Page 91 of Wild Scottish Rose

“Well? You are. Yelling at me this morning about trying to see the damn Kelpies and making me promise to tell you if I go again. All while you sneak off and do the exact same thing behind my back. Do as I say not as I do, huh?” I stabbed a finger in the air, hurt driving me. “And what even was that? By the way. On the beach?”

“Owen.” Sophie’s voice was a sharp warning, and I turned to see many of the people avidly listening in.

I lowered my voice.

“You’ve lied to me all along, haven’t you? About…whatever it was you were doing out there. You’re far more involved in all of this. I asked you for the truth, didn’t I?”

“I was going to…” Shona’s voice cracked. “I was trying to find a way to tell you, Owen. You were so focused on this movie, and I didn’t want to be just another one of your subjects. Not me. Not this. It’s all too new to me.”

“New to you?” I threw out my hands. “What about me? This isallnew to me.”

“Because you didn’t give me reason to feel confident in telling you, Owen,” Shona hissed. “You talk about trust, but you’re so sure you know what’s right in this situationthat you don’t bend an inch. I asked you to stop filming. I asked you to protect this town, yet you just barreled on, so certain what you were doing was right. Where, in all of that, do you think there is space for me to trust you with more?”

“When you told me you loved me,” I said. A low rumble went through the crowd. “Thatis when you should trust me.”

Shona flinched.

“That’s enough.” Graham took my arm and held it strong when I tried to wrench it away. “No, lad. I said that’s enough. You’ve both had a tough go of it. But she’s shaking, bleeding, and clearly traumatized.”

“But…” I wrenched my arm forward and Lachlan stepped up, grabbing the other one.

“He said that’s enough.” The guys dragged me away, while Sophie and Agnes converged on a now-crying Shona.

“Damn it all to bloody hell,” I swore, my heart torn in a million pieces in my chest.

“Come on, lad, we’ll take you home. But if I hear one word of you harassing Shona again, I will come and beat the bloody hell out of your sorry arse, understood?” Graham surprised me by grabbing my neck in a chokehold with his hand, his eyes furious.

Now that the adrenaline was beginning to subside, I just wanted to take a hot shower and forget this day had ever happened.

Was Shona a witch?

Who is she? What is she?

And what is Sophie?How did she stop the Kelpies from attacking us?

For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to complete a project. But not because Shona wanted me to stop. Because it hurt too much to think of staying here. I’d risked my heart with Loren Brae and Shona Scott. And I would never do that again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Owen

Ididn’t see Shona at all the next day.

Well, I saw her once when she stomped past, dragging a bin of garden waste, the white bandage standing out starkly against her forehead. I almost went to her. She turned, saw me in the window, flipped me off, and that was that.

The day after, an eviction notice was slipped under my door.

At that, I smiled. I’d been a model tenant, so she had no right to evict me. I simply wrote “NO” on it in big block letters and slipped it back beneath her door.

By day three, I was aching to speak to her. The lines were beginning to blur in my head about why we were mad at each other, and I just wanted to sink into her softness and figure it out together. Yet I couldn’t. I simply,physically, could not bring myself to go to her. It was like I had a wall in my mind, and I slammed against it every time I thought of her hiding something from me. I’d drawn such a hard line about trust for such a long time now, I had no idea how to circumvent the box that I’d put myself in.

And yet, I hadn’t been able to leave Loren Brae.I haven’t been able to leave Shona.Even though she’d lied to me. My phone buzzed, and I answered it absentmindedly, instantly regretting it when my mother’s voice rang out over the speaker.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Well, it’s about time you answered a call. You’ve been practically ignoring me these past few weeks while I’ve been in desperate need of you.”

Yes, Mom, I’m doing great, thanks for asking.

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