Chapter 17
Samantha waited until the car had driven away before she looked at Derrick. He was standing next to her at the station, holding on to her suitcase. He smiled.
“Well, Miss Heiress, what are you going to do now?”
She wasn’t sure why she felt so uncomfortable.
She’d had a lovely day the day before, full of so many unexpected things.
She wasn’t sure what she’d been more surprised by: money she honestly didn’t deserve or the camera Derrick had popped into York to purchase for her while she’d been ostensibly taking a nap in her room.
In case the scenery goes by too fast to sketch it had been his only comment, delivered with a small smile.
All of which left her where she was at present: at the train station with money in the bank and her life stretching out before her, and finding it ridiculous that she was disappointed that that life wasn’t going to include the man standing there in front of her.
She didn’t particularly like him, as it happened.
Sure, he was tall, dark, and unfortunately quite handsome, but he was also bossy and able to hack into her accounts without exerting himself.
She was just sure if she had anything to do with him it would spell a serious lack of privacy and autonomy for her.
Then again, she didn’t have much with her parents, either, so maybe it wouldn’t have been as much trouble as she feared.
“Samantha?”
She blinked, then realized she’d been staring at him without speaking. “Ah, what I’m going to do. Well, I’d planned on being at the airport tomorrow.”
“Your first-class ticket is open-ended. You could stay, if you liked.”
She hesitated. “I’m not sure I could. My visa is, well, I don’t know what it is. I think it’s a work visa.”
“We can change that.”
She laughed a little, feeling slightly breathless. “You’re handy.”
“You have no idea.”
“Actually, I think I do.”
“Then let’s go fix a couple of things.”
She took a deep breath, then nodded and walked with him until they found an empty bench inside the station.
She noticed for the first time that Derrick hadn’t just sat down like a normal guy.
He glanced around, considered, then sat, but not in a way that drew attention to himself.
She sat down next to him, then looked around casually, just to see if she could see what he saw.
She saw security cameras, a couple of people she suspected were station security, and . . . well, not much else. She frowned.
“I don’t see any bad guys.”
“Neither do I,” he said, “though I hadn’t really expected to.” He lifted his eyebrows briefly. “No reason for them, is there?”
She shook her head, though she was more uneasy than she supposed she should have been.
She had obviously just been through too much over the past week and her nerves were shot.
The thought of going home, though, and having to discuss the whole thing with her parents was enough to get on that last nerve she still had.
Derrick leaned back against the bench and looked at her. “Now, before we work on visa issues, what is it you want to do?”
“Well, my parents—”
“No,” he said firmly, “you. What is it you want to do?”
She frowned at him. “I think you’re trying to breed an insurrection.”
“I think you just found yourself with a great deal of money and a new camera. You’re in England, which isn’t as lovely as Scotland, but you’ll have to make do unless you venture north and see its wonders for yourself. You have the summer stretching out in front of you. What would you like to do?”
She hardly knew how to even begin to think about that. She looked out over the station, not seeing it, and tried to imagine what she would do if she could.
“I think I would like to see the Lake District,” she said, turning her head to look at him.
“A haven for artistic types, or so I understand.”
She smiled faintly. “Is that so?”
“Miss Potter would say so. I think she drew the occasional doodle for her books. And I believe that she invented the phrase all of the sudden, to her publisher’s horror, no doubt.”
Samantha smiled. “Then that’s where I’ll go, for all those reasons. But I should call my parents first.”
“Shoot them an email instead.” He handed her his tablet. “Less room for discussion that way.”
She looked at him quickly. “Password?”
“I believe, Miss Drummond, that you already know it.”
“I would have assumed you would have changed it already.”
He looked at her seriously. “I trusted that you wouldn’t reveal it.”
“That’s a lot of trust.”
He shrugged. “I don’t give it easily, believe me.”
She did. She also had quite a bit of experience with his computer, so she had no trouble writing an email to her parents telling them simply that she’d had a change of plans and would call them when she’d replaced her phone.
“You’re using my machine as if you’ve done so before,” Derrick grumbled at one point.
She smiled, because it was true, finished off her note, then handed him back his computer. “All yours.”
“My turn, then,” he said. “Let’s deal with your tourist issues first.” He glanced upward, adjusted the angle of his screen, then got to work.
“I’m not sure I want to know how you can do this.”
“I’m not sure you do, either,” he said absently.
“Aren’t you afraid someone will hack you?”
“One of my partners does nothing all day but try. I pay him bonuses when he succeeds, though I’m not sure why. Very annoying.” He frowned briefly, then his expression lightened. “Visa done. Let’s look at a place to stay. What do you think of Ambleside?”
“Is it pretty?”
“So sweet you’ll be looking for lemons to counter the taste left in your mouth.”
“Not a fan of England, are you?”
He smiled briefly. “Actually, I’m quite fond of the Lake District, but nay, I’m a Scot through and through. I’m only in London because I must be. I’d rather be north of the border, thank you just the same.”
She suspected she might share that opinion, if she had the chance. “I don’t care. You choose.”
He scrolled thoughtfully through places to stay, then apparently decided on something. She fumbled in her bag for her debit card, but he shook his head.
“It’s on me.”
“But you don’t need to—”
“It’s on me,” he repeated firmly.
She frowned. “You’re very bossy.”
He looked at her briefly. “Could you consider it chivalry?”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered it before. Is this what it looks like?”
He laughed a little. “Well, I didn’t say I was any good at it.” He turned off his computer and put it back in his backpack. “Let’s go get you a ticket.”
“I can—”
“But you won’t.”
She blew her hair out of her eyes. “You’re impossible.”
He heaved himself to his feet and reached for her suitcase. “My finest quality. Let’s go.”
She trailed along after him for a bit but realized that he wasn’t going to put up with that for very long. She ended up standing next to him as he bought her a ticket, then walking with him as he got her to the right train track.
She wondered if she should make a list of the most uncomfortable situations she’d ever been in because at the moment, the comfort of rating her discomfort on some sort of list of things that made her uncomfortable might be the only thing that saved her.
She supposed that standing next to a gorgeous man while trying to decide how to say good-bye fit neatly between her having insisted on wearing pantyhose to the first day of fourth grade—she had spent the whole day pulling them up and showing off her panties—and her first date as a junior in high school when she’d sent Ashton Marshall home with a bloody nose after he’d tried to kiss her and ended up leaving his retainer attached to her braces.
Orthodontics, stockings, and guys, nightmares all.
She looked up at Derrick as the train pulled to a stop in front of him.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she began.
He shook his head. “No, I need to thank you. You were a tremendously good sport about many things.”
“I think I benefitted most,” she said. She smiled. “The earl did give me your fee, after all, which I need to give back to you—”
He shook his head and reached for her suitcase. He put it up into the train, then put his arm around her and hugged her quickly.
“Up you go, lass.” He smiled. “Enjoy your sketching.”
She stepped up onto the landing, looked at him one last time, then took her suitcase and went to look for somewhere to sit.
She sat on the far side of the train where she wouldn’t have to look at him, because she just couldn’t look at him again.
She stared out into the crowd and found it reassuringly free of anyone she recognized.
She was, for the first time in her life, completely alone.
She was surprised at how much that bothered her.
· · ·
The scenery on the trip west was more varied than she would have expected. She supposed out of all the things that had surprised her, that was the most startling. She could have spent a lifetime in England and never lacked for different things to draw.
She stared out the window and tried to make a mental list, now that she was back on her own and had all the time in the world to make every list she could stomach. She supposed the first one she should make was of all the final details that had been sewn up over the last twenty-four hours.
Derrick had offered to get her stuff from the Cookes, but she had begged him not to bother.
Lydia could keep those yards of polyester fabric and acrylic knitted items. It made her a little nervous to leave her plane ticket behind, but since Derrick had so kindly provided her with another that was waiting for her at a travel agency in London when she decided to claim it, she supposed it was no great loss.
She was free of thugs, free of commitments, and free to do anything she wanted to.
Unfortunately, all that freedom left her with nothing to do but face the question that left her the most unsettled.
What in the world was she going to do with the rest of her life?