Must Love Scotland (18 page)

“Will you enjoy designing the wedding flowers?” Declan asked, undoing the top button of the shirt she wore.

Megan sat back—sat
on
him—hands falling to her sides as he undid another two buttons.

“For all I don’t like weddings,” she said, “I do like wedding flowers. Every couple is different, every bride is different. For each one, I want to do my best. I’ve given Tony most of the design work because that’s what a manager does when she wants her operation to grow. I’ve hired good people, and let them focus on what they do best.”

“While you do what?” Declan asked, resisting the urge to push the shirt off her shoulders.

“I pick up the endless, boring, tedious slack mostly, but right now, I do
you
, Declan MacPherson.”

She shrugged out of the shirt, and Declan’s meager store of pillow talk deserted him. When he touched his mouth to Megan’s breast, her hands wrapped around his head and held him closer. Her scent was like the greenhouse on a summer night—complicated, lush, enough to make a man stop and do nothing but inhale the joy of being alive.

He and Megan had kissed before, but this time when Megan brought her mouth to his, Declan’s whole body resonated with the taste of her. Peppermint and eagerness. He could spend hours simply learning that taste, and comparing the taste of her mouth to the taste of her elsewhere. He wanted to catalog her sighs and groans, wanted to learn what made her giggle, what made her shiver.

Megan glossed her damp sex over Declan’s arousal, a confident caress that had Declan reaching for a condom. He did not believe in tempting fate or taking unnecessary chances, not with his own future and certainly not with Megan’s.

She sat up, panting, her braid tickling the backs of Declan’s thighs. “MacPherson, I am not proud of myself. I’m usually a very patient woman, but it’s been a while, and I guarantee you, next time, I will have a smidgeon of womanly wiles, or whatever it is when a woman can at least demonstrate some—”

“There,” Declan said, flopping back against the mattress. “Dressed for the party, which resumes
now.
” When his thumb brushed up through Megan’s curls, he felt the electricity sing through her.

“I knew you were going to be trouble, MacPherson. Do that again.”

Because Megan was soon panting and whimpering and dancing over him with her hips, Declan could shove his own thundering desire aside and experiment with what
trouble
meant to her. She progressed from aroused, to managing, to demanding as he teased, kissed, and caressed. Her breasts were exquisitely sensitive, and Declan was fairly certain he could bring her off without even—

“You,” she said, taking Declan in a firm grasp. “Now.”

Just like that, she gloved him in her heat. The shock of it stilled him in every particular—hands, hips, breath,
brain
.

“A take-charge woman,” he managed. “I do adore a take-charge woman.”

And yet, having taken charge, Megan didn’t quite seem to know what to do. “Sometimes I gobble when I should savor.”

She expected him to decipher Delphic female pronouncements when his balls were on fire?

“So savor now, Megan. We have all night, and I’m not going anywhere.”

That was apparently the right thing to say. She subsided onto Declan’s chest with a sigh and let him set a lazy, getting-to-know-you pace, for an entire minute. Then she was back in the game, kissing him within an inch of his life, devouring his mouth as she became increasingly insistent elsewhere.

A stampede took place in Declan’s bed, a one-woman, desperate, unstoppable stampede. Declan held off as long as he could, drove Megan as high and as hard as determination and passion allowed, and then he fell with her into an endless, tangled darkness of pleasure and oblivion.

The recoil of an explosive joining reverberated through him while quiet descended in the bedroom. Six feet away, old Hughey purred loudly enough to wake the dead, while Megan breathed in counterpoint to Declan.

“MacPherson, I’ll make it up to you. The Scottish air must agree with me, or chasing cows, or something. I’m not normally so—”

Declan scrubbed his knuckles over her crown. “Yes, you are. You’re a determined, passionate woman, and that’s just lovely. I’ve been known to be determined myself. Life tromps over you otherwise, and you’re left with tired dreams and nothing in the bank.”

Though chasing those dreams could leave a man just plain exhausted.

“You’re passionate too,” Megan said, sitting up and unjoining them. She went straight to dealing with the condom, while Declan ached simply to hold her. “Your farm is a work of passion, and so was your grudge with Niall.”

“We have feuds here. A grudge sounds so petty.” Though a grudge fueled by grief was nearly impossible to set aside. The farm was a legacy, something so far beyond a mere passion Declan hadn’t found English words for it.

Megan climbed off the bed and headed for the bathroom, giving Declan his first glimpse of her entirely naked. He used tissues on himself, while water ran behind a closed door.

What had just happened? They’d had sex—good enough sex, for a first round—and then Megan had run off. Perhaps that’s how it was done: Sex that satisfied a bit more than self-gratification, a few shared smiles, and then on to the appointment with the banker.

“I get my ashes resoundingly hauled for the first time in memory, and I’m pouting,” Declan said softly. Hughey leapt onto the bed and began kneading the covers near Declan’s feet. “I’ve become petulant and impossible forty years ahead of schedule.”

The water finally stopped running, the bathroom light clicked off, and Declan felt the air shift as Megan swung the door open.

“Come cuddle up,” he said, because he half-feared Megan would steal his Land Rover and disappear to her little holiday cottage. They’d see each other next at the rehearsal, all sheepish smiles and awkward glances, and then he’d be putting her on a plane and telling himself he was relieved to see her go.

She deserved better than that, and so did he.

“I’m not much of a cuddler,” she said, climbing onto the bed. “I see we have company.”

“Hughey. Bastard refuses to die. He’s seventeen and never been sick a day, though he’s slowed down a lot lately. I swear my grandmother looks out at me through his eyes when I’ve been at the whisky.”

Which whisky was calling to Declan, as a matter of fact.

Megan tucked herself smack against Declan’s side and ran her toes up his calf. “Nighty-night, MacPherson.”

Nighty-night, MacPherson?

She patted his chest, rolled over, and tucked her bum against his hip.

Nighty-night, MacPherson?

Declan rolled too, so he spooned himself around the woman who’d just loved him within an inch of his sanity and then scampered off like a fractious ewe. Megan tensed at first, as if anticipating sexual overtures, but she gradually relaxed in his arms.

First base, to use an American analogy. Declan started with a caress to her shoulders, which were more tense than well-pleasured shoulders should be. He gradually eased around, so he could trace her features—lips, eyebrows, nose, chin.

Megan’s breath sighed against his palm as she slipped more deeply asleep, and that had to qualify as second base of sort. Declan rubbed her scalp, her neck, her arm, and then came back to the pleasure of learning her features with the pads of his fingers.

Had he been any closer to sleep, he might have missed what his hands were telling him: The coolness of Megan’s cheek registered first, and then he realized that her cheek was also… a trifle damp.

The bed dipped, and Megan forced her eyes open. Hughey sat on the hassock like a skinny Egyptian cat idol, staring at her.

“The sun’s up, and that cat doesn’t look well,” she said. Declan’s scent was all over the sheets, and all over her. “He looks like Spats did right before he died.”

“Good morning to you, too, Meggie Leonard.”

How was a woman to think, much less form words, when that sexy burr was accompanied by the naked warmth of Declan MacPherson wrapped around her from behind?

“Greetings, MacPherson,” she said, wiggling to her back. “Did I imagine having this bed to myself for a while?”

Without him, the bed was too big, too cold, too… empty.

He stroked his fingers over her cheek, which stirred a half-asleep memory of the same caress. “I popped out to help Dundas with the milking. You needed your rest.”

Megan had needed something. Some of the fatigue she’d dragged onto the plane with her had abated.

“What time is it?”

Declan’s gaze shuttered, and Megan realized that
he’d climbed back into bed with her
when he had a zillion things to do.

“Half eight. The sun’s up early this time of year, so I pulled the curtains when I left. What have you planned for today?”

His tone said if she bounced off the bed, he’d let her go, no sulking or fuming. “I thought I’d start with a little morning awkwardness followed by a loss for words. If I get up to brush my teeth, will you still be here when I get back?”

He should have smiled, should have kept it light, but this was Declan MacPherson. “You cried last night, Meggie. We need to talk about that.”

“I’ll take that for a yes.”

When Megan had finished in the bathroom, she found Declan’s plaid shirt and put it on before rejoining him in the bed.

“Come here, you daftie,” Declan said, arranging her on his chest. “How are you?” He’d used the same tone of voice on his wayward heifers when he’d threatened to turn them into boots, equal parts affection and threat.

“I’m like one of those dandelions that’s gone to seed, blown every which way on the breeze. I guess I expected my sister to need me for once—I’ve done hundreds of weddings, and what does a lawyer know about weddings?—and Julie can barely see me. I was not expecting
you.
”

“She sees you,” Declan said. “If you disappeared, she’d notice.”

Not the same thing, but a valid point. “I’ll miss Julie.” The words hurt far more than they should. Declan brushed his hands through Megan’s hair, but said nothing. He smelled a little more of hay and green fields this morning, but his touch was the same.

Patient, gentle, ruthless.

“I guess she wasn’t planning on Niall, either,” Megan said. “How are you, Declan MacPherson?” Besides big, handsome, and far too perceptive.

“So those tears were because you’ll miss your sister?”

Declan apparently wouldn’t let this drop, and he wouldn’t go away, so Megan made a stab at answering his question.

“You’re not a vain, selfish jerk,” she said. “I like you. That’s a problem.”

Declan’s hands slowed. Whatever he’d been expecting Megan to say, it wasn’t that. She hadn’t expected
herself
to say that.

“Is that like, you’re not a conniving bitch out to get even with your ex? Not a rich Englishwoman slumming with the bumpkin in a kilt?”

Oh, Declan.
“It’s like that. Declan, when you touch me, I can’t… You don’t hide from me, and that leaves me exposed and helpless. I’m not used to this.”

Whatever
this
was.

He kissed her, sweetly, slowly, and Megan gave up trying to explain or understand. Declan was a good man, an excellent lover, and for the present, in the same bed with her.

“Farming turns a man either bitter or philosophical,” he said, shifting so he was over her. “Your best crop, wrecked in a hailstorm. Your worst field, the one that’s boggier than hell, brings a yield in a drought year that’s the envy of the valley. Sometimes there’s no grasping a bigger picture, Meggie. Sometimes you can only hold on to the now, and be grateful.”

Megan held on to
him
, on to broad shoulders, an elegant back, thick auburn hair that smelled of the fresh air. The tears were close again, and she let the tears have a place in her kisses, in her caresses, in the sighs Declan captured with his mouth.

She reached for the condom and this time made him wait while she got it on him.

“I should have let you be on top last night,” she said a few kisses later. “You’re good at it.”

“Maybe tonight, then,” Declan said, sinking closer. “Even perfection wants regular practice.”

Megan tucked her nose against his throat. Tonight sounded wonderful, and Declan’s loving—slow, tender, thoughtful—left wonderful far behind. If he cared for the land with the same consideration he showed her, his farm should be an Eden of abundant growth and record yields.

“Like that?” he whispered, gaining the first inch of penetration.

“Exactly like that.” The next inches were bliss, in part because they were all Declan, but also because Megan could trust him to get this right. He paid attention, he waited, he listened, he… made love so a lady could relax and enjoy herself.

God in heaven, what a concept.

His teeth closed over Megan’s bottom lip. “I could gobble you whole, Meggie. You’ll be my porridge this morning.”

“You’ll be my Scottish sunrise.”
My best man.

The sun came up in fiery glory three times in succession, and after each time, Declan would wait, his movements slow and relaxed, while Megan caught her breath and wondered how in the hell she’d settle for anything less than this once she left Scotland.

“Declan, sweetie, we’ll both be sore.”

“Are you complaining?”

“Gloating.”

He got a hand under her backside. “That’s all right, then.” Though this time, Declan MacPherson meant business. All of his previous attention had been so much sexual chitchat compared to the focus and drive he brought to his loving now. Megan endured more pleasure in five minutes than she’d known in the five years previous to arriving in Scotland, until she was one witless, aching, glowing monument to female satisfaction.

“MacPherson, you can’t do that again,” Megan panted when she could form words. “You can’t fling me that high and dissolve me into a thousand happy little pieces of what-the-hell-happened. It’s not decent.”

“American men must be stupid and lazy,” he growled. “It’s not me, it’s you. You come at a man with everything in you, and you never back down, never let up.”