She realized she was in too far to escape without sounding crazy, so she decided she would just keep going and look confident. “He didn’t go running through the garden just now, did he?”
Patrick took her bags from his wife and sister-in-law, put them in the car, then shut the hatch. He turned and looked at her. “That lad I think you saw is a local, but I’ve never met him. I understand he owns the cottage on the loch.”
“We were just thinking about him earlier,” Madelyn said with a smile. “Nathaniel MacLeod, isn’t it?”
“The very same, I believe,” Patrick said. “He came vaulting over the hedge just now and left a dent in my car.”
“What was left ofhim?” Sunny asked with a laugh.
“He ran off before I could find out,” Patrick said. He looked at his wife and lifted his eyebrows briefly. “Odd happenings in Scotland, aye?”
“Very,” Madelyn agreed. “Maybe we should have made the effort to go visit him before now, all isolated and alone like he is out there without neighbors.”
“Or we could continue to just let him have his privacy,” Patrick said wryly. “If he’s hiding, he probably just wants to be left alone.”
“I don’t know how he manages that,” Sunny said with a snort. “I think there isn’t a socialite in London who hasn’t pinned me at a party to ask me about him.”
“What do you tell them?” Madelyn asked.
“I say that I understand he’s molded from all the rain, he’s extremely ugly, and that all those rumors of his staggering wealth are grossly inflated.” Sunny looked at Emma. “I guess you’ll know better than the rest of us how much of a recluse he is, given that you’ll be living next to him.”
Emma smiled weakly. So that was the guy everyone seemed to be hunting. That was obviously how he’d perfected that sprint he’d demonstrated for them earlier.
“Well, as long as he’s not dangerous,” she managed.
“Meek as a lamb, I’m sure,” Sunny said cheerfully. “I think he travels a lot, actually.”
Emma didn’t want to speculate, so she simply got into Patrick’s SUV where invited to, then realized what she was missing. She turned and looked at Sunny, who was sitting next to her. “I’m forgetting my car,” she said, “and really, this is too generous—”
Patrick handed his keys to his wife, then hopped out of the car. He opened her door and held out his hand. “I’ll bring it along for you.”
“I couldn’t—”
“You could,” he said easily.
She dug reluctantly in her purse and found her keys, then handed them over slowly. “It’s the gray Ford in the back.”
“I’ll find it,” he assured her. “See you gels at home.”
Madelyn got into the driver’s seat and looked over her shoulder. “Feel like you’re being kidnapped?”
Emma smiled in spite of herself. “A little, but I’d rather think of it as a very welcome rescue.”
“Ulterior motive,” Madelyn said airily. “We’re counting on you to dig up dirt on that reclusive Nathaniel MacLeod. Sunny and I have been trying to figure him out for the past couple of years with absolutely no success. No one seems to know anything about him.”
“That they’re willing to tell,” Sunny corrected. “I think Mrs. McCreedy knows a lot more than she’s willing to divulge.”
“Do you think he’s dangerous?” Emma asked casually. “Really?”
“Mrs. McCreedy says he’s delicious,” Sunny said, “which is her highest level of praise, so I would say reclusive? Yes. Dangerous? No.” She shrugged. “People come to Scotland for various reasons, I suppose, and privacy is definitely one of them. The rumor is that he was born here, so maybe he just feels like it’s home.”
“Or he doesn’t want to deal with the London social scene, which you apparently love so much you can’t seem to stay away from it,” Madelyn said sweetly.
Sunny hit her sister, Madelyn laughed, and Emma supposed they wouldn’t mind if she let them have at each other. She was suddenly finding it difficult to breathe in and out without wheezing. She’d had her own reasons for coming to Scotland, and privacy had been very high on her own list, damn it anyway.
She wasn’t at all comfortable with how easily Sheldon had tracked her down.
She made the occasional bit of polite chitchat with the sisters as they drove to Madelyn’s house, tried not to gape at what was less a house and more a small castle, then followed the sisters inside. The first room she saw was apparently the great hall, though it was relatively cozy in spite of its size. She would have asked for details, but she was suddenly distracted by the sight of a large, thuggish-looking guy walking into the room with a kindergarten-age girl on his hip and a pair of squirming toddlers corralled under his other arm.
