‘It’s nearly there …’ he groaned with the effort. ‘It’s nearly there …’
To my extreme surprise, the door screeched open and a red-faced Scotsman collapsed through it, falling to the floor in front of me.
‘Rory!’ I jumped up, flung my arms around his neck and kissed his sweaty auburn head. ‘Oh my God, I love you!’
Without waiting for a reply, I raced out of the tower and back into the house proper, hurling myself at the first radiator I came to, stretching out my arms and pressing my whole body against it. Warmth. Magical, wonderful warmth. I would never take central heating for granted again.
‘Might help if you’d bothered to put on your trews this morning,’ Rory said, climbing back to his feet.
I yanked the hem down again, the jumper fully stretched out of shape, and it still only just covered my backside.
‘I’m not leaving my room again without a full set of thermals,’ I assured him. ‘But seriously, thank you. I really thought I was going to be stuck up there.’
I looked up to see him frowning down at me.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, yanking my jumper lower. ‘Apart from the obvious?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Only, I was sure Callum said you were blonde.’
‘After that I did molecular biosciences for a year but all the second-year lectures were in the morning andI’m not a morning person.’ Rory poured two very strong cups of tea from his mother’s stoneware teapot. ‘I switched over to astronomy but I couldn’t see a future in it so I’m doing history of art instead.’
‘Because there’s so many more careers in that field?’
‘Right,’ he agreed, missing my sarcasm completely. ‘Immunology was probably the most interesting subject I’ve done but who wants to get caught up in all that if there’s another pandemic?’
‘Immunologists?’ I suggested.
Heaping a very large teaspoon of sugar into my mug, I considered the youngest McClay sibling as he produced a jug of milk from the fridge. He was tall like everyone else in the family and had the same shade of rusted brown hair but instead of blue eyes, his were grey, like his mum’s. Rory was a knockout. There was a mischievous glow about him that was missing in his siblings but I recognised it as pure undiluted Derek McClay. Third time lucky, they’d created a perfect blend of both parents.
He stuck out the tip of his tongue, concentrating as he added milk to his mug and still managing to spill it all over the table.
‘Who knows what I’ll do at the end of this year. Might be time to try something different.’
‘A job?’
‘Fuck no, I meant a different course.’
‘Right.’ I smiled when he went to pick up his tea, neither crying over or even bothering to clean up the spilled milk. ‘If you enjoyed immunology, I really think it’s worth giving it a second look. There are tons of opportunities, you’d get to travel and the field has some funding right now, compared to most others, that is. No one ever has enough funding.’
Rory squinted at me.
‘How come you know so much about it? Aren’t you a massage therapist?’
‘A passing interest,’ I blustered, wrapping my still frozen hands around the roasting hot mug. ‘Sort of a hobby.’
‘Could you not spend your spare time doomscrolling on TikTok like normal people?’
We both laughed, me with nerves but Rory as carefree as I assumed he always was. After ten minutes in his company, I got the feeling Rory McClay didn’t worry himself too much about anything.
‘You’re an interesting one, aren’t you?’ He kicked his feet up onto the kitchen table, surveying me with a curious eye. ‘How did you and Callum meet again?’
Shit. I had no idea what he’d told them, if anything.
‘It’s such a boring story,’ I lied through a yawn. ‘If I tell it again I’ll put myself to sleep. Tell me about Glasgow, is it fun? I’ve never been.’
‘It’s the best, you should go.’ He took the bait happily, jumping on my offer to talk about himself. ‘Perfect place for the black sheep of the family.’
‘You?’ I grinned as he dug around in the open biscuit tin between us. ‘I thought Callum was the black sheep?’
