Page 41 of Highland Games
The next priority was getting a water supply and connecting it to the Rayburn. She’d spent a day driving to pick up the back boiler she’d won on eBay, and the water tank had arrived, but rigging it all up and diverting the water from the stream was a big job, and not one Rory could do hidden away in his workshop. In preparation for this, Zoe had bought extra battery packs so had enough power to last her laptop all day. He couldn’t avoid her forever, even if he wanted to.
With a never-ending supply of fuel, and the new windows and door, it was easy to get the cabin warm and toasty. She allowed herself a little luxury and cranked the Rayburn up to eleven, stripping off her eternal layers of jumpers until she was down to the Precambrian layer of a thin T-shirt. She’d texted Rory telling him she now had the back boiler. If she wanted to see him, she just needed to wait.
Finally, at lunchtime the following day, the time she was usually out, he rounded the bend. Her heart accelerated as she saw him look from her truck to the window, staring at her impassively as she gave a wave. He nodded in response, then got out to unstrap a ladder from the roof, Bandit by his side. She sighed. How could anyone so big be so graceful? As he moved, the air seemed to part in front of him, shimmering as he passed, before coalescing again behind him. He was so solid, part of the landscape itself, and yet at the same time not truly mortal. He was a Norse god, or a kind of fairy king.
Basil was on her shoulder. ‘Oh, darling, what am I to do? I can’t get him out of my head.’ He snuffled into her ear, trying to impart some ratty wisdom. ‘I left London wanting to be by myself. Now I’m scared I’ll always be alone because no one else will ever compare.’
Her feet moved of their own accord to take her out of the cabin onto the porch. The cold air hit her, sending goosebumps rippling across her skin and hardening her nipples. ‘Can I help?’ Rory was absorbed in hefting the ladder against the side of the cabin. ‘I can hold the ladder for you? Make it safer?’Or just spend a couple of hours ogling your backside?
He glanced at her, then immediately away, shaking his head. ‘Not now. I want to get the gutters up and the water butt attached.’
He walked towards his truck and Zoe’s gaze slid down his back. ‘What a butt…’
Rory turned, his eyes wide. ‘What?’
Shit! She had spoken out loud. ‘Water butt, you said you were going to attach it?’ she replied, her voice going higher.
Rory flushed. ‘Yes, if you’ll leave me in peace, I can get on with it.’
Zoe fled back into the cabin, shut the door and sank to the floor, her hands clamped over her mouth to stop her giggles. This was too embarrassing. She couldn’t trust her unconscious mind to stay quiet. Why couldn’t she be more normal? Maybe if she had straighter hair and a straighter mind he might be interested. Being an accountant was the most normal thing about her but it wasn’t exactly a sexy job. She got off the floor, got out her phone, opened the camera and stared at her reflection, trying to find some redeeming features. Crazy hair, bonkers freckles, nondescript brown eyes. She pulled back her lips. At least her teeth were straight. She huffed. It was hopeless. She was never going to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. She stuck her tongue out at herself, gave up, and went to fetch her computer.
Sitting at the battered oak table, she thought about how best to promote the castle. It needed a hook, a USP, and at the moment it didn’t have one. Actually, she mused, that wasn’t quite true. She knew exactly what made the estate so special, and that was Rory, but she couldn’t exactly attract the tourists with the promise of seeing a hot estate worker chopping wood in the back courtyard. She grinned to herself imagining a busload of Japanese tourists being led in by a tour guide to gawp at him. She thought of suggesting the idea, if only just to see his reaction.
She shook her head. The last thing she wanted was to cause him more discomfort, and she also didn’t need any more confirmation of how little he thought of her. She moved the table to position it so she could see his ladder from the window, tuning the TV window to channel Rory. It was like watching an old black and white movie, where the action was a little too fast. He was literally running up and down the ladder. After five minutes, she heard a loud thud and looked up to see he had decided to dispense entirely with a normal descent and was simply leaping from the top of the ladder back to the ground, holding a drill, screws clamped between his lips.
How could she concentrate on writing whilst this was going on? There was no leisurely sound of precise and measured hammering, just the whine of the drill as if a plague of enormous mosquitos were taking it in turns to land on the roof before being slapped into submission by one of Rory’s powerful hands. What was he trying to achieve by working like a lunatic hyped up on amphetamines? He had at least four hours before it got too dark to see, he didn’t need to work like the devil was at his heels. Zoe moved the table away from the window and put her earplugs in. This was the only way she would ever be able to concentrate.
She stared back at the screen. Writing about the castle was easy. All she had to do was replace the word ‘castle’ with ‘Rory’ and she could wax lyrical for hours. Words like ‘rugged’, ‘imposing’, ‘dramatic’, ‘majestic’, ‘stunning’ flew out as she hid her feelings in plain sight. Now she needed images to match the words. Having flicked through theVanity Fairphotoshoot with Brad Bauer looking like a Scottish strippagram, she knew what she wanted, but whether Rory went along with her plans was a different matter altogether.
Upon the roof Rory pummelled the gutters into submission. The harder he made the job and the quicker he pushed himself to complete it, the better. He could have easily done with Zoe’s help, but if she was anywhere near him he’d either grab her or do himself an injury with a power tool because he was so distracted.
He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since she arrived. From that first night when he’d found her at the cabin his mind had been scattered, his body restless. He wanted the cabin and now he wanted her. Neither of which he was going to get now. And when he finally fell into a fitful sleep, his dreams of her were nightmares. She was always out of reach, slipping from him like smoke. She was laughing at him, kissing other men, undoing the buttons on their jeans. His unconscious mind always woke him at this point, aware this was torture too far. Then he would lay awake for hours, his body on fire.
And now she filled his every waking thought. Her smile, which set off flashes of light inside him, the smattering of tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose and her high cheekbones, her glorious hair, as bright and vibrant as a shepherd’s sunset. He wanted her smiles to belong to him. He wanted to kiss every freckle, name each one like a star. He wanted to bury his head in her hair, breathe in the essence of her. His fingers were itchy, sensitive, hyperaware. All the nerve endings in his hands calling out for her.
She utterly bewitched him, and she had no idea who he was. Finally, he could be himself. Truly himself. Only he’d been a dick and it was clear she didn’t like what she saw. The fact she found him repulsive was in an odd way refreshing. She flinched when he went near her, she moved when he sat next to her, she laughed at the sight of him shirtless. There was no pretence. He knew exactly which dung heap he was sitting on.
And yet…
He could have sworn she’d saidwhat a butt, not water butt. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box but he wasn’t deaf.Didshe like him? Or was she taking the piss? He cursed himself for the umpteenth time and dealt with the fact that now the gutters were finished and the water butt attached, he had to continue working inside the cabin.
Rory knocked on the door,then walked in when Zoe called to him, recoiling from the wall of heat that hit him like a tropical summer. She was working at the table, the thin white T-shirt clinging to her body and leaving nothing to his imagination.
‘Are you trying to recreate the surface of the sun?’
She grinned at him and stretched her arms over her head, the T-shirt framing her breasts. ‘It’s all thanks to you. How did you get on with the gutters?’
‘Fine,’ Rory muttered, going to inspect the back boiler on the floor beside the Rayburn. The back of his neck prickled with sweat. He wanted the Rayburn off and the temperature down by fifty degrees. He needed Zoe wearing so many clothes she became indistinguishable from a sofa. He lifted the back boiler to inspect it.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Rory.
‘Hmmm?’
‘Water and power are your biggest priorities right now. I’ve done the gutters and the water butt but I need to hire a digger to get the water tank in the ground. And once the back boiler is in, you need power to run a proper fridge and the pumps. I also want to clear out under the porch so I can fit more wood there. I want you to be able to last at least a week here without being able to get out.’
‘A week?’ cried Zoe. ‘Does the main road often get blocked?’
‘Not often and usually not for long, but I want you to be prepared.’
