Those who had carried fire torches in the parade were now gathering around the unlit bonfire. They looked this way and that, seemingly waiting for direction.
Carenza had noticed too. ‘Where’s McIntyre? Well? Where is he?’ she yelled into the four corners of the field, and this set off a concerned murmuring throughout the crowd that there was no one official there to light the bonfire.
Feeling like she should be doing something to help, Peaches had been about to make a run for the mill house to see what could be keeping him when through the crowd stepped a figure in green: the exact green cloak and mask she’d helped Euan make only a few days ago in the repair shop.
She felt herself propelled towards him, not minding if this would only fuel the town whisperers. She’d already made a show of herself first thing this morning, so what did it matter now?
‘It’s you!’ she cried as she reached him, gripping his arms, waiting for him to hug her, but then… She patted his shoulders. Wide shoulders on a broadly muscled frame. She heard a throaty laugh; definitely not Euan’s. Her hands flew from the stranger’s body. ‘Sorry! I…’
In an instant the man lifted his mask to reveal a disarmingly white-toothed grin, a glossy swish of shiny dark hair, and summer-tanned white skin.
‘How did you know it was me? I wanted to surprise you,’ the man said, his voice a blend of sweet Scottish heather honey and American bourbon, and his eyes just as golden brown.
‘You’re… Felton?’ she realised, dropping down onto flat feet again. He was beaming a suave smile at her that said,Of course I am.
It felt impossible to disguise her disappointment. ‘Felton, where did you get this costume?’
‘Ah! Well, I got the wrong end of the stick, thinking we were supposed to meet at the repair shop to join a parade? The woman in charge said I might as well take these. Someone had left them there, unwanted.’
‘No, not unwanted, I’m sure…’
‘Should I take them off?’ He had his hands at the collar. ‘Does it look weird? I thought since everyone else was wearing this stuff…’
‘No, it’s…’ She shrank even smaller. ‘It’s OK. Keep it on.’
So, Euan hadn’t gone back to claim his costume. That meant he had no intention of coming tonight. The realisation painfully pinched her heart.
On second thoughts, she tried to comfort herself, it was probably for the best he didn’t see her entertaining the son of her mum’s potential business colleague. She hadn’t thought to mention the date (or how she’d misunderstood her mum’s plans for her) when they’d been so close in the chairlifts last night. In fact, she had barely formed any coherent thoughts at all last night.
If Euan saw her here tonight, he might read something into it, thinking this meant something when it didn’t, and she’d offend him all over again. She didn’t even have his number, and didn’t know which was Clyde’s house, and asking any of these gossiping locals where he lived was out of the question, not when they were probably still chattering about her walk of shame at dawn this morning.
Oh, if she could only talk to him for a minute and apologise! Then she could try and explain how panic had gripped her when she awoke in his arms, making her flee, and how last night had been the freest she had ever felt in her entire life.
‘I recognised you from your mom’s pictures. She sent a whole bunch over to Mom,’ Felton was saying.
This brought her round. ‘Oh, Jeez!’ She could just imagine her mother and Valerie Cromarty crowing over her photos at their Women in Business Association meetings, hatching their matchmaking-slash-business-empire plans.
‘Hey! It’s OK,’ he said, nudging her arm in a consoling way. ‘You looked super pretty. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t thought so.’
She was only halfway through asking herself if this was a nice thing for him to have said, or a horribly superficial one, when he spoke over her thoughts.
‘Come on, let me buy you a Beltane punch. Mom told me the stuff’s lethal!’
‘Ah, not this year, it’s not.’ Peaches had to laugh over the extent of the event’s boozy reputation and her mum’s desperate attempts to recuperate it. ‘It’s just ginger ale or diluting juice this year, hate to tell you.’
‘It’s… what? Diluting juice?’ He was crooking an arm for her to take, and his eyes had crinkled into appealing little smile lines.
‘You’ve never heard of diluting juice?’ she said, thinking at the back of her brain how it couldn’t do any harm to loop her arm in his. They moved off in the direction of the drinks stall. ‘You know,’ she went on. ‘Cordial? Squash? What do you call it?’
‘Oh! Fruit punch!’ He laughed in a gentle way. ‘OK, I’ll be sure to ask for two cups of dilutin’ juice.’ He added the last words in a thick Highland accent, nothing like his own confident transatlantic voice.
Clearly picking up on what she was thinking, he asked, ‘Didn’t your mom tell you I grew up in California? I was born here but I missed out on so much Scottish stuff as a kid. Like this kinda thing.’ He gestured at a passing group of drunk lads fresh from the Cairn Dhu hotel bar, each one of them scoffing one of Senga’s chocolate rum balls and dancing their way over to Sachin, who was unenthusiastically spinning a Bay City Rollers record with a dour look on his face.
‘She must have forgotten to mention it,’ Peaches told him. ‘You have a nice sort of in-betweeny accent.’
He laughed again, strolling her along through the crowds the whole length of the rec, totally ignoring the building commotion over by the – still unlit – bonfire. As they wandered, she asked him about his life in America, and he told her a little about his Silicon Valley tech mogul father and their desert ranch and the international school where he’d been educated while his mum stayed here, running her businesses (selling luxury flats to people who worked in Scotland’s answer to the Valley, Silicon Glen).
He was certainly forthcoming about himself, and he smiled at her a lot, and she hadn’t failed to notice the lovely, expensive twill of his jacket under the cape where she lightly gripped his thick arm. She tried to ignore her surprise at how huge he felt. She really wasn’t used to physical proximity to guys. This whole weekend was turning out to be eye-opening. But she still asked herself, who wears a beautiful dark blue wool suit and (she threw a quick glance at his feet) pristine Louis Vuitton Ranger boots to a bonfire and sausage sizzle in a field?
