Chapter 2
Chapter Two
S queezing himself sideways, Bryan plopped into the little fold-down jump seat behind the copilot, as his cousin, Captain Teàrlach Buchanan , began pre-flight procedures with barely a glance in his direction.
“Thanks for letting me ride up front.”
Teàrlach shook his head. “ A student pilot, Bry ? Really ? I swear, you could charm the scales off a snake.”
Maybe that was true most of the time, but his people skills were certainly reverting to Barra - Bryan if his interaction with the Brown - Eyed Book Lover in the airport was any indication. “ If I were going to train as a pilot, you’d be the only instructor I’d trust.”
His cousin’s lips quirked up. “ You couldn’t just buy a ticket like everyone else?”
“Didn’t know I was coming until I came.”
“Story of my life,” the copilot agreed, taking her own seat, and Teàrlach burst out laughing.
Bryan stretched his legs as far as there was room without kicking the wheelchair stowed behind Teàrlach’s seat. Then he buckled up and took out the new fidget spinner.
Hell of a time to lose his grandfather’s worry stone. It had been right there in his pocket, just like always, but then security was a typical chaos of shouted orders to “ Take out your liquids,” “ Empty your pockets,” “ Step forward—not that far forward,” followed by “ We’re going to wand you,” and “ Is there anything in your bag that could hurt me?”
Somewhere in all that mess, the stone had vanished. Fitting , in a way, for the one piece of home he’d taken with him when he left, the rainbow-colored token of love and pride, to be free of Barra forever. An airport fidget spinner was a poor replacement, though.
He should have spent more time searching the floor around his security lane, but then he might have missed his opportunity to bicker with the American at WHSmith . What exactly had gotten into him? He didn’t go around picking fights, especially not with brown-eyed strangers. There was just something about her... mostly something that got under his skin.
“Didn’t buy a ticket because he didn’t want a whole welcome committee, more like,” Teàrlach told his copilot.
“I didn’t know you’d be full up.”
His cousin clucked his tongue. “ It’s the Bàgh a’ Chiùil festival. You’ve been away too long.”
“Bay-a-whatsits…?” the copilot asked.
“It’s Gaelic . It means Bay of Music ,” Teàrlach explained.
Bryan groaned. So this wasn’t just typical summer tourism. The island would be overrun with festivalgoers. God help him.
“How long’s it been since you were here?” the copilot asked. She was young and pretty, tall and black, and most importantly not related to any of Bryan’s island kin. He wondered if Teàrlach was dating her. She made him laugh, which was nice to hear.
“Seventeen years,” his cousin answered for him, and the copilot turned to Bryan for confirmation.
“Half my life,” he agreed with a nod.
She whistled. “ Someone must have really pissed you off.”
Teàrlach glanced back at him too and then answered for him once more. “ Nah , he just ran out of girls to shag that he wasn’t related to.”
“Easy,” Bryan growled, and this time the copilot roared with laughter, slapping her instrument panel in a way that made him nervous. He wanted to warn her to be careful, but he bit his tongue and fidgeted his spinner faster.
“There’s always boys,” she gasped.
“Ran out of them too,” Teàrlach teased, and now the copilot was wheezing.
Bryan already regretted going home.
“Festival’s gotten pretty popular the last few years,” Teàrlach went on. “ Sure you won’t have any trouble finding a tourist to claim.”
“No thanks.”
His cousin was overexaggerating his conquests a bit. Tourist tail had almost always been too cliché for Bryan .
“Some of them out there are pretty,” the copilot said, nodding towards the cabin. “ Want me to put in a good word?”
Bryan scowled and shook his head as a tan face with dark brown eyes flooded his vision—the snarky woman from the airport shop again. Why her of all people? And now she was on his plane, heading to his island.
He hadn’t meant to be an arse. In an anxious rush to make the flight, he’d tried to say, Pardon , but his larynx snagged on the P so his brain substituted the simplest path forward, instead: You ’ re in the way. He even sounded like a prick to his own ears. No wonder she’d been insulted and turned into every primary school bookworm who’d ever looked down their bespectacled noses at him for struggling to read. In turn, he’d lashed out with schoolboy taunts, back and forth like a pair of hissing felines.
What was it about going home that turned him into such a child?
“You sure? I’ve been known to be a pretty good matchmaker,” the copilot offered.
“Thanks, but no,” he said. “ I’m not here for that.”
“What are you here for?” Teàrlach asked evenly, but there was a tension simmering below the surface.
They’d been constant companions as children, and then roommates on the mainland for a few years while Teàrlach attended flight school. When his younger cousin returned home like the prodigal son, Bryan continued to wander, leaving Glasgow to apprentice with the distilleries on Islay . One of the few people he’d kept in touch with during his exile, and sporadically at that, Teàrlach never overtly blamed him for leaving. But after so many years, maybe he, like the rest of the family, blamed Bryan for not coming back.
“I’m here to open a distillery,” he answered after a too-long pause, and saying it out loud made his stomach swoop as though the plane were dropping altitude too quickly. Saying it made it real.
His cousin turned to check that he was serious, and Bryan resisted the urge to tell him to watch where he was flying.
“On Barra ?”
“Why not?” Bryan demanded, a little too defensively. He took a breath. “ It’ll bring jobs. Tourism , maybe. There’s an investor who liked Rionnagach well enough to give me the capital if I can demonstrate my commitment to net-zero carbon.”
“Bry, that’s amazing.”
His stomach’s altitude settled a little.
“He was lead designer for an Ardbeg expression that won a bunch of awards last year,” Teàrlach bragged to the copilot, who nodded and made the mildly impressed sort of sounds people make when they’re too polite to say they don’t care. If Teàrlach noticed, he didn’t show it. “ Zero carbon too?” he went on. “ They backed the right horse, there.”
“Aye. Long as the islanders are open to it?” Bryan didn’t mean to say it like a question, but when he was a young, idealistic lad of eleven, he didn’t exactly endear himself to the townspeople with his passion for environmentalism. It was his greatest fear that the place he’d annoyed and then abandoned wouldn’t have him back, hat in hand, jobs or no jobs.
Teàrlach shrugged. “ Everyone loves a dram. Just maybe don’t yell at them about their Sunday roast killing the polar bears this time.”
Like he had with the woman in the bookshop.
Bryan shook his head in agreement. He’d only done it to needle her after she’d called him a Neanderthal . To place them on more equal footing.
“So you’ll be staying then?”
Bryan liked to think he heard a hopeful note in his cousin’s voice.
“Aye, well, I’ve got to impress the investor, buy land. It’s kind of a lot.” He took a deep breath. “ Anyway , that’s the idea.”
“The family’ll be glad,” Teàrlach assured him.
The fidget toy was spinning so fast by now it could probably propel them the rest of the way home. “ You think?”
“Aye. Where are you staying?”
“Grandad’s.” His gut roiled again. But no one ever said any of this would be easy. “ Did you make it to the wake?”
“I did, aye,” Teàrlach said, and of course he had. The whole island would have turned out: MacNeils and Buchanans alike, laughing and crying and sharing stories of old Grandad Mac , and only Bryan missing.
What kind of Neanderthal would miss his own grandfather ’ s funeral? The words rattled his brain in layers of American snark. She hadn’t said them, but she would have been right to.
He’d wanted to be there. Bought a suit and a plane ticket and everything. But then he had a panic attack about seeing everyone and being asked to make a speech, or worse, not being asked to.
In the end, he missed his flight. He’d spent the whole wake sitting on the floor of the loo in a dank Glasgow hotel, raising a dram to the old man who practically raised him—practically raised them all—the four musketeers until one by one, three had left the island and Grandad Mac behind.
“And Alec ?”
“Och. No one’s heard from Alec in years, unless you have.”
Bryan shook his head. It was just one more way he’d let the family down, losing touch with his older cousin years before. But he was back now. Maybe that could count for something. Maybe he could finally rediscover the peace Barra had once held for him, as Teàrlach had.
His heart swelled when the white sandy beach that would serve as a landing strip came into view, dredging up memories of running fast along the same beach with his three cousins, learning to make his new kite take wing, then doing the same years later with his little sister. Bryan had been half-afraid he’d feel nothing for the island, that after as many years away as home, the place he’d grown up would no longer welcome him. He swallowed down the lump in his throat, grateful to discover one fear, at least, was for naught.
“Beautiful as you remember?” Teàrlach asked softly.
“More,” Bryan rasped.
“I never get tired of this sight,” the copilot agreed, as Teàrlach put the plane gently on the ground, smooth as spreading butter.
As captain, it would have been customary for Teàrlach to wave the visitors off his plane, but he let his copilot handle the pleasantries while he reviewed his instruments and made notes in his flight log.
Bryan hung silently back in the cockpit for his own reasons until all the tourists had disembarked, and then a ramp was brought up for Teàrlach’s wheelchair, and Bryan followed his cousin off the plane where an airport attendant was unloading luggage.
His older sister, Caitriona , was standing there waiting, her hair far grayer than he remembered. At the sight of him, her face drained of color, as if she’d seen a ghost.
Bryan cast an accusatory glare at Teàrlach . Had he radioed ahead to tell her?
His cousin shrugged and said, “ Dude , you were with me the whole time.”
“Cait? What are you doing here?” Bryan rasped.
She dropped some piece of cardboard she’d been holding and threw her arms around his neck. “ I could ask you the same thing, ye wee devil.” Stepping back, she held him at arm’s length to study him before wiping her cheek on her jumper sleeve. “ Let me look at you. Why didn’t you tell anyone you were coming?”
“Element of… surprise?” he offered, and she slapped his arm, but not hard enough to hurt.
“How long are you here? You’ll be staying with Ma and Da ?”
“No, at—at Grandad’s ,” he replied. Though he’d inherited the old stone house, it didn’t feel right to call it his.
Cait’s eyes widened and she bent to pick up the cardboard she’d dropped. “ Grandad B’s ?” she asked coyly.
“Grandad Mac’s . Why ?”
“Do you mind? You’re in the way,” a familiar voice said, and there she was again, the brunette from the airport, stepping up to Bryan’s elbow, suitcase in hand.
Her blonde, fae-like friend gasped, “ Gray !”
Undeterred, the American Book Lover’s brown eyes flashed at him for only a second before she turned a sunny smile on his sister that felt completely discordant with her irritating irritation.
He really must have pissed her off with his careless remarks. You’d think, as someone usually so meticulous with his words, someone who’d been forced to grow a skin thick enough for any insult to bounce off, he’d have been a little more considerate of a stranger in an airport shop. He’d have to file down those rough edges and polish up his manners before visiting Ma .
“You must be Caitriona ,” she greeted his sister, now ignoring him completely. “ I’m Grace . This is Wesley .”
Bryan actually read his sister’s cardboard sign then, the name Graciela Rivera written out in thick, tidy marker.
Graciela , Bryan couldn’t help mouthing. He liked the shape of it on his tongue.
“Welcome to Barradise ,” Cait quipped.
“Are you driving for Uber now?” Bryan asked his sister.
“Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t have Uber on the island. Teàrlach , you couldn’t have warned me?” she shot at their cousin.
He threw up his hands. “ Stowed away, didn’t he? Nothing I could do.”
“Mmm hmm. Still thick as thieves, the pair of you. The thing is, Ry? —”
Bryan tried not to flinch at the old nickname. It stung like a paper cut under the nail, as though the B in his name was just too much trouble, as though she thought by saying it herself she would be forced to endure his stammer.
“—we weren’t expecting you.”
“And…?”
“And you can’t stay at Grandad Mac’s .”
“Has the roof caved in?”
“Well, no. But I’ve let it as a B & B .”
“S— I’m sorry, what?”
“It was just sitting there empty, and the hotels were turning folk away every day, so I bought some new linens and… it’s done.” She held up her hands in surrender, much as Teàrlach had.
Bryan stepped closer, putting his back between their argument and the crowd of tourists. “ Undo it, Cait ,” he said softly.
“Well, I can’t undo it, can I ? They’re here now.”
He glared at his sister. All he wanted was to hide, alone, inside his grandfather’s house and work on his proposal for the distillery, but now he’d have to play host to a couple of Americans unless he could palm them off on someone else.
Grandad’s little house had two small bedrooms and one toilet. Would the American Invasion agree to share? Or would he be relegated to the lumpy old sofa, already six inches too short by the time he was sixteen?
Behind him, the one from the airport who called herself Grace was chatting to Teàrlach like they were old friends.
“If you’d told someone you were coming…” Cait began.
“You’d have what? Not rented out my house?”
“It’s been vacant for months, Ryan Daniel MacNeil , with no word from you.”
This time he couldn’t hold back the shudder. His name was Bryan , damn it, and he’d never once asked anyone to drop the B , even when he couldn’t pronounce it.
“Frankly, I never thought to see you again. We only knew you were alive thanks to Teàrlach here.”
Sighing, Bryan raked a hand through his hair and turned away from his sister’s accusatory glower to face his cousin and the two interloping Americans . The blonde was watching him closely.
“Double booked?” she asked.
“Apparently.”
She scrunched her face sympathetically.
“How long are you here?”
“Four weeks,” she replied.
Bryan tried to keep his own expression impassive, but Jules would be boots on the ground in just over three weeks, and they expected to see not only his finished proposal and the island as a whole but a completed proof of concept. How would he be ready in time with a matching set of American distractions?
“It’s her birthday.”
“It’s not a birthday trip. I’m on a deadline,” Grace corrected, clearly not as absorbed in her conversation as she seemed.
“I heard about your book,” Teàrlach said. “ Congratulations , I’m so proud of you, Gracie .”
“You’re a writer?” Bryan demanded.
Her gaze snapped to his, the scene in the airport suddenly so much more embarrassing. Nine hundred thirty-five trees. His neck burned at the memory while her eyes challenged him to insult her again.
Cait’s gaze flicked from him to her guests. “ Ready to go?” she asked, overly bright.
“We don’t want to put you out,” the blonde said.
“Nonsense. Welcome to Barra .” Bryan punched the B with everything he had just to show his sister he could, before tossing his holdall into the back of her pickup and climbing in alongside the Americans ’ luggage for the drive down the road and along the coast to Castlebay and the house of Grandad Mac .