Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
The cabin temperature is fine, thanks
Georgie
We drive back in a silence so suffocating it might as well be a third passenger, buckled in between us. Patrick only breaks it once to ask if the heat’s okay. Like, yes, Patrick, the cabin temperature is definitely our biggest issue right now.
I try not to replay the last twenty minutes, but my brain has other plans. Somewhere between haddock martinis and synchronized mooning, I evolved from anxious, people-pleasing coder into the sort of woman who shouts about reverse harems at her billionaire boss in a pub car park.
Is this what Riri meant by “living boldly”? Because it feels more like “living stupidly.”
Still, he apologized. Patrick McLaren said sorry to me, which might be more shocking than anything else that’s happened tonight.
I sneak a glance at him. His cap’s pulled low, face unreadable in the darkness.
“Thanks for the lift home,” I attempt breezily. “Although I’m pretty sure this technically qualifies as kidnapping with a side order of cock-blocking.”
He turns his head. No smile.
Tough crowd.
“So,” I try again, desperate to fill the silence. “Did you enjoy the festival?”
“I didn’t partake.”
A giggle bubbles up—probably hysteria dressed as humor.
“I noticed. No kilt, no mooning, and you don’t smell remotely of fish.” I grin at the windscreen since he won’t look at me. “Frankly, you’re letting Scotland down.”
“Mooning strangers isn’t my idea of entertainment.” His voice stays flat. “But if you’re that desperate to see it, I’ll oblige.”
Deadpan. No inflection. Like he’d actually do it just to shut me up.
I squint at him through the darkness. “I genuinely don’t know if that’s supposed to be a joke.”
His eyes stay on the road. “Neither do I. Did you expect me to get my hairy backside out in the middle of a pub?”
“Your ass isn’t hairy.”
“You sound very sure.”
Oh bollocks. There’s no way to explain that I’ve become an unwitting expert on his ass thanks to the binocular incident without sounding like a complete stalker.
“Just... imagined it wouldn’t be.” The words come out so weak I wince at myself.
“I’m sure it’s considerably hairier than yours.”
That breaks me completely, and giggles pour out in a slightly manic cascade that’s too loud for the confined space of his Land Rover.
His mouth twitches—barely perceptible, but I catch it in the dashboard light. “Georgie. Stop talking.”
“Why were you even there if you weren’t participating?”
Silence. His grip on the steering wheel tightens.
He came for me.
This man who treats me like I’m a problem on his to-do list showed up in the worst pub on Skye during the messiest night of the year. Stone sober, standing guard in a corner.
But it can’t be romantic. He watched me kiss Malcolm without so much as a muscle twitch in his face. His confusing words outside the pub don’t match his actions, and I’ve learned that actions scream louder than any half-admission growled in a car park.
“Out of obligation to Jake?” I ask.
“No. Because I know what that festival turns into after midnight. Drunk idiots everywhere, fights breaking out, people doing stupid shit they’ll regret. Someone needed to make sure you got home in one piece.”
His tone is matter-of-fact, like he’s explaining something obvious rather than admitting to any kind of gesture that might be construed as caring.
Patrick McLaren called me sweet once, but I think he might be secretly sweet too, in his own gruff, emotionally constipated way. Sometimes, something softer peeks through.
He exhales, adjusting his cap. “I wanted to be in the vicinity to make sure you’re okay. That was my way of doing that while keeping boundaries. But if you think I’d sit back and watch you get into a car with someone that drunk, you’re out of your mind.”
“Thanks,” I say softly.
He kills the engine outside my cottage.
I fumble with my seatbelt, the metal buckle slipping through my grip twice before he leans across me.
My hands freeze mid-fumble while his knuckles graze my hip as he finds the release mechanism.
“Do you do this in every mode of transport?”
He freezes, so close I can see the thin scar bisecting his left eyebrow in the dashboard light. So close that if I tilted my head the tiniest bit, our mouths would—
“You smell like a brewery,” he says flatly.
Well, that’s romantic. Nothing gets a girl going quite like being told she smells like fermented yeast.
“Excuse me, Mr. Minty-Fresh,” I mutter.
I push open the door, feeling an odd pang of loss as the charged space between us breaks, but before I can step out, his hand clamps around my arm.
“Wait. Your front door’s open.”
I follow his gaze to where my cottage door is indeed wide open. Oh shit.
“It’s fine,” I say, though my pulse picks up. “Fee must not have closed it properly on her way out. The wind probably just blew it open.”
I climb out of the Land Rover, but he’s already out his side and striding toward my cottage.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking the cottage. I’m not letting you walk into a place that’s been sitting open.”
“I’m fairly certain no one’s lurking in there waiting to murder me. What’s the crime rate on Skye? One sheep stolen per decade?”
He doesn’t dignify that with an answer. Just strides ahead.
“Wait there,” he says, disappearing down the hallway to check the rooms.
I ignore him and head straight for the kitchen. I’m not standing outside my own cottage like some damsel.
When he reappears, I’m rummaging through cupboards.
“All clear. No axe murderers in your wardrobe.”
“Thank you for the security sweep. Don’t think this means I approve of you dragging me from my date,” I say, pulling down glasses and trying to tug my skirt down simultaneously. “But since you’re here... do you want a beer?”
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
“I meant for you,” I say primly. “I’m having water.”
There’s a loaded pause, like he’s weighing up whether staying is a spectacularly bad idea.
“All right.”
I have to blink twice to make sure I heard correctly. I was certain he’d grunt out some excuse and leave.
The fact that he’s staying, that we’re about to be alone in this small space with all this unresolved tension crackling between us, makes my hands shake as I reach for the fridge.
Patrick McLaren is in my kitchen after dragging me away from another man.
I hand him a bottle from the fridge and pour myself water. The cottage falls into such quiet that I can hear the appliances humming their mechanical lullaby and the wall clock ticking like it’s counting down to something.
He drops into a chair, legs spread wide, elbows braced on his thighs.
I rummage through the cupboard for paracetamol, shake two into my palm, and swallow them with a gulp of water. Then I turn toward him with a flourish, arms wide.
“See? Following the boss’s post-intoxication protocol to the letter: hydration achieved, anti-inflammatories ingested, blood alcohol content now undergoing systematic metabolic breakdown. Your supervisory duties are complete, Mr. McLaren.”
His gaze meets mine. “Good girl. You’ll thank me in the morning.”
Heat floods my face. My glass nearly slips. Those two words in his voice shouldn’t affect me like this.
“Good girl?” I squeak. “I’m not a golden retriever.”
“Figure of speech.”
I take another gulp of water just so I don’t have to meet those intense blue eyes. The thing is, I am a good girl. Always have been. The teacher’s pet, the rule-follower. Suddenly I want him to keep saying it.
“Fee must still be out,” I babble. “She had a date too.”
His brow arches. “So you’re both working through Skye’s bachelors?”
“Why shouldn’t we? You’re hardly one to lecture about restraint.”
His head snaps up, eyes narrowing. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
I regret opening my enormous mouth. But the words are already out there, and suddenly I want to open this wound that’s been cutting at me for days.
“Maren,” I say quietly. “The gorgeous surf instructor.”
He goes completely still, and the silence stretches until my skin prickles with nervous energy. “How the hell do you know about that? Have the staff been gossiping?”
A lie would be easier, but the truth spills out. “I saw you.”
“Saw me where?”
Oh God. This is mortifying. “You can... see your ice bath from my bedroom window. I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t purposely watching—but one morning I accidentally saw you.”
“You saw me what?”
I grip my glass tighter. “Both of you. And then you went inside.”
For a long, brutal moment, he just stares at me.
“I wasn’t spying!” I rush to add, face burning. “I was just looking out at the view, appreciating the morning, and suddenly you were there and she was there, and you were both very... there.”
“Christ.” The word rips out of him like something physical, and he drags a hand down his face. “Didn’t realize there was a sightline into my garden. That morning wasn’t meant for an audience.” His mouth hardens. “Especially not you.”
The casual dismissal stings—especially not you—as if I’m the last person on earth he’d want witnessing his morning activities with blonde goddesses.
“Well, you’re safe from my accidental voyeurism going forward. I won’t be conducting surveillance operations from my window.”
He drags his hand through his hair until it stands in frustrated spikes, exhaling roughly. “Damn it, with you, I can’t seem to do a single thing right. If there’s a way to handle this without making everything worse, I haven’t found it yet.”
“I’m not a situation that needs handling, Patrick. I’m a person. With feelings. Inconvenient as that might be for your management style.”
All I get back is a grunt and another long pull of beer.
“Are you dating her?” I hear myself blurt.
“Who?”
“Maren.”
“No.”
One syllable, flat and final, offering nothing else about the naked ice bath porn I consumed.
“She seems nice. Beautiful. Outdoorsy.” I aim for casual observation rather than the jealous gnawing that’s been eating at me since the surfing lesson. “You two make sense together.”