Page 58 of Blindsided By You

“Look, the quiz night’s going to be great. Both of us have been away a long time. It’s a good way for us to get back into the local social scene. Something other than the rugby club.”

Don’t get me wrong, I do love the club, even the smell of the carpet soaked by years of spilt beer, and the tang of liniment drifting from the locker rooms brings waves of nostalgia from my childhood, but if I’m going to survive Cluanie, there has to be more.

“At least I don’t have to sit there looking like a dick at the rugby club. I know I can hold my own on the field.”

“You’ll hold your own in the quiz team, too.”

“Yeah, right,” he says, and the gloomy look in his eyes makes something tug inside me, seeing how this beautiful, intelligent man thinks so little of himself.

I curse all those people who ever made him think he was anything less because his brain doesn’t work like theirs, or because he learns differently from other people. That includes his bastard of a father. I’m determined to prove them all wrong. This stupid pub quiz is one way I can start.

“We’ll practice,” I say. “There are question sets online. Give me your phone. I left mine in the car.”

He tosses it across and I search for a moment. Geordie grabs at some pillows, props himself up, and crosses his arms across his chest a little belligerently, a less than enthused expression on his face.

“OK, hit me with them.” He exhales a weary sigh.

“Right,” I say, having found the website for the very company The Railway uses for their quiz. These will be perfect. “Question one: What is the main ingredient in guacamole?”

He screws up his nose.

“Avocado. Disgusting. Way too green.”

“Geordie MacDonald, you’re going to get a bloody deficiency disease if you don’t start eating something besides meat and carbs.” I glare at him and he smirks back, totally unashamed of his childish stance on vegetables.

“Nothing deficient about this, is there?” He leans back and spreads his arms wide, his naked body living proof that he might be right.

“Vain bastard,” I scoff. “OK. Next. What is the national animal of Scotland?”

“For fuck’s sake, are you picking out the easy ones just for me?”

“Nope.”

“Unicorn. It’s on the Cluanie R.F.C logo for chrissakes.”

“Exactly,” I say, skipping to the next question. “Which 2014 Taylor Swift album was her first officially labelled as pop rather than country? Oops, I think that’s one for Daisy—who just so happens to be the best damn brow tech I think I’ve ever let loose on these.”

I waggle my brows at him and he laughs, and stretches forward, tracing a long finger across them.

“Beautiful,” he says. “Like every bit of you.”

I’ve never been turned on by someone touching my brows before, but then, it doesn’t even take a touch for Geordie to light me up. When his hand softly drifts down, tracing the contours of my face I melt into it until he’s cupping my cheek. I’m already thinking we should forget the quiz and go back to practising other things. Though we hardly need to, given I’ve been in Geordie’s bedroom every day since he moved in. From his smug face, he’s reading the effects of his caress, and I pull away.

“No distracting me from quiz practice. The answer was 1989, by the way,” I say, going back to the phone. “Which is the only Northern Hemisphere team to have won the Rugby World Cup?”

“England, 2003,” he recites as if that’s the most ridiculously easy question he’s ever heard. I wouldn’t have got it even though I’ve lived and breathed bloody rugby for years. Geordie’s going to be the man for any rugby questions. “Wish I could say Scotland,” he muses. “Maybe one day—”

He jerks his head towards the window as the sound of a car climbing the long driveway drifts up from below. It’s a refined purr, not the diesel rumble of Nathan’s trusty old Land Rover. Geordie stalks over to the window, buck naked, and draws back the curtain. A slant of moonlight highlights his beautiful arse, round and muscled from all that thrusting in the scrum. Perfect for any kind of thrusting, really. It makes me want to grab hold of it and pull him onto me—and into me—again.

“Jesus,” he says. “It’s my father.”

I pull a sheet around me and move to stand, one hand on his shoulder, peering down into the parking area out front of the house. A broad silver Mercedes glides to a halt next to my little BMWroadster, which practically glows as the security lights, triggered by the other car’s arrival, bathe the area below.

The two vehicles couldn’t be more different: Kenneth MacDonald’s sedan, a conservative middle-aged man in a formal dinner jacket, while my expensive gift-to-self is a flamboyant redhead in a sparkly cocktail dress. I’ve begun to regret buying something so distinctive since I started sneaking around with Geordie. I’m sure someone in the neighbourhood will soon note my regular trips up this country road at odd hours of the day and night.

“Crap. What do we do? I can’t exactly pretend I’m not here. I knew we should have done a deal with Nathan for his spot in the garage.”

“What the fuck does he want?” Geordie tenses beneath my hand. “Oh, shit. I hope it isn’t something wrong with Mum. Though surely he’d have phoned.”

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