Taking a deep breath to compose herself, Sadie kept her gaze locked on the breathtaking view. She just needed to be herself and stop acting like this was the first time she had ever talked to a member of the male species. This was just business and he was just a man. A damn fine man, but a man just the same.
She immediately forgot her advice and risked a glance back at him. “Sorry,” she repeated. She cleared her throat and consciously relaxed the stranglehold she currently had on one of the door handles. “I didn’t mean to laugh”—she stole another glance back over her shoulder—“but you have to admit the child’s creativity is impressive.”
Something else he had said about the crisis in the kitchen gave her an idea to help calm her case of raw nerves to a more manageable level and find something—anything—to talk about. She would ask him about the crisis.Get him talking about this family.“You said Esme might push your father into one of his spells. Is he in poor health?” The elder MacDara had seemed a bit odd and absentminded in the boardroom, but other than that he’d looked fine.
Alec joined her at the wall of windows.
Sadie shifted slightly, doing her best to increase the space between them with as much subtlety as possible. It was amazing how much heat and . . . and . . . something she couldn’t quite put her finger on rolled off the man in waves. It wrapped her in a teasing cloak ofcome closer—you know you want to know me better.The air crackled whenever he was near. Every hair on her arms stood on end. The closer he got, the more she wanted to shiver and snuggle up against him just to see how much thatfeel-goodtingle would grow.
Alec glanced down at the space between them, then fixed her with a knowing grin. He knew exactly what she was doing—and found it amusing. He clasped his hands to the small of his back, eased sideways to close the distance between them, then turned his attention to the view out the windows. “Aye. Esme is creative—too creative for her own good, as well as ours sometimes.” He barely shook his head, his amusement fading to a tensed, unreadable look. “AndAthairisfine—just a wee bit too old and muddled in the head to weather many of Esme’s storms.”
He pulled open one of the doors and gallantly waved toward the charmingly rustic cushioned settee and pair of rocking chairs situated in one corner of the wide redwood deck. “Would ye care to sit outside and visit a bit before we go over our duties for the coming weeks? ’Tis a lovely fall day and I wish to learn more about the gifted writer of the entertaining emails that gave me so many reasons to smile over the past few weeks.”
Every self-preservation alarm Sadie possessed blared out loud and clear, warning her to stay on her toes and be ready. If this was a trap, here was where he would set the bait for whatever was going to happen that would make her wish she had never come to North Carolina.
She slid past Alec, the heat of his nearness triggering that same wave of skin-tingling shiver bumps. She avoided his gaze and hurried out onto the deck. The scent of him washed across her. Fresh-scrubbed male. Clean and enticing with just a hint of the wild, as though he’d bathed in the middle of the woods in preparation for the hunt.
Sadie held her breath to stave off the urge to back up, lean in close, and take another long, appreciative sniff of the broad chest that had just been mere inches from her nose. She clenched her fists so tightly all her knuckles popped. Glancing at the cozy gathering of seats in the corner, she barely paused before veeringtoward the other side of the deck. There was no way she could sit still.
She took refuge next to the wood railing hemming in the porch. Perfect spot. She could stand here, enjoy the view, and act like she had everything under control. She could do this. She wasn’t all that experienced when it came to men, but she was no fool.
Sadie rested her forearms atop the wide plank and leaned to peer down into the woods below. “It’s beautiful here. You are a very lucky man, Mr. MacDara.”
The wood of the railing creaked as Alec leaned on it next to her. “I prefer ye call me Alec—aye?” He took a slow look around the area, then nodded toward the blazing reds, oranges, and yellows of the autumnal wood. Here and there the vibrant colors were interrupted by the rich green of lush pines pushing their way toward the sun. “And yes—I’ve been blessed with many opportunities and the good health to work hard enough to make them a success.”
Had she worded that wrong? Had she made it sound as though she thought him entitled? Sadie inched sideways, surreptitiously putting a little more space between them. “I didn’t mean to sound as though I thought you hadn’t earned”—she waved a hand toward the wood—“all this. The park. The lodge . . . I mean the keep.” Great. And now the babbling would begin. She tried to recover with a hard swallow.“Sorry. I don’t always word things right—at least not when I’m talking out loud.” That sounded awesome. Maybe she should tell him when she was writing, she was great. She edited out all the stupid—but when talking, the stupid escaped.
Alec’s gaze dropped to his arms propped atop the railing, then he subtly shifted sideways, closing the distance she’d just placed between them. Without looking at her, he nudged his shoulder against hers. “Rest easy, lass,” he said softly. His voicevibrated with a deep, soothing tone she’d replay in her dreams. He sidled a glance at her and grinned. “Ye’ve got nothing to fear from me. I swear it.”
Maybe if she grabbed this Scottish bull by the horns and got all her misconceptions out in the open, she’d feel better. She hadn’t had this bad a case of uneasiness in years and didn’t like it. She faced Alec, keeping one hand planted on the wood railing to steady herself. “If I have nothing to fear from you—no worries about ulterior motives or . . .” she struggled to pick the right words “. . . or whatever.” She released her chokehold on the railing and made a sadly weak flip of her hand. “Then tell my why—straight out and in plain terms: why am I here?” She pointed at him, taking great pride in the fact that she’d managed to keep her finger from trembling. Confidence bolstered; she pointed at him again. “Why am I here with you for the next six weeks?”
Alec straightened from his relaxed lean against the wood railing, his gaze focused on the colorful tapestry of the acreage of trees surrounding the keep. His smile was gone, replaced by an unexplainable look. He seemed lost in a daydream—a daydream that had him puzzled.
“Thirty-one emails,” he finally said with a decisive dip of his chin.
“What?”
He turned and faced her, dead serious, with a look in his eyes that made her forget to breathe. “Thirty . . . one . . . emails,” he repeated, enunciating each word slowly and clearly to prevent the slightest hint of misunderstanding.
Sadie traced her fingers along the rough grain of the wood plank, willing the board to give up all its secrets about Alec MacDara. The disturbingly handsome man was so unreadable. “What do you mean by thirty-one emails?” she finally asked,while staring down at the rough-grained board and tracing the pattern with her fingernail.
“Ye asked why ye were here.” Alec leisurely turned around and leaned back against the railing. Fingers laced together, he rested his hands across his middle and propped his elbows on the sturdy banister behind him. “’Tis because of yer emails. Yer way with words.” His voice dropped lower, took on a quiet, sultry tone—and sounded almost . . . lonely. He looked at her—not just a glance, but something more. His gaze heated, growing more personal and soul-piercing by the second. “Each email ye sent drew me in—touched me in ways I canna explain. I heard yer laughter in each line. Felt yer joy. I glimpsed yer heart in those words. Saw their purity. Learned yer truths.”
He reached out and smoothed a curl of hair away from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. The unexpected gentleness of his touch stole her breath and made her heart double-thump with a giddy rhythm.
“The more I read, the more I realized I needed time with the writer of those messages. I needed time with you,” he finished, his expression almost . . . hopeful.
“They were just emails,” she whispered, mesmerized by the softness of his touch and the turbulent storm of emotions she saw in his eyes. A hungry loneliness was reflected in their depths and Alec no longer attempted to hide it.
She’d written the first missive in standard marketingsnag their attentionstyle. But then after a spark of intuitiveness—or maybe what some might call divine guidance—she’d been inspired to write the rest of the emails as though she were clueing in a long-lost friend on all the silliness of the fool’s-gold glitter of Hollywood. The more she wrote, the more she envisioned the reader as a cherished pen pal she hoped to meet someday.
Delia would have fired her on the spot if she’d read any of those emails. Of course, Sadie had also figured the reader of the emails was some grossly underpaid assistant working in small-town North Carolina—maybe even a woman her own age—lonely and looking for a friend. Sadie tried not to flounder even deeper into the mire of need reflected in Alec’s gaze. She had so figured this all wrong. Who would’ve thought Alec MacDara would have read those emails himself? All thirty-one of them.
“J-just emails,” she hesitantly stammered. Her alarm bells clanged even louder, and a sense of imminent danger surged through her like the burn of good whisky. “I thought I was sending them to . . . y-your assistant. You know . . . a counterpart. Somebody on my level. They weren’t addressed to the CEO. I wouldn’t have used such silly words to the . . . b-boss of the company.” The way Alec’s tempting mouth quirked to one side as his full lips barely parted made it difficult to speak intelligently, and even more impossible to think.
“They were not just silly words.” Alec leaned in close, barely frowning as he tucked more hair behind her ear and cautiously cradled her cheek in his large, callused hand. “Ye ken that I mean ye no harm, Sadie Williams,” he said, ever so slowly drawing her in. “Ye ken that for certain . . . aye?”
Ken?She had a pretty good idea whatkenmeant but didn’t trust herself to answer. At the moment, standing upright with a minimal level of composure instead of either tossing caution to the wind and climbing aboard this delectable Scottish mountain of a man or turning and running like hell in the other direction was all she could manage. She wet her lips and focused all her senses on the totally kissable mouth hovering so close she could almost feel the velvety heat of its pending touch. Yeah. She was so not running.
