Chapter 14 #2
Struan slipped his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t fidget.
He couldn’t remember why he was still here, only that if he left now, he’d have to pass Rae at the door.
See her freckles up close, smell her sweet perfume, feel her warmth, which seemed to radiate from her skin like sunlight.
He’d already been torturing himself every night with those memories.
No amount of self-induced orgasms had driven her away; his own rough hands couldn’t mimic the sensation of her delicate ones, true pleasure hollow and just out of reach.
All he wanted was to bury himself in her until this desire was finally flushed from his system.
‘I saw your van outside,’ Rae was saying to Eiley, motioning her head to the green bus Eiley sometimes drove to sell in different locations.
Struan had mentioned enquiring over the weekend whether Eiley was interested in attending the Strawberry Fair, but the bookshop had been closed while Eiley enjoyed a getaway with her boyfriend, Warren, and three children.
‘I was just wondering if maybe you’d like to have a space reserved at the Sweetbriar Strawberry Fair at the end of August.’ She handed Eiley a flier. ‘Struan said you might be interested.’
Harper gasped, squinting to look at her more closely. ‘Wait! You’re Rae Docharty! Cam told me you were in town!’
‘Oh.’ Rae winced. ‘I sort of hoped the Cam thing wouldn’t come up, but never mind. I’ll leave you all to it.’
‘Wait!’ Harper repeated, hurdling over Dot’s legs to grab Rae’s arm. Rae raised a brow. Struan knew what it meant, having experienced a similar confusion upon meeting Harper. Why is this bubbly blond woman suddenly latching on to me? Am I about to be kidnapped and left in her basement?
There was no saving Rae now. She had been chosen. He inched closer in an attempt to provide some reassurance, his elbow brushing her arm. Unintentionally, of course.
‘Yes,’ Harper gushed, ‘Cam told me about the drama, but she also told me you’re Rae Docharty!’
‘Erm… that is my name, yeah.’
‘The Rae Docharty! Judge on SuperCook, fine-dining extraordinaire, overall beautiful badass! My ex-fiancée introduced me to your food years ago, when you were working in Manchester, and I almost broke up with her to marry your roasted lobster. In fact, I should have.’
‘Oh! Thank you! Wow, it’s a small world.’
‘It was so fascinating to watch you work. Sorry, I didn’t recognise you without all the steam in your face,’ Harper continued, and then shot a piercing glare at Struan. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were “friends” with my favourite chef?’
He scratched his chin. ‘I’ll work on my mind reading skills.’
‘You’d better.’ Her razor-sharp attention returned to Rae. ‘Could I be really cheeky and ask you something?’
‘Ask away.’ Rae shuffled closer to Struan with a laugh.
‘Would you ever consider catering a wedding?’ Harper pointed at her Leaning Tower of Wedding Plans. ‘I’m sure you’re super busy with the farm—’ Another almighty gasp. ‘The farm!’
‘Harper,’ Struan interjected, ‘I think you’re overwhelming the poor lass. Could you stop talking like a senile wizard?’
‘Sorry. I’m just very excited and very stressed.
’ Harper put her hands on her hips and blew out a breath.
‘I started planning the wedding a bit too late, but I know my mother-in-law, Myra, works in the farm shop, and she’s always saying how beautiful it is, and how you’ve been working on reviving it.
Would you maybe perhaps mayhap consider hosting a cosy little celebration before I grow planet-sized? ’
‘Planet-sized?’ repeated Rae.
Harper patted her stomach, which hadn’t yet swollen to reveal her pregnancy.
‘I’m also slightly pregnant. We want to be married by the time the little peanut comes along, and I already have the perfect dress…
’ Her eyes sparkled with warmth. Struan couldn’t imagine how nice it must feel to know a love like that.
To be surrounded by family the way the Milligans were.
‘“We” meaning the two of you?’ Rae motioned between Eiley and Harper, earning a shared guffaw.
‘No. Although, you know, if I hadn’t met Fraser first, who knows?’ Harper teased.
‘She’s marrying my brother,’ Eiley explained, embarrassment creeping up her neck.
‘Oh!’
‘So? Would you pretty please with cherries on top consider it?’ Harper clasped her hands together with bated breath.
Struan braced himself for the no that was sure to come; there was absolutely no way Rae could manage an entire wedding without help, and as far as he knew, Doug and Audrey had never hosted an event on that scale with the exception of the Strawberry Fair.
But Rae slipped her sunglasses off her head and said, ‘Well, it depends. What date did you have in mind?’
Harper’s squeal ricocheted through the bookstore, causing both Eiley and Struan to plug their ears.
Oh, dear. Rae would surely need all the help she could get.
An hour later, a visit to the farm had been planned for tomorrow, and Harper had dashed out of the bookstore to tell Fraser the good news.
Dot had snuck out at some point between talks of colour palette – warm jewel tones – and floral arrangements – sunflowers and roses – leaving just Struan and Rae sitting side by side on the couch.
Admittedly, Struan could have left at any moment, but he hadn’t.
Mostly because Rae’s round eyes as Harper had talked had said, Please, don’t go, but also because he knew Rae felt already overwhelmed, even if she wouldn’t admit it.
He couldn’t just leave her to do this alone.
And also, perhaps he didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to be around her.
While Eiley helped a customer at the counter, Rae slid to the armchair opposite, the movement sending the Strawberry Fair fliers scattering across the coffee table. She neatened them back into a pile with painstaking precision before smoothing her wispy baby hairs and braving eye contact.
He felt like splinters were burrowing under his skin, and leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs just to torture himself a little bit more with their almost, not enough, proximity.
‘You look like you could use a coffee.’ He tipped his head in the direction of Bel’s Beans, the café across the street.
The usually calm strip of storefronts bustled with more and more colourfully dressed tourists as the afternoon wore on, likely walkers who had spent the day enjoying the surrounding forest and loch and now hoped to fill their stomachs.
People lined up for smoothies and iced lattes outside Bel’s, examining the chalkboard menus while Captain Angus surveyed them from the bench, pipe dangling from his mouth.
Not ideal, but he wouldn’t have minded the wait. Pathetically, he’d be glad for it.
The lines around her mouth deepened. ‘I think that would be breaking our rule.’
‘We wouldn’t technically be alone,’ he pointed out. ‘There’d be a whole town of buffers. Besides, I think I could control myself. Unless, of course, you’re worried about your own fragile self-restraint, Little Rae.’
She dug the heel of her white trainers into his shin, earning a chuckle from him – and some satisfaction, too, because she was blushing.
‘I think I can restrain myself just fine, Nevis. But I don’t have time.
Need to get back to the farm. We actually had a few visitors this morning thanks to the fliers. ’
‘That’s great. I’m glad things are looking up.’ He couldn’t help but give her a sobering look. ‘Are you sure you can manage a wedding, though? Harper wouldn’t exactly be an easy first client.’
‘Don’t say that in front of her if you want to keep your manhood,’ called Eiley somewhere from the children’s book section, earning a perplexed look from the elderly bloke the next aisle down.
Mirth brightened Rae’s expression. ‘I’m not going to turn this down. The farm needs all the help it can get. Dad was talking about selling, and I just…’
‘Can’t let it happen?’ Struan completed softly when grave lines crumpled her features.
‘No. I can’t. I know I don’t have a right to dig my heels in at this point, but that place has always been the one constant in my life – through Mum leaving, Granddad dying, high school and uni and a dozen different pets being buried in the far field.’
‘I understand.’ He couldn’t help but cover her fumbling hand with his own, thumb drawing soothing circles over her skin.
He’d thought them smooth, but he turned over her palm and saw more silver scars and calluses trailing down to her wrist, likely oven burns or more of that picking.
She worked harder than anyone he knew. She deserved to keep the place that made her feel safe, even if she wasn’t around much to really use it.
‘I felt the same when Mum sold the house. It’s…
hard, knowing you can never go home again.
I don’t blame you for trying to prevent it.
I just don’t want you to bite off more than you can chew. ’
He smoothed the angry flesh on the side of her finger: his way of saying he saw her, saw all that anxiety brimming just under her surface. He wasn’t sure anyone else did, even if it was written in subtle marks all over her demeanour.
Rae looked down at his hand touching hers. He thought he’d gotten her back.
Fool’s hope. She pulled away, knees bumping against the coffee table. ‘If I can handle four years of culinary school, I can handle this.’
‘On your own?’
‘I’ll hire help.’
‘I’m a wee bit busier now it’s tourist season, but you know I’m here, too, aye?’
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you, Struan.’
His chest leapt at the way she said his name, like a gentle current flowing through the stream he was named after.
Whatever was between them was more than just desire.
He’d lusted for people before, but never had their voice plucked through his nerve endings like this.
Never had he worried for them and the smallest of scars on their skin.
‘I should go,’ she decided too quickly, grabbing her bag from the floor.
Disappointment tugged Struan’s posture further into the couch. He needed something. An acknowledgement of what they’d shared the evening in the fields. ‘Since I still have a head on my shoulders, I… er, take it you didn’t tell Martha about us?’
Rae faltered, grip around the strap of her canvas bag tightening. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’
It hurt, that denial. Maybe it had been a mistake, one better off not made again for Martha’s sake, but it had still meant something.
To him, at least.
When Rae turned her back and ambled out of the bookshop with her chin high, he wondered if he’d imagined it all. If this had really been nothing to her: the mud on her wellies, the grass stains on her dress.
But then, hadn’t he already known that?