The Great Scot (10 page)

Erin started to say something, then apparently thought better of it.

“What?” he asked, already aware it was not her nature to censor herself. Nor, he found, did he want her to.

“Nothing. It's none of my business anyway.”

“Since when would that stop you?”

She looked indignant for a moment, her mouth opening, then shutting, then her lips quirked in an endearingly rueful smile as she sat up a little straighter in her seat. “Sometimes it stops me.”

He should let well enough alone. The last thing he wanted was her poking about in his personal life any more than she already had. Maybe it was her willingness to see herself clearly, even when the view wasn't entirely flattering. Whatever the case, instead of shutting up and focusing on the road as he should have, and steering the conversation back to her television show romances, he said, “Tell me, anyway. What inappropriate, none-of-your-business remark were you going to make? I've already signed your contract. You don't have to worry about nacking me off now.”

“It was nothing really,” she insisted. When he shot her a come-on-now look, she shrugged. “Okay, okay. I was just going to say that most of the time you were in the city, you were married, so you weren't exactly a guy on the prowl. But I understand you're a widower, so I thought better of going there, that's all.”

She'd said it as matter-of-factly as possible, as if to spare any inadvertent poking at tender spots that she could. So that made it surprisingly easy to respond in kind. “It's been a few years now. I'm through the worst of it. Despite what they'd have you think in town.”

He felt her looking at him then, and while it was a little uncomfortable, it wasn't as irritating or intrusive as he'd have expected. Maybe because she didn't know him, and therefore didn't really have any preconceived ideas on what he'd probably felt then, or what she thought he should be feeling now. Unlike every other person in the village, she had no direct, personal knowledge of his life here as a child, no knowledge of his life in the city, and certainly nothing of Maribel, or the supposed fairy-tale marriage that had swept him away from Glenbuie and his chiefly clan duties.

“They care about you,” she said. “It's kind of sweet, actually. I'd think it would be nice to know I mattered like that, and to so many. Although I can imagine for you it probably feels a little suffocating.”

She really was the most disconcerting sort. But she went on before he could frame a reply, which was just as well because he was suddenly feeling quite revealed. And he hadn't yet said a word.

“Do you miss city life? I mean, not specifically the life you had there with—with, well, you know what I mean. I just meant the overall idea of living in the city, versus living out here. Brodie mentioned you left here pretty young, so you obviously wanted to get out and see the world, which a lot of kids in your position would, I think. Being tucked away out here, as well as the burden placed upon you by your birth.”

He nodded. There wasn't anything else to say. It was like she could see inside his head. And he found himself intensely curious as to what she'd ferret out next.

“Was it hard to come back to the slower, bucolic way of life? Where everybody knows your business? And you had to take on the family responsibility and the clan leader role, too.” She shook her head and laughed as she waved off her questions. “Never mind. Stupid questions. Of course it wasn't easy. And I'm really putting you on the spot. I'm sorry.”

“I don't mind,” he said, more stunned than anyone that he meant it.

Early on he'd been too raw to discuss his reasons for coming home with anyone. Later, he'd tried to broach the subject with his brothers, but even though they knew him better than most, he'd been gone a long time, and they were more village-oriented and grounded in Chisholm clan life than he was. As different as each of them were, of the four brothers, he was the true changeling. And at that time, none of them were married or seriously involved. He doubted they'd really understood his reasons for leaving, but the fairy-tale marriage that kept him from coming home again after graduation had smoothed over most of that. They wanted the happily-ever-after for him, as much as they wanted it for themselves. It was the only story that made it okay for him to abandon his birthright.

People forgave a lot for love.

It was a story he'd wanted to believe in, too. So how to tell them it wasn't the fairy tale that had kept him away? Or that it hadn't been much of a fairy tale after all? Just a tragic end. Especially now that his brothers had found their own happily-ever-afters? It had seemed easier to leave them to their beliefs. Cowardly, perhaps. But he could live with that. After all, that was far down on his list of sins.

But now, here, with Erin, he was finally free to express himself honestly and directly, without fear of recrimination or misunderstanding. The opportunity was tantalizing. Almost a relief of sorts. “And you're right,” he said. “Initially I wasn't particularly happy to come back to Glenbuie or Glenshire. It was a responsibility I had borne for a very long time, and one, I suppose, I knew I couldn't avoid forever, though I was giving that a pretty good shot.”

“What—if you don't mind my asking, what happened to your parents? How old were you when you became next in line, so to speak?”

“They died when I was ten. Car accident. Our grandfather, Finny, raised the four of us. Tristan was barely out of his nappies. But my brothers were more invested in following family traditions than I was. They love Glenbuie, always have, and are truly devoted to this way of life. After I left, I did my best to contribute my share from afar, but I knew it wasn't enough. After Maribel died, the decision to come home was simpler.” Though not exactly simple, he thought. Not simple at all.

“And everyone was happy to have you back? No recriminations for being gone so long?”

“I was welcomed home with open arms. I felt a bit guilty about that.” Something he'd never spoken aloud until just that moment. But it was okay with Erin. She was…safe.

“Why guilty? Do you think you'd have eventually come back anyway, even if the tragedy hadn't occurred?”

It was a question he'd asked himself more than once. “I don't know,” he replied honestly. “I suppose if my presence here were required in lieu of actually losing our ancestral property, I'd have figured something out.”

“Which isn't really a yes,” she said, kindly, but with that little eyebrow arch that added a little ribbing nudge.

“No, I suppose it isn't. But it's the truth.”

“Was it because you loved the city that much, or hated it here?”

“Yes,” he responded, sending her a short glance, catching her dry smile in response. “It's more complicated than that, though.”

“I'm sure it is. Your wife…she was a city girl, right?”

“What do you know of Maribel?”

Erin shrugged. “Just what I picked up in town. You're quite the topic, you know. The Great Scot.”

He flushed a little at the unasked-for moniker. “Aye, much as it pains me.”

“Well, I learned that you met in university, were head over heels in love with her, and stayed in the city after graduating and marrying because she was from a bigwig family who—”

“Bigwig?”

“Sorry, I'm not insulting her, I promise. Important, high society. I'm not sure what your term is for that. Posh?”

Dylan's mouth curved and he didn't fight it this time. “Yes, you could say that about the Leightons. And then some.”

“So…you stayed in the city for her. But I'm guessing you also stayed for yourself. Hence the guilt?”

He glanced at her, no longer focused on the thrill of the drive, going more on autopilot at this point, having traveled this track often enough to manage it in his sleep if he had to. “Aye,” he said, the honest answer easier than he'd thought it'd have been. “Not that she'd have agreed to come home with me if I'd chosen that path, but that was a decision she'd never have to make and she knew that when she married me. She's no' to blame for my avoiding my clan obligations. That decision was mine.”

“But because she was in your life, because you were in love, people here sort of forgave you for staying away.”

He kept his gaze firmly on the road. “Aye,” he said at length.

“So, after…you know, did you feel like you had to come back then? Were you ever tempted to just strike out for new territory, start completely over again some place completely fresh?”

“Quite the curious sort, aren't you?”

“I'm sorry,” she said, immediately and sincerely contrite. She settled back in her seat again. “You said you didn't mind, but I'm probably poking too much. You should have just told me to shut up.”

“I would have if it had bothered me. I think you know me well enough by now to know that much.”

She laughed lightly. “True. It's just…people interest me. Always have. And your life is so different.”

There was nothing generic about her life either, he'd bet. And was surprised to realize he wanted to know more about her. “To answer your question, no, it didn't occur to me to strike out. It was easy enough to leave Glenbuie at the tender age of seventeen, but dinnae confuse that with thinking it was easy for me to put off my role here, put it onto my brothers' shoulders, no matter that they willingly accepted the weight. After Maribel's death, I stayed on in Edinburgh for a short time, but I knew where I'd end up. Life in the city quickly became unbearable for me.”

“I can imagine.”

“As does everyone else, but it wasnae what people thought. I was forced to confront some truths about myself that weren't so easy to accept. And coming back here made those truths even harder to deal with. But I knew I had no choice but to finally grow up, come home, and take on my due share. Which I have, and am committed to continuing.”

“Very noble of you.”

He shot her a sideways glance, unsure if there was hidden censure in her seemingly sincere tone. “I certainly make no claim to noble gestures. It was hardly that.”

“But you did it, you made the sacrifice. And, from what I can tell, though you're not outwardly enthusiastic in your role as innkeeper, you're doing what you must to make everything work for the best of your family, and the villagers too, I suppose. There has to be some reward in that, a sense of fulfillment.”

“Aye, there is. But I wouldn't consider it a sacrifice on my part. I wouldnae return to Edinburgh now, even if my obligations here were to diminish. My reasons for wanting to be in the city, away from here, no longer exist.”

She reached across the stick shift and briefly laid her hand on his arm. “I'm sorry,” she said, so quietly he barely heard the words over the rush of the wind. “I know you say you've dealt with your loss, but obviously it's changed you pretty profoundly as a person. It might mean good things to the people of Glenbuie, but you did suffer a loss for their gain. I'm sorry for that.”

He braked as they approached a turn and let the car roll to a stop near an overlook. He glanced down at her hand, still lightly touching his arm, and tried to remember the last time someone sincerely tried to comfort him, with no other agenda at stake. And the words just sort of tumbled out.

“I didnae come back here grieving the loss of my perfect union. The truths I had to face were about admitting the fact that I'd stayed in a loveless marriage. And no' for any noble reason, as if I believed so deeply in commitment and till death do us part, as I'd told myself for years. I stayed because I knew in my heart it was my only excused escape from contending directly with the burden of my birth. And when I was completely honest with myself, when I truly hit rock bottom, I realized I had probably always known that about my union with Maribel, despite believing myself madly in love in the beginning.” He looked up to find her gaze steady on his. “So you see…it's everyone in the village who made the sacrifice so I could run off and live this grand life I wanted and thought I was so deserving of. In the end, coming back was the very least I could do. For them. For myself. I'm no' a noble man, Erin. Far from it.”

E
rin didn't know what to say to that startling confession. And from the way Dylan suddenly shifted his attention back to the windshield in front of him, he wasn't all that comfortable with it, either.

“So much for being enigmatic,” he said.

Erin laughed. He really was quite the paradox. “Oh, I think you still have that one cornered.”

He opened his door. “Come on, look at the view.”

At the moment, she was perfectly content with a view that contained only Dylan Chisholm, but she realized he probably wanted to be anywhere but trapped inside the small confines of a car, possibly with anyone other than her, so she readily complied.

He gestured toward the railing, then pointed. “That's Glenbuie below.”

She was still thinking about what he'd revealed, and, okay, looking at him standing there, all windblown and casually dressed, and finding herself far more intrigued and turned on than she knew she should let herself be, so she was caught completely off guard when she followed the direction of his hand and saw the glorious view sprawled out below. “It's stunning. You can see the whole valley.” She edged closer to the rail. “There's the square, the distillery…”

“Aye. 'Tis the best view of the village to be had.” His voice came from next to her ear, which meant he was standing right behind her.

It sent a shuddery sensation of pleasure through her. She casually crossed her arms in front of her to hide the instant effect it had on her. And also because the contact, even with her own arms, assuaged the ache just a little.

“Beyond the town, those fields on the other side, with the narrow river cutting through them, that is our farming and grazing land.” He lifted his hand to point again, grazing her shoulder with his biceps.

She had to drag her attention away from his arm, his hand, his very nice, large hand, the same hand that had gripped her shoulder earlier at the top of the staircase and made her knees go dangerously wobbly…Yes, she had to stop looking at him and look at the damn view. If he had any idea where her thoughts were at the moment, he'd likely laugh.

“My youngest brother, Tristan, lives out there.” He lowered his arm and rested it on the rail next to her hip, boxing her quite neatly between his very large, imposing body, and the railing in front of her. “Reese's place is back behind the distillery. Brodie lives above the pub still, with Kat, but they're looking to build a home on some of our property west of town.”

“It's really quite the legacy,” she said, proud that she could form words at all at the moment. Her pulse was thundering and she had to press her thighs together against the rather insistent ache that was building there. No way could Dylan know the ridiculous impact he was having on her senses. He was just playing tour guide, trying to make her forget about what he'd said in the car. “I assume in centuries past, the clan chief was responsible for all of it. Your family took care of the town, the farms, the land, all of it. Wasn't that how it worked?”

“Aye,” he said, not putting so much as an inch more distance between them.

She couldn't help it, she turned her head just slightly so she could catch his face from the corner of her eye. He was staring straight ahead, his thoughts perhaps a million miles away. Given the topic of their conversation, it made sense. But it didn't remove the teeny tiny moment of disappointment she felt, confirming what she'd known to be true. Dylan Chisholm wasn't remotely aware of her as a woman. A shame she couldn't say the same about her awareness of him as a man.

She was just deciding how to slither out from between him and the rail without somehow embarrassing herself, when he continued to speak. “It's no'much different now, really. We lease the fields to tenant farmers. The distillery is still the main employer in the village, with the other businesses around the square thriving mostly to support the population that works making whisky.”

“So, you still feel somewhat responsible for their welfare? Economically, I mean.”

He sighed a little. “Why do you think I agreed to your offer?”

She did turn then. Big mistake. He didn't move right away and her body brushed fully against his. She jerked back, mostly in an instinctive reaction to the hot jolt that went rocking through her on contact, banging her hip against the rail. “Oh!”

She wouldn't have lost her balance, she wouldn't have. Not that time. But it didn't stop Dylan from bracing her hips with his hands and shifting her away from the railing anyway.

“I forgot putting you near a steep drop was a dangerous proposition.”

If he only knew. The only thing she was in danger of propositioning at the moment was Dylan. “You startled me. I'm fine, really.”

“Really.”

Why wasn't he letting her go?

Before she did something extremely foolish, she extricated herself from his grasp. “So, you agreed to the lease because of the villagers?” Her voice was too perky, too…just, too. She was striving to be businesslike, but she'd take anything other than breathless. She'd never been the breathless type before.

The corners of his lips quirked and she was instantly entranced. The prospect of getting an actual, honest smile from him tortured her. She wanted one, in the worst way possible, but she didn't think her heart was up to handling it at the moment.

“I told ye, I'm no' a saint. Of course I did it for myself, my family, to help maintain the auld pile. But when I came down to Hagg's that night, it was clear how excited everyone was, and they all made their case for the economic boom it would bring. So it came into consideration. It had to.”

“You make it sound like you really don't care, that you're doing it out of obligation, or maybe that leftover guilt. But that's not true, is it? You do care, maybe more than you want to admit.” Why was it she couldn't keep her mouth shut around this guy? Who did she think she was? Dr. Phil? “It doesn't matter, really.” She waved her hand, ready and willing to dismiss the whole topic, which was totally none of her business. “What matters is that you agreed and everyone wins,” she said brightly, thinking it was time to get back in the car, get on with her original plan for the afternoon.

Yeah. Planning fantasy dates. With Dylan. Great.

Why hadn't it occurred to her that getting him to help her find romantic date locations might not be such a great idea? Definitely not clear thinking on her part. A growing problem the more time she spent around him.

“Actually, you're more on track than you know,” he said.

She knew better, she did, but she heard herself saying, “I am?”

“There is real value in putting others' needs first, in doing the right thing, even if it's not the thing I'd have chosen for myself alone. I had plenty of years doing exactly that. In the end, it was a hollow achievement, and no' so fulfilling.”

She didn't say anything to that. She would have thought he'd had plenty of experience putting others' needs first, what with being married and all. But his declaration in the car, about staying in a loveless marriage so he could hide in the city and avoid his obligations at home still echoed in her mind. Had he really been as self-serving as all that? Sure, he didn't come across as Mr. Happy Innkeeper, but he was literally devoting his entire life to the project.

“Cat got your tongue,” he said, at length.

“I'm just…processing.”

“What part, specifically?”

He was standing in front of her again, only she didn't shrink back this time. Instead she looked up into his face, into those guarded eyes of his. “It's just…you strike me as a man who, when he wants something, or believes in something, is very devoted to it, very committed.”

“Aye, 'tis true.”

“So—” She broke off, shook her head, and this time she did turn away.

A gentle hand on her arm had her turning back. “So, what?” he asked. “No censoring, remember?”

She paused, thinking there was a time for everything and perhaps now was the time to curb her curiosity about him, for his sake and her own. She had a list longer than her arm of things she needed to be focusing on. Learning more about Dylan Chisholm wasn't on that list.

“Erin.”

She sighed. Damn. Her name, with that accent…She looked up again. “Okay. You said you stayed in a loveless marriage, but that your reasons for doing so were selfish.”

“Aye, they were.”

“So the fairy-tale relationship with Maribel—”

“Wasnae much of a fairy tale, I'm sorry to say, for either of us. Perhaps in the beginning, when we were young, quite foolish and headstrong, we believed it to be.”

“So…you're saying you both…fell out of love?”

He nodded. “If we were ever truly in it. She married me to rebel against her parents controlling her every move. I married her because she was the epitome of what I'd dreamed of for the life I knew I was destined to have in the city.”

“But you thought you were in love. At some point.”

“Oh, aye, quite infatuated we were. But we soon came to realize the infatuation was as much from the rebellion we'd mounted as it was true infatuation with each other.”

“So…if neither of you loved the other, then why stay together? I mean, you say you did it to keep the fairy-tale premise alive, keep your reason for staying in the city. What about her?”

“Somewhat the same thing, to keep her parents at arms' length. They are excessively wealthy and if given an inch, they tend to take over completely. It was…convenient, I guess, for both of us. At the time, if you'd asked me, I would have said we were being quite mature, accepting our limitations and being adult about them.”

Erin bit the corner of her lip, then asked the question on the tip of her tongue anyway. “So, did you have an open marriage then?” His immediate look of surprise made her feel inordinately better, which was silly since she wasn't supposed to feel anything where he was concerned. What he did with his life was certainly no business of hers.

“No. We'd have never done that to each other. We had a marriage in full, we had enormous respect for one another, we just weren't madly in love with one another.”

“But—”

His lips quirked in that almost smile of his again. “Sex?”

“Well, yeah,” she said, swearing she wasn't blushing, but possibly she was, a little bit. Maybe more than a little bit. How sick was it that the idea of him having sex only with his wife was making her hot? Well, the idea of him having sex at all was going to make her hot. Him standing there, breathing, was doing that.

“We knew how to take care of each other. I'll leave it at that.”

“It sounds…”

“Cold? Clinical? It wasn't. We just…” Now he trailed off, then shrugged. “It was what it was. She was on a cruise with some friends of hers in the Mediterranean when…when she died. There was a malfunction and the boat essentially blew up. Maribel and the captain were the only ones aboard at the time. Neither survived. I was working insane hours and was out of contact, so the authorities tracked down her parents first.” He shifted then, looked at his feet, then out at the view, before looking back at her. “I never quite forgave myself for that. We might not have had the fairy tale, but she deserved better than that from me. She certainly deserved to be protected from them better than I protected her.”

“What do you mean? You were next of kin. Didn't you have more legal rights than they did?”

“Technically. But in foreign countries, things can get confused. And her father has deep pockets and knew how to pull strings. To be fair, she was their only child. They were beyond themselves with grief. Maribel was gone and I…they handled it like they wanted to…and at that point, it was too late to interfere. They had her interred in their family mausoleum. Perhaps I should have fought harder for that, but it was the closest thing to any home she'd have had. We'd never…we'd never done anything about that kind of eventuality. Anyway, I tried to stay with them, console them, but they blamed me.”

“
How?
You weren't even there.”

“Exactly,” he said, his tone sardonic, but his expression pained nonetheless. “They were traditionalists. When they weren't nagging us about starting a family, they were begging us to move back into the Leighton manse so they could have what little family they did have around them in their later years. They couldn't understand why we'd take separate vacations, or…well, separate anything. They were convinced that had we been together on vacation things would have been different and she wouldn't have died. He trailed off, shook his head. “So I let them do what they needed to do to make peace as best as possible, but I've never really reconciled with the fact that I didn't stand up more for what Maribel would have wanted.”

“As you said, she was gone. Her parents are still here.” She touched his arm. “You did what you had to do at the time. If she respected you as you say she did, then she'd have understood, right?”