Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
W hen Grace committed to a new endeavor, it was always with her whole chest. She was nothing if not the A + overachieving daughter of two overachieving parents, so avoiding Bryan , with a B , for the next week was easy. All she had to do was adjust her schedule to stay up writing all night and then sleep through his pandemonium with liberal use of ear plugs, melatonin, and utter exhaustion.
She essentially reverted to her natural Tennessee biorhythms, writing until she was too tired to see straight and then crawling into bed and passing out. It made for some interesting dreams.
Because Catholic guilt was real even for a reformed Catholic who hadn’t been to church since her parents divorced, she apologized almost constantly for abandoning Wesley to her own devices, though she knew her friend would forgive her simply because Wes was Wes . As she continued to remind Grace , rambling the island alone suited the Wesley Teal aesthetic and was, in her words, “a small price to pay in exchange for getting the whole double bed to myself while you work yourself to the bone. Instead of boning.”
Wes would always be Wes . Just like this trip was always meant to be a sabbatical for her and a work-a-thon for Grace .
And slowly, oh-so-painfully-slowly, but surely, the novel began to take shape. It was a truly terrible first draft because she allowed it to be. At least words were on the page.
When the house was deathly quiet, Grace would creep out to raid the pantry or use the toilet and examine the guys’ progress. It had taken no time at all for them to frame out a new south-facing facade, and in contrast to the cavernous stone they’d knocked down, Bryan had designed a whole wall of windows, which would open out to the porch and the gorgeous ocean vista beyond. Everything was still tarped to keep out the elements, but there was evidence of a future built-in window seat that gave Grace’s tummy a little twist of delight.
They had laid out heating coils along the stone floor and were beginning to cover them with more modern stone tiles, a sort of classic call-back to the original floors, but installed to efficiently warm the cold little cottage. Even with the floor unfinished and the wall still torn up, Grace could see how cozy it was going to be. The lighting alone would be a massive improvement over the previous space.
Bryan’s vision had opened the room significantly, allowing it to breathe as it was always meant to. The previous wall had been a sacrilege, blocking such a gorgeous view with dull, white-washed stone. Once the windows were installed, she was sure it would still be protected from the harshest gale, but brighter, even on the darkest winter day.
For now, twilight poured through the tarps like blue and brown stained glass, and Grace couldn’t help taking the risk of bumping into him and his forearm tattoo—she tucked herself into the in-progress window seat, right up next to the drafty tarps, and began typing away on her phone instead of her outlet-dependent laptop.
After all, wasn’t it every girl’s dream to write in a window seat by the sea? How could she not?
That was exactly how Bryan found her when he padded out to the kitchen, nothing but a pair of joggers slung low on his hips. He froze when he saw her, and she froze too, as though by not moving he wouldn’t notice her there, never mind he already had.
“The vampiress emerges,” he murmured.
“Sorry. Did I wake you?”
He shook his head. “ We didn’t work as hard today. Not hard enough to tire me out.” He lifted the kettle to offer her a cup, and she nodded, though she’d already drunk enough to flood the ocean.
“You’ve done an incredible job,” she told him, her stomach doing annoying things when he allowed his back to straighten and a tiny smile of pride to tug his lips.
“Thanks. And you?”
“Oh, I didn’t do much,” she said, simultaneously proud of her help with the roof and the wall destruction, but also ashamed that she hadn’t done more like their bargain had stipulated.
“I… meant your… writing?”
“Oh.” Her cheeks burned. “ Me too. I didn’t do much. Just a few thousand words.”
“How many do you lack?”
“Maybe twenty? Another week and I should have the ending. If I can figure out how it ends.”
His eyes widened. “ You don’t already know?”
“I know what happens. Broadly . I just don’t quite know how we get there. Yet .”
“If only you could take a holiday…”
Grace leaned back against the wall beam. “ I know. I should be enjoying my time here. I am enjoying it. I’ve never seen a more beautiful place.”
Bryan turned back to prepare the mugs of tea. She liked the way he made a ritual of it: measuring out loose tea into little beehive-patterned metal steepers, adding a dash of milk and honey to each cup.
When he handed the mug over, his fingers brushed against the inside of her palm. Was it his touch that singed her, or the tea?
“Careful,” he growled. Then , “ You should come out tomorrow. It’s the midsummer ceilidh everyone’s been on about. To mark the end of all this festival nonsense.”
“Sounds…” Honestly it sounded liked like a big noisy, sweaty, chaos party. Not that she had much experience with parties. “ Loud ,” she finally settled on.
“Oh aye. Quite the stramash, if tales of years past are any indication.”
“Yikes.” Stramash sounded a bit scary, if she was being honest, except for the way it slid silkily off his tongue.
And now she was thinking about his tongue again, and how somewhere along the lines, his beard had gone from reminding her of a dangerous, spiky stinger to instead the soft, fuzzy butt of a bumble bee.
“Torture,” he agreed. “ Please come.”
And why did she like those words from the Stoic Scot’s lips quite so much?
“With an invitation like that, who could refuse?” she asked, a little breathless.
“Everyone should experience a ceilidh once in their life.”
“I don’t know how to dance,” she protested, peering into her tea and taking tiny sips to keep from scalding her tongue. “ And I didn’t bring a dress.”
“Come as you are, as long as you come.”
And there were those words again, he was practically begging. OMG Gracie , settle down.
“What’s in it for you?” she couldn’t help asking. After kissing and then disappearing on him, she couldn’t imagine he thought of her as very good company.
He studied her intently for a moment before looking away. “ Wesley and Eòghann obviously fancy each other. But she won’t let herself enjoy it if she imagines you’re miserable at home.”
“You think?” Grace asked, but she knew he was right. When he didn’t answer, she said, “ I’ll consider it,” but she already knew she was going to concede.
He nodded pensively, then stared into his own tea.
Grace wanted to ask why it mattered if she came or not.
She wanted to ask if he was sorry he kissed her, or if he even still thought about it like she did? She wanted to ask about the renovation, too. Where were the windows? What was next after the floor? Was he angry she’d stopped helping him, or actually relieved?
And had he read any more of her book? Did he like the ending?
When the emptiness filled up with her unasked questions, he said, “ I’ll let you get back to it,” and lifted his tea in mock salute.
“Sorry,” she replied out of habit—for being in his space when he might wish to be alone, for not being a more interesting conversationalist if he didn’t, for everything that happened after last week’s kiss.
“You apologize too much,” he observed, frowning.
“Sorry,” she muttered automatically.
His scowl deepened, that deep chasm between his eyebrows popping out like a demanding cursor.
“I mean… suck it, MacNeil ,” she corrected herself, and the man almost choked on his tea.
“Quite,” he agreed through fits of coughing before scurrying away.
* * *
When Grace awoke the next day, the first thing Wes asked was whether she’d deign to drag herself away from the computer long enough to attend the ceilidh.
“I know you’re not here for vacation, but even high school kids go to formal dances, so in a way this would be hands-on research. Or hands-off, if you insist. I’d say we could sneak around and spike the punch, but this is Scotland . It’ll already be spiked.”
“That sounds like a gross generalization,” Grace laughed. Because despite Wesley’s very cogent argument and puppy-dog eyes, it was Bryan’s grumpy golden-retriever face that had already convinced her to take the evening off.
Running into him the night before hadn’t been as awkward as she’d feared. Maybe they had both silently agreed to move on from the kissing and everything else, sweeping it under his new radiant flooring, never to be spoken of again. Grace couldn’t decide how to feel about that.
“Don’t make me go by myself,” Wes begged. “ I have no problem doing just about anything on my own— Orgasms ? A given! Movies ? More popcorn for me. Dinner out? Literally what Wesley Wednesdays were invented for. But please for the love of… whatever. Do not make me go to this dance alone.”
“Fine, I’ll come. But only because I’m the world’s greatest friend.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t go that far. Rebecca made up with her terrible husband just so I could take her place on this trip.”
“Ugh, Marshall ,” Grace agreed.
“Forget Marshall , we have outfits to plan,” Wes said, throwing open the closet and selecting a twirly, brown-plaid, A -line skirt.
“That’s… my skirt,” Grace said. “ That wasn’t even in the bag I left in Glasgow . Why do you have my skirt?”
“Semper paratus,” Wes said with a shrug, as though vague non- Church Latin was any kind of answer, but at least Grace had something to wear.