Must Love Highlanders (9 page)

Liam’s theory was they should go upstairs immediately. “What theory?”

“About American women being easy.”

That theory. “American women aren’t any easier than any other variety of women,” Liam said, as Louise led him down the hallway. “But American men are lazy, inconsiderate, incompetent louts. Their women get lonely and restless, and then some handsome, charming fellow sashays by while the lady’s on her holiday—we need my sporran.”

“And here I was hoping you’d lose the kilt.”

Liam looked down at his oldest, plain black work kilt. The one he’d worn for the marathon writing sessions on his dissertation.

“I’m quite partial to this kilt.”

“I meant,
take it off
, Liam.” Louise swayed up the stairs ahead of him, a delectable sight in black yoga pants and a man’s plain white T-shirt. Clay smudged the hem over one hip, and Liam would have bet his autographed first edition of Janson’s “
History of Art”
that Louise wasn’t wearing a bra.

He wanted to sketch her, smudges and all; wanted to see her throw pots naked; wanted to—fetch his sporran. When Liam got upstairs, Louise stood fully clothed by one of the picture windows, looking out on damp green woods.

“Good,” Liam said. “I want to undress you. I want to take down your hair, want to—what?”

“Now you turn up loquacious and take-charge? What if I want to undress you first?”

In the midst of the rainy woods, the sun shone in Liam’s heart, and quite possibly a few other locations. He tossed his sporran on the night table.

“Then Louise Cameron, be about your stated agenda, if you please.”

She let Liam get his boots off, but then she sat him on the bed, drew his T-shirt over his head, and treated him to the same focused attention Dougie showed his victuals.

“You work out,” she said, running her hands over his chest. Her touch was inquisitive and sure, as if he were fresh clay, warm and ready for the wheel and her creative impulses. “But you don’t push it with the weights. I like that.”

Louise also liked kissing. She’d used her toothbrush while Liam had fed the cat, and she used her imagination as she knelt between Liam’s legs and sank her hands into his hair. Her kisses were by turns delicate, plundering, curious, and even shy.

As Liam kissed her back, he waited for the desolation to well, for the sure conviction he was making a fool of himself, for the despair that could rob him of all pleasure.

Louise eased away, arms about his waist, cheek pillowed on his thigh. “I want to savor you, Liam, and I want to throw you on the bed and have at you in case I lose my nerve.”

He took the elastic from her hair and set it beside his sporran. “Does that happen? You get this far and wish you’d never asked or accepted?” Did it happen to her
too
?

She nuzzled his parts through the wool of his kilt, an overture as friendly as it was arousing.

“I don’t get asked. My brother says I have a No Vacancy light on. You?”

“A widower probably has his own version of the No Vacancy sign. I’m not having second thoughts, Louise. I want to make love with you.”

Liam wasn’t having second thoughts yet, and didn’t sense any lurking. Interesting and a significant relief, or maybe the simple result of accepting overtures from a woman who’d leave in two weeks.

Louise sat up and went to work on the buckles of Liam’s kilt. “I didn’t know you were a widower, Liam. I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
Was he all right? A prosaic, mundane question to which most people expected an equally prosaic reply. Louise unfastened the kilt and flipped the sides open, leaving Liam sitting naked on the bed, Louise kneeling before him.

“I’m doing better. We’ll talk.”

Because with Louise, Liam could talk. She had a meddling, sometimes insensitive family; she’d made poor career choices; and uncertainty still tried to occasionally steal her breath and her confidence. None of that had followed her up the stairs, and yet it was all a part of who she was and why she appealed to him.

When she stood, Liam pushed her yoga pants off her hips, revealing long legs, interesting knees, and an absence of underwear. Louise picked the yoga pants up with her toes and foot-flung them onto a chair.

“Good aim,” Liam remarked, settling his hands on Louise’s hips. The artist in him tried to find the right term for the color that was two shades darker than auburn as he coaxed Louise to straddle his lap. While he wrestled with that aesthetic challenge, Louise pulled her T-shirt off and fired it in the direction of the chair too, so they were both naked.

“You don’t have to finesse this, Liam. I’m wound up enough—”

He kissed her. “Maybe the problem is, American women don’t expect enough of their men, or don’t take the time to show the poor blokes how to go on.”

And yet, Liam understood Louise’s dilemma. She was dealing with a resurgence of desire, a gale-force wind gusting through her mature, rational self-image and her firmly entrenched low expectations. She’d grown accustomed to desire wafting past her life on breezes and zephyrs, not this hurricane of desire and need.

Liam rose with Louise in his arms, her legs twining around his flanks.

“Wall sex?” she asked. “It’s fine if you like—”

He tossed her onto the bed. “You tell me, Louise. If you want wall sex, floor sex, doggie sex, oral sex, shower sex,
ceiling
sex—now you’re laughing at me, and my charms on display for all to see.”

And what a fetching picture she made on the quilt, naked, smiling, and rosy.

“I don’t want sex at all. I want Liam Cromarty’s lovemaking.”

He came down over her on all fours. “Then you shall have it.”

The conversation turned tactile, as Louise mapped him with a sure, firm touch. She listened with her hands, stroking down his sides, kneading his bum, tangling her fingers in his hair.

Liam was retaliating with slow, lazy kisses, when Louise turned her head. “Cromarty, you are the most infernally, maddeningly—you’re not one of those men who gets turned on by begging, are you? I draw the line—”

Liam eased down onto his forearms and gave her some of his weight. “Louise, you say where and how. I say when. Can we agree on that much?”

“If when is soon.”

“Compared to two years, twenty minutes is not—”

“Two
years
, Liam? Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

Liam kissed her brow. When she called him
honey
in that tone of voice, he was helpless not to kiss some part of her.

“You ought to be pleased not to find yourself on the worktable in the studio,” Liam growled, “mud everywhere and a forgotten stylus digging into your tender parts.”

“I’d be more pleased if you’d—”

“Spare me from a determined woman.” Artists were like this. They fixed on an idea, and had to harp and refine and focus on it until they’d badgered the notion into complete submission.

Liam grabbed his sporran off the night table, found a condom, and put it on. “Are you happy now, Miss Cameron?”

She studied his rampant cock more closely than she had any of the Old Masters at the portrait gallery.

“I’m about to be very happy, Mr. Cromarty.”

Liam granted himself a moment to gather his thoughts, to breathe, to take stock, and
be present
. This felt right, felt like moving forward, like trusting in life again.

He positioned himself against Louise, then laced their fingers against the pillow. “Hold on, and tell me if I’m gettin’ it wrong.”

Louise closed her fingers around his. “Same goes, Cromarty. Hold on, and tell me if I’m getting it wrong.”

They got it
right.
Liam joined them slowly, pausing to savor and kiss, and breathe together, to nuzzle and rejoice. Louise matched his rhythm beautifully, untangling one hand to anchor on his bum, her ankles locked at the small of his back. The sheer pleasure of her eagerness, the glory of her sweet heat, the sense of shared desire swamped Liam’s entire awareness.

He sent his mind in search of words. “Say when, Louise.”

“Liam.”

He took that for a
when
and picked up the tempo to slow, hard lunges. Louise clutched at him with gratifying desperation and
when
became
now
, and then, for a moment,
forever
. Pleasure cascaded up through Liam, bringing light, joy, and a sense of well-being so profound he could have wept.

And laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

When he’d stopped heaving like a racehorse, he settled for a smiling kiss to Louise’s ear. “God bless America.”

She chortled, her belly bouncing against his. “Now look what you’ve done.”

He’d slipped from her body, though the way she patted his backside won her a place in his heart. Gentle, firm, proprietary, protective, and bit scolding.

“No worries,” he said, heaving to his hands and knees. “I’ve another frenchie in my sporran.”

She brushed his hair back. “A french—oh. We have other names for them. Only one?”

Lovely woman. “You’ll find more in the drawer, but we’ll have to replace those. Jeannie would notice.”

Louise began carefully unrolling the condom from Liam’s softening cock. “At least she doesn’t go through the trash.”

Morag might. Liam made a mental note to take the trash to his house. “I could have done that, Miss Cameron.”

“I’ll let you get it the next three times,” Louise said. “For now, I need a cuddle.”

Liam’s tushy was sufficiently adorable that Louise tried to memorize its contours as he moved from the bed to the bathroom. He left the door open, so she could watch him standing at the sink, washing his hands, then rubbing at himself with a damp washcloth.

He was a man in his prime, gloriously healthy, and an inspiration to anybody with a visual/spatial imagination.

“I want to sketch you,” Louise called.

“First you want to cuddle, then you want to sketch,” he groused, drying his hands. “Next I suppose you’ll be raiding my sporran for a bite of tablet. Fickle is woman.”

“You brought me tablet?” Thoughtful of him.

“I usually have some with me, and you seem to enjoy it.”

Liam was no boy, and thus he had wounds and scars, parts of himself he kept guarded. Louise would not ask if he always had condoms in that sporran, because he’d already told her—

“Did you check the date on those French whatevers?” she asked as he climbed back into bed.

“I bought them last night,” he said. “Had to buy more cat food and grabbed them on the same trip.”

Louise wrestled Liam against her side, or pushed and tugged until he figured out where she wanted him.

“You’re a friendly sort,” Liam remarked, his cheek resting on the slope of her breast. “Though a simple, ‘Liam, may I hold you?’ might get the job done faster.”

Liam, may I fall in love with you?
Louise would scare him off if she asked that, and she’d scared herself by even thinking it. They lived on opposite sides of an ocean, for criminy sakes.

She traced the contour of his ear, a more complicated appendage than most people realized—on many levels.

“Liam, may I interrogate you?”

He heaved a seismic male sigh. “I married while I was at uni, her name was Karen. She thought I had ambition, I thought she had a nice laugh. She was an accountant, though she also enjoyed cooking.”

Louise waited, because these were the introductory recitations, the ones that not only didn’t hurt, they comforted a little.

“We married,” Liam said, “and then, I fell in love. With Caravaggio, with Vermeer, with Canaletto, the Venus of Willendorf, the Lascaux cave paintings, Fabergé eggs, and early medieval manuscripts. With all things beautiful and profound and interesting. What my wife thought was ambition was merely passion. I didn’t figure that out until it was too late.”

Louise stroked her fingers through his hair. “You haven’t told this story to anybody, have you?”

“My family knows some of it. That feels good.”

So, no. He’d carried these regrets and memories around for years rather than entrust them to another.

“I’ll tell you a story when you’re through,” Louise said. Liam wouldn’t laugh at her, wouldn’t tell her to stop overreacting and feeling sorry for herself.

He kissed her shoulder. “I’ll listen, and there isn’t much more to tell of mine. I wrote some articles, comparing porcelain to cave paintings, Vermeer to Warhol. I was too inexperienced and cocky to understand that wasn’t the done thing. The galleries loved those articles, the academicians didn’t know what to do with them, and in short order, I was Dr. Liam Cromarty, PhD, attending the openings, speaking at the conferences.”

“You’re not telling me all of it. You got into some pissing contest with another hotshot, you failed to spot a forgery, you stepped in doo-doo somehow.”

Liam might be the expert on Vermeer’s influence on Fabergé, but Louise had four PhD’s in how to step in doo-doo.

“I’m not sure what a pissing contest is,” he said, “but suffice it to say, I was so busy racking up frequent-flier miles and being witty and insightful at gallery openings, I lost track of my wife.”

“Was she ill?”

Liam wasn’t ill, but he was ailing, with regret, with old grief, and with the loneliness those burdens caused. Louise could feel them in him the way she could feel cold at the center of a ball of clay.