Page 12 of Some Like It Scot
Mark and I had only spent one evening together after a media event in London, and no amount of toothbrushing had removed his painfully thorough and unprovoked kiss from my tactile memory. Twenty texts (most of which I tried to ignore), a long and unflattering (to him) social media message, and five months later, he’d seemed to have moved on.
And now? I had to spend three weeks with him in this house?
My eyes narrowed on the beautifully ornate ceiling. Gran often talked about how God wrote the story of our lives. Hmm... Why did my personal genre look more like a book of jokes than a cozy mystery or sweeping adventure?
It certainly didn’t resemble a romance. For one, living on the fly made it nigh impossible to meet a guy for more than two or three dates. My lips tipped. Except the delicious Egyptian in Cairo. Five of the best dates of my life, all along the Nile on a dahabeah.
But second, I’d never met a guy to stay put for. Finding one who was confident enough to encourage my travels but loved me in such a way to bring me home? Well, maybe he was as legendary and mythical as a sword in a stone.
Mark’s voice drew nearer, so with careful, quiet steps, I descended the back stairs and turned the curve on the landing of the stairs, just as his blond head came into view. With a creak to the next step, I blew out the breath I’d been holding and dashed down the remainder of the stairs into a narrow hall, only to come nose to wood with a massive stair railing swinging toward my head. Before ducking, I did wonder how on earth a stair railing could fly, but with my introduction to Craighill, normal seemed relative.
The railing swung over the space my head recently vacated, and on the other side of it stood Mr. Scotsman from the day before. The railing balanced on one of his massive shoulders as if it were nothing more than a damsel.
I blinked.
Well, not that he seemed the sort to throw damsels over his shoulder. But with those arms, it probably wasn’t a hardship.
Heat flooded my already hot face, and if my breathing came any faster, my head might take flight off my body like a hot-air balloon.
I stared up at the man from my crouched position on the floor, the brim of my cap blocking the top half of his expression, but his close-shaved beard framed an impressive frown. I braced myself as I rose to my feet.
Maybe I could get in the first word.
“If you’re going to lug a tree through the house, don’t you think you ought to wear a warning bell or something?”
Looking up to him still felt strange, but in a nice sort of way. I met his gaze, but the scowl I’d expected was surprisingly absent. Instead, his dark brows pinched together and he studied me as if he wasn’t sure what to do next. Those eyes had taken on more of a stormy blue than the paler hue of earlier. And I lost whatever verbal defense I’d partially been concocting in my head.
The man didn’t respond with words, but his gaze traveled from my face to the brim of my hat and then back to my eyes. The silenceprickled over my skin, and I cleared my throat, gesturing with my book to his railing.
“Do you carry stair railings through manor houses often?” I placed my free hand on my hip to have something to do with it and looked away from his stare to the wood. The light filtered over it, highlighting the beautiful grain and reddish sheen. “Is that cherry? What an amazing finish!”
I reached my hand to smooth over the wood, noting the careful trim work on the lip of the railing. “And the detail. Beautiful. There’s something about hand-carved wood that feels so intimate, isn’t th—”
My words died on my tongue as I glanced back at his face and realized I’d been yammering on to a man whose sentence lengths so far made it up to five fingers. Maybe less. Plus, by stepping closer to touch the railing, I’d moved nearer to Stoic Scot than I’d intended. My pulse ricocheted in my throat. I breathed in to make a comment and caught a distinct sweet scent along with something tangy. Maybe wood finish or cologne? I nearly grinned. No, he didn’t seem the cologne sort.
He blinked as if coming out of a daze. Again his gaze shifted from my eyes to my hat, then paused on the book in my hand. The crinkles on his dark brow deepened. “That book’s rubbish.”
Three words in that sentence. He was digressing. My yammering clearly impressed.
Yet the sentence and his tone of voice failed to match. There was a softness in his delivery, breathlessness, even, which slowed my comprehension.
“What?”
He cleared his throat and took a step back, nodding toward my book. “That book on Scottish legends. It’s pure rubbish. If you want a good book on the subject, you can fetch Alec Frasier’sLore and Legendfrom Mirren’s in the village.”
Three full sentences. And in that Scottish accent.
Why did I feel like I’d just won an award while also being reprimanded? The way he curled hisr’s sounded a whole lot different from Mrs. Lennox. Skin-hummingly different.
I tugged the book to my chest to protect it from his critique. True, I had only read the first few paragraphs, but “rubbish” seemed a strong insult for something that couldn’t defend itself. “Are you one of the servants in this whole Edwardian Experience?”
Though Mr. Grumpy would have a difficult time making his six-seven, wide-shouldered, thundercloud-browed self unnoticeable.
“I’m not a servant.” He grumbled out the words, his eyes narrowing.
My attention flitted down his attire of dusty white shirt and brown trousers, halting for just a second to appreciate those shoulders one more time. It was a rare thing indeed for me to meet a man who mademefeel small.
“Are you quite done oglin’ me?”
