Shutting the door, very much aware I was half-naked and probably reeked of sex and Eilidh, I physically retreated from them, raking a hand through my hair. “Aye, sorry. Just let me shower. Make yourselves at home, have a coffee, there’s food in the?—”
“Fyfe, is everything okaaaaay—” Eilidh had wandered down the stairs in just my T-shirt and now stood midway, gaping in horror at her brother.
Apparently, we’d both forgotten Lewis and Callie were coming over to help finish the nursery.
A snort covered by a cough came from Callie’s direction.
Lewis stared stonily at his sister. Then at me.
I waited, heart pounding.
“Fuck.” He grimaced, shielding the sight of her with his palm. “At least do me the courtesy of hiding it for a while.”
Callie pressed her cheek against Lewis’s back, hugging him from behind. Laughter trembled on her lips. “It’s okay, Adair.Realizing your wee sister is a woman is scary, but we’ll get you through it.”
“Funny,” he huffed but covered her hands with his as he looked at me. “You take care of her or I kill you.”
“Fair.” I clapped him on the shoulder, relieved he wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it. “You guys settle. We’ll shower.”
“Separately. On entirely different continents.” Lewis led Callie into the living space.
“Aye, sure, that’s exactly how we’ll do it,” Eilidh called down to him. “We won’t at all be washing each other’s bodies while you’re downstairs picturing us on separate continents.”
Evil. She was truly evil.
My shoulders shook with laughter as I met her on the stairs.
Her eyes danced with amusement.
Fuck, I loved her.
“Payback, Eils. Payback!” Lewis warned from below.
Eilidh giggled and turned upstairs. I followed her, grinning at the flash of the boxers she’d adorned. She’d pulled on a clean pair of my underwear.
I didn’t know why that was so sexy, but it was.
Between that and walking back into my bedroom to find it musky with the aroma of our exploits last night, I knew I was about to break the bro code.
Despite what she’d joked, Eilidh sat on the end of the bed. “Do you want to shower first?”
“Sure.” I had no intention of showering alone. Instead, I strolled into my bathroom to take my contacts out. The world blurred before me. However, I wasn’t so blind I couldn’t see enough to shower. I did every day. But Eilidh didn’t need to know that. “I’m slightly blind without my contacts. You want to help me out here?”
Eilidh wandered into the bathroom. Her lips trembled with laughter. “You are so full of shit.” Without another word, shewhipped off my T-shirt and boxers. Grinning like a fool, I got naked too and hauled her into my generously sized shower.
We did wash and shampoo, but it took us longer than usual because our hands kept wandering to places that were very fucking distracting.
Eilidh had to bite her lip to stifle her cries as I made her come. Twice.
Thirty-Seven
EILIDH
The Cavendishes lived in the same development as Fyfe. For a while they used to split their time between here, Gairloch, and London, but when Theo’s wife, Sarah, had gotten unexpectedly pregnant (I knew from Callie that the Cavendishes hadn’t wanted children, which was difficult to believe considering how much they doted on their daughter Rose), they’d gradually started spending more time in Ardnoch. They wanted Rose to have stability, so they lived in Ardnoch permanently now that she attended primary school.
However, they still traveled during the summer and Theo traveled more often because he was not just a screenwriter but a producer. Now that Rose was a wee bit older, he was starting to work on projects that did require some travel.
His wife, Sarah McCulloch Cavendish, wasn’t someone I’d known particularly well as a child, even though she’d lived in Ardnoch her entire life. Her cousin, Jared, had returned to Ardnoch to help their grandfather Collum with the farm, and the three of them kept to themselves. Plus, there was some antagonism between my family and the McCullochs owing to a generations-old land dispute so, growing up, I’d never known ifSarah disliked us. It turned out she couldn’t care less about old arguments and was now a good friend to my family.
