Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
GAVIN
Och, I’m a complete numpty.
I’m selective?
Try: I’m an imbecile. Callie looked at me like I’d thrown a puppy over a waterfall, and rightfully so. It’s bad enough I had to reject her mid-advance, but then to tell her it’s because she’s not my type? I could have picked a better lie.
Callie is very much my type. If someone took the search history of my heart and created a woman, it would be her.
But I’m not about to start up a romance with my cousin’s guest. Especially not one who’s staying in my house for a few weeks.
She isn’t returning to America until after Hogmanay. That’s a whole other level of daft.
I’d like to think I have more respect for women than that.
I’m selective in how I treat people. I’m selective about the women I kiss and how I use them to assuage my bruised and battered heart. I select to only be physical with people I’m in a committed relationship with.
Does that make me a bit odd? Perhaps. Has it ostracized Callie within the first hour of officially meeting her? Most assuredly.
I scrub a hand over my face and glance around the interior of my house. She’s still pacing on the phone outside with her sister, and it doesn’t take Einstein to know she’s likely sharing the humiliation of our first encounter and begging Luna to drive faster.
My phone buzzes with a message from my cousin.
Hamish
We haven’t left yet. Rhys and Luna are being slow.
Well, that’s not ideal. I clench my teeth.
Gavin
You could drive separately
Hamish
Ruby wants to ride up together, save money on petrol.
Gavin
Fair enough
Hamish
We’ll hurry. Probably be there in the morning. Won’t make it tonight, I reckon.
Gavin
Mind the road
Hamish sends a thumbs-up emoji, so I put my phone away and let out a frustrated breath. By now, Callie probably knows they haven’t left yet, too. If Hamish was within reach, I could throttle him for leaving me alone with her for so long.
Instead, maybe I should make Callie something to eat. I know some people get hangry without food, and she didn’t eat breakfast.
The front door squeaks open—I really need to grease those hinges—so I run a hand through my hair and go to meet her in the vestibule.
Her cheeks are ruddy from the cold and her brown eyes are bright.
Her wavy brown hair hits her shoulders, and she tucks it behind her ear on one side. Och, she’s bonnie.
A bit of a wreck, but bonnie. My stomach pitches when I think about how rude I was in the car, but trying to correct it now might lead her to think I’m coming on to her.
Best to leave it be.
“Hungry?” I ask.
“No.”
I don’t believe her, but I pick up her suitcase anyway. I have a feeling if I push it, she’ll dig her heels in more. “Follow me. I’ll show you to your room.”
Callie is silent as we make our way up two sets of stairs to the attic room. It’s the smallest bedroom but one of my favorites with an unbelievable view. It gets a little chilly though. I’m debating telling her this when an icy look stops the words before they can make an appearance.
“Thanks,” she says, in a way that puts a period on the end of our time together. She’s kicking me out.
I give her my best smile. “Come down when you want to eat.”
Her responding smile is fake. It’s a little painful, to be honest. The Callie who laughed with me last night, the one I shared the easy conversation in the pub with, is gone, probably somewhere in Inverness. This Callie is grumpy and distant, and I want the other one back.
The door closes in my face.
Well, I should have at least made a joke to lighten the mood. Better have something prepared for next time.
My phone rings while I make my way down the stairs, and when I see my grandmother’s name flashing across the screen, I answer it. “Hiya, Granny.”
“Hamish gave me the news.” She sighs heavily. “There’s a storm coming, Gav. I feel it in my elbow.”
I go into my office on the first floor and close the door behind me. The drapes are pushed away from the window, and the clouds are off in the distance. Granny’s elbow was broken once and gives her grief, but it’s not usually wrong about the weather. “Let’s hope you’re misinterpreting.”
“Is your guest here?”
“Aye, she’s settling in now.” I feel a wee bit of temptation to tell Granny what a fool I’ve been. Her advice is usually grand, and I’ve been following it most of my life. But I don’t want her to be disappointed in me, either, and I know she will be. “How is Grandad?”
“Well enough, he is. Canna get him to agree to an American Christmas. He thinks they’ve come to ruin December.”
“They’ve taken enough from us, haven’t they?” he calls in the background.
He still blames America for stealing his best mate over fifty years ago. Never mind that Georgie is still happily married and living in upstate New York near all his grandkids.
“Quiet, you,” Granny says, her voice distant. “He doesn’t like change.”
“Mrs. Winter sent out an email saying she’d like to make a schedule for dinners, so we take turns cooking meals. Other than that, I don’t believe there’s much planned in the way of American Christmas.”
“Just you wait, lad,” Grandad says. “They’ll try to microwave the tea.”
I must be on the speakerphone.
Granny makes a clucking sound, and I can hear her moving away. “Listen, there’s something I’d like to ask you. When your parents arrive, how would you feel about letting them park up by the shed?”
Does she mean if they arrive? I can’t say that to her or it’ll break her heart, but my parents aren’t known for keeping to their word.
They live in a campervan and move at the whims of their finances and the weather, so we’ll see them when it’s convenient for them and not a minute sooner.
“It’s your house, Granny. You decide where they park up. ”
The line goes silent. My desk is littered with discarded story concepts and blips of ideas.
Napkins torn in half with pencil sketches and lists of potential books I haven’t tried to write yet.
Things that don’t evoke any feelings at all.
I move everything aside and pull out my iPad, powering it on.
When Granny still doesn’t speak, I glance up at the window.
My eyes land on the large shed outside and the gravel drive leading up to it.
“You mean here,” I say. My mouth goes dry.
She wants my parents to stay here? After I bought the house from them two years ago, they haven’t been back here once.
When I see them, it’s at my grandparents’ house across town, at the pub for dinner, or not at all. “Granny, they won’t want to come here.”
Even if they did, why did she think it was a good idea to make them sleep outside of the house they couldn’t afford to keep?
“I think they would like the invitation, Gavin.”
“We don’t see eye to eye on that opinion.”
“Mine is not exactly an opinion,” she says.
I set my Apple Pencil on the desk and lean back in my leather computer chair. I can’t illustrate anything right now. “You’ve already spoken to Mum about this, haven’t you?”
“She wants to be near you, Gavin.”
“What Jean says she wants, and what she actually does, are two entirely different things.” Granny, of all people, should know this well.
My mother couldn’t commit to anything in the world outside of my father.
Toward him, she is stalwart. But the biscuits for my bake sales and the permission forms for school trips, she is fluid about.
Those don’t need to happen. No one will die if the biscuits don’t show up, Gavin.
It’s not life or death if you miss the class trip to the zoo, Gavin.
When all my mates saw a lion leap in the air and catch an unsuspecting bird in its jaw on a school trip, it was the final straw. I started asking Granny to step in when things were important to me. That was the last thing I was going to miss because of a mere signature.
“You’ll not let her park up at the house, then?” Granny asks.
Way to make me sound like the bad guy. “They’re always welcome to park here.”
I’m simply not looking forward to the morning when we make plans to golf, and I look out my window to find the campervan missing because they had a whim to drive to Wales.
“Thank you, darling. I’ll let her know. We’ll come visit soon, aye? Meet Luna’s sister.”
“She’d like that, I’m sure,” I say, though I don’t know for certain. At this point, I imagine Callie will like anyone who has two legs and isn’t me.
Granny gives me an update on my cousins in Dunleith and rings off shortly, leaving me with thick silence and the threat of a storm.
My horses will need extra hay if that’s the case, and maybe new straw at their hooves before long.
I look down at the blank screen on my iPad and let out an exhale. Quite as empty as my brain at present.
I click it off and lean back in the chair, closing my eyes. What am I supposed to do with a woman who wants nothing to do with me for the next twenty-four hours? Feed her dinner and play Monopoly? That’ll be a bowl of laughs and many trips to jail, I imagine.
We’d started off on the right foot, but I wish we’d stayed on it too.
How could I have known she was unaware of my identity?
Hamish had sent me multiple photos, courtesy of Luna, and I’m supposed to assume Luna had not prepared Callie the same way?
We were two strangers meeting to share a ride.
Of course Luna would prepare her sister so she wouldn’t enter the wrong vehicle, right? Right?
Wrong, apparently.
Americans. So bloody reckless.
The floorboards creak directly above me, and I glance up.
Callie’s moving around in her room. I lean back, tracing the edges of the ceiling with my gaze, and consider the situation.
She’s proven she can be fun, that we can be fun together, even.
Furthermore, we’ve proven we have a good rapport.
If we were there on night one, we can get back to that.
All it takes is a little charm. I can certainly be my charming self and entice her back to the land of friendship. It shouldn’t be that hard. I’ve seen enough American Christmas movies. I know what they like to do during the holidays.
Besides, I have nothing else to do.
Watch out, Callie Winter. You just became my next wee project. We’re about to become friends.