‘It’s an away day. We’re meeting away from the faculty offices.’
She frowned, sure that he was being evasive. Why was he being so secretive? Unless … could he be meeting a married lover or something like that? If he were having a clandestine meeting, that might explain it, although from what she’d seen of Ross, he didn’t seem the type. But then what did she know about how men thought? She’d got it so painfully wrong with Philip.
‘That suits me.’
‘Are you sure? I don’t mind dropping you off somewhere.’
‘That’s pretty central to the main shops.’
‘Okay, if you’re sure. I don’t mind driving you somewhere else. Did you want to go to the Old Town?’
Izzy had an insane desire to laugh and was tempted to ask him to drop her on the Royal Mile. She knew, like everyone in Edinburgh, that the Royal Mile would be crowded with tourists spilling onto the road and coaches gravitating to Holyrood Palace, causing the traffic to back up behind them.
‘I’ll come with you to the car park. As I said, that suits me perfectly. Thanks to Jeanette, I’ve got a list of who’s coming for Christmas, so I can put together stockings, and I thought some touristy gifts would be cute. I also thought I’d get everyone some genuine Scottish fudge and some shortbread. And a fridge magnet from one of the wee tourist shops.’
‘Good call.’
‘And maybe a miniature whisky and some tinned haggis.’
‘Where are these people from?’
‘Mr Carter-Jones is from the Midlands and his wife is from Canada but she apparently has Scottish ancestors from way back who left Scotland in 1747, not long after the Jacobite uprising.’
‘Hence her wanting to revisit her roots.’
‘Exactly. I’m slightly nervous about her expectations, although Jeanette said she was lovely in her email.’ Although how you could tell what someone was like from an email, Izzy had no idea.
Mrs Carter-Jones had given an additional budget for the stockings of £50 per person and a brief description of everyone. Mr Carter-Jones and his brother-in-law were both keen golfers, both sons were whisky fans, the daughter into beauty, the niece was a bookworm, and Mrs Carter-Jones and her sister were keen cooks.
Izzy rubbed her hands together. It had been a while since she’d been properly shopping and she was looking forward to the day. She just hoped she had enough time to fit everything in and that her arms were long and strong enough to carry all the bags.
‘I can almost hear your brain whirring,’ said Ross. It was the first time he’d spoken voluntarily for a few minutes. Izzy couldn’t decide whether she was being paranoid or not but there seemed to be an odd tension in the car, like a coil that had been wound tighter and tighter.
‘Is everything all right?’ she burst out, finally succumbing to her anxiety and hating the feeling of impotence that came with giving in to the temptation to ask him about the tension.
His jaw tensed and he didn’t turn her way.
‘It’s fine,’ he said with an enunciated snap that clearly meant it was anything but.
‘Fine?’ she echoed, deciding they were so close to the car park now that she had nothing to lose. ‘When people say “fine”, they usually mean the opposite.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ he said, in the sort of terse tone that would normally shut a conversation down. But Izzy was made of sterner stuff.
‘So I’m imagining the heavy frost that seems to have taken up residence in the car?’
‘You are,’ said Ross.
Well, that told her. It felt like the sort of argument she’d had with Philip when he’d been blowing hot and cold. He could be her best friend in front of everyone, making her feel like the centre of his world, and then in the blink of an eye he could grow distant. Izzy gritted her teeth and turned to stare out of the passenger window. Ross could suit himself. She wasn’t going to let it bother her, although it did. She’d begun to think of him as a friend – and, stupidly, perhaps a bit more – but clearly away from the castle he didn’t want to know her.
When he pulled up outside the entrance of the car park and offered to let her out there rather than stay until he’d parked the car, she immediately agreed.
‘I’ll meet you back here at seven this evening.’
‘Great,’ said Izzy in a clipped voice, adding a forced smile.
For a moment she thought she saw regret shimmer in his eyes but then it disappeared, leaving her thinking that perhaps she’d imagined it. This was the cool, distant, self-possessed Ross Strathallan she’d first met in the castle and she’d do well to remember it. Why did she get the impression he was trying to get rid of her?
‘See you later,’ she said and with a jauntiness she was far from feeling, she waved and turned to stride away as quickly as she could. Bugger Ross bloody Strathallan. She’d had enough of vacillating men to last her a lifetime. She was not treading that treacherous path again.
