Page 33 of Suddenly Single
“Si, si,” he said, nodding emphatically.“I will do this today, and you will help me,” he said.
“What?No! That isnotwhat I meant—”
“Grazie,grazie,Jenny Turner,” he said, and suddenly took her by the shoulders and yanked her forward, giving her a kiss on one cheek, and then the other.“Come, we write the letter now,” Lorenzo said, and stood up, taking her hand.“Look, you see? You’ve come with a computer.”
Jenny tried to protest, but Lorenzo was determined.
She did not notice that Edan had come back around to the courtyard. He was standing at the edge of it, watching Lorenzo usher her inside to write his letter.
Ten
Edan didn’t know how things like this happened.The last few days had seemed almost as if he’d imagined them, they were so foreign to his way of living.He didn’t know how fully formed women suddenly threw their arms around men they scarcely knew and kissed them.He didn’t know how that same impulsive woman was suddenly inseparable with another man she’d only just met.
But that is precisely what had happened with Jenny and Lorenzo.
One moment, she was stomping through his reception area with clothes clinging to her enticingly curvy body, and the next, she and Lorenzo Bartolotti had their heads together, bent over a computer, murmuring in Italian.
They’d even dined together last night.Jenny had tried to include him in their party, but Edan was not going to suffer being the third wheel at that table, particularly after Lorenzo’s brothers had left the Cassian Inn, bound for a proper resort with a proper golf course. And a proper bar. And proper dancing girls.
And again the next morning, there went Lorenzo and Jenny toddling off to East Beach on some mission of importance, chattering away as if they’d known each other all their lives.
Edan should have been relieved that the loquacious lass had something to occupy her.He should have been grateful that Lorenzo had come along and removed the unexpected problem of her in his head and in his life. God knew he had enough to do without her nattering on in his ear.
But he was not relieved.He was, surprisingly, miffed.And it didn’t help that his dogs were moping about as if she’d left them behind.How long did she intend to stay and wreak havoc, anyway?
“I donna understand it,” he said to Clara’s headstone.“It’s no’ as if I care, aye?” He glanced sidelong at the headstone for a moment, feeling as if Clara was giving him the side eye from some celestial perch. All right, perhaps it was true that Jenny had uncovered some feeling in him.It was lying there, visible where his grief over Audra was beginning to rot through.
Jenny had set him on fire, and for a man who had not been set afire in a while, that was a dangerous thing to have done.Now he wondered if she was the sort of bird who flirted and carried on with any fucking penis that crossed her path.That thought was followed by the equally exasperating thought that it wasn’t his business.All those thoughts together put him in a very foul mood the following afternoon, which was much remarked upon by Rosalyn.She said his demeanor was colder than Highland snow.That his scowl could curdle milk.And then she’d made the mistake of summoning him to the kitchen to tell him she needed flour.
“If you need flour, Ros, you’d best say so before five o’clock.It’s no’ as if the markets stay open for the Cassian Inn, is it?” he’d snapped.“Now I’ll have to drive all the way to Black Springs.”
Sandra, who had been helping Rosalyn in the kitchen, gasped.In all the years she’d known him, she likely had never heard Edan say something so coldly.
“I’ve got a sack of flour,” she said. “ I’ll just fetch it.” She fled the kitchen.
“What’s put your knickers in a twist?” Rosalyn demanded.She was not as easily put off as Sandra.
Edan shook his head.He stood in the dining room, his gaze fixed on the windows that looked out over the garden and the drive.He was aware that Rosalyn’s gaze was boring into him. “I’ve no’ seen you like this since Audra left.Are you ill, then?”
“I’m no’ ill.” But he might be at any moment, for he happened to notice the happy alliance of Italy and America rumbling toward the inn in Lorenzo’s red car.Lorenzo always hired a red car, the bloody rooster.
“Well, you’ve been acting like an utter dobber for two days now.”
Edan rolled his eyes. He would let that insult slide, particularly as he couldn’t give a good reason he was in such a foul mood without revealing too much. He would keep his torment to himself, thank you. But that was precisely the thing—there shouldn’t havebeenany torment.It was one bloody kiss! He was going back to Scotland, goddammit, and Audra would take him back.He’d spent the last two years of his life working on that relationship, and he’d spent the last six months planning the repair of it.
He steadfastly refused to let the little devil in him ask why he would go back to a woman who, if he was being honest, had never seemed overly happy with him, and had always found reason to complain.She was Scottish, that was why—she didn’t belong in America any more than he did.Andhewas Scottish dammit, no matter that he held dual citizenship, courtesy of his American mother. Audra was from Balhaire, just like him.He wasnotan American.
He did not belong here.
Lorenzo’s red car suddenly screeched into the courtyard to a halt. Lorenzo hopped out.
“Oh that bloke,” Rosalyn said, startling Edan.He hadn’t realized she was standing behind him.“Ishethe reason you’re acting strange?”
“I’m no’ acting strange,” Edan said, and turned away from the window before Jenny emerged from the car.
“Hmm,” Rosalyn said, her eyes narrowing slightly.She folded her arms and stared out the window.“What’s the American bird doing with him? What’s the American bird doinghere? Seems passing strange to me that she’s at the inn with nothing to do here.”
“How would I know?” Edan asked irritably.
