Must Love Scotland (5 page)

“Hello,” she said to Hamish, her voice friendly and low. “I see Uncle Donald did not lie. Niall, won’t you introduce me to your friends?”

Declan appreciated women with almost the same intensity he did a good single malt, and that Niall knew the lady, and merited
that
sort of smile from her, rankled. But then, Niall was about to lose his entire dream, and perhaps fairness required that he have a lady to console him for that loss.

How could three men fill up an otherwise empty room, and with such a blend of tension, sadness, and great good looks?

The older guy, whom Niall introduced as Hamish, was what the younger two would become and Uncle Donald already was: Tough, weathered, a full head of white hair, twinkling blue eyes, and hands as callused as any farmer’s.

The younger man, Declan MacSomething,
was
a farmer, if muddy boots, a worn denim jacket, plain black kilt, and the scent of him were any indication. A single wisp of straw clung to auburn locks falling nearly to his shoulders. The boots ought to have been left at the door, but his air of sorrow and determination probably accompanied him everywhere.

Niall had a hint of the same qualities, but they were muted, tucked away behind civility and natural reserve.

“Would you care for a wee dram, Miss Leonard?” MacSomething asked. His accent was thicker than Niall’s, his smile more charming.

Julie had no patience for charming men. “I’m still a bit jet-lagged, but I thought I’d get in a walk before the sun went down. The trail along the river is very pretty.”

Niall had introduced her as a friend from the States on holiday, which struck Julie as the sort of prevarication hostile witnesses pulled during the fencing phase of cross-examination.

“I’ll walk you back to the cottage,” Niall said. “MacPherson, my thanks for the drink, and I’ll want a look at that will.”

MacPherson crossed his arms, muscles bunching along broad shoulders. Julie preferred Niall’s strength—lithe, relaxed, not this auburn-haired bull moose in a kilt.

“
You’ll
be wanting a look?” MacPherson retorted. “As if you can understand language more than two hundred years old, Niall? As if you’re an expert at reading a hand so faint and elaborate I can’t make it out myself? Since when does larking around with the rich boys on the links give you those sorts of skills?”

Niall was not a particularly sweet guy, but he’d tucked Julie in more than an hour ago without taking any liberties—she was still bemused at that—
and
he was her golf coach.

Then too, she was a prosecuting attorney, and advocacy was in her blood.

“Mid-eighteenth-century language isn’t that complicated if the document is in reasonable condition,” she said. “We have the technology to read ink on paper when the lettering is so faint, you can’t even see it with the naked eye. As for language, it hasn’t changed that much in two hundred years.

“The Elizabethans did a lot to increase the size of the language,” Julie went on, “as did urbanization throughout the seventeenth century, but two hundred years ago, we had monolingual dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, cant dictionaries, and technical dictionaries. We also have voluminous correspondence—”

All three men were looking at her as if she’s started spouting Adam Smith verbatim, which she could do, because he’d been a particular favorite of Dad’s.

“Is your friend an expert, Niall?” MacPherson asked, all suspicion and lowered brows. God help the heifer who thought to thwart him on a bad day.

“I’ve testified as an expert only a couple of times,” Julie said, “when my father became too ill. He retired from the Smithsonian where he was one of their head document restorers, and I worked for him through both undergrad and law school.”

And Dad had been gleefully passionate about his work until the end.

Did any lawyer, ever, die wishing she could try just one more case? Hear one more bench opinion? Lock up one more deadbeat parent? Dad had put those questions to Julie a week before he’d died, but by then, she’d accepted the prosecutor’s job and racked up tens of thousands in student loans.

“So you
are
an expert,” Niall said.

“She’s your
friend
,” MacPherson shot back, as if friendship with Niall Cromarty were membership in some gang of rogue document curators.

“I met Niall less than six hours ago,” Julie said, “and I’m paying a tidy sum to stay in the Cromarty family’s cottage. If that makes people friends in Scotland, then I’ve sorely misread a lot of Scottish history.”

MacPherson’s expression went through a transformation, from suspicious, to flummoxed, to reluctantly smiling.

“My mistake,” he said, extending a hand. His nails were clean, so Julie shook. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Leonard, and I hope you have a lovely time in Scotland. Niall, the will is available for inspection by whatever expert you can afford.”

MacPherson lifted a glass from the bar, saluted with it, and downed the contents. Niall did likewise, and Julie expected them to hurl the glasses at the nearest roaring fire, except the hearth across the room was full of blue and white potted pansies.

“Glad that’s settled,” she said. “Niall, you offered to walk me back to the cottage?”

“That I did. MacPherson, I enjoyed the wee dram, I’ll be in touch.”

Julie heard, “Come out swinging and may the best man win,” lingering in the air as she and Niall left the Hare.

“What was that all about?” she asked. “And why doesn’t somebody tell that guy he’d have a lot more friends if he bothered to clean his boots?”

She negotiated the rain-slick steps to the Hare, stone so old countless feet had worn down the middle of each tread. Niall remained at the top of the steps, and when Julie turned to hustle him along, his nose was twitching.

Then his cheeks and his lips joined in, until a great hooting laugh came out, just as the sun broke from behind a cloud.

Niall Cromarty was a handsome man. With laughter in his eyes and a genuine, beaming smile on his face, he was a terribly, awfully handsome man.

Julie marched off toward the path in the trees, determined not to hold even handsomeness against him. He was her golf coach, after all.

Niall’s legs were long enough that he needn’t be seen running after Julie Leonard, though in full sail, she moved along at a good clip.

“Next time you see Declan, you might explain to him about cleaning his boots,” Niall said. Though a wife would have broken Declan’s muddy-boots habit years ago.

Julie slowed, marginally. “I doubt there will be a next time. You two were snorting and pawing as if the last juicy bone in Scotland lay between you.”

“We’ve uncomfortable truths we’d rather not air, so we scrap over the land instead.”

Niall checked the impulse to take Julie’s hand and teach her the fine art of the saunter, because they had yet to gain the trees. Every curtain along the high street had a pair of curious eyes behind it, and the last thing Niall needed now was to become an object of gossip—of further gossip.

Julie took the right path around the village’s cathedral—the coldest church on the planet, according to Niall’s mum—and Niall did touch her arm.

“You can’t get through that way. They’re forever repairing the old part of the church, and unless you want to scramble over the fences, we need to go back the way you came.”

Right through the woods, which this late in the afternoon would already be in long shadows.

“Is it safe?” she asked.

Americans.
“We might come across Uncle Donald, but he’s trying to convince us his back is troubling him, so it’s probably safe enough.”

She took off around the graveyard where Niall had chased his cousins as a child.

“Your nap must have restored your energies,” Niall said.

“I have a schedule, Niall, and the rain has stopped. We can probably hit a bucket of balls before it gets dark. Why does MacPherson hate you?”

“Hate is a strong word,” and, Niall hoped, inaccurate. Declan was simply a Scotsman bearing a grudge.

“He was gloating,” Julie said, stopping before a hunk of worn, gray granite that came to about waist height. A Cromarty likely lay beneath it, or a MacPherson. Nobody knew which for sure anymore.

“You don’t gloat over another’s misfortune unless they’re your enemy,” Julie said.

Somebody was gloating over Julie’s misfortunes, based on her tone.

“Let’s have a seat,” Niall suggested, because he’d always found the cathedral grounds peaceful, and at this time of day they’d be private.

He led Julie to an alcove along the church wall where the bench would be dry. Moss grew in the cracks between the stones, despite the lack of light. Even the moss was tenacious in Scotland.

“Once upon a time,” Niall said as they took a seat, “Declan’s sister Belinda fancied me. I was touring a fair amount, beginning to make a name for myself, so our interest in each other wasn’t exactly steady.”

“Touring?”

“Playing golf.” Though golf had little enough to do with second-rate hotels, bad food, and worse sleep. “If I was in town, we’d spend time together. Declan and I are the same age, and were friends. Declan’s the protective sort.”

Something buzzed. Julie extracted a black smartphone from her jacket pocket, scowled at the screen, then stashed the phone away again.

“Declan isn’t protective of you, apparently,” she said.

Nobody was protective of Niall, except perhaps Donald.

“Once upon a time, Declan and I had each other’s backs,” Niall said, “but Belinda fell ill, and I stuck to my touring schedule. Declan was with her when she died, and he blames me for not being there for her.”

The phone buzzed again. Julie ignored it. “Belinda told you to keep to your schedule and neglected to inform her brother of this?”

“Perhaps. Belinda and I were by no means exclusive, at least on her part. This became obvious to me when I thought to surprise her by coming home early from a trip.”

The damned phone buzzed again, and this time, Julie powered it off.

“My ex is calling,” she said. “He cheated.”

Two words, but an entire judicial opinion lay within them. This former husband had broken Julie Leonard’s heart, and worse, shaken her confidence. Very likely, he was the one gloating at any misfortune to befall her too.

“You’re better off without him, Julie. He scorned the treasure he had, and nobody should tolerate such arrogance in a spouse.”

“Scorn. Good word. I want to scorn him right back, but I know that’s a way for him to win all over again.”

So she attacked her golf game and set her sights on a black robe. Not a bad strategy.

“You’re wiser than I,” Niall said. “Belinda wasn’t in love with me, but Declan was in love with the idea that Belinda and I would marry. His best friend and his sister, a family circle completed. Declan and Lindy were raised by their grandmother and had only each other when she died.”

Julie leaned back against the stones of the cathedral wall, stones people had been leaning on for centuries.

“Let me see if I can fill in the rest,” she said. “Lindy slept around, but her brother was the last to admit she enjoyed variety, and you were simply a notch on her bedpost. Your career was just taking off, and when she fell ill, you expected her to get better.”

“We all expected her to get better,” Niall said, and in this regard, he could understand Declan’s bewilderment. “She had some virulent form of lymphatic cancer and barely lasted sixty days after her diagnosis. Declan went wild, nearly worked himself to death, would accept no help with the farm for nearly two years.”

“While you played golf.”

Julie Leonard was an astute woman—about others, at least.

“While my golf game got better and better,” Niall said. “Shall we resume our walk?”

She was on her feet, unselfconsciously dusting off her backside. Declan MacPherson had noticed Julie Leonard as a man notices a woman, and Niall permitted himself a moment to do the same before resuming his place at her side.

“It’s pretty here,” Julie said, stopping at the edge of the graveyard. “Peaceful, and not like the churchyards back home.”

“You’re pretty,” Niall said, wishing it weren’t so. Julie was also smart, a good listener, and thought Declan MacPherson’s boots stank. The last was petty, also a relief.

Niall played fair—golfers put great stock in the protocol of sportsmanship. He brushed a thumb over Julie’s chin in warning, then tucked a lock of her hair back over her shoulder. Her hair was silky soft, and when he touched her, she neither tensed, nor pulled away.

“I’m about to kiss you, Julie.”

“A kiss is no big event, but why?”

A kiss should be some kind of event.

So Niall explained his reasons as he joined his mouth to Julie’s. Because her lips were soft and warm, because her fragrance was lovely, and her blue eyes more caring than she knew. Because she’d finally, finally stopped chasing life down the fairway, and had taken a moment to sit with Niall in a pretty churchyard among memories that weren’t pretty at all.

Because she neither sided with Niall’s enemies nor pretended righteousness on his behalf over a stupid, stubborn difference of dreams with a former best friend.

Niall’s explanation of those motivations involved a leisurely, respectful meeting of mouths, a soft twining of arms, a gentle hint of further intimacies, and an embrace as novel as it was dear. Julie heaved a sigh, her breasts to Niall’s chest, and let him hold her.

“I’m on the rebound from a rotten divorce, and I’m leaving in two weeks,” she said, magic words to her, apparently. “This is merely a kiss in a quiet churchyard.”

If she chose to leave matters there, Niall would be relieved—also disappointed.

Her fingers toyed with the hair at his nape. Niall was overdue for a trim, but wouldn’t get to it in the next two weeks.

“Why don’t you talk to Declan?” she asked, drawing back.

Niall let her go, because he needed breathing room too. “I tried, years back. Declan is stubborn, and he needs to recall his sister fondly.”