“What do you think?”
She was starting to gain an appreciation for the weirdness of his life. “Flight 1387,” she managed. “Well, I think I’m glad it doesn’t leave until tomorrow.”
He shivered. “Agreed. Well, we’ll take it and let time wait a bit for us. How do you feel about sushi for tonight?”
“Disgusting.”
“Good,” he said, sounding relieved. “I’ll tell Gavin you’re insisting on steak. He tends to roll right over me when it comes to choosing places for supper.”
“I’ll protect you.”
“I have the feeling you just might, lass.”
She hoped her duties in that regard would never be more difficult than nixing a restaurant in a city full of them.
She had the feeling time might have a different opinion entirely.
Chapter 22
Nathanielstood at the window of his office with a choice view of the Tower and stared out at the street below him. It was a view he quite liked, actually, but he had always appreciated the endless movement of humanity in a big city. London had always felt less like a large city than a small one that had sprawled over enough acreage to give it a formidable place on the map. He enjoyed his little corner of it, loved his little flat in Notting Hill, was happy to step outside his door and encounter coffee and shops instead of medieval lads and swords.
That wasn’t to say he didn’t consider his home to be the Highlands, though, for he did. He craved the heather and the sea and the endless sky. He loved the fact that he could go walking for hours and not see another soul. That was made slightly more complicated by his having continual brushes with a more unvarnished Highland experience, but what was there to do about that? He couldn’t seem to solve it on his own, Patrick MacLeod seemed perfectly content to wait for him to come to terms with his double life and ask for aid, and he honestly wanted nothing more than to exchange his sword for a much smaller piece of metal to go around a certain gel’s finger.
He leaned back against the wall and looked at the woman in question. She was sitting at his desk, flipping through binders full of projects that he had funded. He’d considered the idea as he’d been sitting in that expensive conference room of MacLeod Surety Company, wishing his grandfather hadsomething else to do to keep himself busy, and wondering why Gerald was finding himself lurking in places he shouldn’t have been.
He’d put off thinking about Gerald on their last day in New York in favor of simply enjoying a life that felt normal. He’d had a lovely dinner with a brother he realized he spent far too little time with, watched that brother and a woman he fell harder for every moment he was with her get along as if they’d known each other for years, then slept through some show about witches and the rehabilitation of the same.
He hadn’t wanted to admit to being nervous about anything at all, never mind how Emma might truly feel about him, but he couldn’t deny that he had been. He still was. He’d listened to Emma tell Gavin a few of her father’s more noteworthy escapades as a corporate raider and he’d been very clear on how she viewed the same. That was not a woman who cared for destruction.
He supposed Patrick MacLeod had a point: medieval Scotland was likely not the place for Emma Baxter.
They’d landed at dawn and he’d happily caught a cab to his flat and made her breakfast before he’d given her his bed for a nap.
Lunch had been something off the street before they’d caught the Tube to his office. She’d been quiet on the way there, which he understood. It felt as if a monumental hurdle was there in front of them both.
He’d turned her loose in his office and let her choose what she wanted to look at without trying to influence her in any way. It was probably best she form her own opinions about his work. Given her background with her father and her recent experience with the less noble members of his own family, he thought it might be all that would give him any hope with her.
He’d hijacked his partner’s office and done a bit of business, occasionally leaned into his office to see if Emma was still there, then left her to her own devices.
He’d finally given up pretending to work and taken to pacing, though that hadn’t taken up as much time as he would have liked considering the modest nature of his office. His partner’s office was enormous, which suited him, but Nathaniel didn’t particularly care for sitting behind a desk. He preferred to meet with clients in coffee shops or in the park.
Well, that and he spent so much time on the road, as it were. A fancy office seemed like a waste of money when he was rarely there—
He realized suddenly that Emma had paused in her perusing and was looking at him.
Tears were streaming down her face.
He looked at her carefully. “Good?” he asked.
She pushed back from his desk and stood up. He leaned back against the wall because he realized that, beyond any reason, he felt as if he’d known that woman forever and forever wasn’t going to be long enough to keep knowing her. If she pitched him now—
He stopped thinking when she walked to him and stopped in front of him.
She leaned up and kissed him softly.
“Well,” he managed as she smiled briefly at him, then walked back over and sat down on his chair. “Well.”
She ran her fingers over the last page of that particular binder. Those were his micro loans, little bits of money that no one else would have cared about but changed lives in places where people didn’t often go. It was his favorite book, as it happened.
