Off Kilter (6 page)

“I’ve got my hands full with your mad skills—”

“Hey,” she said, pretending to be affronted, “my new site concepts are going to revolutionize how you do your custom ordering and you know it. Blaine, on the other hand, could probably dig up markets you haven’t even considered. In fact, just before the wedding apocalypse, he’d surprised me with his ideas on expanding Sheffield’s hold on the custom sloop and catamaran market.”

Roan didn’t point out that marketing yachts to rich people was slightly different from finding toeholds in the global traditional
artisan craft market, mostly because she was likely right where Blaine was concerned. “I thought you had him working on the whole Iain story. Has he found out anything yet?”

“He’s working with Shay, actually.”

Roan’s brows lifted. “Shay?
Our
Shay?”

“Um, yeah,” she said, looking at him quizzically. “What other Shay do we have?”

“None, I just”—he shook his head—“I can’t quite picture those two teaming up, is all. Shay is so … dry. And Blaine is—”

“Anything but,” Katie laughed. “I know. But he owns that and you know it. That’s what I’ve always loved best about him. I’ve so thoroughly enjoyed getting to see him be fully himself all the time, since coming here.”

“It stretches the imagination to consider that he’d be capable of being anything other than the … vibrant personality he is.”

Katie laughed. “I know you won’t believe this, but he was
the
most straight-laced executive at Sheffield-McAuley.”

“I’m not even touching that one,” Roan said, finally relenting and laughing. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Blaine, it was that he didn’t really understand him, or his motivations for being there. He trusted Katie that the guy was harmless, and from what he’d seen, Blaine was definitely not there to get in the way of his childhood friend’s future happiness … but it was still odd, no matter how you looked at it. So Roan tried not to. “What you’re telling me is that, if this little conversation they had happened a good, what, hour ago, then probably the whole damn island knows by now?”

Katie nodded and grinned, then leaned forward before he knew what she was about and snatched the finalists’ envelope away from him. “Ha!”

He didn’t even bother telling her to give them back, or not to look. He merely sighed, swore under his breath, and swung his attention back to his laptop screen and the Malaysian business meeting notes. “No mocking. No taunting.”

“In your dreams, pretty boy.”

He did smile at that, a little.

“Why is it you’re so annoyed by this anyway? I dinnae ken, mon,” she added with a bit of sass. “You know you’re a hot commodity on the island, that all the women want you, even the ones old enough to be your grandmother—”

“Don’t.”

“I’m just saying, you’re a flirt and a charmer of the first degree. I’d think you’d be making T-shirts and posters of the damn photos and seeing what side business you could strike up. In fact, I’m surprised you’re not soaking up every bit of this added attention.”

“Well, that’s where the brief tenure of our friendship might be showing,” he said, keeping his gaze on the screen, even though he saw nothing but a blur of text. “My behavior with the people on this island is just me being me. I enjoy them, they enjoy me, we enjoy each other. It’s … natural, for want of a better word. But there’s nothing natural about me posing in the all together to be flaunted about for the world to see in some damn calendar.”

Katie sauntered closer, wiggling the stack of photos in her hands.

“I’m tellin’ ye,” he warned, “I dinnae want to see them. I’ll be haunted for life. I’m no’ jokin with ye on this, darlin’ Kate.”

She lowered her hand with the photos, and her expression, or what he could see of it from the corner of his eye, sobered a little. “You’re really serious, aren’t you?”

“I really am, aye. My thought has been that we’ve grown close as friends so quickly because we have an understanding of each other. ‘Tis true we both embrace laughter and fun, and think most folks would be far better if they just lightened up a wee bit and didnae view all things with such dour seriousness. But because you are betrothed to my closest friend and our island leader, and clearly besotted with the lucky sod, your open and fun nature is seen as friendly and puir of heart, which I know it to be. Just because I am an unattached male, it doesnae mean I should be viewed any differently. I am a happy, hearty soul who enjoys the excitement life brings and embraces it
fully, but I dinnae conduct my life in a way that would be considered immodest or amoral.”

She stared at him for a beat, then another, making him feel more than a wee bit ridiculous for his outburst. But he’d been taking the ribbing of everyone on the island for the past week and he was tired of it. Most especially when it came from those he expected to support him.

“Well,” she said at length, “these aren’t amoral or immodest.” Then she fanned the photos out a bit. “Okay, maybe a wee bit on the immodest side,” she added with an inviting grin. Upon seeing his scowl, she grew a little impatient. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Roan, you could use some lightening up yourself right about now. It’s not like it’s pornography. They’re good natured and sexy, which, to my mind, is natural and perfectly healthy. They’re a bit of fun and if they bring business to Kinloch, then what’s the harm?”

He didn’t respond right away, and hoped the subject would naturally come to a close. He should have known better.

“Wait.” She walked around the desk until he finally looked up at her. She held his gaze for a long moment. “I think I see what this is really about. It bothers you a lot that Kira saw these, doesn’t it? Is that it? You don’t care what the world thinks of you or your behavior, but you do care what she thinks.”

He refused to answer—on the grounds that she was one hundred percent correct. He knew he was being a sheep’s arse about it, but the fact was, he didn’t need whatever respect he might have fostered in Kira over the past year and a half to be blown to middling hell because she saw him as some halfwit more interested in exposing his manly bits than he was serious about growing the island economy.

He reached over on the desk and picked up the reject packet. “Here,” he said, in lieu of a direct response. Katie knew she was right. He didn’t need to confirm it. “Look through these, and find something else we can submit. I know Tessa is a hotshot in her field, and I’ll be the first to applaud the successes
she’s had, but that doesn’t necessarily qualify her to judge this.”

“But you’ll trust my judgment?”

Roan looked at her. “Let’s just say I think you have a better understanding of the attraction between women and men than she does.”

“Well, I’d like to argue that, strictly on feminist grounds.”

“But you’ve met her.”

“I have.”

“So, do me a favor, okay?”

Katie held his gaze, and he was thankful for the sincere affection he saw there.

“When is the deadline?”

“Has to be on the ferry tomorrow.”

“Okay, I’ll look them over tonight. But you get to call Graham and explain why I’m ogling half-naked photos of his childhood buddies.”

“He’s no’ to be part of this selection process,” Roan warned.

“Oh, not to worry,” she replied. “I don’t know that this would be his preferred way to spend an evening together.”

Roan grinned. “Point taken.”

Katie juggled the packets and slid the finalist photos back in their envelope. “You’ll be here in the morning?”

“I have a seven o’clock phone conference, then computer lab at the school at eleven.”

“Hey, I heard the soccer team did well with their game against Castlebay. Good job, Coach.”

“Football, ye Yank,” he said, even as his face split in a wide grin. He was proud of his kids. “Kicked Castlebay’s arse, they did.”

“Graham told me those kids have played together since being old enough to go to school and hadn’t won a single game in two seasons. I think what you’ve done to help out is great.”

“All they needed was some steady direction. It gives me a chance to kick the ball about again, prolong that whole growing up thing a wee bit longer.”

“I hear you, Peter Pan. But they’re lucky to have you.” Katie walked to the door, and glanced back. “Roan, if Kira knows you,” she said, making a circle in the air with her hand to indicate the whole of him, “the real you, then your posing for this picture will make her laugh, and be proud that you’re willing to step outside your comfort zone for the sake of the island. If she doesn’t, then maybe you need to set your sights on someone else.”

Caught off guard yet again, he took a moment too long to come up with his ready response. “I would, luv, but Graham has already won your heart.”

“Maybe you were right then. You should think about getting a few cats after all. Being as you’re so pathetic and all.” She winked at him and ducked out before he could lobby a response.

He was smiling as he went back to work, but with her comments about Kira echoing through his mind, he wasn’t nearly as settled as he’d like to be.

T
essa finished lacing up her hiking boots and tugged the legs of her jeans down over them, before quietly letting herself out the back door of the croft.

The sun hadn’t quite made its way over the horizon yet, and the rock-strewn meadows that bordered Kira’s property were still drifted over with a thick, morning fog. She could barely make out the fuzzy bodies of sheep clustered just beyond the closest stone wall, much less those farther out. The occasional grumbling bleat was the only sound in the otherwise quiet dawn.

The weight of her favorite, standard issue, classic Nikon F-301, circa 1985, was a familiar comfort hanging around her neck, one she wasn’t taking for granted on the peaceful September morning. Pulling her fleece jacket a bit closer, she zipped it up against the morning chill and set out through the side gate, across the rear field, heading toward the stacked stone wall in the distance. She planned to take the herding trail she knew led well beyond it, circling the base of the sole mountain peak to be found at that end of the small island. Beyond it lay the singletrack north road that eventually looped around the entire island, but her destination was the rocky shoreline on the far side of the north track.

She couldn’t make out the mountain at all; the fog was too thick. Actually, Ben Cruinish was more a very large hill than a real mountain. Nothing like the towering twin peaks that
formed the stunning skyscape at the western end of the island. The flaxseed crops that were the basis of the baskets woven on the island were grown in the protected valley between them. The easternmost tip, where Kira’s croft was situated, was more meadow and stream, populated by sheep-rearing crofters and the fishermen who plied their trade off the northern coast, out past the Sound of Ailles in the waters of the Atlantic.

The rhythms of island life might seem slow, even rustic, but the islanders were methodical in accomplishing the daily tasks required to subsist off the land and sea. Their work ethic was positive and hopeful, something she’d witnessed in places with far, far less to be positive or hopeful about. The people didn’t seem to take for granted the natural bounty they had available to them. They took deep pride in the traditional artistry of their intricately woven baskets, their single export and source of income.

She’d traveled enough, seen enough, to have an honest respect for cultural traditions, and marveled at how they persevered the world over, through centuries of strife and constant challenge. The people on Kinloch had every right to be proud of their heritage, and how it had not only kept them a viable, thriving community within their homeland, but had grown into a commodity being traded in a global marketplace, where people around the world enjoyed the fruits of their very creative labors.

But it wasn’t Kira’s wildly imaginative waxed linen baskets or the quiet calm of island life that were the focus of Tessa’s thoughts. She’d woken again, with adrenaline pumping through her so hard she’d been shaking, nauseous with it, her skin hot and flushed, the bed linens damp from sweat. For the fifth night in a row, her unconscious mind had dragged her through the harrowing journey it kept insisting she take when she finally, exhausted, had closed her eyes and prayed for uninterrupted sleep.

Since arriving on Kinloch, she’d been safely tucked away in Kira’s croft, quite consciously secure in the knowledge that no
bombs would be dropped, burning the roof over her head, or leveling the buildings around her; that no vicious, virus-carrying insects would be feasting on her flesh; no night-marauding animals—two legged or four—would be hunting for her. Nor was there even a remote threat that anyone would storm the cottage, looking to roust her from her sleep and drag her off to a cell somewhere, to question her endlessly about her reasons for being in the village in the first place.

No. None of those things would ever happen to her there.

But tell that to her subconscious. All of those things had happened to her in other places. Often enough that it felt perfectly normal for her to sleep with a knife under her pillow, a net over her bed, and a fire extinguisher within easy reach—which could also double as a Louisville Slugger when necessary.

She’d spent the past nine months trying to figure out how to come to terms with the tricks her mind had started playing on her, while still maintaining a full assignment load. She understood it was a form of post-traumatic stress, and was smart enough to know she couldn’t just ignore it, outrun it, or out think it. Extensive counseling had helped her understand it and why it was happening, and even change the way she thought about it and dealt with it. But counseling hadn’t stopped it from happening.

Mostly because it
was
still happening … for real.

Several months into counseling, she’d heeded the counselor’s advice and taken a brief, five-week sabbatical. She’d made huge, confidence-building strides. But back in the field, one bomb had gone off, and everything had come screaming right back with it. No amount of employing all the techniques she’d learned would stave the terror off. Not as long as the bombs kept exploding. And people kept dying. The counselors and therapists who’d helped her had all said the same thing: find a new career. You can’t handle this one any longer if you want to stay healthy.