She gave a half-shouldered shrug and fiddled with the hair at her nape. “We don’t run it as a charity, although any profit we see is modest. It’s a boon for the businesses in Highland though.”
“Which came first, the festival or the name of the town?”
“The town came first. Founded in 1805. Scots settled all through the Blue Ridge Mountains. The festival didn’t come about until the late 1980s, when the town needed revitalization.” Her smile was polite, as if reciting facts for a tour. “I’ll leave you to get settled and freshened up. Come on down when you’re ready.”
She pulled the door shut behind her. He stood there, debating his next move. He should give a minute for the hallway to clear, then find his uncle for a serious chat. Instead, he shuffled to the bed and toppled onto the mattress like a falling caber. Silence wrapped around him like the warmest blanket.
He let out a groan, toed his shoes off, and loosened his tie. After a week spent in airports and airplanes and hotel rooms with the noise of other travelers—strangers—around him, the serenity and welcome of the room was too much to deny.
His mobile vibrated in his pocket. The London office number flashed on top of a backlog of a dozen texts from his mum and coworkers. He tossed his mobile onto a chair in the corner, turned his back to the electronic appendage, and wallowed in the blankets. No honking horns or banging doors disturbed him. Birds sang and the breeze rustled the leaves of the trees outside his window.
He had things to take care of—namely uncovering the reasons behind Gareth’s subterfuge—but putting a pause on his worries if only for a moment was blissful. He buried his nose in the pillow. It smelled fresh, like sunshine.
A soft knock on the door had him lifting his head. “Come in.”
Gareth slipped inside and shut the door like James Bond on a scavenger hunt. “I was shocked to see you, laddie. How did you find me?” His voice was a gravelly whisper.
“Mrs. MacDonald ratted you out. Don’t come down too hard on her though, it was Mum doing the interrogation.” Alasdair propped himself up against the mass of pillows.
“That bloody infernal woman.” Gareth’s shoulders bowed up, emphasizing his bearlike physique.
Alasdair could hardly take offense of Gareth’s opinion of his mum. After all, Alasdair had been dealing with the bloody infernal woman his entire life, but she did have her good traits—or at least, good for him. Devotion and a willingness to turn Machiavellian when it came to Alasdair were top of the list.
His mum, Fiona, and Gareth had been at odds for years, although early on they had maintained a truce. After the fracture of his parent’s marriage and subsequent shocking death of his da, his mum and Gareth’s relationship had devolved into a tense war with Alasdair as the prize. Alasdair had taken his mum’s side, but now wondered what he’d surrendered because of it. His interactions with Gareth in recent years had been limited to updates about Cairndow.
“I was already in the States for work, and she sent me to round you up and fetch you home,” Alasdair said.
“I’m not leaving. Not yet, anyway.” Gareth moved to the window. “Dugan has things well in hand, and Iain is home giving him a hand.”
“As a stopgap, Dugan is fine, but I thought Iain was deployed?” Dugan Connors was the actual groundskeeper at the castle and Iain his son. Dugan was a good, practical man, and Iain could fix anything, but neither had the patience or people skills to deal with tourists and tradesmen. Without Gareth’s charisma and leadership abilities, the estate would suffer.
“He got out.” A story lurked behind Gareth’s simple statement, but Alasdair couldn’t handle another family’s complications when his was tangled beyond comprehension. “I’m having fun here in Highland.”
“You are going home soon though, aren’t you?” At the lengthening silence, Alasdair sat up and swung his legs off the bed. “Uncle Gareth?”
His uncle continued to stare out the window. Did he sense the same magic drawing Alasdair to the woods? Finally, Gareth turned with a smile, but his eyes didn’t crinkle. “Of course I am. Although, I suppose it depends on your definition of ‘soon.’”
“I thought we might fly out together in a couple of days.”
Gareth crossed his arms over his chest as if preparing for an argument. “I’m staying at least through the festival. I promised to help bring an authentic Scottish flare. Why don’t you stay too?”
Alasdair shook his head. “I have too much to do.”
“Is that why you never come to Cairndow?” Gareth could have imbued the question with well-deserved disappointment, but he didn’t. Only kindness lurked in his voice. Alasdair would have preferred the disappointment. Gareth’s kindness inspired guilt and had Alasdair looking to his feet.
“After … everything that happened, it’s complicated. You know that.” They stood in silence for a few beats, and Alasdair knew they were both thinking about Rory, Alasdiar’s da and Gareth’s only brother. “Plus, my job at Wellington is demanding.”
“I thought you bought up land like this”—he gestured out the window at the pristine forest—“bulldozed it, and plopped flats or shopping centers down.”
“That’s not—” He cut himself off. It essentially was what he did, along with other types of real estate developments around the world for his firm and its shareholders. He was paid well for it too. “I’m not here as a representative of Wellington,” he added weakly.
“I would love for you to stay so we can catch up, and I’m sure Rosie would say the same.” A pause hit before Gareth said softly, “It’s been too long, Alasdair.”
It had been too long, and standing shoulder to shoulder with his uncle made Alasdair wonder why he had allowed so much time slip to by, yet all he said was, “Isabel can’t wait to see the back of me.”
Gareth chuckled, but glanced toward the door as if Isabel might burst forth at any moment with an “A-ha!” and an accusing finger. “She’s a funny one, she is. Watches me like I’m planning to pocket the silver.”
“Speaking of deception, why are you masquerading as a bloody groundskeeper? Are you doing something underhanded?”
Gareth’s smile fell. “Of course not. Rosie is a rare one, but I’ve been burned before by women only interested in the estate or my title. When Rosie and I met in Edinburgh, she assumed I was normal with no extraordinary burdens. I enjoyed the way she looked at me as a man and not a title. You know how it is.”
Unfortunately, Alasdair did know. While he didn’t advertise the fact he would someday be the tenth Earl of Cairndow, Debrett’s listed him as heir and anyone enterprising enough to dig could uncover his lineage. Once a woman knew he was in line to inherit an earldom, including a picturesque castle on a cliff, he could never trust his instincts or her reactions. It had ruined relationships.
“Is that why you never married?”
Gareth stared off to the side, but Alasdair was sure he wasn’t studying the wood details of the wardrobe. He was remembering someone, and it wasn’t Alasdair’s place to probe a tender memory. Protectiveness welled in Alasdair even though Gareth’s hurt was in the past. He wanted to reach out to comfort his uncle, but the gap of distance and years seemed too vast in that moment to bridge.
“Any heartbreak is well behind me.” Gareth shed the darkness like a cloak and everything about him lightened. This time his smile reached his eyes and lent a familiar twinkle. “The present is Rosie, and my promise to help with the festival.”
“Where does the truth about who you are fit into your plans?”
His uncle had the grace to look chagrinned. “I never considered our dalliance would extend beyond the two weeks she was in Scotland. It was a lie that hurt no one, but then she invited me to Highland and I couldn’t refuse. Didn’t want to. I fear I’ve reached a point of no return, and she’ll naught forgive me. I canna bear the thought. Will you keep my secret?”
The decision was made in a split second. All of Alasdair’s best childhood memories centered around Gareth. Lea
rning to ride and drive and fish. The peace and welcome and acceptance he’d experienced at Cairndow. The laughter and the tears and the triumphs they’d shared.
His uncle had more than earned Alasdair’s love and loyalty and was more important than any new shopping center or housing development or promotion. An opportunity to heal the past was his to claim. Time and maturity had softened his memories.
Alasdair would stay, whether Isabel Buchanan wanted him around or not, to rediscover the connection he’d once shared with Gareth. And in the process, Alasdair would make certain his uncle wasn’t hurt again.
Chapter Three
Izzy pressed her ear harder against the door separating Alasdair’s room from their shared bathroom, but the duet of male voices rumbled indistinctly. Although perfectly mundane explanations presented themselves for the closeted reunion, suspicion lurked in the forefront of her mind.
The tension between the two men had been weird, and the age difference between the “old mates” even weirder. Not that it was impossible to have a friend thirty years older, but it was certainly unusual. What did they have in common? What did they talk about?
Did Alasdair suffer from bunions or hemorrhoids or gout? Did he worry about his retirement funds or like to yell at punk kids to get off his lawn? Not that Gareth seemed the type to worry about such things. He was young at heart, just like her mother.
Izzy absolutely, positively couldn’t ask Alasdair whether he had hemorrhoids. Trouble was the thought was planted and the question likely to pop out in an awkward moment. She closed her eyes. Thinking about Alasdair and hemorrhoids brought forth a picture of his butt outlined in his slim-fitting pants. It was an incredibly nice butt. Firm looking and round, but not too round. And most likely hemorrhoid free.
Stop it, she mouthed as if that would have any effect on the whirl of her brain. She might have banged some sense into her head if it wouldn’t have drawn attention to her snooping. Alasdair discombobulated her.
Even worse, she’d almost told him about her writing. Not about the silly stories she’d made up as a kid, but her years-long, so-far-unsuccessful quest to write a great Southern novel like Eudora Welty and Harper Lee and Flannery O’Conner. She glanced at the closed laptop on her nightstand. It was hard to find the time to tweak her current manuscript this time of year—which felt like a blessing at the moment.
While the constant stream of rejections hitting her inbox were depressing and discouraging, she had carried on until the email last week had her considering actually giving up once and for all. “Trite and amateurish.” The words haunted her. It might not be stupid to dream, but it was feeling more and more like a waste of time.
She became aware of the silence on the other side of the door. Had they formulated their (possibly) evil plans? The door opened. With her weight still tilted into it, she head-butted Alasdair Blackmoor in the chest. His breath escaped in an oof and he took a step back, unbalancing her further. She grabbed hold of his tie with one hand, his shirt with the other.
She took a deep breath. His tie was loose and his shirt was unbuttoned, revealing the hollow between his collarbones. His scent was enticing yet subtle. Would he notice if she nosed the skin at his collar to capture the elusive spices? His shirt was soft and smooth, the muscles underneath firm. She imagined charting every ridge and dip like Lewis and Clark.
“Good grief. Sorry about that. I was…” She won the battle (barely) to keep her face out of his neck and lifted her gaze. Unfortunately, it got stuck on his mouth. Her mind blanked.
“You were…?” His lips moved. They were well defined, the bottom curve lending an unexpected sensuality to his masculine features.
His jaw was strong, his nose patrician, and his cheekbones broad. Taken together, he was handsome, but not in the classic sense of a movie star. He was handsome in a more aggressive way that made her think that under his sophistication he knew how to get down and dirty between the sheets. Danger awaited her if she continued down that rabbit hole.
His thick, dark brows were lifted in expectation. What was he expecting from her? Oh yes. An answer to what she’d been doing pressed against the bathroom door. She searched her brain, but found an empty warehouse. “I was … stretching.”
“Stretching?”
“Bathroom yoga. It’s a thing.” Was it? Weirder fads existed on the internet. “I’m just getting into it so I’m not very good yet.” Her tongue seemed determined to further embarrass her.
“I enjoy yoga myself.”
She made a humming sound. Of course he did. It was probably how he stayed so lean and hard. How flexible was he? Her hand opened and flattened round his torso as her imagination wallowed in the inappropriate thoughts.
“Maybe you could show me your moves.” His brogue had roughened. No wonder generations of women had fallen at Sean Connery’s feet.
“What moves?” She had a dearth of moves. Men were supposed to make the first move. At least, that’s the lesson she’d learned from James McFarland when she’d asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance in eighth grade, and he’d rejected her.
“Your yoga moves?” His voice dropped yet another octave. Something in her chest vibrated like a cat purring. He was close to laughter—at her expense, of course—yet, she couldn’t locate any indignation.
“Ah, those moves. Yeah, they’re pretty special.”
The corners of his sharp eyes crinkled, and one side of his mouth rose higher than the other in a boyish smile. That was the only part of him that felt boyish. The rest was all man. The heat blazing a path through her threatened a five-alarm fire.
She forced her hands from his shirt and tie, thumbed over her shoulder, and shuffled backward. “I’ll give you a lesson another time, I need to…” Now her thoughts were a desert, barren of coherent thought or logic.
“Wash your hair?” He propped a shoulder on the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his chest. The crazy thing was while he had every right to be annoyed, he didn’t demonstrate anything other than amusement.
“Water my flowers, actually.”
Another lopsided smile squirted lighter fluid on the blaze he was kindling inside of her. “Do you water that huge field of wild flowers?”
“Of course not. I have pots. With flowers in them. Obviously.” She bit the inside of her mouth. This was going great. Real smooth.
“That makes more sense, although it’s easy to imagine you…” This time it was Alasdair who seemed to lose track of his words. His smile disappeared, leaving behind the man with the steely eyes and aloof air.
“Imagine me what?”
“Not important. I’ll be sure to knock next time. Please, take your time.”
“I’m done. It’s all yours.” She closed the door on her side of the bathroom, grabbed a magazine off her nightstand, and fanned herself, imagining him undoing his clothes button by button. With the noise of the running water masking her movements, she slipped out of her room. Not that Alasdair had his ear pressed against the door monitoring her movements like the fool she was.
She skipped down the stairs as if chased, only slowing when she stepped outside. Closing her eyes, she lifted her face to the sun. As far as she knew, the earth was still in rotation and hadn’t spun off course. Nature exerted a grounding force on her suddenly topsy-turvy world.
This Scottish invasion couldn’t have come at a worse time with the festival fast approaching. Alasdair’s disruption had put her behind on her day’s to-do list, yet she couldn’t locate the concentration she needed to sit down and work.
The mindless task of watering her pots left her with time to dissect what she’d discovered, which was pathetically little. Gareth and Alasdair shared a secret, but whether it involved her mom or Stonehaven or (less likely) hemorrhoids was still in question. Searching his things would be crossing a line, and staging an inquisition would be too obvious.
The truth had a way of emerging like flowers pushing out of dark, cold soil in spring, but she was too impatient to allow events to un
fold.
“And here I thought you were feeding me a load of codswallop.” Alasdair’s voice made her breath catch as she swung around. Water splashed onto his fancy brown shoes with the elaborate stitching. He high-stepped out of range, shaking his feet.
“Sorry! You startled me.” Izzy dropped the hose and ran to turn the spigot off. “Is codswallop a Scottish delicacy? Highland might be billed as the Heart of Scotland, but our stomachs are pure Southern.”
She got two nonplussed blinks from him before he erupted into laughter. “Codswallop is rubbish. Lies. Not something to eat.”
The smile she tried to stifle broke free. It was hard to remain stoic and cold in the face of his good humor. “You can’t blame me for thinking it’s something you Scots might eat.” She gave an exaggerated shudder then waved toward his shoes. “Leave your shoes out here. They’ll dry in a jiffy in this heat. I hope they aren’t ruined.”
Alasdair shuffled backward into an all-weather lounge chair, toed his shoes off, and stripped his socks, water dripping. “They’ve survived countless London downpours. A Georgia drenching won’t matter.”
His comment was yet another reminder of their difference in geography. He rolled up the wet bottoms of his pant legs while she wound the hose back up and said absently, “You’re going to mess up the crease in your britches.”
He stretched his legs out, crossed his feet at the ankles, and linked his hands behind his head, tilting his face to the sun. With his sleeves rolled up to his forearms and barefooted, he was a far cry from the buttoned-up sophisticate she’d pegged him as in the Brown Cow.
“I suppose I’ll survive without a perfect crease in my … what did you call them?”
“Your britches.”
He smiled the charming crooked smile from earlier. “You talk funny.”
The way Alasdair said it didn’t make her think it was an insult. “So do you. I thought you came to New York on business all the time. I’m surely not the first American you’ve met.”
“I’m in New York once a month.” He tilted his head and squinted at her. “I’ve never met anyone like you up there.”
A Highlander Walks into a Bar--A Highland, Georgia Novel Page 4