“I didn’t partake.”
A giggle bubbles up—probably hysteria dressed as humor.
“I noticed. No kilt, no mooning, and you don’t smell remotely of fish.” I grin at the windscreen since he won’t look at me. “Frankly, you’re letting Scotland down.”
“Mooning strangers isn’t my idea of entertainment.” His voice stays flat. “But if you’re that desperate to see it, I’ll oblige.”
Deadpan. No inflection. Like he’d actually do it just to shut me up.
I squint at him through the darkness. “I genuinely don’t know if that’s supposed to be a joke.”
His eyes stay on the road. “Neither do I. Did you expect me to get my hairy backside out in the middle of a pub?”
“Your ass isn’t hairy.”
“You sound very sure.”
Oh bollocks. There’s no way to explain that I’ve become an unwitting expert on his ass thanks to the binocular incident without sounding like a complete stalker.
“Just... imagined it wouldn’t be.” The words come out so weak I wince at myself.
“I’m sure it’s considerably hairier than yours.”
That breaks me completely, and giggles pour out in a slightly manic cascade that’s too loud for the confined space of his Land Rover.
His mouth twitches—barely perceptible, but I catch it in the dashboard light. “Georgie. Stop talking.”
“Why were you even there if you weren’t participating?”
Silence. His grip on the steering wheel tightens.
He came for me.
This man who treats me like I’m a problem on his to-do list showed up in the worst pub on Skye during the messiest night of the year. Stone sober, standing guard in a corner.
But it can’t be romantic. He watched me kiss Malcolm without so much as a muscle twitch in his face. His confusing words outside the pub don’t match his actions, and I’ve learned that actions scream louder than any half-admission growled in a car park.
“Out of obligation to Jake?” I ask.
“No. Because I know what that festival turns into after midnight. Drunk idiots everywhere, fights breaking out, people doing stupid shit they’ll regret. Someone needed to make sure you got home in one piece.”
His tone is matter-of-fact, like he’s explaining something obvious rather than admitting to any kind of gesture that might be construed as caring.
Patrick McLaren called me sweet once, but I think he might be secretly sweet too, in his own gruff, emotionally constipated way. Sometimes, something softer peeks through.
He exhales, adjusting his cap. “I wanted to be in the vicinity to make sure you’re okay. That was my way of doing that whilekeeping boundaries. But if you think I’d sit back and watch you get into a car with someone that drunk, you’re out of your mind.”
“Thanks,” I say softly.
He kills the engine outside my cottage.
I fumble with my seatbelt, the metal buckle slipping through my grip twice before he leans across me.
My hands freeze mid-fumble while his knuckles graze my hip as he finds the release mechanism.
“Do you do this in every mode of transport?”
He freezes, so close I can see the thin scar bisecting his left eyebrow in the dashboard light. So close that if I tilted my head the tiniest bit, our mouths would—
