Page 6 of Highland Games
Morag put down the phone with a flourish and pulled up another chair in front of Zoe. ‘So, my darling, tell us everything!’
There was a sudden silence as even baby Liam looked at her, awaiting a response. Zoe felt like a scrawny girl again. ‘I, I don’t know where to start. Mum and Dad are fine. I’ve been living in London and working mainly as an accountant, but then Willie got sick…’
Morag squeezed Zoe’s knee. ‘I’m so sorry, pet, that must have been very sad for you and your mum.’
Zoe nodded. ‘He didn’t even remember Mum at the very end. And he had changed so much. But then he left me the lease on the cabin, and I decided to make some changes in my life. So… I’ve left my job and come up here to live.’
After a short, stunned silence, Fiona and Morag whooped with delight. ‘Oh, Zoe love, that’s wonderful news! Businesses always need accountants, and of course you can stay here, you can bunk in with Fi and Liam, unless you fancy sharing with our Jamie?’ Morag said, giving her a sly glance.
‘Mum! Stop! Zoe might have a boyfriend,’ said Fiona to her mum before focusing her laser eyes on Zoe. ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’
Zoe blushed. ‘No. But—’
‘That settles it then!’ exclaimed Morag, getting up as Liam began to wail. ‘I need to tell everyone the good news. Oh, and the cake. Let me get the cake.’
‘But, but…’
Morag stopped. ‘Yes, love?’
‘I appreciate the offer to stay, I do, but—’
On cue, her potential roomie Liam screamed the kind of high-pitched baby cry that would wake even Sleeping Beauty.
‘I’m going to be living in the cabin.’
3
Two hours later, Zoe left the post office in a daze. Part cake coma, part emotional overload. Her life at a desk in an office seemed to belong to a completely different person. Morag and Fiona had been dismayed and worried that Zoe intended to live in what they could only describe as ‘a great big heap of firewood’ and tried their best to dissuade her. And with every new customer brought out the back to see Zoe, the same questions and statements were issued. Sadness for her great-uncle. How was her mum? Did she have a boyfriend? She couldn’t possibly stay at the cabin, wasn’t she beautiful, oh, and did she have a boyfriend?
Zoe felt a twinge of guilt she had lied so shamelessly to everyone about the state of the cabin. She was banking on the fact that none of them had been up there in years. According to Zoe’s telling, the cabin just needed a rag rug and some pewter plates and she’d be the Laura Ingalls-Wilder of Kinloch. Morag, keen to find any way that Jamie could be involved, had volunteered him for the job of chimney sweep and had press-ganged him into going around later that afternoon.
Now she needed wood for the Rayburn. Getting it going meant she could cook and keep herself warm. Morag had said there was a labourer chopping wood in the back courtyard of the castle, and suggested Zoe see if he might be able to sort her out.
The castle loomedover the small village, its granite walls touching the sky and casting a domineering shadow over the nearby buildings. She brought out her phone to take some snaps for Instagram and made her way to the back of the castle, the ‘tradesman’s entrance’ as Morag described it. It was the more human back door, where for hundreds of years servants came to and fro, along with the animals, delivery carts, wood, and everything else needed to maintain the front of the house in opulent splendour.
As she walked down the narrow street next to the high wall, she could see the opening up ahead. The gates had long gone but the cobbles of the courtyard remained, gently spilling out to meet tarmac and double yellow lines. The sound of wood splitting echoed towards her and she rounded the corner with a spring and a smile before stopping dead.
The courtyard was old and utilitarian. Part car park, part workshop. A muddy truck, bearing a coat of arms, was parked haphazardly next to a pile of logs. The courtyard looked like a place for dumping things for dealing with later or never. But it was also a place where the heavens had opened and flung out a god. To the side of the courtyard, facing away from her was Thor’s better proportioned brother. Thor got the hammer, but this guy got an axe. He was splitting wood with ease and precision, his movements effortless and exact, a fusion of man, metal and wood.
He was shirtless, wearing faded trousers and brown leather work boots that looked so used he must sleep in them. His body appeared chiselled from golden marble, with not an ounce of fat to hide his perfection. Zoe watched, mesmerised, as he casually swung the axe down, his muscles moving in exquisite harmony. She stared at the expanse of his back and arms, a body created by work outdoors, not pumped up in a city gym. His hair, wavy and wild, skeins of dark honey and gold, almost grazing his shoulders. She felt dizzy, discombobulated, a ringing sounded in her ears as her unconscious mind and hormones roared into life. She shook her head, confused by her reaction to the sight in front of her.
He bent over to pick up another log and Zoe’s eyes slid down to the peachy perfection of his backside. She breathed faster, her jaw slack, her mouth dry and heart pounding. He might have had a face like a dog’s dinner but she didn’t care. She would just worship his back, and arms, and bum, and – oh no. It was happening again.Not now!
In stressful social situations, Zoe’s default reaction was to laugh. The more inappropriate the situation, the more hysterical she became. Zoe was the child who cackled like a hyena at funerals, who wet herself when her elderly neighbour was carted off in an ambulance with a broken arm. It was embarrassing, uncontrollable and socially unacceptable. The sight of the most incredible man (back half) she had ever seen started out as hyperventilation, then careered out of control into a screeching car crash of a laugh.
The god turned around, still holding the axe. Zoe had a glimpse of a ten pack of abs before she doubled over, one hand clapped to her mouth trying to disguise the hysteria as a coughing fit.
He put down the axe and pulled on a faded plaid shirt, slowly and deliberately doing up the buttons from the top to the bottom. It was a striptease in reverse but Zoe had never seen anything so erotic before. She had to get control of herself. She needed this guy’s wood.
I need this guy’s wood…she thought, compressing her lips together so tightly her hysteria had no other exit than her nose. She snorted so hard her eyes watered from the pain, then the fake cough to cover it up made her throat raw.
Still, Thor’s brother patiently waited.
‘I’m so sorry!’ she gasped. ‘Something caught in my throat!’
Get it together! she inwardly screamed as she straightened up, brought herself back under some semblance of control, and looked at the stranger.
As her eyes met his, a jolt of electricity shot through her. He had the eyes of a wolf, the ice blue of a glacier, rimmed with grey, striations of silver shooting out from bottomless black irises. They held her as the rest of the world dropped away. She took in the pure maleness of him; his features strong and powerful, a slight bump on his nose from being broken, full lips, high cheekbones, all set in the bronzed face of someone who lived his life under the open skies. His hair was a golden shaggy mess and had clearly not seen a brush for years, yet Zoe wanted to reach up, run her hands through it and bring his mouth crushing down on hers.What is happening to me? Speak to him!
