Page 39 of Tender Heart
Remembering my task, I crunch over the gravel and let myself into the small hut.
Inside is neat, with so few items it hardly looks like anyone lives here. If I didn’t know better, I’d think nobody did. But I do, and Callum does. Apart from sleep, that is. I find myself frowning as I take in the bareness around me. The journal is on the small table I guess he eats at when he’s not in the house with me.
I can’t take it. He’ll know it’s missing. So, I sit at the table and open the leather tome, willing each page turn to quiet down. Guilt amplifies every tiny sound the book makes until it roars around me.
Heavens, I hate this.
My skin heats, and I swear it crawls its way along my bones.
I hunt for the reference. The wordsmo nighean.
Skimming and scanning as fast as my writerly brain allows, I come up empty-handed.
Those two words are not on these pages. Anywhere.
Another burst of laughter carries from the dock, and I startle.
That’s it, I can’t do this.
I am no villain. It’s evident by my squishy insides that can barely tolerate this small breach of privacy, even after that particular horse has bolted. I close the journal and tiptoe from the hut, like somehow he will hear me in his space.
Chastising myself for the stupidity of my thoughts, I cross the threshold into the house. With a sigh, I pad to the kitchen and start another type of hunt.
The kind that ends with a meal shared by two people.
One edible and within my limited culinary abilities.
It can’t be that hard, can it?
Twelve
CALLUM
“Pass us the wrench, will ya?” Em mumbles, head hidden inside the deck opening, face-first into the engine space. His hand reaches for the tool, and I drop it into his grease-stained palm. Tinkering, he huffs before saying something I don’t catch.
“You’re gonna have to speak up, bud. Can’t hear you over all that hard work.”
He jerks up, rocking back onto his heels. The wrench points at me as he says, “Don’t start something you can’t finish, Cal.”
I chuckle at him. It’s just too easy.
We’ve known each other for longer than most friendships will ever last, and I know his mind like it’s my own. And this man is so damn easy to rile.
My gaze drops to the wrench as he starts reciting every task he’s done today and some he’s yet to get to, before rattling off everything he’s missed over the years because of his job. Mainly his family.
I gotta admit, his family life can get a little hectic. But at least he has that.
Iris and I are all that’s left of our family. In the States, at any rate. Save one cousin in the city, there’s nobody else to speak of.
I’m sure I have uncles and aunts, maybe more cousins, in Scotland. But I’ve never met them. My parents broke off all ties when they left in the middle of the night after both families forbade their relationship. Ended up here, bought the café, and maintained the lighthouse. They must have been happy, because that’s the only way I remember them.
“. . . You coming?”
“Hey, what?”
Em shakes his head and leans back into the engine bay, disappearing from the shoulder and up again.
“I said”—he sits back up and shuts the small door, securing the latch—“Wednesday night. Iris wants you at the café.”
