Looking back now, it felt like he’d tried as best as he could but by the end, their relationship was like being caught on a warped fairground ride with the same tinny music playing over and over.
Jamie shifted his mind from the past and darted his eyes to Alicia. God, she was stunning. He’d love to take her to his lodge and kiss those rosy lips, touch her peach-soft skin, fall onto the bed with her?—
Forget about it. Never going to happen. Classy women like that don’t go for average guys like you.
‘Is everything okay with your meal? Mr Butler?’
‘What? Oh, aye, it’s wonderful, as ever, thanks, Graeme.’ The food was exceptional, but Jamie’s appetite for sitting amongst other people, amidst haunting memories and near to a woman he’d known for five minutes who managed to turn his polite actions into predatory behaviour was turning his stomach. So Jamie finished off his main and decided to call a night on the sociability thing. Sitting alone in a restaurant wasn’t exactly peak social anyway.
As he rose from his seat, Jamie contemplated whether to acknowledge Alicia again. It went against his instincts to ignore someone. But that was the best course of action for preservation of self-worth, so he held his head high and left the restaurant without looking her way.
Jamie headed straight back to his lodge where he changed into jeans and a flannel shirt. Grabbing a bottle of whisky, he made himself comfortable on the porch for an hour of silent contemplation, staring at the dark shadow of Ben Corrin. The mountain that never changed. The mountain he could predict and understand. The mountain that never let him down. This was him now. He would take a leaf out of Ben Corrin’s book and be a mountain. Solid, unmoving and unmoved. Always there, but if you wanted the mountain then you could come to it.
Chapter 8
Alicia
Dean and Diana’s lodge was much smaller than Alicia’s. Or was it that the walls were closing in? She wondered if she had been here enough time to politely leave. Was forty-five minutes long enough?
‘You’re much smaller in real life than on the telly.’ Dean supped on a home-made margarita and raked his yellowy eyes up and down Alicia in a way that made her skin crawl.
‘You’re even prettier, too,’ said Diana. ‘Chad Bradbury was a lucky lad.’
‘Mmhm.’ Alicia was only able to make vague appreciative mumbles in response to this line of conversation. No way was she talking about Chad with these people, as hospitable as they were pretending to be. All she wanted was to get away from them. Plus, they had laced the margarita with a potent amount of tequila and she might be sick if she drank more than one.
Then, as the bottom of her glass was fast approaching, and the chat about the charms of the hotel was drying up, the perfect departure excuse landed in her lap.
‘If you fancy staying for longer, we could all have somefun together.’ Diana sent a saccharine smile Alicia’s way, a hint of suggestiveness lacing it like the salt on the margarita glass.
‘What?… Oh, God, no!’ Alicia surprised herself with her vociferousness and tried to backtrack. ‘I mean, sorry, but I’m not that person. I… Look, I will have to go now.’ She nearly apologised again. But why should she? She’d come here for a friendly cocktail and been propositioned into a threesome with a couple who were about twenty years older than her.
‘You don’t have to leave,’ said Dean. ‘I was enjoying our chat.’
‘I think it would be best.’ Alicia put down her glass – which she’d been gripping as a stability device. ‘Thank you for the drink.’ She strode towards the door.
‘Dean will walk you back to your lodge,’ said Diana. ‘Make sure you’re safe.’
‘Truly, there’s no need.’ Alicia examined the patterns on the lodge floor rather than looking at Diana. There was a whorl of wood that looked like a ghost. ‘It’s sixty seconds away.’
‘We’ll wait here to see that you get back, then.’ Diana patted her on the shoulder, and she had to stifle her impulse to flinch. They hadn’t mentioned the nudes, but that’s what they were thinking of. She almost tripped down the porch steps in her haste to escape this creepy couple. The cold air was like being given new life after the suffocating heat of the lodge.
It wasn’t that she feared Dean and Diana. It was the violation of privacy she hated: that they’d seen her naked and thought that made her fair game. She loathed that her own image was out of her hands and being cultivated by other people.
Alicia stumbled along the path, her mind fuzzy from the margarita, sights on her lodge, where she could lock the door and be safe in her own world. But before that there was someone else’s world. Jamie’s. As she neared his accommodation, she saw that he was sitting on his porch in jeans and a flannel shirt, a whisky tumbler in hand, brooding on an orange glow dancing in a small fire pit. The epitome of rugged mountain man. She stopped on the dimly lit path and watched. The title for a painting came to mind. The Lone Scotsman. An unaffected man, minding his own business and radiating unfiltered masculinity. She could stare all night.
Or she could move out of the shadows and go talk to him.
‘Hi.’ Alicia stopped in front of his porch.
‘Oh, hey.’ Jamie turned from the fire, the timbre of his voice undercut with a mild flintiness, possibly at his solitude being disturbed. Alicia willed him to smile even more – to ease the cold and foreboding generated by Dean and Diana.
‘Aren’t you cold?’ She motioned to his bare feet. God, they were huge.
‘Naw. I’m always roasting hot.’
Mmm. Snuggling up to a man’s hot body to keep warm in bed. Alicia roved her eyes up Jamie’s legs, thinking about wrapping her own around them.What would that feel like?
‘You okay?’ he asked.
