Must Love Scotland (7 page)

“We’re new people,” Julie said, patting the baby’s back. “New people always interest a happy baby. You talk golf and I’ll cuddle with my squeeze. You can put us both to sleep.”

She took the rocking chair while the grin Henry aimed at Niall was positively gloating. Put her to sleep, indeed.

Niall stretched out on the couch, a hopeless indignity because the couch in Jeannie’s rental was about two feet too short.

“What golfing topic would you like me to address?” he asked, wedging a pillow behind his head.

“When did you decide to focus on golf professionally?”

A prosecutor’s question, but also the question of a woman whose expectations, about marriage, career, and herself, were falling to pieces.

“While I was at uni,” Niall said. “I’m not stupid, but the only place I felt alive was on the links. My grades were adequate, and the classes that had something to do with golf or golf courses were great fun, but the rest was…”

“Going through the motions,” Julie said, kissing the baby’s cheek. “Doing the next expected thing because it is expected, and you haven’t planned anything else because you’ve been so busy living up to expectations.”

The picture she made with wee Henry was sweet and right, somehow. “Do you want children, Julie?”

She had the knack of handling a baby, and Henry, who did not take to everybody, had claimed Julie for his own the moment she’d held him. Jeannie had seen that, picked up her purse, and disappeared for her interview without a backward glance.

“I thought I wanted children,” Julie said. “I have cousins, too, and friends from college, law school, and grad school. I’ve been around a lot of babies and toddlers. In my work, I handle delinquency cases, and those poor, clueless, hopeless kids—”

Niall knew a little about those poor, clueless, hopeless kids. The ones born holding low cards with no hope of exchanging them. What could an adult who’d been dealt all the aces in the world offer to doomed youth?

“I do a golf camp for kids each summer,” Niall said. “I learn a lot about the game from them, and some of them keep in touch.”

Henry gave up a contented sigh, the sound startling for its unequivocal surrender of all thoughts, cares, worries, or ambitions. In one gusty breath, the baby conveyed utter trust in the woman who held him, and in life’s goodness.

“Keep talking,” Julie said. “You’re serenading him to sleep. You can’t teach children golf in one week.”

“Golf is probably like the law. You don’t conquer it, you surrender to it. The complexities are unending, the possibilities and anomalies fascinating, the folklore a living body. I’m reminded of one of those screen savers that keeps repeating, though at the same time it’s never the same image, only the same pattern.”

“A fractal,” Julie said. “My father loved them. History is like that too. You can’t study Scottish history without studying English history, then Norse history, then French history, then—Henry’s asleep.”

Niall was wide awake, even as he lay relaxed on the couch. He never talked about golf with anybody. He instructed, he lectured, he demonstrated, he wrote, he critiqued, he analyzed.

Maybe he wasn’t talking about golf with Julie either. “I’m not trying to teach the children golf, I’m trying to teach them what golf taught me.”

Julie rocked the baby slowly, the picture of complete, unified contentment. “Which is?”

“That we’re all still learning, all the time. That nobody has a faultless swing under all circumstances, that we can all improve, and the joy is in the striving. Once that lesson sinks in, you can dream again. It’s not about the big tournaments or the lavish sponsorships. It’s about wrestling the most interesting dragons, day after day, until gradually, you tame them, or make friends with them—I’m spouting nonsense.”

Julie said nothing. Just rocked slowly, cuddling the infant, eyes closed.

A buzzing came from her purse, which sat across the room on the kitchen counter. She rose and passed Niall the baby so smoothly, Henry didn’t wake.

“I should turn my phone off,” she muttered. “Back home, the day isn’t even into business hours yet, and some fool lawyer is probably wondering why they can’t find a case file—crap.”

She stared at her phone screen as if it were the dirty diaper Niall had changed an hour ago.

Don’t go.
Niall assumed a
crap
uttered with that much disgust meant Julie had received a text telling her she had to leave Scotland and get back to Maryland.

Steady on, Cromarty. You just met her, she
is
leaving soon, and you’re an idiot.

Julie tossed her phone back in her bag. Though she wore chinos and a polo shirt, her posture was tense, her hair swept back from her face to reveal a fierce set to her jaw, a hard light in her eyes.

That damned phone call had called forth her armor, in all its hard, shiny, impenetrable glory.

“Trouble?” Niall asked, drawing a finger across the baby’s nape. Such soft, soft skin.

“Not trouble. Just somebody who can’t take ‘I’m in Scotland, leave me alone’ for an answer.”

Tension went out of Niall, tension associated with the worry that he might have to let Julie go before they’d become lovers, before they’d taken their friendship—amazing, unusual word—down whatever fairways the next two weeks allowed them.

Abruptly, a bunker loomed. “Does a woman tell her steady boyfriend, ‘I’m in Scotland, leave me alone’?”

Julie’s shoulders dropped—golfers noticed posture—the tension left her, and her smile was soft and impish.

“I haven’t had a steady boyfriend since law school. My ex occasionally tries to pick a fight about the separation agreement, but it’s signed in triplicate, and a very simple deal. The divorce is final, and the appeals period ended last week.”

“He’s run out of holes,” Niall said. This apparently pleased the man’s former wife.

Pleased Niall too.

“He’s run out of holes,” Julie agreed, “and his father has run out of patience with him, and Derek has never before been in a situation where charm or dear old dad couldn’t get him what he wanted.”

While Julie was enough of a lady not to gloat over that—much.

“Let’s put Henry down for his nap,” Niall said, “and we can watch some of my favorite lessons.”

Julie lifted Henry’s warmth and weight from Niall’s chest. “I have a better idea. Let’s do a little tidying up here, so Jeannie won’t have to deal with housework when she gets home.”

Jeannie had never been house proud, but Henry’s arrival seemed to have tipped the balance from relaxed housekeeping closer to messy. Toys in primary colors were strewn about the floor, the kitchen sink was half-f of dirty dishes, flat surfaces were cluttered with a combination of magazines, bills, and baby-gear.

“The golf will wait,” Niall said. Though it couldn’t wait indefinitely.

Julie put Henry in his crib while Niall started on the dishes. Forty-five minutes later, the sheets had been changed on Jeannie’s bed, the rugs vacuumed, the clutter organized into tidy stacks, the toys restored to their toy box, and a casserole was thawing on the counter.

“Is this how you practice law?” Niall asked, as Julie rearranged throw pillows on the couch. The result was prettier than their previous order, more settled. “As if you have only twenty minutes to do forty minutes of work?”

“I like to be productive,” Julie said, snatching a baby blanket from the arm of the rocker. “That’s why I earned a master’s degree while in law school. You can get a lot done if you stay focused and get enough sleep.”

She folded the blanket over the back of the rocker, creating softness and order where clutter had been.

“You never answered my question,” Niall said, stepping closer and slipping his arms around her. He’d been wanting to do this all morning, but Henry had stolen that march. “Do you want children, Julie?”

She smelled of baby powder and oregano, a domestic combination that went well with a hug.

“If I want children, I’d better get busy. Derek and I didn’t discuss having a family when we were courting.”

“For all three weeks of your courtship?”

Julie’s hair was a marvel of ruthless order. How did she do that, and would she kill Niall if he undid the chastity belt around her bun?

“We dated for four months,” she said, biting Niall’s earlobe gently. “I suspect Derek changed the subject when children might have come up. He would have been a lousy dad.”

She’d longed for children, then, but hadn’t brought them into a marriage she’d regretted probably from its inception.

Niall kissed her, because to say she’d make a wonderful mother would simply add injury to the insult her ex had done her. Julie relaxed into the kiss, sinking a hand in Niall’s hair and letting him have her weight.

He was about to insinuate a thigh between her legs and go after her perfect bun when the front door opened and Jeannie bustled through, a dripping umbrella in her hand.

“I wouldn’t take that job if it were—oh, beg pardon.” She tapped the point of her Winnie the Pooh brolly on the flagstones, creating a shower pattern near her boots. “You’ll want to watch that cuddling. It can have permanent consequences.”

Niall kept one arm looped around Julie’s shoulder. “I hadn’t realized it was raining. Henry went down about an hour ago.”

Jeannie hung her jacket on a hook and left Pooh dripping against the door.

“Then he’ll be up in no—you cleaned! Oh, you cleaned and tidied! I almost called to ask you to get a casserole out of the freezer—and you vacuumed, and I hear the dryer, and oh, Niall.”

Never had a woman looked at Niall as Jeannie was regarding him then, as if her every wish had been granted, as if he’d given her the ability to hit a hole in one at will.

“He changed diapers too,” Julie said, squeezing Niall’s hand. “You and Henry have a very lovely relation in Niall Cromarty.”

“You think Niall’s lovely?” Jeannie asked, crossing to the kitchen where she peered at the empty sink as if the gleaming stainless steel were a beautiful, recently exposed archaeological mosaic. “Niall, you’d best marry this one. Women who think you’re lovely don’t come along all that often.”

Jeannie grinned, because members of the Cromarty family teased each other, but she was wrong. A woman who found Niall lovely wasn’t a rare occurrence in his life at all.

It was utterly unprecedented.

Thank God for Scottish rain.

Julie got a parting hug from Jeannie, Niall endured a kiss to his cheek and a smack on the arm, then Henry made waking baby noises, and all of Jeannie’s attention became riveted on the bedroom at the end of the hall.

Julie braved the downpour to race out to Niall’s car, only to once again attempt to open the driver’s side door, much to Niall’s amusement.

“We can hit balls in the rain,” Niall said as he started the engine, “provided there’s no lightning. I’ve even golfed when it was snowing. We’ll get thoroughly soaked, and thus force the sun to reappear.”

Niall, thoroughly soaked.
Julie would be lucky to recall which end of the club did what if she dwelled on that image for long.

“I’m not dedicated to impersonating a weather goddess,” Julie said. “Can we find another one of those fish and chips meals?”

“My thought exactly.”

Even in the rain, the village was pretty. The low granite houses wore the wet with a casual indifference. The flowers were just as cheery, and children played in a flooded gutter, stomping their boots and shrieking as they dodged the resulting mess.

“I love that sound,” Julie said as Niall cut the engine outside The Wild Hare.

“The rain?” he asked, making no move to leave the car.

“The laughter of children. Being a prosecutor, you don’t hear much laughter, unless it’s nasty, gallows humor laughter. The streets without laughing children are the streets where crime is most likely to make fools of us all.”

“You Americans like your guns,” Niall said. “We Scots used to be the same way. Every man armed, the women carrying daggers in their bodices, all of society divided into complicated lines of allies and enemies. A tiring way to go on, as best I can make out, and it wastes effort fighting that could be spent solving problems and pulling together.”

“We Americans like our freedoms,” Julie said as a clap of thunder interrupted the noise from the children. “I like your perspective, though.” Niall’s view of history offered hope. Scotland had outgrown its more violent lawlessness. Children outgrew their teenage dramatics. Perhaps the US might need fewer prosecutors some fine day.

“This rain won’t let up any time soon,” Niall said. “Shall we make a dash for it?”

They’d parked as close to the door as possible, but the rain was coming down in torrents.

“I should have worn a damned raincoat,” Julie said. “I hate when I’m not prepared.”

Niall leaned forward and wiggled out of his jacket. “You don’t know the territory like the locals do. Wear this, and last one past the post buys lunch.”

Julie figured out sleeves and zipped Niall’s jacket closed, but a cold dousing was probably a good idea. He’d looked so damned sweet, holding that baby, keeping up a steady patter of man-talk with the infant kicking and cooing on the changing table.

“A boy who kicks like that could go to the World Cup, young Henry.”

“So you like being the altogether, do you? You’re a Cromarty lad for sure.”

“Ach, you could teach old Helen a thing or two about clearing a room, you wee stinker.”

And then, like the bad fairy turning up at the princess’s christening party, Derek’s text.
Call me, baby. I’ve got a surprise for you.

“Ready?” Niall asked, hand on the door handle.

“Ready.” Julie was ready to forget Derek, the practice of law, and at least temporarily, anything approaching common sense. “Go!”

They reached the front door at the same time, but when Julie would have yanked it open, Niall stopped her.

He kissed her there in the cold rain, thunder rumbling in the distance, children yelling and carrying on across the street. The moment was perfect, the kiss a point of heat and certainty in the middle of a chilly and unsettled day.