was worthy of such love, then realized he was an idiot for questioning any of it, risking it with his own foolish fears. He made her happy. Just being himself. Her smiling face was proof of that. What more of a guarantee did he need, for God’s sake? “I wanted to woo ye,” he said.
She giggled a little at that, and it was a delightful sound that warmed his already thoroughly smitten heart. “Woo me, now, did ye? Well, I must say, I don’t typically need a liveried footman and town car.” She tipped up on her toes and kissed him. “But it was rather exciting. You shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.”
“It wasn’t trouble, it was my pleasure. I . . . I wanted to do something special for you, but mostly, I wanted to announce to you, the world, anyone who cares, that this evening, I’m entertaining a very special woman. In my home. And that it means everything to have you here. To see you here.” He tugged her closer. “I want ye here, Kira. I want ye in every nook and corner of my life. I hated coming back to an empty space. You’re right, about it being like a jail. Only I never knew it. Now I canno’ imagine going back to it.”
Her eyes had grown a bit moist, but her smile was so wide he didn’t doubt her tears were born of happiness. “So,” she said, trying for a teasing tone even as the waver in her voice betrayed the depth of emotion she was feeling, “are ye saying I have full visitation rights then?”
He laughed, scooped her up against him, and swung her around.
“I like your home,” she said, as she took in the whirl of her surroundings. “It’s no’ remotely cell-like,” she noted, as he settled her back on her feet. Then she caught the twinkle of lights, turned her head, and gasped. “Ye have a tree!” She swung her gaze back to his. “I thought ye weren’t much for the Christmas holidays.”
“I haven’t been. Before,” he added. “If it’s too hard for you—maybe I should have asked, but I’d thought, hoped—”
They had talked of her marriage and her divorce during one of their phone calls from Edinburgh, but now he wondered if he’d gone overboard, getting a tree.
“No,” she said, sliding from his arms, but grabbing his hand as she walked closer to the tree. “It’s beautiful. I love all the colorful lights.” She looked back to Shay. “But there are no ornaments.”
“I don’t have any, and it seemed . . . I don’t know, wrong, I guess, to just buy them. At the celebrations with Roan and Graham growing up—mostly Graham in this case—there were always handmade ornaments and ones given or received as gifts. They all had meaning and I rather liked that. Not only the memories associated with them, but the foundation they built, so . . .” He bent down and slid out a small box from under the tree, then straightened and handed it to her. “I hope it’s okay.”
“Okay?” She jumped up into his arms, and wove her arms around his neck, kissing him firmly on the mouth. “It’s . . . perfect.”
Shay smiled and kissed her back, but didn’t put her down quite yet. “Ye havena opened it yet.”
“The fact that you thought to . . . that you . . .” A quizzical look crossed her smiling face. “What happened this time in Edinburgh anyway? You’re like . . . a changed man.”
“Aye, but that happened the day I met you. I’ve just finally come to fully understand it.”
“What happened?”
“Open the box,” he said.
She slid from his arms, then turned and leaned back against him. He circled his arms around her as she tore off the paper and opened the small box. Inside was a small, badly chipped, hand-painted china angel, hanging from a frayed gold string. She dangled it from her fingers. “She’s lovely.”
“Hardly,” Shay said, amused, then turned Kira in his arms. “When I was back in Edinburgh, working on this divorce . . . there was nothing new or different about it, nothing I hadn’t witnessed a hundred times over. But I kept thinking about our talk, and how much ye ground me, and how easy it would have been to ring you up and talk to you about it, about what a shame it was, and how ridiculous and sad it was that this couple felt they had to argue over belongings that were, otherwise, utterly meaningless. And so, I thought about the worst case scenario. With us. What if that was us, five years from now, ten, twenty? And I thought about my life, and how . . . and how I’d made sure that nothing in it had real meaning.”
He gestured to the room, and turned her so she could take it all in.
“It’s a nice place, Shay. Comfortable furnishings, beautiful antiques, lovely paintings and art. It’s peaceful, and calm. Like a retreat. And that makes perfect sense, I guess.”
“Thank you, and yes, it is all that. But there isn’t one thing in this house that I’d miss if it were gone. That I’m attached to. I don’t know that I even realized I’d done that. My car—” He broke off, and let out a short laugh. “That’s it. The only thing I care about.” He turned her back to face him. “How pathetic is that?”
“It’s no’, Shay. It’s survival. For you.”
“A hollow life, if you ask me. Or at least, that’s how it felt to me, when I came back here, to pack, after . . . after our last night together. And when I was in the city, listening to all that bickering about stupid things . . . I thought, well, if I was going to fight for something, I’d at least like to fight about something I cared about.”
Kira smiled, then lifted up and bussed him again, hard, on the mouth.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“I like that fighting spirit. All those years of fighting for other people. You’re finally fighting for yourself.”
He pulled her back into his arms. “I’m fighting for us. And I hope to God we never come to fight against one another, but I damn well want something worth fighting for.” He lifted her hand, which still held the angel. “When my father died, I had all his things put in storage before selling his flat. I never looked through them. Here, either. He only kept a little place in the village, and . . .” He shrugged. “It was all left to me, but I wanted no part of any of it, so I sold it all off, along with most of the furnishings. But his papers and some of his personal things . . . I didn’t know what to do with those, so I just locked them up. Anyway, while I was in Edinburgh, I went to storage, and . . . I wen
t through his things.”
“You did?” Kira’s eyes were wide and that sheen of tears had returned. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, aye.” He leaned down and kissed her temple, as much to soothe himself as to soothe her. “I don’t know what I’d expected to find—something of my past, our past, his past, even, I suppose.”
“And?”
He shook his head, laughed ruefully. “Like father, like son. And ye’ve no idea how much it pains me to say that. His papers were all business. In fact, there was nothing personal in them at all.” He cradled her hand, holding the angel in his. “Except for this. I found a small box, either kept by my mother, or a nanny, I don’t know. I found the certificate of my birth, a few photos of me as an infant, and the angel.” He turned it over. The gold inscription on the back was badly chipped. “I believe it says First Christmas. I assume for a baby. I dinnae know why it’s in such poor shape. As far as I know it’s been in that box since I was an infant. So perhaps it was passed down. It could have been my father’s or my mother’s. I don’t know. But it was the only thing they kept.”
Kira looked up at him. “Why are you giving it to me? It’s the only thing you have.”
He turned her in his arms. “You’re the only thing I have. The one I want to keep, to hold on to. This, the angel, is what I have of myself to give ye, Kira.” He framed her face. “It’s no’ much, but it’s wha’ I have. And, so help me God, I’ll do whatever it takes so that I’m never fighting against you, to get that back. Do ye understand?”
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