It’s not romantic in the way Isla expected.
It’s heavier.
Older.
A crowd of expectant paparazzi stands waiting in front of the gate.The flashes go off as the car waits for the gate to open.Every newspaper she’d seen in the airport had the headlines that Keir MacLaren was dead.
Never to sing again or play his guitar or even the keyboard he kept on stage.Never to get the chance to know his daughter.
The limo pulls into the gravel drive, tires crunching loudly in the silence.Isla steps out, stiff and sore, jet lag pressing behind her eyes like a bruise.
Cold air hits her in the face, and she breathes in the Scottish air.
This is where he lived.
This is where he chose to be.
The thought stings more than she expects.
“Hello,” a lady in a white uniform says.“Follow me.”
Quickly, the maid ushers them into the castle.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.Ma’am, you’ll be in the east wing.Your mother right across the hall from you.Tea will be served at four p.m.The butler will bring up your luggage.My name is Matilda.If you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to ring me.”
She leads them up the stairs to their bedrooms.
Inside, the castle is dim and cool, the air smelling faintly of stone, wood smoke, and something masculine, leather, perhaps.Isla’s footsteps echo too loudly on the floor, her heels sounding foreign and intrusive.
A sense of feeling out of place creeps over her.Her father’s house.
“Mr.Bell would like to speak to you whenever you’re ready.He’s in Mr.Keir’s study on the first floor.”
The maid disappears, and Isla sinks onto her bed.She glances around the room, a feeling of despair fills her.Why is this the first time she’s ever been in her father’s house?
She has to get out of here.
Opening the door, she hurries back downstairs, her exhaustion momentarily forgotten.A feeling of foreboding sends her fleeing.
Downstairs, she sees her mother walking into the study.Sigh.Of course, she goes straight to the study.She wants to know what they will inherit.
The solicitor greets them, polite, careful, already measuring, and ushers Alisa into conversation.Isla drifts away, uninterested in legal logistics and wills and estates she never asked for.
But not her mother.She’s all about the inheritance, and that irks Isla.
She needs space.A place to escape from the despair and hopelessness filling her.In a cruel twist of fate, she will never know her father.
She wanders down a corridor, then another, the castle unfolding in quiet wings and turns.Portraits line the walls, stern faces, judgmental eyes.She wonders briefly if Keir ever felt watched here.
A door stands ajar at the end of a hallway.
Isla pushes it open without thinking.
She assumes it’s staff space.Storage.A back corridor she shouldn’t be in.All she was looking for was a place to escape this massive building.A door to the outside.
Instead, she collides with a solid body.
“Oof—!”
