Chapter 16
LACHLAN
Ardnoch Castle and Estate ran like a well-oiled machine.
The management team was beyond competent and dealt with the daily running of the place so that I had the freedom to put my energy elsewhere.
Like securing famous musicians to play at the castle throughout the summer period and installing Michelin Star guest chefs for special weekend dining events.
That one bothered Arrochar’s boyfriend somewhat.
Guy Lewis had been an Australian culinary star working as a sous chef in a two-hatted restaurant in Melbourne when he and I met.
I’d offered him more money than he could refuse, and he was one of the best investments I had made for Ardnoch in recent years. The members loved the food.
However, it was always smart to shake things up a little by bringing in chefs from the world’s top fifty list to add some excitement.
It pricked Guy’s pride, but I was a businessman and couldn’t afford to pander to a chef’s ego.
Especially one dating my little sister. Guy worked long hours and was obsessive about food.
I didn’t understand how he could possibly give Arrochar the attention and focus she deserved.
As a big brother, I was particularly protective of my youngest sibling. I constantly had to remind myself she was thirty-one years old and perfectly capable of handling her own life. But that didn’t mean I had to like any of her boyfriends.
Mac flashed to my mind.
Guilt quickly followed the thought.
Fuck. I could still taste Robyn in my mouth.
Groaning, I sat back in my chair in my real office as my body tightened with the memory of yesterday in her caravan.
Seeing her in that run-down piece of shit of Gordon’s had irritated me to no end, reminding me that as Mac’s daughter, I should have offered Robyn a room or a cabin on the estate.
Rent-free. Agitated at her living quarters, irritated with myself, and bothered constantly by her, I’d lost my goddamn mind.
There she’d been, yelling at me, and the only way I could think to stop her was to kiss her.
“Great plan,” I muttered, throwing my pen across my desk.
She’d lit up under my hands.
I tasted her fire on my tongue and, goddamn, it ignited something inside me.
It made no sense.
She was Mac’s daughter.
She’d given me nothing but hell since she’d arrived and treated me with disdain.
“Tell that to my dick.”
The sound of bagpipes pierced the room, jolting me. “Jesus!” I glared over my shoulder, out the small window where I could see the sway of Malcolm’s dark green, black, red, and white kilt. He wore Sutherland tartan; we all did if an event called for traditional attire.
“Every time.” I pushed back from the desk, needing distance from the pipes and a chance to clear my head.
Wanting to escape the castle without bumping into any members, I took the side entrance off the staff quarters and walked toward the path that led to the beach.
It was around a thirty-minute walk, past Loch Ardnoch and the second loch near the coast, Loch Evelyn, named after my great-great-grandmother.
I’d only just passed the footpath that forked toward Loch Ardnoch and Eredine’s studio when I heard someone calling my name over the bagpipes. Trying not to be irritated by the interruption to my solitude, I stopped and turned.
Lucy, dressed in workout clothes, hurried toward me. “Hey, you!”
“Hi.” I nodded toward the castle and raised my voice to be heard. “Not going in for afternoon tea?”
“Not today. Where are you going?”
“Just a walk down to the beach.”
“Can I join you?”
I didn’t want anyone to join me, but I’d never say that to Lucy. “Of course.”
We fell into step together, the breeze particularly strong as we walked through nothing but rolling, wild fields that would eventually lead us to the water in the distance. As Malcolm ambled around the other side of the castle and we moved farther away, the pipes became a distant wail.
“Are you okay?” my friend asked.
“Fine.”
I could feel her eyes on my face. “Did something happen between you and Robyn?”
“Why would you ask that?” It seemed unlikely that Robyn would say anything about the kiss. Right? Though she and Lucy had grown close these last few weeks.
“Robyn is off today too. But it could be because she’s gearing up to see Mac.”
“She’s here?” I glared. No one had told me Robyn was on the estate.
“Yeah. She’s with Ery. She said she’s going to see Mac after their session.”
“About bloody time,” I muttered, satisfied that my visit yesterday had yielded a result.
Though, considering I’d gone there with the intention of commissioning photography from her and instead pissed her off, kissed the hell out of her, and pissed her off some more, it wasn’t much of an accomplishment.
I’d never gotten off on needling a woman before in my life, but there was just something about her—
“You’re scowling so hard, it’s a wonder your face doesn’t crack.”
I turned that scowl on my friend.
Lucy just laughed. “What is going on with you?”
I considered confiding in her. If there was one person I could trust with my personal life, knowing it would go no further than her ears, it was Lucy. But what was the point? It was never going to happen again.
Lucy’s laughter died. “Seriously, Lachlan. What is going on? You’re wound so tight these days.”
“I kissed Robyn,” I blurted out, rubbing a self-conscious hand through my hair.
At her silence, I looked at her, and to my annoyance, Lucy was quite obviously struggling not to laugh.
“Oh, it’s funny, is it?” I huffed.
Her reply was a long snort that turned into laughter. “Oh baby, what have you done?”
“It was an accident.”
“What? You tripped into her mouth?”
“For Christ’s sake, you know what I mean.”
“No, actually, I don’t.”
“It shouldn’t have happened.”
“Why?”
My answering glower was incredulous. “Have you met the woman?”
“Yes, and I happen to think she’s almost as great as I am.”
I sighed, ignoring her teasing. “She’s Mac’s daughter.”
“True.”
“She’s immature.”
“Ah, no, I quite rightly disagree. You just happen to provoke an immature side. And vice versa.”
“I’m immature?”
“You two go at each other like kids at recess.”
The comment was scarily similar to something Mac had said.
Fuck.
This whole time we’d been snipping and snarling at each other, attracted to one another and resenting the other for it.
“It makes no bloody sense.” I picked up my stride, as if moving farther from the castle—and from Robyn—would somehow help.
Lucy hurried to keep up. “Why? Because she’s not one of us?”
“Not that. You know me better than that.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
I stopped abruptly. “Luce, you know me. I’m never going to settle down with one woman. My family are the Adairs and you, Ery, and Mac. It’s one thing to be attracted to a woman who drives me up the bloody wall, it’s another that she also happens to be my best friend’s daughter.”
“It’s still so weird Mac is old enough to have had Robyn,” Lucy opined.
“It doesn’t matter. She’s Mac’s. She’s ten years younger than me. And I don’t do serious. So she’s off-limits. I just need to avoid her.”
Lucy made a choking sound. “Are you saying that you can’t control yourself around her?”
A memory of yesterday flashed before my eyes. I hadn’t expected the electric sexual chemistry between us.
“I can control myself. It’s just an itch.”
My friend patted my shoulder. “Baby, you and I are the same. And I agree. It’s just an itch. An infatuation heightened by the need to get laid.”
“Leighanne,” I murmured.
The thought of channeling my sexual frustration into Leighanne left me feeling beyond dissatisfied.
“You’d go all the way to Glasgow to get laid? That sounds like escaping to me. Does that mean … you honestly can’t control yourself around Robyn?”
That almost sounded like a taunt.
I eyed Lucy, but her expression was neutral. No evidence of the goading I’d been sure I’d heard in her voice.
“I can control myself. I have never been unable to control an attraction to a woman in my life.”
The rain came on before we could make it to the beach, so we turned back.
By the time we neared Loch Ardnoch, it was lashing down.
Lucy yelled that she’d see me later and dashed toward Eredine’s studio.
I hurried toward the castle. My white shirt was soaked through and water dripped off my beard and hair.
I pushed the latter back off my face as I entered the side entrance near my office and froze in the doorway at the sight of Robyn leaning against the wall, trying to catch her breath.
Her gorgeous big eyes met mine. They were a moss green today.
Strange, unpredictable, changing female.
As I closed the door behind me, the tension between us was thick, palpable.
Robyn pushed off the wall, her wet ponytail trailing over her bare shoulder.
Yesterday was bad enough … the tight T-shirt and yoga pants showing off every curve of her strong but feminine body.
Today was worse.
A sports bra her breasts strained against. Her nipples were hard. From the cold rain … or me? Wishful thinking?
Heat flushed through me, arousal heightening as a trail of water trickled down her toned stomach.
My mouth felt dry. All my blood rushed south.
Damn her.
“I hope you don’t mind I used this entrance,” Robyn said, breaking the tense silence. “It was the closest point of shelter.”
Rain moistened her lush lower lip.
Images of licking it off, of pushing her up against the wall and possessing every inch of her exploded through my mind, and I moved.
“Adair—” Robyn cut off as I grabbed her by the arm while roughly pulling my office key card from my back pocket. “Adair, what are—”
I hauled her into my office and used her body to close the door.
Chest heaving, desire for her fogging up every rational thought in my head, I braced my hands on the door at either side of her head, caging her in. “I don’t do relationships.”
Robyn looked baffled. “O … kay.”
“If we fuck, that’s all it will ever be.”