Off Kilter (3 page)

He found himself wondering …

She abruptly broke their gaze and looked over her shoulder so she could back onto the road. Turning the car in a tight U she headed off down the road without a backward glance.

Roan and Katie turned and watched, Katie framing her eyes with a hand on her forehead.

“And so delightful, too,” he said calmly.

She glanced at Roan, and smiled. “What did you do to piss her off?”

He gaped and plastered his free hand over his heart. “Me? I’m fairly certain she was dropped from the womb that way.”

“Roan,” Katie chided, though there was still a decided twinkle in her eye. “Maybe she was just having a bad day.”

That was what he loved about Katie McAuley. Aside from the fact that she made his best friend a happier, more well-rounded human being, she’d also proven the perfect partner in crime for Roan. Unlike the scientific-minded Graham and the natural-born mediator, Shay, she was of sunny disposition, like himself, and also had a rather droll view of life. She didn’t share that side with everyone, but seemed to have found a kindred spirit in him.

He’d initially been quite taken with her. Even though he’d never have acted on the attraction, they had quickly moved on to form a kind of familial bond that he’d come to cherish. He’d grown up with Graham and Shay as his ready and steady mates, so he’d never felt a lack of friendship or kinship, but it was a new and different thing, having what amounted to a sister in his life.

“You don’t get that kind of attitude from having a single bad day,” he said.

Katie watched the Fiat disappear into the distance. “Well, given what she does for a living, I’d guess she’s seen a whole lot of bad days, so maybe we shouldn’t be so judgmental. I know I couldn’t do what she does. It was nice of her to help us out.” Before he could follow up on that comment, she turned and checked out his garbed form, wiggling her eyebrows. “My, what a big … sword you have.”

He wiggled his right back. “That’s what they all say, luv.” They laughed and he quite willingly let his curiosity about Tessa die an unexplored death as he turned his attention to more pleasant matters. He slung a casual arm over Katie’s much narrower shoulders as they walked across the track to his lorry. “Did you see Graham just now as you arrived?”

“I saved him from death by wedding details, yes. He’ll owe me for that, later,” she added wryly. “But I came by because I wanted to tell you that I have the mock-up of the new home page done for the site, with the details about the calendar, and I wanted to know if you’d like to give it a look.”

Katie’s background had been in management for her family’s ship-and-yacht-building empire, but her heart was in marketing and graphic design. She had quickly found a niche on Kinloch as his much needed creative consultant. She had already contributed several fresh ideas to the promotion he did for the island economy, which centered on the artisan baskets that were woven exclusively on Kinloch and sold worldwide.

“Pretty confident. We haven’t even developed the photos as yet,” he said with a laugh, while also trying not to cringe at the thought that he was the featured attraction of at least some of them. Surely the other blokes on the island who had already posed for Tessa would provide plenty of shots for her to work with. “We’re a long way from advertising the thing. We need to win a spot in it first.”

She just smiled up at him. “I’m a believer. I’ve looked back at everything you’ve done here. In the past five years your accomplishments in getting the baskets to a more global market have
been nothing short of incredible, given the limited set of tools you have to work with. When you set your mind to something, you get results. I know folks are grateful, but I don’t think everyone realizes just how much you do, because you don’t toot your own horn.”

“Well, I’d love nothing more than toot my horn, but word is you’re already taken.”

She just rolled her eyes.

“But that’s okay. I’ve accepted my singular future. I’m thinking of getting a few cats, actually,” he went on, adopting a rather pious expression, “and looking onward to a life dedicated to the service of others.”

“Give me a break. If Kira would so much as blink in your direction, you’d be happily servicing your own needs with her a heartbeat later.”

He was used to her ribald comebacks by now, but he’d rarely been the source of one, so he choked a little. First Graham, now her. “I dinnae ken where ye got that idea,” he said, even though he knew she was too keenly observant not to see right through his protestations. “I’ll die a monk, writing sonnets to your ethereal beauty, and pine for the perfect love that I can only observe, but am destined never to have for my own.”

“I dinnae know how ‘tis that the lovely villagers of Kinloch put up with yer multitudinous mountains of crap.” She laughed, her accent dead on despite her brief tenure on the island. “But I certainly won’t. So ask her out already. Sheesh. It’s pathetic watching a grown man pine for no good reason.”

“I pine only for you.”

She had the most feminine snort. “Who did you use as your front woman before I came along? Seriously, Roan, I don’t know what you’re waiting for. She’s not attached and—”

“And presently letting Morgan le Fay live under the same roof with her.” He gave a shudder that wasn’t entirely feigned. “No thanks. I’ll wait until Tessa’s taken her leave.”

“Aha! So you admit it then. Well, that’s a start.” She patted
him on the arm. “But I know you, you’ll only find some other excuse entirely. You don’t strike me as a chicken, Roan, so seriously, man up.”

“I’m no’ a chicken, as you put it. And my manhood isn’t in question.” He waggled his brows. “You’ve seen my sword?” He lifted it, then stowed it in the back of the lorry when she merely shook her head and gave him a sad, pitying look.

“Don’t think you’re going to charm me into forgetting this conversation,” she warned, unwittingly echoing the same dire warning as issued by her fiancé earlier. “I’m on to you, Roan McAuley. You run around this island, being roguishly adorable and making everyone else feel good about themselves. It’s about time you got some of that love back.”

He shot her an affronted look. “I’ll have you know I’m beloved by all here. Treated like a veritable prince. What more could a man ask than the admiration and love of his people?”

“A warm bed and an open heart,” she said, quite a bit more sincerely than he’d have anticipated. “One that’s accepting of yours.”

He didn’t have a quick rejoinder for that.

“You have so much to give the right person,” she went on as they trundled toward town. “And she’s right here, all but on your doorstep. What is it that’s holding you back?”

His smile faded a bit. “It’s a complex tale, Katie.”

“It couldn’t be. You’re a man. And therefore too one dimensional for complexity.”

He barked a laugh, though a quick glance at her proved that while she was willing to keep things light, she was far from letting it go.

“Speaking of our one-dimensional capacity,” he said, changing the subject back to work, “what integrity-challenging marketing campaign has that wickedly brilliant brain of yours devised? Despite what you think, we men like to think we’re more than just the sum of our manly parts. We’re sensitive blokes, you know, with fragile egos. We need them stroked.” He glanced at her and grinned. “And stroked often.”

“Oh, brother.”

“Roguishly adorable, I believe you said.”

“And already regretting it.”

They laughed together as he drove the rest of the way into town, but his thoughts remained partly on his conflicted feelings for Kira … and far more annoying, his apparent inability to stop thinking about her temperamental houseguest.

“W
ell, doesn’t that just bite.” With a disgusted snort, Tessa clipped up the final series of shots on the cotton cord she’d strung inside Kira’s narrow pantry, which temporarily doubled as her dark room. It was cramped and the juryrigged lighting sucked, but she’d operated in far, far worse conditions. “Figures.”

She wasn’t surprised. Not really. She’d known exactly what she was getting when she’d started running the shutter. She’d just hoped that maybe, for the first time, her illustrious eye for things might have failed her.

So much for that.

With the last of the film processed, she needed to clean up so Kira could have her pantry back before breakfast. But she couldn’t seem to stop staring at the last half dozen shots she’d taken.

She could tell herself she was interested in the integrity of the shot, the point of view she’d chosen, and how the angle allowed the sun to perfectly filter the light across the tops of the mountains and spill down over the fortress tucked between the peaks. She had an affinity for capturing the natural beauty of any landscape in her scope of vision, and had done it for so long it was second nature to her.

Of course, what had always drawn her was the juxtaposition
of the staggering splendor of nature’s bounty … contrary to the horrifying atrocities committed by man.

She closed her eyes briefly against any threat of invading visuals, then opened them once more to look at the subject of the photos in front of her. There was nothing remotely horrifying or atrocious about their human subject. In fact, she could argue that his natural beauty almost eclipsed that of the stunning backdrop.

He wasn’t ruggedly hewn like their island leader, Graham, whom she thought of as Paul Bunyan in plaid. Roan was tall, as well, but where Graham was linebacker big with a square jaw, Roan was rangy and lean, broad of shoulder, lean of hip, his muscles perfectly and tightly defined, and his skin surprisingly golden, which only leant a gleaming, gladiator feel to the whole image. Unruly, sun-bleached brown hair shagged around his head in wayward curls, looking as if he did nothing more than rake a hand through it now and again. There was a shadow of stubble on his cheek, but she sensed it was more a result of the afternoon hour than through any deliberate design. In fact, she doubted he gave his appearance much thought. Mostly because he didn’t have to.

He was roguish and charming, with a devilish glint of mischief in his green eyes and a deeply grooved dimple that winked often given his penchant for grinning. She was quite certain he was well used to incorporating all of that to further his own agenda whenever it suited him. Probably because it had netted him an alarmingly high, ego-inflating ratio of success.

She had no patience with people like that.

She knew her own unusual looks and her taller-than-average height set her apart from the crowd, but she’d spent a lifetime playing them down to get what she wanted, and where she wanted to go. She took a lot of pride in the fact that her work spoke for her. And only her work. No one could argue that she’d earned her way to her current pinnacle of success by employing
any asset other than her pure, unmitigated talent behind a camera.

And yet … she looked at all that rugged, charming beauty, and it tugged at something inside her. Something intensely … female. She responded to it, to him, almost viscerally, and no amount of intellectual arguing with herself could divert her from that singular truth.

She closed her eyes with the sole intent of ridding herself once and for all of his unwanted hold on her attention, but all that did was drive her thoughts in steamier, more primal directions. She thought about how he’d smiled and dangled that kilt. How he held that sword. His palms were wide, even the muscles in his forearms were rigidly defined, as he’d gripped the hilt. Her lips parted as she imagined him letting go of that tartan, and striding to her, planting that sword deep in the earth, then taking her by the arms and yanking her up against him, plunging his tongue into her mouth and making her—

A tap on the door jerked her from her reverie.

“How goes it in there?”

“Almost done,” she choked out, cheeks flaming as she realized how almost “done” she’d actually been.

“Can I see?” Kira asked through the closed door.

“Not yet with these,” she said, rallying herself back to the moment at hand. And away from where she’d like to have another pair of hands at the moment. “But I have a ton of digital stuff to sort through, so you can give me your expert advice about them.”

There was a snort. “I have an eye for weaving patterns, but you don’t want me tellin’ ye anything about photography.”

“They’re pictures of half-naked men.” Tessa opened the door a bare crack and slipped through, shutting it quickly behind her. “The appeal is universal, requiring only gut instinct.”

“So shallow,” Kira said, then smiled. “I like it.”

“Then you are officially my assistant.”

Kira’s smile broadened, and the light it brought to her eyes
made Tessa feel slightly less than the schmuck of a friend she’d been of late.

“I’ve got the tiffin almost done,” Kira said, as she turned into the small, but tidy kitchen. She smiled over her shoulder. “‘Tis only appropriate we enjoy the rush of chocolate endorphins while drooling over naked men—even if I did grow up with most of them.” She paused then and made a face. “Come to think of it, I’m not sure I can be the least bit objective after all. I still remember what each of them looked like with freckled cheeks and the complete absence of body hair.”

Tessa wrinkled her nose. “Ew.”

“I know. But there is chocolate—which can only help.”

“I can be shallow enough for the two of us. Let’s proceed, shall we?”

Kira slid the pan of tiffin—chocolate and crushed cookies baked in warm, buttery goodness—and set it to cool on a rack on the butcher block counter, while Tessa propped open her laptop on the small kitchen table. She plugged in one of the three digital SLR cameras she’d used that day. It had been simpler than changing lenses back and forth.

Kira slid two heavy stoneware mugs onto the table and filled them with hot water, before dropping tea bags in each to let them steep. “I would ask why you need so many of those, but any explanation you’d give would go right over my head. I’m fortunate if I can get both the head and the feet of my subjects in the same shot. But let me tell you, I never cease to be amazed that you look through that little window and capture what you do. I look through that same tiny porthole and can’t even hope to decide where to frame the scene so that it looks like anything more than a disorganized jumble.”