Some Like It Scot (24 page)

“Katie,” he said quietly and gently. Like the man she'd first met in the garden.

She lifted her gaze to his, and couldn't deny or pretend to ignore the intensity of her relief in seeing openness again, the…vulnerability…was the word that came to mind. No one looking at Graham MacLeod, hulking in height, square of jaw, broad of shoulder, and heavy of calf, would think he had so much as a chink in his armor. The clan armor he wore only served to strengthen that masculinity, which was interesting, given he was wearing what amounted to a skirt and sash.

She knew he could be fierce. Well, his alter ego, but as of that morning, she knew, firsthand, he was capable of it as well. What she really knew, and understood, was that he was quiet by nature, reflective, thoughtful. He spent more time using his mind to think things through and form workable solutions to problems, than to battering-ram his way through obstacles with his oversized body.

It was that man she'd found hard to leave. So hard, in fact, that she hadn't.

“What?” she responded, curling the fingers of her free hand inward to keep from reaching up to touch his face. She recalled the kiss they'd shared on the ferry from Oban. Whatever the mystical connection was, however dark and erotic and compelling, their real connection was equally so, for entirely different reasons. She felt…accepted by him. Wanted by him. Not for her last name, or her association to money or success. Not because she was the only McAuley eligible to fix his problem. With him, she could fully be herself, no other agenda, and enjoy the knowledge it was not only okay, but desirable.

“I dinnae know what might be ahead. On Kinloch. For me, or for you. Much less as an us.”

“I'll stay on the ferry, take it back on the next crossing. I really don't want to complicate—”

He was already shaking his head. “We're no' meant to part, you and me. Don't ye feel that?” He took her hand, turned it over in his so their palms met, then wove his fingers through again and pulled their joined hands up between them. “You stayed. I didn't want ye to go. It's as simple as that.”

She smiled then. “Nothing between us is remotely simple.”

His lips curved a bit, too, and it made her heart skip a beat, then another, to see the honest affection come to life in his eyes. “Aye, 'tis true enough, I suppose. But at least we're both aware of it. The rest, the parts we can't explain? They're happenin' for a reason, Katie. I cannae help but believe that to be true. It explains, at least in part, why I was so upset with your taking off.”

“You wanted me to go,” she reminded him.

“In my head, it made rational, logical sense. But that's no' the part of me that was affected by your leaving. No' in that initial moment when I knew you'd gone.”

“I didn't mean to hurt you.”

“You shouldnae have been able to.”

She blinked at that, but knew what he meant. “I suppose not, no. We're still strangers. More or less.”

“Only in the measure of time could we consider ourselves that.” He lifted her hand, and pressed a kiss to the back of one knuckle, then another. His lips were warm, and so was every inch of her, as a deep well of affection spread through her. “But I think we're timeless, Katherine Elizabeth. I don't know that we've been strangers for a very, very long time.”

She could only nod. Anywhere else, with anyone else, she'd be booking an appointment with a very expensive shrink. But, with Graham, surrounded by the sea, and the striking skyline provided by the mountainous islands…anything seemed possible. Probable, even. “So, are you saying you want me to stay? On Kinloch?”

“I still think I need to try and have the law changed. I dinnae think it's right to be forced into matrimony.”

She smiled. “I can only second that sentiment.”

His smile was more a quirk of his lips. “Aye. So, I'll pursue it the way I need to. I'm no' sure what we'll do or say about your presence. But we've the rest of this ferry ride to come up with something.”

“We could just tell them the truth.”

“What?”

“The truth, Graham.” Now that she'd said it, she realized it was exactly what they should do. “Everything. What I was doing when you found me, why I'd decided to run off with you, why we changed our minds, and why I'm on Kinloch anyway. All of it.” She ducked her chin briefly and felt a flush creep up her neck. “Okay, so maybe not
all
of it.”

He tipped her chin up, and his smile was both knowing and charming as hell. “Aye, perhaps no' all of it. Rather hard to explain.”

“Aye,” she echoed, her gaze drifting from his eyes to his mouth, then back to his eyes, which had darkened considerably in those few seconds.

“We should probably agree to keep to ourselves while it's all sorted out, our story, and my pursuit of abolishing the law,” he said, his voice all gruff again, only there was an entirely different note behind it.

The kind of note that made the most delicious tingles zip across her skin and down her spine. “We should,” she agreed. “Better not to confuse things. People. Us.”

“Us,” he repeated, voice barely a murmur, his own dark gaze dipping to her mouth.

The look alone made her tremble. “No chance of that…thing happening again,” she managed, squeezing her thighs together. “Safer that way.”

“Safe,” he agreed, even as he tipped her chin up a little higher, then shifted slightly in his seat so he could slant his mouth perfectly down onto hers. “So, none of this, then.”

“No,” she breathed against his mouth. “Absolutely none.”

He kissed her like a man dying of thirst, and she was a pool of fresh spring water. He sipped, he dipped his tongue, he tested, tasted, then sipped some more, sighing in abject pleasure with each thirst-quenching swallow.

In turn, she felt like he'd brought the sun and water to a parched, dry desert, and with him, she bloomed into a thriving, vibrant, lush oasis.

The kiss grew in urgency, his fingers shifted to grip her chin, and he released her hand to cup her face as he took the kiss deeper.

She lost all sense of place and time, but reveled in the depth and need of the mating…and nary a whisper or hint of anything otherworldly involved. It was purely Graham, real and whole, steady and…kissing her like he was branding her for life.

She couldn't help but think, as she clutched at his shoulders, and fell fully and completely under his spell, that perhaps he already had.

S
o much for planning and strategy.

Looking up, seeing Katie sitting there, he'd thought it was some new twist to their mystical entwinement. Apparition? Savior? Initially he'd thought the former—that he'd simply willed her there, and her spirit had come to him. Then she'd said his name. The overwhelming sense of relief she hadn't left him after all, that she was truly still there, made her damn near feel like the latter. And that had well and thoroughly pissed him off.

At a time when he needed to be supremely confident and rock steady, in order to get his people to believe in and agree to his plans for the future—theirs and his—he was in some kind of wobbly, emotionally charged netherworld where nothing made sense. He couldn't seem to think straight for more than a moment at a time, largely due to the woman presently in his arms.

The obvious solution was to keep her from being there. They'd just agreed to as much, in fact.

Instead he was kissing her as if his life depended on it.

In that moment, with the taste of her on his mouth, on his tongue, his body rock hard and wanting far more than a taste of her delectable lips, he was hard-pressed to deny the sense that he might die if he didn't find a way to claim her fully. And soon. And often. The urge—the demand—to sink deeply inside her, move, thrust, take, while the sweet, hot core of her wrapped tightly and perfectly around him, milking him until there was nothing left to do but surge forth and pour himself into her…yes, that demand, left unfilled, might very well be the death of him.

They both needed to stop pretending it was ever going to be otherwise between them. Until they saw it through, neither was going to be strong enough to tame it, control it.

He left her mouth, kissed her jaw, then tucked her close beneath his chin, both of them gasping a bit for breath. He tried to find his way back to sanity, back to the strength of mind he'd always been able to rely on—until that moment on a garden path, when he'd heard her swear.

His lips curved into a deep smile of their own volition as that moment replayed through his mind. She felt it and pushed back just enough to look at him.

“What's funny?” Her eyes were bright with need, her cheeks flushed from the heat of their kissing.

He wanted to see what the rest of her would look like, flushed with the heat of desire. For real.

“I was just thinking I must be a very perverse man,” he said.

“Because you know this isn't what you want, and yet…”

“Oh nay, this is what I want.” He leaned in and kissed her, hard and fast. “I'm done pretending otherwise.”

She blinked a few times as she struggled to find her breath. “Okay.”

He grinned. Okay, indeed. “But I said that because I was thinking how I've been drawn to you from the moment I first heard your voice.”

“When I was in the prayer garden? But I was angry, very angry, and I'm pretty sure I was, uh, expressing my frustration quite…forthrightly when you found me.”

“Colorfully so, aye. It was what compelled me up the walk. I wanted to make certain you weren't in need of any assistance. I didn't know if you were ranting to the heavens, or to someone in particular.”

“A little of both. Only the someone in particular was me.” She smiled. “You did save me from myself, though, if that makes you feel any better about your perverse Samaritan tendencies.”

“Well, I wasn't entirely altruistic. I needed to get inside the church so I could meet the stranger I'd come to marry. When I didn't hear any other voice raised in anger, I decided I'd leave you to your privacy. I must say, I was quite surprised to see the bit of wedding gown flash out as I'd turned to go.”

“Is that why you turned back?”

“It made me pause, then I realized if the bride were in the garden, she couldn't be inside getting married, therefore buying me a bit of time to complete my stated mission. However, before I could make good on that decision, we ran into each other, literally.”

She looked into his eyes. “I wonder what I'd have done. If you'd never come up the path, I wouldn't have known who you were, why you were there. I wouldn't have known your generosity of spirit—”

“You're too kind. I was stalling.”

“You were nice to me, and your attempts to help were sincere, even if they served the dual purpose of putting off a task you weren't all that enthusiastic about taking on. Though I have to say, you sounded pretty enthusiastic once you got inside the church.

“Once I realized she was you.”

They both paused, then Katie said, “You know, had you just been some strange man in a kilt, standing up and claiming you and I were destined to be together, I'd have had someone call security, or whatever one does in a church when confronted by a deranged stalker.”

“Deranged, now, was I?”

“Well, you have to admit the complete outfit and your heated claims definitely leant the episode an air of—”

“Unique interpretation?”

“I was thinking desperate irrationality, but we can go with that.”

“Because of ten or fifteen minutes spent talking to me in the garden, ye thought me perfectly sane?”

“Because of those fifteen minutes, I already knew I was the one you'd crossed an ocean to find…I'd had a little time for that to sink in. It was a long walk down that aisle. It felt like miles. I saw you, and I couldn't stop thinking about what you'd said. It was an option, an alternate solution, being dropped into my lap.”

“Rather like coming to America to find you was my alternate solution.” His smile grew. “To think we both went with the insane plot when given the option.”

She smiled as she slid one hand up along the side of his neck and ran her fingers down the side of his stubbled face. “Possibly. But the reason I said yes was because during those fifteen minutes spent in the garden, you'd already treated me with more respect, more honesty, and more compassion than the people inside the church who were supposed to love and support me.”

He stared into her eyes. He'd wondered when he'd begun to fall for her. He couldn't imagine a time when he hadn't been thinking of her. “When”—he let the sentence hang, then cleared his throat—“when was the first time you knew…about the other part? Between us.”

“When was yours?” she countered.

“It's no' the same as the others, no' so much a vision or feeling like ye've been set down in a different time and place. But I know it was there inside me when I stood up in yer chapel. It was like I was compelled to say the things I did, to feel what I felt. Both were way out of proportion to what I'd been planning to say. The intensity of that moment was not a little stunning. Though I was clearly seeing you at the altar, and I was definitely inside that chapel, there was absolutely something greater than myself guiding me, at least in that initial moment.” He broke off, looked away for a moment. The few times he'd thought about how he'd behaved in the church had left him feeling a bit ridiculous and mortified. Now he felt anything but. It all felt destined somehow. “Your turn.”

“In the limo,” she said. “Only it wasn't like—like the thing last night.”

Her stuttering had him looking at her again, and he marveled at how pretty a shade of pink her face could become. “Nothing to be embarrassed about, ye ken. About last night, I mean. We, neither of us, had any control over that.”

“I've been telling myself that,” she said, a dry note in her voice. “Have yours all been, well, not like that, that was—” She couldn't finish. She cleared her throat, then said, “Have they all been, um, highly charged? Like that?”

“If you mean sexually intense, no.”

She sat back a bit. “No?”

He couldn't help it, he grinned. “Yours have?”

“Uh, yes.” Her blush deepened and his smile grew. “At first, I was more voyeur. I mean, I felt like it was happening to me, but I was more removed. It's hard to explain. Each time after that, it felt more immediate, more…real. More detailed. Like all the foggy elements were coming into sharper focus, and I wasn't just watching and feeling. I could smell, and taste, and describe how it felt to touch—” She stopped, blushed again, then laughed. “So, the short answer would be yes.”

He was still grinning.

“But not yours?”

“Dinnae look so crushed,” he teased.

“I'm—I wasn't. I was just…surprised, I guess, because it seems like we've been living out the same thing, experiencing the same thing.”

“It's two sides of the same coin, I'm sure of it. Just because I wasn't always dropped down into the midst of us twined together in passion, doesnae mean we weren't just before, or heading straight back to it.”

“Has it been like you're dreaming, or just watching? Or have you—you know. Like last night, when we were both there, in the moment, fully together, except…not really.”

“If you mean could I describe the scents, tastes, feel of things, then the answer is yes. Initially it was as you describe, like I was watching more than feeling it happen simultaneously. But once we landed in Castlebay, it seemed much more detailed, more immediate. As if I was living it, breathing it. The history between us felt very specific.”

“History. Yes,” she said. “That's it exactly. Well, that last time anyway. It did feel like that. Not just because we were clearly in a different time or place, but…there was something familiar about it, though I know I've never been there before or seen anything like it.”

“Agreed.”

They fell silent for a few moments, but his hands were on her again, and the taste of her was on his tongue, and the shores of Kinloch were fast approaching. He wasn't done. He was so far from being done. “Stay with me,” he said. “On Kinloch. Tell me you'll stay.”

“What about—”

“I dinnae care what about. I—I know what it felt like when I thought you'd gone. I don't want to feel that again. I want us to have a chance to figure this out. I know it will complicate things, but I'm no' sure I much care. I need to understand this, and for that, I need to understand you.”

“Is that why? Because I'm a mystery—or this alternate universe thing between us is a mystery that you simply want solved?”

He tugged her to him and kissed her hard, fast, until they were both breathless when he lifted his head. “I don't want to feel as I did when I thought you'd left me behind. If we do part again, we'll both know the why of it.”

Her eyes were huge pools of crystalline blue that could break his heart or make it sing. It was the latter he was after.

“Is the parting inevitable in your mind?” she asked.

“I have no preconceived notions, Katie.”

“Are you open to wherever it might lead?”

“Are you?”

Her eyes opened wider, as the horn blew, announcing their arrival in port.

“Ye hadn't thought of your side of it, then?” he said, when she didn't immediately respond. “Only mine?”

“It's your home. I don't want to be there as a curiosity. I only want—”

He waited a beat, but she didn't continue. Instead she broke eye contact and looked down. “Only want what?” he prodded.

She looked up, and he'd never seen her so serious. “I wanted a chance to find out. To figure things out. For myself, yes. But with you, too. I might not have been honest, even with myself, when I decided I wanted to come here. But that is the truth of it. I do want that chance.”

“You're taking the bigger gamble,” he told her. “I'm home, my life is here. I'll be able to continue on, much as before, with my work, my goals. You…you've just left a life in chaos, without clear direction for the next steps on your path.”

“I'd say that puts you at as great a risk, then. Getting involved with someone who is neither steady nor grounded. Nor even knows what she wants to be when she grows up. Certainly, at the very least, it carries the potential of risk that I'll want to go back home. At some point.”

“Aye, I suppose it does.”

The horn blew again, startling her. He held her, knowing what they said here, decided here, was critical to whatever would come afterward.

“Are we being selfish, wanting to explore this?” she asked. “Maybe you were right the first time and it's wiser to cut our losses, so you can go do what you need to do to take care of your people, and yourself. While I go…figure out, well, my entire life. We could always try again later, if that's what we still wanted. When the rest is clear and it's not so complicated.”

“It's rare I've let myself want anything that wasn't also about achieving things for others,” he told her, keeping her face turned to his, his eyes steady on hers. “I'm no' sure 'tis wise, this want I have for you. And aye, it could lead to heartache, I suppose. But I'm not willing to leave it up to fate, again, that our paths can cross in the future. We're both here now. I'd rather know I tried, and failed, than turn tail and run from it.” He pulled her closer, until his mouth was near on to hers. “Because there could be a great glory to be had in this, Katherine Elizabeth Georgina Rosemary. Greater glory than surely I've known or felt until this time. One we'll never know if we don't try.”

“I want to know,” she whispered. “I want to find out.”

“Then find out we shall,
mo chridhe
. Find out we shall.”

They were still kissing as the boat bumped along the pilings into the slip dock.

Graham finally broke apart, and gently set her back in her seat. “We look well and thoroughly ravished,” he said with a smile, knowing he should care a great deal more than he did, how they initially presented themselves to everyone. “I'm no' thinking anyone looking at the two of us at the moment is going to buy the explanation that ye've turned my offer down flat, and have simply come along on a personal sabbatical.”