Chapter 4 #2
She had, after all, paid her respects to his fallen clansmen.
His heart whispered its approval.
Patrick cursed it to silence.
The woman drove slowly. It was no wonder he’d almost run her over before he’d seen her. Then again, what else could he expect of her? It wasn’t as if she’d had the benefit of several years of driving on the proper side of the road like he had.
She stopped in Inverness. Patrick remembered the first time he’d seen the place. It had seemed, to him who had grown up with only his family about him, like an enormous metropolis. The sights, sounds, and smells had overwhelmed him at first, but he’d soon grown used to them.
His Yank found herself a car park and simply sat with her head resting against the steering wheel. Patrick felt an unaccustomed sense of remorse wash over him, and he honestly hoped it was weariness and not his own callous treatment of her to cause her distress.
He rubbed a hand over his face. Maybe he was coming down with something. He’d felt more emotions in the past hour than he’d felt in the past year.
Frightening.
He made his own parking place where he probably shouldn’t have, then caught up with her in the crowd.
Inverness wasn’t Edinburgh, to be sure, but it did have some shopping and the accompanying crowd to hide in.
Patrick watched her look in windows, but she didn’t buy.
Given that the suit she was wearing was obviously very expensive, perhaps she couldn’t find anything fine enough here to suit her.
She stopped at a small grocery. Patrick followed her in.
It was an easy thing to spy on her without being noticed.
It was, after all, one of the things he did best. He made himself scarce in the crisps aisle whilst she chose fruit.
He loitered near the vegetable bins whilst she rummaged through day-old breads.
He pretended a great interest in feminine hygiene products as she chose something to drink, then he managed a long-distance look in her basket. Bread, fruit, and water.
Not exactly a gourmet lunch.
He followed her from the store, then leaned uselessly against a wall as she ate her lunch on a bench.
Watching her eat made him realize that he hadn’t eaten himself, and after his morning with Jamie he surely deserved something.
He popped back inside the grocery, grabbed the first things he laid his hands on, paid, and then exited quickly. He looked at the bench.
She was gone.
He was halfway down the block in a panic before he realized what he was doing. Stalking a stranger, for starters. Caring about someone whose name he didn’t even know, for a finisher.
Obviously, he hadn’t been sleeping enough.
“Murderer.”
The sound of that voice caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand up.
How long had it been, he wondered absently, since he’d heard that voice speak to him with anything but vicious accusations?
Never, actually, even when the man had had reason to speak to him kindly.
He certainly had no reason to now. Patrick turned and gave his former father-in-law a casual smile.
“Father,” he said.
The older man’s face tightened. He looked as if he would have given anything to have gotten his hands around Patrick’s throat and squeezed, but they were in the middle of the street, and Gilbert McGhee was nothing if not civilized.
“I told you,” Gilbert said, “never to call me that.” Patrick tossed his apple up into the air and caught it with a shrug. “It slipped. As I’m sure your kind title for me did.”
“It was no mistake—”
The man standing next to Lisa’s father, her uncle as fate would have it, put his hand on his brother-in-law’s arm. “Leave it, Gil. Go get us a table. I’ll be along shortly.”
Patrick met Gilbert’s hate-filled glance with a mild stare of his own.
“I’ll see you hanged for killing her,” Gilbert snarled. “See if I don’t.”
Patrick had nothing to say to that. He’d never had anything to say to that.
He watched Lisa’s father walk away and wondered what else he might have said at the inquest that he hadn’t already said.
He’d never been formally accused of killing his wife, but he’d been accused of it more than once by her father.
Only there was so much more to it than what the inquest had revealed, so many things that would never come to light if he had his way. Out of respect for the baby he’d lost and the fragile mental stability of Lisa’s mother. Someday, perhaps, he would give Gilbert McGhee the full truth.
But not today. Today he was more than willing to put his dark past behind him and move on to things he could do something about. He turned to Gilbert’s brother-in-law and smiled. “Slumming today, are we?”
Conal Grant put his hand on Patrick’s shoulder and shook him gently. “I’ve been calling you for days. Where have you been?”
Patrick shrugged. “I’m having trouble recharging my mobile phone batteries. Bloody things.”
“Buy a generator, Pat. I even left messages with Jamie.”
“You know he won’t give them to me. He doesn’t approve.”
“I know,” Conal said with a sigh. “He told me the like very clearly. Thus you see how desperate I was to even subject myself to one of your brother’s tirades.”
“What did you need that was so dire?”
“I have work for you.”
Patrick looked at his employer, the man who had first given him something he had been supremely suited for. He’d been pruning Helen Grant McGhee’s roses when Conal had come along, looked him over, and somehow decided that there was more to him than skill with plants.
When was it that they had become less employer/employee than partners and friends?
Sometime after Lisa’s death, no doubt, when Patrick had worked around the clock practically every day of the year.
It had been then, when he’d been trying to bury himself in something besides earth, that he’d made a friend out of his former uncle-in-law.
“Work?” Patrick echoed with a yawn. “Why would I want to work?”
“So you can pay for the restoration—and I use the term lightly—of that wreck you’re camping in. You’d be happier in a caravan.”
“You’d be happier with me in a caravan,” Patrick countered, “for when I failed to show up when you deemed I should, you could simply attach a lorry to my front and drag me, house and all, to my next assignment. What is my next assignment, by the way?”
“Rich lad on holiday.”
“I’m still on holiday myself.”
“Not as of today, you aren’t. The lad likes you. Asked for you specifically.”
Wonderful. He was immediately assailed by visions of hours of attentive listening to youthful woes. “And where am I to keep track of this giddy lad? London?”
“Where else?”
Where else indeed, Patrick thought with a sigh.
It was all available in London. He’d seen it all in London.
Now, sampling was another story entirely.
He would be a personal bodyguard to visiting monetary aristocracy, scout out the security of their locations before they arrived, then baby-sit them after they’d come, but indulging himself was out of the question.
He’d seen too much of London’s seedier side to have it hold any appeal for him.
Given the choice, he would have preferred being at Jamie’s, sitting at the long table and visiting with family and friends.
But he needed to work—more for himself than his bank account—and Conal counted on him.
“When?” Patrick asked.
“Reconnoiter tomorrow, nanny in three. Which, I might add, is why I’ve been trying to ring you. I was almost to the point of driving up to see you.”
“Horrors,” Patrick said with a shiver.
“I certainly think so. Now, are you equal to it?”
“I’m always equal to it,” Patrick said. “You’ll have the papers ready for me on the plane?”
Conal nodded. “As usual.”
“There are times I feel very secret-agentlike.”
Conal smiled. “Aye, and there are many such agents who would be very envious of your skills, especially all that karate business you’re so fond of.”
“It’s so much less messy than going about hacking at people with a sword.” And learning it all had given him something to do besides sleep during that first year when the grief had been heaviest.
A slight, almost imperceptible shiver went through Conal.
“I’ve seen you go at your brother with a sword.
And there are almost times I believe you both about where you learned to use it.
” He rubbed his hands together. “Now, on to more interesting business. Though I can guarantee you no Bond girl as a prize for your labors, I would like to see you find something suitable on your own.”
Patrick nodded, but his head had begun to pound. Conal had told him not to marry Lisa, but he hadn’t listened. He wished, not for the first time, that he had. For his sake. For the baby’s sake.
And, six years later, he could honestly say he wished it for Lisa’s sake as well.
“Anyone promising lately?” Conal asked.
Patrick shook his head. The vision of a woman leaning over his clan’s marker came immediately to mind, but he pushed it away. “Nay,” he said firmly, “no one.”
“There’s time, my lad. So, Thursday, then,” Conal said. “Get back to me when you land.”
“I always do.”
Conal grasped his shoulder again briefly, then walked away. Patrick didn’t envy the man the trouble of soothing Gilbert.
But that wasn’t his problem anymore, appeasing that man, and for that he was grateful.
He retraced his steps and sat down on the Yank’s bench.
He plowed through his lunch with single-mindedness, then rose, tossing his garbage, and made for his car.
He was walking down the sidewalk when whom should he see but his prey herself.
He dashed for his car.
And as he did so, he cursed himself. By the saints, he had do-it-yourself projects galore at home. Stones to restack. Plumbing to see to. Broken windows to fix. He didn’t have time to play cat and mouse.
But he caught up with her just the same just outside town.
She took out a curb and left a hubcap behind.
He got out, threw the hubcap in the back, then jumped back into his SUV and took up the chase again.
And he decided, as he tracked her like a hapless rabbit, that he was tailing her because it was good practice.
It wasn’t because he was losing it. It sure as hell wasn’t because he was intrigued by the woman.
She went to Cawdor Castle.
He skulked about in the car park.
She stopped at half a dozen other places, even simple vistas that he passed on a regular basis and had no more awe for. What in the hell was she doing? Going down a bloody list?
Somewhere during that long afternoon he parked. And then he snoozed. And when he woke, she was nowhere to be found.
Damn.
He was so numb from his touristy travails it was all he could do to point his Range Rover in the direction of home and hope it got him there. What he wanted was another nap. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a nap. He was quite certain it had been decades.
That this woman should inspire the like in him was no doubt a sign.
As he drove, he realized he’d neglected to contact his mechanic.
It appeared that he would have to charge up his mobile phone after all.
Either that or go use Jamie’s phone, but he knew where that would lead: to another of his brother’s forays into his library or a lecture on the evils of playing bodyguard to the rich and irresponsible.
At least Jamie wouldn’t berate him for owning several hideously expensive cars, given that Jamie had his own share of luxuries.
The mechanic would have to wait. There would be time enough on Thursday before the plane took off to make those arrangements.
He drove home in leisurely fashion, with his windows rolled down and stereo blaring to keep himself awake.
He almost ran into the ubiquitous Ford rental before he realized what he was doing.
He couldn’t decide if he should be relieved or indulge in a curse or two.
His Yank, still doing twenty clicks below the speed limit.
He backed off and followed her until it was time for him to turn off to home. He considered quickly. There wasn’t much up ahead save the village. Perhaps she was staying there.
His car seemed incapable of turning right. He followed along behind the dark blue car until it turned off, slowly and cautiously, into the village. He flipped himself around and headed back the way he had come.
The village wasn’t big enough to boast more than two lodging facilities and he wondered which she had chosen and why she had chosen a place so remote. Then again, if merely roaming the Highlands had been her goal, she had chosen a likely enough place.
Comfortably close to his home, actually.
Though that didn’t really concern him, of course. He had much to do and needed to be about doing it. Let the Yank see all the sights she wanted. He was far better off not dozing in any more National Trust car parks. He was quite certain he’d seen all the sights he cared to in this lifetime.
He considered taking her hubcap to her, but the thought was just too exhausting. He would do it in the morning.
For now, it was all he could do to limp home to his empty house.