KiltTease (4 page)

She laughed, probably at the scowl forming on his face. The wonderful sound broke the silence and the melancholy he sometimes felt. He opened his eyes.

“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t always think before I act. Or speak.”

Kate started to loosen her hold on his shirt. The one woman who had saved his ass without asking for anything in return—and like that, an idea flashed in his mind. To be honest, Mick had planted the seed.

Quinton placed his hands over hers to keep Kate to him. “Do you read tabloids?”

She tilted her head. “That’s a strange question, but no.”

If Mick were here, he could handle this. Quinton wouldn’t question the hows or whys. That’s why he hired the man. So…how exactly could he go about this?

He narrowed his gaze on her. “This is Bobbie we’re talking about. Even that whole display with my ex won’t quite cover the favor I’m doing for you.”

She narrowed her eyes back at him. “I don’t think I’m going to like the sound of what you say next.”

Smart. Aye, he liked her so he dropped the pretense of making this sound like a favor for a favor. “Probably not. It’s got nothing to do with Bobbie, so get your elbow ready just in case.”

Her face still held a glow. “What do you want, Quinton?” And her voice continued to hold a sexy rasp.

He ran this thumb over her knuckles and watched the lust flare up again. Aye, he wanted her too, but he
needed
this. “You’ll be hanging around Uncle Douglass anyway during this whole wedding.”

“And?” she said slowly, wary.

Quinton dropped her hand. Caressing her felt dishonest when he wanted her for something other than sex. “It would help me tremendously if you could…be my girlfriend for a week or two or six.”

Kate laughed until she must have seen how serious he was. “No.”

“Aye.”

She sputtered for a moment then finally managed to get some words out. “And when one of your family members want to know what’s really going on?”

His stomach clenched. His exploits in his youth had been splashed on plenty of gossip mags over the years. Before Angeline, he seemed to have a new girl on his arm every week. His family never pried. How could they when they caroused as much as he did?

“Trust me,” he said, “they won’t think differently of you. Or me, for that matter. You can always run it past Victoria.”

“Yeah, Victoria is the one to ask. I already know what Douglass would say. He put whiskey in my Coke earlier. So truthfully, he’s the reason to blame for me elbowing Bobbie in the nose. I have more restraint sober.”

Oh, God. He wanted to kiss her again. “No touching.” He glanced at her mouth. The pull to do more, to ensure both of her lips were swollen, still tugged at him. “No kissing unless you want to.”

She wet her bottom lip, her shoulders lowering. She was going to say yes. “Your proposition is insane, you know that?”

Aye, he was asking her to be his pretend girlfriend instead of talking her into his bed. That was fucking certifiable. “So was slithering up my body like a snake when my ex first showed up.” At her offended gasp, he stepped forward, breathed her in, and whispered, “Come on, Kate.” Her scent was as intoxicating as her taste. “Think of the stories you could tell when you get back to America. I’ll be the Scot you pretended to date.”

She blinked up at him, her mouth parting as though she knew he wanted to kiss her again. And she was giving him permission to do just that. “You were sent from hell to tempt me. I’m now sure of it.”

He’d flirted with her in the bar and screwed up his quiet retirement. No, he hadn’t thought someone would capture his lapse in judgment on a mobile—Quinton never did, no matter how used to it he was, but the blame laid squarely on his own shoulders. He should have ignored the tug in his gut, his cock, when he first had seen her. None of this would be a problem for him now if he had.

Quinton said, “I could say the same about you tempting me,
sweetie
, but your reply sounds like a yes.”

“You could just tell Angeline to fuck off.”

He scoffed at that easy solution for his fucked-up life. “I could, but my situation is a little more complicated than that.”

Although, five minutes alone with him, and Angeline would know there was something different about him now. She’d catalog every wince and see through the lies he’d told for the past year.

Without the prescription pills he’d taken before every date with her or every game—the only time he allowed himself to take them—Angeline and then the world would have known about the severity of his injury.

And now she’d have no trouble reporting to everyone who’d listen why he had really retired. The lie he’d told about no longer being able to stand the politics that had nothing to do with the game would go out the window. The truth would assuage her massive ego and probably line her pockets as well. He was done being her meal ticket.

He’d come clean
if and when
he wanted to. The moment anger stopped choking Quinton whenever he thought about the real reason he’d left the game he loved…aye, that would be the day he confessed.

Until then, he’d privately come to grips with the fact his future no longer had rugby in it. Quinton would ensure he failed at nothing else. If that meant taking on a girlfriend, he’d do it.

“I won’t lie though,” he said, “fixing my problems this way is going to be a lot more fun.” He held his breath waiting for her firm answer.

She screwed up her face and then sighed. “It can’t interfere with my work, so if Victoria shoots down the idea of us…dating, then it’s a no-go. If I get fired, you’ll just have to take out a loan from a bank or sell your car to pay me. This is my traveling money. Matter of fact, anywhere we have to go, you foot the bill.”

He started to frown and remembered she didn’t know he had plenty of money to piss around. Yet her demands were reasonable. Kate could have demanded the world and hadn’t. That notion settled on him, and he shifted under the weight. “How many dresses do you have?”

She took a step back. “Another strange question.”

He waited, lifting his brow. She sighed again. “This one.”

Kate traveled alone and traveled light. That fact seemed to fit the woman she appeared to be. “Okay.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out his business card to write down his address. “Meet me here before work tomorrow. You’re going to the brunch with my uncle, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, sounding wary once more.

He squinted, trying to remember. “Aye. That’s brunch at the MacDougal castle in Inverness. I get up before the crack of dawn. Drop by before your shift starts.”

She just shook her head, looking a bit shell-shocked.

“What?” he asked.

Kate let out a little laugh, the shadows in her eyes darkening. “Sometimes you really should just break your promises.”

Now that was strange and mysterious—another red flag if there ever was one. Quinton stepped into her space and focused on her face. “What does that mean?”

She didn’t even flinch at his sharp tone. “It means I’ll be by in the morning before my shift. I’m checking the Baird’s blood pressure one last time tonight, and then I’m clocking out. I need a drink.”

He shifted out of her space again, relaxed and somewhat appeased by her answer. “Come on. I’ll buy.”

She stared at him for a second and then shook her head. “And if your shark of an ex zeroes in on you again?”

He smiled slowly. “We’ll come up with something to convince her you’re mine.”

“Yeah,” she muttered. “You were sent to temp me into stupidity.”

“Ditto, my lass.” Her expression turned pensive, and he could see a question forming in her mind. He said, mostly to distract her, “I like that we have so much in common, since you’re my girlfriend and all.”

She smiled, and his heart stuttered at the way it beat back the shadows in her eyes. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Kate, I can attest that you’re my first, and I pray to the Virgin Mary my last, pretend girlfriend.”

Her smile went naughty. “I promise to be your best then.”

Aye, she probably would be. Daft. He was fucking daft.

CHAPTER FOUR

Kate had assumed when Quinton had written down the address where she was supposed to meet him it had been a home address. Clearly not. She had to have the cabbie drop her off at the entrance. If she’d walked all the way from the front gates through the massive garden, she would have had to get her feet amputated just to dull the pain in her feet.

The hotel was just as massive as the garden but smaller than she was used to. The two floors were understated in design yet pretty like most cottage-style structures in Scotland. The hotel sat on the outskirts of Glasgow. Nothing but hilly roads and goats to be found this far out. One night probably cost more than her monthly budget.

But barely six in the morning, it was quiet and only a handful of cars were parked in the circular drive. Though there was no sign of a valet. The gravel in the driveway crunched beneath her shoes as she walked up to the door, unease trickling in. Not toward Quinton. Last night, he’d played the gentleman.

She’d watched him with his family—confirming at last they knew him and he wasn’t a figment of her imagination. When she’d broached the idea of dating Quinton to Victoria, the pregnant woman had just laughed and told her it was fine as long as it didn’t conflict with her work hours.

After that, Kate had learned he could keep up with her and throw her off her usual stride. What surprised her was that, compared to his cousins and brother, he seemed to shy away from the spotlight.

Plenty of people had definitely tried to urge Quinton into that light until he found a nice quiet corner and had dragged her into it. The insight was interesting when coupled with the fact he had no problem asking for what he wanted.

So, no, the unease knotting her gut had everything to do with her own devil-may-care behavior. Quinton could have been a psycho, and there she was kissing him and agreeing to some crazy charade.

She hadn’t even asked what he meant by complicated. Why would a man like Quinton need a pretend anything? He didn’t look like a troll, and he didn’t act like one. Normally she would have pried all that information out of him. She was nosy at best, meddling at her worst.

He was just so…him. Quinton could be funny, intense, charming and a little dirty. And somehow she couldn’t bring herself to care about what she should and shouldn’t do while with him. This was not like her at all.

Even just five months ago, Kate would have never booked a one-way ticket to a foreign country. She had the travel bug, no question, but even then, her family had lived in so many places every place in America felt familiar and like home. That was a far cry from kissing a stranger in a pub and then agreeing to epic shenanigans.

Her mother would suffer from an apoplexy if she knew. Her dad would probably want to shoot Quinton. But they weren’t her barometer, not for this trip. Her parents had never quite understood her, anyway. They believed in continual fresh starts. While she thought digging in her heels and building a solid foundation mattered more. Just like her grandmother.

Kate tilted her head back and asked, “Grams, what am I doing?”

Having adventures would undoubtedly be her grandmother’s answer. Her grams believed in stability but not in being staid. Because this charade would be so far from the latter, Kate told her rational side to shut up and rang the doorbell.

A butler—a real-life butler—answered. He didn’t look older than twenty-five. He wore the entire black-and-white getup. There was no mistaking him for a bellboy. Hotels didn’t have butlers. Concierges, yes, not butlers.

All she could do was stare for a moment. “This is a
house
?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He pronounced “ma’am” like it had an
R
, so an English butler at that. She opened her mouth to ask a litany of questions when Quinton came into view. A shoulder brace covered most of his upper body. The basketball shorts hit just below his knees, and the sneakers looked new.

A smile lit up his muddy-blue eyes. “You showed up. Good.” He tossed the towel he carried over his shoulder. “Come on in.”

She refused to move. “You are…”

How exactly could she finish that sentence? Filthy rich didn’t quite fit Quinton. Over the years, she’d worked for plenty of rich people. Some had been snooty. Some down to earth. But they all had a sense of coming from money. She’d assumed Quinton’s I-get-what-I-want attitude had everything to do with his alpha nature.

This new piece of information about him refused to settle in. “What do you do?” she asked.

He just smiled and crooked his finger. The butler opened the door wider and gestured for her to enter. She gaped at him and walked inside. Quinton met her halfway, put a hand to the small of her back, and guided her into his home. She shivered at the gentle touch.

That reaction could also be why she had said yes to epic shenanigans.

“Let me give you a tour,” he said.

“Giving me time to think up a good response?”

“Sometimes you need it to think of a really good reply. I’m trying to be thoughtful.”

And despite the turmoil building in her stomach, she laughed, and let him guide her.

The outside design might have been understated, but the inside was a different story. He was built like he could lift her with his pinky, and one would expect he’d have a bachelor pad to end all bachelor pads. As they passed each room, she could tell a designer, an expensive one, had kept the house from falling into that stereotype. One bold color scheme bled into the other, feeding off the masculine motifs and rich colors.

Quinton had a home. Even she didn’t have a home.

Quinton hadn’t answered her question. She so needed answers.

Kate started to push for one when they entered a room on the first floor. Her feet stopped working at the threshold while her mouth dropped. From wall to wall, there were clothes, shoes, purses, coats and jewelry. She clamped her trap shut and glanced at him.

A cocky smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You only had one dress, so I pulled some strings.”