Must Love Scotland (8 page)

A chilly and unsettled life.

What should have been a casual stolen moment morphed into something complicated as Julie battled the impulse to throw her phone down the storm drain. She clung to Niall instead, to the promise of two weeks of stolen kisses and simple pleasures.

“Julie?” Niall said, brushing wet hair back from her cheek. His fingers were warm, his question embodying more than her simple name.

I don’t want to go home.
The conviction blossomed at full strength in Julie’s mind, like the punch line to a closing argument that would conclude days of contested litigation.

She didn’t want to suit up for the judgeship sweepstakes while dragging the gossip about her divorce behind her, didn’t want to face Derek and his damned surprises, didn’t want to deal with more hopeless children, hopeless adults, and clever, ruthless defense counsel.

“My father loved Scotland,” she said. “He gave papers here every chance he could. I never understood why. I’m beginning to now.”

“We have the best rainy days?” Niall suggested, holding the door open as if they weren’t both sopping wet.

“You do,” Julie said. “You absolutely do, and the cutest babies, and best flowers, and the nicest roaring fires.”

Somebody had lit a wood fire in the enormous stone hearth at one end of the dining room. Julie crossed to it, shrugging out of Niall’s dripping jacket and leaving a damp trail on the plank floor.

“If it isn’t a pair of wild geese, blown in from the north,” Hamish Campbell boomed from behind the bar. “Sit you down, and I’ll fix you something before the quilters descend. Nothing stops those women, and they can drink even the anglers under the table. The pipers have them beat, though.”

“Donald sometimes joins the quilters,” Niall said. “I don’t think he can whipstitch a straight seam, but they tolerate him because of his stories.”

The quilters tolerated Donald because of his blue eyes and his charm.

“May we eat here by the fire?” Julie asked, draping Niall’s wet jacket over the back of a chair. “I haven’t been near a real fire for years.”

Hadn’t been held in a real embrace, hadn’t been kissed in the pouring rain, hadn’t made love until she was too satisfied to move.

What the hell has my life come to?

“Fish and chips?” Niall asked, rearranging the table and chairs so they were closer to the fire. “A wee dram to chase off the chill? Sticky toffee pudding?”

“All of the above,” Julie said, taking the chair Niall held for her. “You should eat up too, Niall. We’ll need our strength if the weather ever clears, and I may never again have a chance to enjoy all these wonderful Scottish delicacies.”

Behind the bar, a glass went pinging to the floor, but it must have bounced off a rubber mat because it didn’t shatter.

“I’ll place our orders, then,” Niall said, taking Julie’s purse from her shoulder and wedging it onto the dark beam that served as the fireplace mantel. “You sit right there and decide how you’d like all those Scottish delicacies served, though you can have seconds if you wish.”

He was flirting. Julie reviewed their conversation and wondered if she had been flirting too.

Yes, she had, most definitely, been flirting. A day to renew her acquaintance with simple pleasures then.

“May I have thirds?” she asked, peering up at Niall.

He got a handful of her bun, gently tipped her head back, and kissed her on the mouth.

“Julie Leonard, you may have as many servings as you please, for as long you’re putting your feet under the same table as my own.”

Well.
Julie ate every bite, ordered a second sticky toffee pudding to go, and even had a taste of Niall’s caramel apple crisp.

Julie Leonard was wrecking Niall’s game. She looked delicious wet or dry, and he had a hunch she’d look good tidy or tousled too. He barely tasted his fish and chips, but the whisky—or perhaps Julie’s hand accidentally brushing his thigh when he’d held her chair?—warmed him up most agreeably.

The rain had slowed by the time Niall pulled into the cottage driveway, and the afternoon stretched before him. He ought to start on his inquiries regarding the blasted will Declan MacPherson claimed to have unearthed. The document could well be some damned writ permitting cattle to graze on the village green, a list of farm equipment, a letter between cousins.

His attorneys would want a look, his accountant would pitch a fit, the bank would carry on as if—

“Niall, won’t you come in with me?”

Julie’s question was not innocent. She might have intended it as a simple gesture of hospitality, but Niall suspected she was flirting. She was subtle about it, though an invitation hung in the air, like the rain dripping from the leaves, the scent of woods and pine, the glow in Niall’s belly from a nip of smoky, island single malt.

“Julie, if I come inside with you, I’ll want to take you upstairs. Is that what you want?”

“You’ll want to go to bed with me?”

“Yes.” That was the simplest part of what Niall wanted with Julie Leonard. The rest was of no moment, when she’d leave in less than two weeks, and an expensive, protracted battle loomed courtesy of Declan MacPherson and his infernally literary granny.

A little joy snatched on the eve of battle wasn’t too much to ask.

And Niall could be Julie’s joy, too, as she prepared to lay the groundwork for the long struggle to land a judgeship.

“You’ll be my rebound ride?” Julie asked, staring straight ahead at the snug little cottage. “You deserve better, Niall. I don’t want to be one of those golf groupies who sees you as a notch on her putter.”

Julie wasn’t a golf groupie. Niall was beginning to wonder if she was any kind of golfer at all.

He got out of the car, and Julie did likewise. Douglas sat regarding them through the kitchen window, his expression sagacious.

“You’ll soon go back to Maryland,” Niall said when he and Julie were under the porch overhang. “I’ll stay here and thrash through the next round of foolishness with Declan’s lawyers. Why deny ourselves shared pleasure? A candidate for a judgeship can’t exactly kick up her heels in her own backyard, can she?”

Not that she would. Julie Leonard wasn’t a kicking-up-her-heels sort. Even wet, her bun was still tidy.

“A judgeship is years away,” Julie said, perhaps the first time she’d admitted that to herself. “But you have a point. I’m an employee of the state, an officer of the court, and I have to watch my step.”

“You’re on holiday thousands of miles from home, Julie. Enjoy yourself.”

Niall wouldn’t beg. Julie had been wheedled and manipulated enough, and he liked her hesitance. Flirtation was fun, but Niall had learned that what came next, for him at least, wasn’t as easily forgotten.

Julie kissed him, pressed herself close to him in the gloom of the porch, the dripping trees all around them. She was extending an invitation, and maybe coming to a conclusion.

Niall drew her closer, so she could feel the evidence of his arousal, and factor that into her decision. Her arms came around his neck—when had a woman ever fit him so well?—and she snuggled right into his embrace.

“I’m out of practice, Niall. This could be awkward.”

No, it could not, not with a fit like that. “I haven’t used my putter in a while either, Julie. We’ll keep swinging until the ball goes where we want it to.”

She smiled at that. Golf lent itself to all manner of stupid analogies. The law probably did too.

“I’ll need a minute upstairs,” Julie said, slipping away and opening the door. She put the extra sticky toffee pudding on the counter and knelt to pet the cat.

Niall took his phone out and set it on the counter. “You have five minutes, madam.”

Julie stared at his phone, then fished hers out of her enormous bag and placed it beside Niall’s.

“Five minutes, and the cat stays down here,” she said.

The cat went where he pleased. When Julie headed upstairs, Niall locked the various doors to the cottage, though, because Uncle Donald might see Niall’s car in the driveway and invite himself in for a cup of tea.

“Our privacy is in your paws,” Niall said, giving Douglas a scratch under the chin. “Guard it well, and there’s tuna fish in it for you.”

Niall used his five minutes to leave a message telling his lawyer to find him an expert who could decipher an old will without costing him a fortune. Then he made use of a guest toothbrush in the downstairs loo and dragged a comb through his hair.

When Julie’s five minutes were up, Niall took the stairs, making certain his tread was audible. He found her sitting on the bed, still dressed, though her slides were by the window, and her feet were bare.

And Julie’s hair was still in its chastity belt.

Niall sat beside her. “Your expression was far more animated when you faced a full bowl of sticky toffee pudding with a spoon in your hand.”

“I’m not married anymore,” Julie said. “There’s nothing my ex can appeal, no chance the decree can be overturned, but this…”

Her head came to rest against Niall’s shoulder.

“This makes it real,” he said. Like when the tour started, and he wasn’t on it. “You’re alone again, but you prove that by being with me. A paradox.” Or an irony. He slipped an arm around her waist, because sex was only part of what they were doing. “Are you scared, Julie?”

She hiked a leg across his thighs, adopting a very friendly posture.

“Niall, I am so
relieved
, so shamelessly, endlessly, unendingly relieved. No more
trying
, no more misplaced loyalty, no more pretending I haven’t been betrayed, no more ignoring the disappointment or the anger. I get my future back. I get
my self
back. I get back a simple, honest reality I never should have let slip from my grasp.”

Julie was savoring a moment of victory, when Niall had feared she was hesitating before a decision she’d regret.

“You’re quitting the tour,” Niall said, wrestling her into his lap, “giving up the sponsorships, and doing as you damned well please. Good for you, Julie Leonard. I’m proud of you, and you should be proud of yourself. Now, will you give up your clothes too?”

A combination of joy, calm, and desire burbled through Julie as she treated herself to more of Niall Cromarty’s kisses.

This was right, this was
her
right. Ten days from now, she might have regrets, but a missed afternoon at the driving range would not be among them.

“I have protection,” Julie said, turning to straddle Niall. “I believe in protection.”

“As do I, but I also believe in being naked, Julie Leonard. I want your skin next to mine, nothing between us save for that protection you so helpfully tucked among your socks.”

Niall fell back on the bed, tugging Julie with him. She went down laughing, until his hand slipped under her polo shirt, a warm, welcome sensation amid many other welcome sensations.

“I’m wearing a sports bra,” Julie said. “There’s no clasp. I’ll have to—”

Niall’s expression—tender, amused, and patient—said he knew very well what a sports bra was.

Derek had made jokes about Julie’s breasts, about a Holstein having contributed to the Leonard gene pool, and it being impossible to have too much of a good thing, right?

Julie sat up and pulled her shirt over her head. “I like my breasts, do you hear me? They’re pretty, they can nourish babies, they bring me pleasure, and I like them. Love them, in fact. A lot. Girls, say hello to Mr. Cromarty.”

The bra went next, while Niall’s smile became tinged with emotions Julie couldn’t read.

“Say something, Niall,” Julie whispered, abruptly feeling foolish, to be sitting half-naked on a man she’d met only days ago, lecturing him about her breasts.

“Hello, ladies,” Niall said quietly, kissing the tip of each breast. “My name is Niall, and I’m the luckiest man in Scotland. My mission in life has become to see that we get on famously.”

Julie braced herself to be
handled
, because a well-endowed woman expected that. She’d never told her husband he was being ham-handed. She’d learned instead to ignore—

Niall’s tongue, soft, damp, and delicate, circled a nipple, one direction, then the other.

“You taste of lavender,” he said. “I like it. Tell me if you like this.”

In the next small eternity, insights wedged themselves past the pleasure Niall brought Julie. She’d been
enduring
sex with her husband, telling herself for years that intimacy took time to fine-tune, that she’d raise her complaints—that’s what they were—when she and Derek were on a walk, or at the mall.

That orgasms were overrated.

The time had never come to open that discussion—to even go for a walk—and another part of Julie had gone into hibernation, an important part she should have paid more attention to.

“How am I doing?” Niall asked, glossing his thumbs over Julie’s damp nipples. “How are
we
doing?”

Another insight: Derek had never asked that question, never invited a conversation about their lovemaking. He’d been all dirty talk, dirty jokes, and in a subtle way, disrespect.

For their marriage, for Julie, for the intimacy a husband and wife ought to share.

“I’m overdressed,” Julie said. “So are you.” She rose off Niall and gave him a hand up, so they were standing close to each other beside the bed. He took off his shirt in a single motion, up, up, off, and tossed it across the room to land on the floor near Julie’s slides.

For a moment, she simply looked at him. Niall wasn’t bulky, but his musculature was defined. His strength would last, and be supple and quick. She permitted herself a sniff. Cedar, seaside, heather… the great Scottish outdoors.

Yum.

“If I start touching you now,” she said, taking one step back, “I’ll just have to stop to get my slacks off. I’ll resent the hell out of any interruption once we get started.”

“Goal-oriented,” Niall said, toeing off his shoes. “I like a woman with a sense of purpose, but Julie, we’re not in a hurry. We won’t ever be in a hurry.”

Oh, he sounded so confident. Julie hoped he’d eat those words, but first she’d get her clothes off.