Chapter 9 #2
Roddy entered with platters and bowls piled high and saved her from evil thoughts concerning her fork and several tender, meaty places on Bentley’s physique.
Madelyn turned her attention to the food.
It was impossible not to notice the man sitting on the other side of it.
His expression was positively inscrutable. Then he looked up at Roddy and smiled.
And that sight was enough to force her to draw several more cleansing breaths.
“My thanks, nephew,” Patrick said.
“A pleasure, uncle,” Roddy said.
“Madelyn, stop hyperventilating,” Bentley said, sounding annoyed.
Madelyn ignored him and concentrated on Patrick. “He’s your nephew?”
Patrick set to breakfast with gusto. “Aye.”
“But—” Madelyn began.
“Inbreeding,” Bentley said with a sneer. “He’s probably married to his sister.”
Madelyn didn’t expect Patrick to jump up and defend his honor, and he didn’t.
“Don’t have a sister,” was all he said through a mouthful of oatmeal.
Madelyn laughed in spite of herself. Bentley seemed to find that less than amusing.
He began a rant that included everything from complaints about the food to comments on the quality of the local women.
Madelyn could hardly eat. The only reason she managed it was that she didn’t have money for anything else later in the day.
Her breakfast, though, didn’t sit very well, and she suspected with the way it was quickly becoming a rock in her stomach, she wouldn’t be able to eat later.
She rose. “Thank you, Roddy,” she called toward the kitchen. “It was great.”
He came out, wiping his hands on a towel. “Where are you off to today?”
“It’s a secret.” Actually she didn’t have a clue. Out of here seemed to be a good start. She would work out the particulars later. She looked at Bentley. “Your car better not be in my way.”
Bentley only smirked at her. She looked at Patrick, but he was staring at Bentley without a trace of expression on his face. Roddy was wringing his towel as if he intended to expunge any and all traces of moisture from it.
Well, it looked as if everyone was anxious for her to leave. She turned and walked away with as much spring to her step as she could manage.
That lasted until she got to the foyer, then she had to clutch the front door frame and recover. What she needed was a week flat on her back. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the luxury of a week to recuperate. She’d have plenty of time to recline on her parents’ couch when she got home.
That thought was enough to propel her out the door. She practically trotted around the corner of Roddy’s inn.
Once again, she pulled up short.
Bentley’s jag was there.
Another low-slung black sports car—Patrick’s no doubt—was there.
Her little rental was not.
Her heart leaped in her chest. Good heavens, had her car been stolen?
Horrifying visions came to her of having to work the rest of her life to pay the upped insurance premiums for a car that was no doubt being stripped of all usable parts at that very moment in some hidden locale used for such nefarious purposes.
“Ow, ow, ow,” she said as she ran back into the house. She came to a skidding, quite painful halt in the foyer. Facing her was a little tableau she suspected she wouldn’t soon forget.
Patrick was leaning back against a wall, in the shadows, as usual. Roddy was further torturing his dish towel. Bentley Douglas Taylor III, that pompous ass, was dangling his keys from his pinkie, not bothering to hide his look of triumph.
“Shall we go?” he asked pleasantly.
She could hardly believe the events she’d been plunged into. “You took my car?” she asked in disbelief.
“Your credit, it seems, is not very good,” he said.
Her bag landed with a thud at her feet. “I can’t believe you took my car.”
“I didn’t take your car.”
“You liar,” she breathed.
“Careful, Madelyn,” he said calmly. “You’re walking on thin ice.”
“Take it, had it taken. You jerk, it’s all semantics.”
He drew himself up, looking highly offended. “Semantics are my lifeblood.”
“I can’t believe it’s legal,” she said, stunned. In fact, she wondered if she could ever stop shaking her head. When was the nightmare with this guy going to end? “What’d you do,” she asked, “call up one of your cronies at American Express and have them cancel my card?”
He smiled. “I have a wide circle of friends.”
“How, I don’t know,” she said.
Then it hit her.
She looked at him in horror. “You didn’t have my card canceled.”
He only continued to smile.
She looked at Roddy. “Where’s the phone?”
He pointed miserably to the desk. Madelyn went, made a quick phone call to one of the myriad phone numbers she had memorized, then slowly hung up the phone.
Her credit card was frozen. And no, they were very sorry, but they could do nothing about that. Her credit, it appeared, had suddenly taken an irreversible nosedive and American Express could no longer extend to her any of their privileges or benefits.
She could hardly believe it, but believe it she had to. She quickly made a short list of what that meant.
No rental cars.
No cash advances.
She had ￡200 in her purse. Enough to eat. Not enough to eat, rent a car, put gas in a car, or even have a car to make it to the next B and B she had reserved. She looked at Bentley.
“I don’t suppose I still have any paid lodging anywhere else.”
“I don’t suppose you do,” he said without even a flicker of remorse. “Since you had no mode of transportation, I thought it best to cancel the rest of your reservations. Unless, of course, you care to travel with me—”
“Never.” She looked at Roddy. “Is my stay here still covered or did Bentley cancel that as well?”
“You’re all paid up for at least another week,” he said, nodding his head vigorously.
He was an awful liar. She doubted that even the full series of workshops at Bentley’s private prevarication seminar could fix that. It was all she could do to nod in an equally perjurious manner, and she had learned how to at Bentley’s knee.
Bentley snorted. “She most certainly—”
“She’s covered,” Roddy said, shooting him a glance that Madelyn was proud of.
Bentley pursed his lips, but said no more.
She wanted to sit, but that would have hurt.
She couldn’t look at Patrick—she was too humiliated.
She couldn’t look at Roddy—she was too damned grateful.
She couldn’t even look at Bentley—if she’d had to look him in the eye, she would have wrapped her hands around his neck and cheerfully throttled him.
“Well,” Bentley said pleasantly, “let’s go, shall we? But first, toddle on off and change clothes so you don’t embarrass me.”
Was he out of his mind? He’d just made her life a living hell and now he wanted to make it worse? Was it possible it could get worse? She suspected it could.
She wondered what she was supposed to do now. A quick list of options came immediately to mind, things she dismissed one by one.
Bum money off Sunny
was the first, but she couldn’t ask her sister to raid her savings when Sunny rarely took vacations herself, and if she did, they were usually taken within walking distance.
Bum money off the folks
was the second, and it went the way of the first without hesitation.
If she called her parents, she would be subjected to a lengthy lecture on the virtues of traveling on the cheap and probing questions as to why she wasn’t doing so.
That would be followed by the inevitable discourse on the evils of her profession, the failings of her taste in men, and the possible justified retribution due one who had left the sacred path of academia to pursue the almighty dollar.
No, the price there was just too high.
She would have to think of something, but she wasn’t going to be doing any thinking standing in Roddy MacLeod’s entryway, facing three men who were staring at her for completely different reasons.
She stuck her chin out to keep herself from crying, turned, and marched over to the front door.
She made a mental note not to do any more marching. It was excruciating.
Maybe she would head to the pub and pick up some Gaelic. Her father would be proud. Maybe someone had a free tourist book she could look at. It would sure as hell be as close as she was going to get to anything she’d planned on seeing.
She was tempted to speculate on how much farther she was going to have to slide before she reached the bottom of the abyss, but that kind of speculation was never a good idea. Besides, she had the feeling that the slide wasn’t over.
“Where are you going?” Bentley bellowed. “You haven’t changed your clo—”
She shut the front door behind her. She could be happy in the village. There were lots of sights to see there. Local color. Interesting architecture. Cheap entertainment.
She heard the front door open and close behind her. “Go away, you jerk,” she said over her shoulder. “Haven’t you done enough? Or do you have to follow me to make sure I’m completely miserable?”
Footsteps crunched in the gravel behind her. “You forgot your purse. I thought it might serve you later.”
Madelyn closed her eyes briefly, then she turned and looked at Patrick. “Thank you,” she said, taking her bag.
“No need.” He reached for her hand. “Come on.”
She shook her head. “You don’t want to get involved in my life. It sucks. And I think it’s still heading south.”
“Directions change.”
“Huh-uh,” she said, shaking her head. “Not this time. This is the real thing. Vacation in the Toilet. I’d be scared if I were you.”
“I don’t frighten easily.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Why?”
She would have come up with a witty reply, but she found herself a little unsettled by the feeling of his hand around hers.
His hand was sending some sort of electricity up her arm.
Sunny would have been able to explain the karmic ramifications of that, but she didn’t bother to try.
She was just afraid all that zinging would soon fry her brain.
She dug in her heels for a last-ditch effort to save Patrick from her and her disaster of a life.
“Really,” she said. “You should rethink this.”
He stopped and looked down at her with a grave smile. “I’ll survive.”
That smile was going to be her undoing. “That’s what I used to think,” she managed.
“Perhaps you think overmuch.”
“I have been accused of that on occasion,” she conceded.
He tugged on her hand. “Think later. Walk now.”
“But—”
“Taylor’s behind us.”
She didn’t have to hear that twice. She limped right along with him as fast as she could and didn’t protest as he helped her lower herself into his car.
“How many of these do you have?” she asked as he squatted down beside her.
“This is the last one.”
“Any other colors?”
He looked at her and lifted one eyebrow. “Black suits me,” he said.
“I like black myself,” she offered.
“And I like your lime.”
She smoothed her hand over her pants. “Thank you,” she managed.
He leaned over her with the seat belt. She thought she might faint.
“Breathe,” he said, not looking up as he fastened it.
“Tailbone pain.”
He looked at her and smiled, a wry curling of his mouth. “Sure.”
“You don’t affect me,” she lied.
“Don’t I? You disturb the hell out of me—”
A strident voice interrupted him. “Now, wait just one minute—”
Patrick sighed lightly, then rose. Madelyn craned her neck to see what was going on—after she’d locked her door, of course. She wasn’t a fool.
Bentley was blathering on. Patrick only shrugged, moved past Bentley, and walked away. He got in the car, turned it on, and backed up. Madelyn looked at Bentley to find that he had hopped in his car.
“Oh, no,” Madelyn said.
“He’s not going anywhere,” Patrick said as he pulled away.
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“Did you destroy the Jag?”
He looked, unsurprisingly, horrified. “Woman, are you daft? I should sooner do damage to my brother. Nay, I merely made a few adjustments to his spark-plug cables.”
“Bentley will never figure that out.”
“I didn’t imagine he would. And he’ll surely offend any mechanic in the area before he can get them out to offer aid. I daresay we’re safe for the day.”
She blinked, hard, then looked out the window when that failed to halt the tears welling up in her eyes.
“I hardly know how to thank you. This is just all so awful. I had such big plans.” She looked down at her purse and realized she’d left her list on the bed.
If that wasn’t the last straw, it was close.
She ignored the tears running down her cheeks.
“I don’t even remember what I had on my list for the morning. ”
“Leave your plans be and let me see to the day.”
“But I can’t let you—”
“I am accustomed,” he said, glancing briefly her way, “to seeing to the necessities and comforts of the women in my company.”
A man who would pay for dinner instead of forgetting his wallet? Was this possible, or had she stumbled into a fairy tale? She stared at him in surprise. “Do you have any faults?”
He laughed and the sound of it was as breathtaking as sun breaking through storm clouds. Chills went down her spine and she almost wept. Hormones. It had to be hormones, and intense tailbone pain combined.
“Flaws? Aye, and you would be acquainted with several.”
She honestly couldn’t have said she knew what he meant. He flashed her a brief smile, one full of conspiratorial good humor. It was so sweeping a change that she felt as if her feet had been pulled from beneath her by a riptide.
Flaws?
Nah.
Too good to be true?
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
And then he reached over and took her hand. He squeezed gently and continued to hold on until they reached the main road and he had to shift gears.
“Be at peace,” he said with a smile. “I’ll see that the day stays out of the loo.”
She actually laughed.
It felt marvelous. And if the rest of the day was that wonderful, she would be thrilled.
He took her hand again.
Things were definitely off to a good start.