They reached the hollow just as the worst of the rain hit.
Dashing inside, they stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the rain cascade in sheets, dimpling the lake and shaking the leaves.
“Quick thinking. Spotting this.” Tavish squeezed her hand in approbation.
At which point, Isla realized she was still holding it.
His hand, that was.
She dropped her grip as if scorched.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Tavish’s grin. The wretch likely understood her every action.
The thought made her frown. And maybe huff a sigh.
“Am I so transparent to you?”
He laughed then. “Nae, lass. Not always.”
She huffed again.
“Though I will admit,” he continued, “sometimes reading ye feels as easy as a book.”
Hearing him echo her own thoughts . . . a shiver traveled her spine.
She nudged him with her shoulder. It was meant to be a display ofannoyance, but as he didn’t move an inch, it only reinforced the hard solidity of his body.
He said nothing for a long while, both of them staring out from their small grotto as rain hammered the landscape.
“I feel it, too.” His words so quiet, she almost didn’t hear them. “The sense that there are wee bits of ye I never learned. Or perhaps never clearly saw. For example, I didn’t know ye play the piano with such skill. I sat in awe listening to ye the other night.”
Isla flushed at the compliment. “Yes. Pianos were rather in short supply atop Cairnfell, so I was never able to give you a proper demonstration.”
“I imagine ye have other talents I have yet to see.”
“We were so young. Am I so changed then?”
“No more than myself. But I remember that wild lass, standing atop the cairn, screaming her rage into the wind. The lass who bravely took my hand and stepped into the swimming hole that day. And I wonder . . . what happened to that lass? Or was I merely seeing what I wished?”
“Gray happened,” Isla whispered around the sudden ache in her throat. “That’s what befell that lass.”
“He hurt ye?”
“Not physically. Never that. Just . . . my mind. My soul. He was angry and cutting. My life always balanced on a knife’s edge.” One of a thousand reasons why Isla had found such joy at Malton Hill. It was the one place Gray never intruded.
“A knife’s edge,” Tavish repeated slowly. “Ye mentioned his threats to cast ye out. Is that what ye refer to?”
Isla swallowed, refusing to let tears fall. She had already shed a lifetime of them over her parents’ betrayals, over Gray and his changeable nature.
Rain continued to patter down, the world a soft hush. The heat from Tavish’s large body saturated her left side. The scent of damp wool and his cologne—bergamot and sandalwood and an exotic spice she couldn’t quite pin down—engulfed her senses. She was torn between gulping it in or breathing through her mouth to avoid it entirely.
But then that rather summed up how she felt about Tavish as a whole—did she want to run far and fast from him? Or grab hold of those broad shoulders and lose herself in his kiss?
Standing beside him now felt like times past. When he would take her hand and they would talk and everything else would simply . . . melt away.
How she had missed this. The ability to speak without worrying about what the other person might think or say.
“There is more . . .” she began.
