Jamie stepped out and mist seeped into the car, its cold fingers prickling her cheeks. She let herself out and shut her door, the thud deadened by the thick air. Using his phone as a flashlight, Jamie dug around a loose chunk of stone at one corner of the cottage. After a minute he held something up. “They’ve been hiding the key in the same spot for decades. Technically it’s not breaking in now, right?”
The fog was so thick she could scoop a cupful and drink it, if it didn’t remain a wary meter out of reach. Hard to imagine a happy family on summer vacation. Hard to imagine summer at all, though the thought of a night here alone with Jamie heated her up from the inside.
He unlocked a wooden door and shoved it open with a scrape. She clunked up the two stone steps and he stood aside to usher her into a living room. As he followed, the gray-white glow of his phone created more shadows than light, black shapes rearing and diving behind the furniture—a wooden table, four chairs, a sofa, a candelabra above a blackened fireplace, a kitchenette. It smelled of earth and damp and soot and firewood. Someone had brightened it up with turquoise curtains tied back beside the blinds, a pale blue-and-pink tartan throw draped over the sofa, a thick red rug on a rippled flagstone floor that might have been molded by centuries of foot traffic. Jamie shoved the door shut and laid the keys on a windowsill above the kitchen sink. As he slipped past, he touched each side of her waist. She tensed.
Two internal doors gaped, one revealing a tiny bathroom, the other a bedroom not much larger, with a bed that could generously be called a double. The only bedroom.
Not that they’d be doing much sleeping...and definitely nothing else.
“I take it you don’t have a big family,” she said.
“My parents took the bed, my sister curled up on the couch, I had a camp bed—we had to push the table aside to fit it in.” He lowered the backpack to the floor. “My mum would light the fire even in summer because she liked the pine smell and the ambience, so we’d sleep with the doors and windows open.”
“I’m struggling to imagine warmth.” But she could see the charm—feel it like a tug on her heart. It wasn’t a place her parents would choose. They liked five-star hotels, vibrant cities, art, museums, restaurants. “Where are they now, your family?”
“Here. Scotland.” He scooted past again, briefly touching her upper arms, opened a little box attached to a wall and flicked a switch. The fridge rattled and hummed.
“Scotland” was evidently all she’d get. “Will you visit them, once this is over?”
“Maybe,” he said, in an unnaturally casual tone. She reached for a light switch but he caught her wrist.
“No lights,” he said. “With few leaves on the trees, it’ll be visible at the country house. I’d rather not risk a neighborly knock on the door. No one at all knows we’re here and we need to keep it that way. Wow, you really are cold.” He took both her hands in his and held all four to his chest, frowning at the fireplace. Just him being protective, being the carer, but her breath rushed in. “I’ll find some firewood. The fog and darkness will hide the smoke.” He squeezed her hands and slowly let them go, as if giving her time to regain control of them.
They brought in their few remaining belongings and Samira set up the computer on the table while Jamie headed out with the wood basket. From habit, she repacked everything else, using the laptop screen as a light. She was over occupying other people’s vacation spaces, though at least this time she wasn’t alone with the four Js. If only it were a real vacation—the kind where you left your toothbrush out, drank red wine, played cards, laughed, rested your cheek on your man’s chest and listened to his heartbeat and felt his steady breath in your hair...
The door swung open and thumped against the wall. She jumped. Jamie swept in, heaving the basket, filling the room with the tang of freshly chopped pine. He kicked the door closed. Attraction smacked into her chest like a physical force. Primal instinct? Protectorandprovider. Shouldn’t she be immune to that, as a woman of the twenty-first century?
“What’s that?” he said, staring at a box on the table, wrapped in gold foil. Her “present” for the fake wedding—actually the boxed-up leftovers of her home security monitoring system.
She tore off the wrapping. “It’s a motion-sensor camera. I thought I’d drive ten minutes up the road and install it. It’ll send an alert to the app on my phone if anyone approaches. Just in case your instinct doesn’t alert us first.”
“Pure dead brilliant,” he said.
He lowered the basket beside the fireplace and knelt. His palm shot to the dressing on his arm. He held it for a second and tentatively rolled his shoulder back. Why deny that he was in pain? Why refuse medication? He didn’t seem the type to let masculine pride shape his decisions—but then, there were mysteries in him she couldn’t decipher. She swallowed. She was salivating. Hunger—forfood. She dived into the shopping bag on the table and found more protein bars, plus bananas, dark chocolate and cashews.
“Sorry,” he said, turning his head. “I didn’t factor in an evening meal. And whatever became of lunch? How about I try my luck with the trout while you fish for dirt on a certain presidential candidate?”
“You’re going fishing? It’s nearly midnight.”
“So the fish won’t be expecting it. My brain is straddling three different time zones right now. It’s fishing time in one of them, I’m sure. Chances of sleep are very low.”
“Me, too. And I had an overnight sleep in the car, so...”
“If I can find only pike then I’m afraid we’re going hungry. My dad used to force-feed them to us.” He gave a melodramatic shudder.
She sat at the table, eating cashews and staring at Jamie’s broad back as he ripped newspaper and laid the fire. He seemed to take up more than his share of the room. Had he always been that muscular or was it a soldier thing?
She forced herself to focus on the laptop. Good honest—dishonest—work would make her forget about the way her belly filled with warmth every time she looked at his crinkly eyes or his accent rolled over her or he brushed past smelling of mint or he kissed her...
Not that they’d be kissing again. Whatever his reasons for pulling away, they were deeply buried and none of her business. She would stop obsessing about him when she started obsessing about finding this information.
Besides, who could fail to be attracted to a sexy, caring doctor? And a doctor who was also a soldier—how many boxes did that tick? Her stomach filled with bees again. In a minute it’d start buzzing.
She sensed a change in the air. He was studying her, his head tilted, lit by the blazing paper and kindling.
“What is it?” she said, her cheeks warming.
“You were staring at a black screen. Penny for the complicated string of thoughts that’s tying your brain in knots.”
