The Sweetest Hours (Harlequin Superromance) (16 page)

“Kristin...?” he began.

She seemed to sense what he was going to say and intercepted him: “I’m tired, Malcolm.”

He glanced at her, assessing her mood. She was closed inward. He needed to tread softly.

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about the thing with the clothes this morning.”

“Don’t be,” she said, “it’s not necessary.”

To him it was.

She sighed at him. “Can’t we just forget about it?” She looked out the window, a furrow in her brow. “I’ve decided that I need to consider the whole experience as just part of the adventure.”

“The whole experience? You’ve...not much experience with men?”

“Oh, please, Malcolm, it’s not like I haven’t dated—I’ve even had a few serious relationships. I’m just...used to my life in Vermont, that’s all. I’m not used to being here.”

“I’ve lived both places, Kristy,” he said quietly. “More time in your country than in mine. We’re not that different, you know.”

She pressed her lips together harder. She was hugging herself as if she was upset.

Something
was bothering her. It was killing him not knowing what it was.

“I want us to be honest with each other,” he said. “We didn’t start off on the right foot, me being deceptive to you with my security name, but I’m hoping that can change.”

“I’m fine, Malcolm.” She showed her teeth in a smile to him, but it came out like a grimace. “I really am.”

He nodded, letting the silence stretch out as the wee car coughed and sputtered its way up the hilly road.

She reached for a radio knob, but the whole kit was missing from the car; just a gaping hole remained, so she gave up and snatched her hand to her lap, where she twisted her fingers.

He said nothing. Just waited some more. After a time, she drummed her fingers on her knees. Outside, they passed more Highland cows and bleak Highland moors, but she’d seen herds and stretches of green rolling hills like this yesterday, and so the novelty had worn off. The questions had subsided.

But that was not the reason for her drumming.

Kristy glanced sideways at him. “I do like men, Malcolm, if that’s what you’re thinking about me.”

He mashed his lips together, holding in a guffaw. “I was not thinking that, lass, but ’tis good to know.”

“And I’m really not a prude.”

“I should not have said that you were.”

“It’s just... We barely know each other,” she said.

True. He drummed his own fingers on the steering wheel. “Ten questions. What’s your favorite dessert?”

She paused, leaning her head back on the seat. “Um, anything with chocolate,” she said tentatively.

“What day is your birthday?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “June eleventh.”

“I’m January twenty-fourth.”

She sat up straighter. “That was the day before Burns Night.”

“Aye.”

“So...you spent your birthday night in a hotel in Vermont?” she asked, curious again. “Did you even celebrate it?”

He laughed. “No. And that’s exactly what my sister said to me when she called me that morning in your factory to chide me about it.”

“Get out!” Kristin twisted in her seat and grinned at him. “
That’s
what the phone call I overheard was about?”

“Aye.” He nodded. “Being in Scotland, she was five hours ahead of us, and so waited to call, thinking she’d be teasing me about having a hangover. She clearly has the wrong idea about me, you see.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Why? Well, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her much lately. Most of my life, I haven’t lived in Scotland. I only moved back recently, and now I live in a flat in Edinburgh.”

She nodded, digesting it all. He was still working on the assumption that he could convince her to move here. But if he brought it up again too quickly and in the wrong way, he might push her further away. He didn’t want to do that. He liked that they were getting closer.

After a time, Kristin opened the book of Ordinance maps Malcolm had borrowed from Alistair, having promised the B&B owner upon pain of death that he would mail it back to him on Monday, when he returned to the office.

He let the silence sit. When they came to a petrol station at a roundabout, Malcolm pulled the car over and went inside, buying some chocolate bars and two water bottles for the rest of their journey. When he came outside again, Kristin was stretching her legs and twisting her lower back to and fro. He knew how she felt.

He handed her one of the waters and a chocolate bar.

She stared at it, biting her lip in wonder.

No, Kristy,
he thought.
I am not a man who forgets things, once learned.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “You’re a kind person at heart, Malcolm.”

No, he wasn’t. Depending upon the situation, he could be brutal.

But Kristin affected him. She made him relax his defenses and want to be kind to her.

“Are you feeling better now?” he asked.

“Yes.” When they were back in the car, buckled in, she turned to him. “You wanted me to be honest with you. Well, okay, here it is. I’m not...looking for a hookup.” She coughed, embarrassed. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me. When I first heard you talking on the phone that day in my office at Aura—especially when I overheard your accent—a hookup with you was actually the first thing I thought of.”

Her cheeks turned pink, and she laughed self-consciously, tucking her hair behind her ear and looking away from him. “But...that’s really not my personality at heart. And I don’t think that’s yours, either,” she said hurriedly, daring to glance at him. “Besides, we have this...conflict between us regarding Born in Vermont, and I don’t want to fool myself into thinking that a hookup might be able to influence you into implementing my proposal, because that would cause all sorts of additional problems that would haunt me when I got home....”

She let her words trail away. Her hometown back in Vermont, the fate of the factory, was the big excuse she was leaning on, he saw that now.

But was that the whole story? There seemed to be something more he wasn’t seeing, and that she wasn’t showing him.

Playing ten questions with her, feeding her chocolate, hunting down her castle—none of those things were going to bring it out of her, whatever it was.

He reached over and adjusted the mirror. “For today, we’re a team. We’re castle-hunting. How about we leave it at that?”

“What’s in it for you?” she asked.

Time spent with her.
Kristin
was in it for him, and the promise of more in the future, if he didn’t screw it up. But he just smiled at her.

“Malcolm, today is also the day we talk about Born in Vermont. Ten o’clock. You know that.”

“Yes,” he said. “I promised I’d discuss it with you, and I will.”

* * *

T
HE
DETAILED
SCHEMATICS
on the Ordinance map didn’t always translate into what they were seeing on the road ahead of them. And the internet directions made everything seem even more confused.

Malcolm scratched the back of his neck. Eileen had used some kind of itchy detergent on his collar—she’d shrunk the shirt, too. In frustration, he peeled the damn thing off, wadded it and tossed it into the backseat, so he was left wearing his white T-shirt. Kristin didn’t seem to notice.

“Go here,” she told him for the tenth time that morning, turning around and pointing to a fork in the road behind them.

He swore they’d circled the same two mile radius at least three times, from different directions. He felt tired and cross. “You’re not even looking at the map,” he protested. He pulled over and turned it in her lap so he could see what she meant.

“Listen to me, I’m serious,” she said, “my intuition is telling me that the ruins are
that
way.” She pointed again.

“We’ve been down that road before.”

“No, we haven’t.”

“Don’t you remember that cow?” he asked.

“We’ve seen dozen of cows, but not him,” she insisted. “He’s a new one. See the weird twist on his right horn?”

Malcolm couldn’t help it; he laughed.

“I am
deathly
serious,” she said, but she was giggling, too.

“All right, I’ll do what you say.”
Always listen to the woman,
that’s what Malcolm’s father would counsel.

“I’m telling you,” she repeated again. “I just have a feeling.”

“I know, I know. Look, I’m turning the wheel for you,” he grumbled.

A sheep farmer was headed toward them on the narrow single-car lane, and riding some kind of off-road vehicle that Malcolm doubted was properly licensed for the roadways. A sheepdog trotted along beside him.

Malcolm pulled over into a farmer’s driveway, rolled down his window and beckoned the farmer to them.

“Aye?” the farmer said.

“We’re looking for—”

The dog broke into a conniption fit of barking.

“Hold your wheesht!” the farmer said to the sheepdog.

Be silent,
it meant. The dog quieted down.

“We’re looking for McGunnert Castle,” Malcolm continued, using his “Scottish voice.” “It may be a ruin, or even just a cellar.”

“Aye,” the farmer agreed in an equally heavy vernacular. “’Tis a small ruin.”

Malcolm’s heart sped up. “Is it nearby?”

“Of course it is,” Kristin piped in. She pointed past the back window. “It’s down that lane behind us, isn’t it, sir?”

“Aye, ’tis,” the farmer replied. “Another small way. Off to the right, in the trees. Where a grove of pine trees should not be.”

At least Kristin didn’t say, “I told you so.”

Malcolm executed a turn, then did as he was bade. He was through second-guessing.

“There it is!” Kristin shouted. “There! There!”

He drove the short distance, and over the rolling green hill was a stand of pine trees, and beneath that, a shadow....

He braked to a stop, and before he could ask Kristin to wait for him, she opened the door and jumped out, running—her gait easy, hair bouncing in the wind, elbows gracefully pumping. Over the boggy field and into the distance.

Malcolm watched for a moment, feeling the anticipation himself. Still, by habit, he gazed around them. Other than himself and Kristin, he didn’t see a soul.

He locked the vehicle and followed her across a green moor still damp and cool from a passing rain shower. His unfamiliar shoes sank into a few squishy spots. Overhead, a large raven cawed and called.

He passed into the stand of trees with wide-spreading branches and plenty of room to walk beneath and jogged to catch up to her.

“Malcolm, look!”

There were indeed ruins, and she stood atop a low wall, looking upward at a higher, broken wall. The section of wooded area had seemed to grow over the stacked stones, consuming them. True to what they’d been told earlier, the roof was missing from the structure.

“Do you see?” she said. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Aye.” He stood beside her. “But how do you know it’s yours?”

“Because it said McGunnert Castle right on the map.”

“True, and your grandmother was a McGunnert, but how do you know this was hers by right? Did she live here? Was this her village? Or did the letter-writer just pluck her name out of the U.S. phone directories, looking for a person to fool?”

“Here is the proof that she at least knew what this place was.” Kristin stepped onto a low wall and began to climb the crumbling stones higher. “There, in the upper right corner. Do you see?”

Malcolm squinted. And just as he squinted, a shaft of sunlight glowed down upon a square in the stone, illuminating an inlaid carving of a bee in flight.

“Compare that to my grandmother’s brooch.” She unpinned it from her shirt and jumped down to show him the likeness.

Their heads bowed together. Malcolm inspected the bit of carved gold. “It’s the same sketch of a bee.”

Kristin nodded, her face shining. “This small ruin isn’t the whole, fully functioning structure I was hoping for, but it’s a castle nonetheless, and to me, it’s beautiful. Even if somebody else owns it, which I’m sure is true, it doesn’t matter. In my heart, this was my Nanny’s, and now it’s mine. I’m the one who believed in it.”

Malcolm gazed up at the castle wall turret. An eerie feeling came over him, as if he was standing in a place almost...holy. Kristin was meant to be here, and he was meant to be here, too, in this spot, in this moment.

But moments were fleeting, and sadness passed over him. Unless he convinced her otherwise, Kristin would leave soon—gone from his life forever.

It’s not as though he could ever go back to Vermont with her. He was the man who’d destroyed her town’s livelihood. Kristin’s beloved bee potions.

But for the next few minutes at least, they were still together. He bent to the spongy, squishy earth, and pocketed a polished black stone, loosened from the castle wall at some point. Silly and sentimental of him, maybe, but he would keep it on his desk as a reminder.

No.
Who was he kidding? He tossed the stone away. “What are you going to do now?” he asked her.

Kristin pulled a small digital camera from her back pocket and walked around the low structure, clicking photos of the ruins from several angles. He leaned against a boulder, watching her. Without warning, she turned and took a quick photo of him.

Nobody took pictures of him. He didn’t like it and normally didn’t let people do it. “What’s that for?” he asked.

“For me. Just me and nobody else.” Her cheeks were flushed.

Oh, Kristy.
Malcolm couldn’t move.

“Will you...take a picture of me with my castle in the background?” she asked, her voice shaking.

Nodding, he accepted the camera from her and backed up.

Through the lens she was blinking at him, her hands clasped. He paused, holding the image in the viewfinder, memorizing it for himself. With the dew and light hitting the castle wall behind her, she looked beautiful.

A pain in his chest, he snapped the photo.

Her smile faded. “It’s sad, isn’t it? We had a good adventure together.”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t even pretend that he didn’t know what she meant. It seemed as if neither one of them wanted the moment to end.