Hired By My Rich Highland Husband

Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

T he grandfather clock’s ticking gnawed at Max. Seven hours and fifteen minutes since Rowan had taken off. A forgotten scrunchie on his desk taunted him with its casual intimacy.

He picked up his phone again. No messages.

‘Goddammit.’ The curse burst out on a harsh breath as he dropped into the chair.

The virtual meeting with the trust had been strained, yet manageable. Blackwood’s vague hints at ‘unusual expenditures’ tied to Rowan’s arrival were designed to plant seeds of doubt. Max had deflected, though this had only been Blackwood’s opening salvo.

For now, the trustees seemed pacified.

That bastard knew what he was doing. Blackwood might not have tangible proof yet – otherwise, he would have thrown it on the table – but he was sure as hell looking for it.

Which was why Max had to make sure that there was no traceable record linking his finances to Rowan. That had kept him busy for a few days. Evidence erased, tracks covered, favours called in. Making sure that no one could follow the money. A textbook exercise in finance. His life’s work.

So why did his hands feel numb and empty?

The study seemed heavy without the possibility of her barging in. When had this space begun to feel wrong without her sprawled across the antique furniture, asking impossible questions?

Max slid his hand on the spot where she had sat yesterday morning.

‘This is pathetic.’ He pushed the chair away from the desk, but couldn’t flee the memory of her scent – vanilla and citrus, sunshine and trouble.

A stack of contracts waited for his signature. Important documents. Time-sensitive decisions. He stood there and stared at it until the words swam. All he could see was her face last night when she told him she needed him. And he didn’t know how to be needed. He’d never learned.

How many messages had he sent? Too many.

Are you safe? Is your gran okay? Talk to me .

Yes, pathetic.

The walls inched closer, lined with Drummonds who had never let emotion cloud their judgement. Who had never compromised. Certainly not for a woman with wicked green eyes, a huge heart, and a laugh that cracked foundations.

Get it together.

The silence held no answers. Only memories of her voice filling these dusty corners with life. The way she had challenged him, seen through him, made him question everything he thought he knew.

Kissed him.

Summer rain drummed against the windows. Somewhere out there in Glasgow, Rowan was cursing his name. The thought tugged at something vital inside him.

His reflection fragmented across the window glass – a stranger with haunted eyes and too many shadows. The man she had begun to trust.

Your mistake, little writer.

The study clock struck one, its chime echoing through empty corridors. Another hour without word.

Without Rowan.

Mrs MacPherson’s voice brooked no argument. She planted both hands on the worktop and fixed Max with the same stern look she had used when he was eight, refusing vegetables. ‘When’s the last time you ate?’

He hesitated. ‘I had coffee this morning.’

‘Coffee isn’t food.’ The kettle whistled, and she poured two cups of tea. ‘And you’re not seventeen anymore, running on caffeine and willpower.’

‘I’m not hungry.’ A day without food had left him light-headed, but the thought of eating closed his throat up.

She pulled out a chair. ‘Please park yourself, Maxwell Drummond.’

The childhood echo in her tone made him comply before his brain caught up. Mrs Mac nodded once, satisfied, and turned to the Aga. The familiar sounds of her puttering about the kitchen pushed against his skull – metal against metal, water running, cupboards opening and closing.

A plate appeared before him. Plain toast with butter.

‘That won’t eat itself.’ Her practical tone cut through his brooding.

The bread’s yeasty scent turned his stomach.

‘Small bites,’ she instructed. ‘And stop grinding your teeth. You’ll wear them to nubs.’

Mrs MacPherson had always been more than the housekeeper. After his parents shipped him to university, she had been the only one who reached out. Her letters, filled with mundane updates about Dunmarach, had been a lifeline he had gradually ignored. Eventually, those stopped coming too, and he had told himself it was for the best.

He had spent years treating her like any other employee, all while she had remained a constant in a life he had done his best to compartmentalise. So she was, in some unspoken way, the closest thing he had to an old friend.

Max made himself take a bite.

The ceramic mug clicked against the table as she set it before him. Earl Grey, a splash of milk, no sugar – just as he had drunk it since his Fettes days.

His fingers tapped against his thighs. Rowan would have noticed that tell. Would have called him out on it with that knowing half-smile.

‘You’re looking like death warmed over, if you don’t mind me telling you,’ Mrs MacPherson stated.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Are you?’ She sat down across from him, her own tea cradled between weathered hands. ‘Because that toast tells a different story.’

Max’s fingers tapped against the table’s scarred surface. How many meals had he eaten here as a boy, hiding from his father? From everything?

‘Have you heard from her?’ Mrs MacPherson’s question held no judgement, only quiet concern.

‘Her grandmother is stable.’ The words clung to his tongue. ‘According to Oliver.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

‘She won’t answer my calls,’ he said quietly.

‘Can you blame her?’

‘Pardon me?’ His head shot up. ‘Whose side are you on?’

‘Marriage isn’t about sides.’ She took a sip of tea. ‘It’s about showing up. Being there. Even when it’s messy and inconvenient and you don’t have all the answers.’

Max stared at the tea in his hands. Showing up? What did that even mean?

‘It’s not that simple,’ he said.

Her shrewd eyes fixed on him. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘The trust could take everything if—’

‘Everything?’ She set her mug down. ‘These stones have stood for centuries. They don’t care about you. But that lass? She needed her husband. Not his driver. Not his money. Him. That’s what marriage is about. Not money or a castle or that distillery.’

‘How do you know—’

‘My eyes are everywhere,’ she said. ‘And Lady Drummond texted me. Vague, of course. Just so I wouldn’t worry. And Ollie called. Didn’t take much to put one and one together.’

Lady Drummond.

His voice faltered. ‘I couldn’t—’

‘Drop everything and go with her?’ Mrs MacPherson leaned forward. ‘You’re not your father, if you don’t mind me saying, and it’s high time you stopped trying to be.’

The words landed like a stone dropping into the pit of his stomach. For a moment, he couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. He had spent so much of his life trying to hold it all together, to dominate every piece on the board.

Max pushed back from the table. ‘You’re overstepping.’

‘Och, hush.’ She waved off his protest. ‘I’ve known you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. I see more than you think.’ His glare didn’t so much as make her blink. ‘That girl brought light back to these halls. Made you smile again. Real smiles. I haven’t seen you smile like that since before Martin.’

‘Mrs MacPherson—’

‘Your family isn’t around anymore, so I’m the one left to talk to you. Marriage isn’t a business deal. It’s standing by them when your spouse needs you, even if all you can do is hold their hand while the world falls apart. It’s choosing them, every day. Especially when it’s hard.’

His fingers dug into his thighs. Outside, rain lashed against leaded glass, each drop an echo of Rowan’s parting words: ‘For a minute – for one stupid minute – I let myself believe you might feel something for me.’

Did he…love her?

Yes.

‘I’m not sure… I mean, I don’t know how to—’

‘Be there? You start by showing up, day by day. The rest follows.’

Steam no longer rose from the tea. Like everything else lately, it had gone cold while he wasn’t paying attention.

‘What if I’m not—’ He glanced away, biting his lip to stifle the unease. ‘What if I can’t be what she needs?’

‘First of all, you’re already married, so it’s a wee bit late for that. And then it’s not for you to decide what she needs. That lass is clever and has a good heart. She knows what and who she wants.’ Mrs MacPherson stood and gathered his mug. ‘Glasgow’s only three and a half hours away. My Cameron lives down there, I visit him every month.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Mac.’ He had no idea why he used her childhood nickname.

She smiled fondly. ‘Eat something proper first. You’re no good to anyone running on empty.’

Mrs Mac left him in the kitchen alone with the growing certainty that he had got everything wrong.

Max’s footsteps resonated through the study. The stag’s head that had terrified him as a child and mocked him later, now watched with quiet understanding. It had become his space, shaped by late nights reviewing contracts and early mornings with Rowan claiming the space as effortlessly as his attention.

He traced the faint ring her tea mug had left. A tiny act of anarchy, soaking into the grain of his pristine world.

‘Drummond, you fool.’ The words were meant only for himself and the stag. ‘She was never just part of an arrangement, was she?’

The moment she had looked at him, trying to tell him she had shown up to trim the trees… The moment she didn’t yield a single inch. The moment she didn’t see Laird Maxwell Drummond of Dunmarach, London financier and Highland whisky heir.

Just…Max.

All that cheek she had given him from minute one.

He never stood a chance.

And right from the beginning, Rowan had refused to fit into any boxes he had tried to put her in. Trespasser. Convenient solution. Contract wife. She had blown past every boundary.

The trust’s latest report lay unopened on his desk. Paper and ink, nothing more. His father would have prioritised these documents over everything. Over everyone.

‘I’m not him.’ The words hung in the air, simple and true.

Mrs Mac was right. The revelation took hold in him with quiet certainty. He wasn’t his father, but he also wasn’t Martin, and Rowan most certainly wasn’t another asset to be managed.

She was the woman who had brought warmth back to these cold halls. Who faced down his demons with nothing but sass, kindness, and unwavering faith. Who saw past his walls and scars to the man beneath – and opened herself up to him anyway.

Until he had failed her when she needed him.

The spare set of keys for the distillery’s Land Rover lay in a bowl on the corner of the desk. Three and a half hours to Glasgow. To Rowan. To the only family alive, the only family that mattered.

Max picked up the keys. The trust could wait. The legacy could wait. Everything could wait. Right now, his wife needed him.

The study door closed behind him with quiet finality. His steps echoed through Dunmarach’s halls. He knew what he had to do.

The Land Rover’s keys bit into Max’s fingers as he approached the vehicle. Its hulking silhouette loomed in the gathering dusk, a beast of metal and memories waiting to devour him.

Thirteen years since he had sat behind a wheel. The door handle felt alien beneath his fingers, cold and unforgiving. He pulled it open and shut himself in with the scent of engine oil and mud.

His body remembered this – the subtle give of suspension, the dormant power.

Max’s hand trembled as he adjusted the mirror. The ghost of that seventeen-year-old boy stared back. Every breath stuttered like he had forgotten how to inhale. The steering wheel’s grip pattern dug into his palms. Rough and textured. Nothing like the Porsche’s smooth leather.

Cold sweat gathered on his forehead.

‘You can do this.’ His voice sounded wrong in the enclosed space. Too tight. Rain drummed against the roof, its rhythm morphing into the screech of tyres on wet tarmac. The taste of copper flooded his mouth. Martin’s laugh cut short. Blood on leather.

Max’s fingers cramped around the steering wheel. Cold sweat trickled down his spine. The cabin walls closed in. He fumbled for the window control, desperate for oxygen that didn’t taste of burning rubber.

Rowan’s voice pierced through his panic. A memory, vivid and clear: ‘Max, you’re not made of stone. You just act like it.’

The words anchored him to now. To purpose. To her.

He willed his mind back to the present. The rain wasn’t metal. The air didn’t reek of burning rubber. He wasn’t seventeen anymore.

Three and a half hours to Glasgow. To redemption. To the only person who had ever seen past his walls to the scared boy beneath and loved them both.

He forced air into his lungs. The ignition key slotted home with a metallic click that echoed through each of his molecules. One turn. That was all it would take. One moment of courage.

Now he realised how much he had let fear govern him. His life.

He had passed his test, and his license had sat untouched in his wallet, valid but useless.

He shouldn’t be driving alone. He shouldn’t be driving. But if he stayed here, if he let fear root him in place again, he would lose her. She wouldn’t wait forever. Not for a man too afraid to meet her halfway.

And losing her would be the only thing he couldn’t survive.

‘I choose her. I choose us.’ He drew a shaky breath and turned the key. The engine roared to life, its purr drowning out the sirens in his head. Max’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel as he eased the Land Rover into first gear. He was ready.