Page 10 of Heirs and Graces at Highland Hall
As she snuggled down into him, and watched the great beast turn in lazy circles in the sky, a strange feeling had settled over Bex. Like Duncan hadn’t been talking about the birds at all.
The memory stirred a warmth somewhere in the pit of her being, only to evaporate as the image of Duncan, drunk with his arms around the two Australian women, resurfaced in her mind.
It was with a shuddering of her shoulders that Bex shook the feelings away and reminded herself to focus on the task at hand. Then, with one last glance at the herd of deer, she headed over to the front door and, upon finding it unlocked, stepped inside the castle. It was eerily quiet. The grandfather clock stood whereit always had, and the large oil paintings hung on the walls in timeless landscapes of the ever-changing views around them, but there was no patter of dogs’ paws on the floors. No sign of life. Closing her eyes, she drew in the scent of leather and wood polish and a history she only knew a fraction of.
Quashing the melancholy that threatened to overwhelm her, Bex walked towards the study, the room in the house where she had spent months sorting through old paperwork, only to stop and change her mind. After all, she probably shouldn’t just let herself into the house without knocking. It wasn’t like it used to be. The new lord might not take kindly to finding a strange woman wandering around his home.
‘Hello?’ she called out. ‘It’s Bex. Rebecca. The accountant.’
‘I’m just in here.’
The voice that answered took Bex by surprise. First, it was coming from the drawing room, the small room next to the main staircase – where Fergus would sit in the evenings with a dram of whisky and his dogs. It was the homeliest room in the castle, and certainly not where she expected to be doing business with the lawyer. The study would have been a much better fit, and assuming the lawyer was an old friend, she’d thought he would know that. But the second thing that surprised her was that the lawyer sounded English. Not a hint of a Scottish accent anywhere. He also sounded younger than she had expected.
Another person sent up from London to get the job done? Possibly. And there was no point delaying it any further.
With a sense of sadness she knew would come with seeing Fergus’s room, she pushed open the door to the drawing room, only to be hit with a spark of anger.
The lawyer, whoever he was, had his back to her. He had picked up a chair and moved it so that it was directly in front of the fire. Only it wasn’t just any chair he’d taken and turned. It was Fergus’s armchair. The one he’d always sat in. And tomake matters worse, the old tartan blanket that Fergus had kept across his lap had been tossed aside onto another chair with half of it dangling on the floor, like it was meaningless.
‘Sorry, but you shouldn’t be sitting there,’ Bex said.
‘Excuse me?’ the voice said, nothing but his expensive shoes visible.
‘I said you shouldn’t be sitting there. That’s Fergus’s chair and you should have left it where it was. It’s a matter of respect.’
As the man rose leisurely to his feet, Bex’s frustration rose. ‘Did you hear what I said? I said you need to put that chair back where it belongs.’
She stopped as the man turned slowly to face her, almost as though he was toying with her. The heat of anger bubbled to burning, but as his eyes met hers, words stuck in her throat.
‘It’s you,’ she choked out, struggling to make sense of who she was seeing. ‘You’re the man from the airport.’
His eyes twinkled in the exact same way they had done the day before. ‘And you’re the woman who nearly gave me a broken ankle.’
9
He was just as good-looking as Bex remembered. Possibly more so. Dressed in a light-blue checked shirt with the top button undone, he looked as though he’d just finished work in the office and removed his tie. Except, of course, that couldn’t be the case, given it was first thing in the morning.
A lawyer and an accountant. That was a better match. A match that made more sense than an accountant and a groundskeeper, didn’t it?
As quickly as the thought shot into her head, she tried to shove it away. No, she wasn’t going to be having thoughts like that. She was here to work with him, that was all. Besides, if the night before had taught her anything, it was that she was 100 per cent not over Duncan. Not taking this man’s number had been the sensible thing to do, but of course, that had been before she was going to know she had to see him again. Work with him even.
As she stood there, her jaw still slightly open, she couldn’t help but wonder if fate was playing some dark, twisted joke on her.
‘So, you’re Rebecca,’ he said, a small smile tugging at his lips accentuating the glimmer in his eye. ‘The phenomenal accountant I’ve heard so much about.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say phenomenal,’ Bex said, before inwardly wincing at how bashful she sounded. That wasn’t a normal start at all. No, she was proud of how capable she was. She cleared her throat and started. ‘But yes, I’m the one who sorted out all the finances at the estate for Fergus before he passed away.’
The man nodded. ‘From what I hear, the old man was very fond of you. I’m getting the feeling it was mutual, what with you trying to kick me out of his chair and everything.’
‘Yes, the chair.’ Just because he was good-looking didn’t mean she wasn’t still annoyed. ‘That was his favourite place to sit in the evenings,’ she said. ‘We used to sit there together. Have a drink. A hot chocolate normally.’
‘With a dash of something in it, I’m guessing,’ he said, his smile tilting slightly to the side.
A whole swarm of butterflies took hold of Bex’s stomach. My God, he was charming. And he knew it. She could tell. You didn’t look like that without knowing about it. And obviously, he was intelligent. He wouldn’t be working on a case like this if he weren’t.
But she wasn’t going to get sucked in by that. She’d been sucked in by enough men like him in the past. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again. That’s why being with Duncan had been so refreshing; because he hadn’t bought into that fast car, lavish luxury lifestyle. He knew it was the little things that mattered more.
‘Well, I guess we need to get started on work,’ she said. ‘I’ll be honest. I have no idea why Fergus wanted me here. I thought I’d done my job and this type of thing would fall on you.’
