However, when she got back to New York, she was a good deal less quick in returning texts, even though she always picked up when he phoned.
This was because she was having lunch with the “G-Force” to fill them in on Alex and Rix’s wedding and her mother’s shenanigans.
Or she was over at Nora and Jamie’s to work with Nora on some event.
Or she was shopping with Cadence, Mika’s daughter, for some special occasion.
Or she was busy cooking, because she’d been asked by one of the G-Force to make some dessert of hers that he wanted to use to impress a date.
Or she was at her father’s, making sure some repair she’d ordered happened as she expected.
It unnerved him how full her life was in New York. She’d given the impression it was aimless, when it was anything but.
He could live anywhere, but considering the matches he called were mostly European, the commute would be impossible. He’d have to keep his flat in Edinburgh and be there most of the time regardless.
If they got to that place, he’d hoped she’d move to Scotland.
He was wondering about that now.
A long-distance relationship was far from the best-case scenario, but it could work, if you both had a firm sense of where you’d land when that time came.
It’d never work if both parties lived full lives where they were and neither wanted to leave it.
That wasn’t a worry for now.
They’d had two dates, multiple phone calls, a myriad of texts, and each had an understanding this was something deep, something special, something they wanted to explore, and that was all Dair needed for the now.
He knew her flight had landed. He’d timed in his head how long it would take to get through Customs and Immigration. And he knew she should be through those doors any minute now.
Five minutes later, she was.
And the instant he saw her, his chest warmed, at the same time he roared with laughter.
She gave him a dour look.
He strode forward, still laughing, and when they met, he swept her in his arms, the massive bouquet of deep red roses he held slammed against their hips, and he heard a variety of things tumble to the ground as he took her mouth.
She tasted of bubblegum and Blake, and it was the sweetest thing ever to touch his tongue.
When he lifted his head, he teased, “Did ye leave any duty-free shopping in the shops, lassie?”
“Shut up, Dair.”
He grinned at her, it getting wider as he saw her hair down, the front sweeping back to fall into big fat curls on her shoulders. She was wearing a black cardie over a black turtleneck and a pair of gray trousers with pleats and very wide legs. A thick statement belt was around her waist. And of course she was wearing high-heeled boots.
“Trust ye to look like you’re walking off a runway when ye walk off a plane after a seven-hour flight,” he remarked.
“I’m famished and I hate airports, so stop being wonderful and get me out of here,” she demanded.
Dair continued to smile as he let her go but gave her the flowers, and they were worth every bit of the exorbitant cost of buying them with the way her eyes lit but her expression gentled when she took them.
He then gathered up all her shopping bags and took the handle of her large suitcase.
He rolled it with his arm around her shoulders. She carried her tote, rolled her carry-on and juggled the flowers so she could wrap her arm around his waist.
“Flight go all right?” he asked on the way to the car park.
“It was a flight. It’s over,” she replied.
