Chapter 21
Sunny dragged her suitcase along the sidewalk behind her and wished for a taxi—or maybe just for a suitcase that rolled.
Perhaps she’d just been pulling it too vigorously over the past hour and the wheels had given up in self-defense.
Shoving everything she owned into it haphazardly had left it a little heavier than it might have been otherwise, so maybe that had added to its stress.
She didn’t dare carry it, though; she had no desire to break her back along with her heart.
She stopped to rest. She was just not having a good day so far.
Being in Cameron’s arms first thing in the morning had been sublime.
Wringing a few answers from him had been promising.
Almost being kissed by him had been . . .
well, she supposed she was lucky they’d been interrupted.
She wasn’t sure what would have been left of her otherwise.
She knew very well, however, what would have been left of Cameron if she hadn’t been able to stop Patrick from turning around and going back up to Cameron Hall to kill him.
All that fast talking she’d had to do had been a good way to keep herself busy until she’d gotten herself inside Moraig’s to pack.
It was then that things had gone truly downhill.
She’d used the phone Jamie had given her to buy a plane ticket only to find that she had no money in her bank account.
She had no money in her bank account because no money had been transferred from her stock account.
There’d been no money there because her stockbroker had squandered her entire life savings.
Not only had he done that, he’d gone the extra mile and left her owing the brokerage house money.
She supposed she should have checked her mail a time or two over the past couple of months instead of sitting inside her house and weeping over a man who had his breakfasts with other women interrupted by his fiancée.
Patrick had pleaded with her to stay and vowed that he and Jamie would take care of her, but she hadn’t been able to accept his charity past allowing it to get her in the air.
She would crash on her parents’ couch and get a job.
She would slip her father a few new Gaelic idioms and maybe that would earn her a respite from all the grad-school applications he and her mother would subtly tuck under her pillow every night.
Madelyn had said very little during the drive to the airport. Sunny hadn’t expected anything less. Her sister had had her own reasons for leaving the Highlands once upon a time. But Madelyn had had her love come after her.
Sunny seriously doubted she would be so lucky.
She cursed until the urge to weep receded.
At least if she was in America, she wouldn’t have to see pictures of Cameron and his lovely bride—or just pictures of him crawling in and out of the back of his Rolls, exiting restaurants, flashing at paparazzi what she easily recognized as his polite smile.
At first, she’d thought that the only reason his picture had been in any weekly had been because he’d been escorting Penelope.
Then, as she’d thumbed through a tabloid stuffed in the seat pocket in front of her on the way down, she’d decided that he had his picture in gossip rags because he was very photogenic.
Well, that and the fact that he was a Scottish lord and the CEO of Cameron Ltd.
Actually, she suspected it was mostly because he was gorgeous and his photographs probably sold a lot of magazines to women who liked to look at him.
Maybe it was just as well she’d never be married to him.
Sharing him with innumerable unknown females who lingered over photographs of him would have been just the beginning of the indignities.
If she’d had to put on pantyhose, or make sure her slip wasn’t showing, or have cameras shoved in her face all the time, she would have lost it.
She was good with living things, as long as they were babies, yoga students, and things emerging from compost. Anything else was an unknown quantity, one she really had no desire to face.
Yes, it was best she just head back to the States where she would be safe.
She wasn’t running away, of course; she was making a measured, deliberate change of course.
And the sooner that was done, the happier she would be.
She took a firmer grip on her suitcase and continued to trudge up the street.
She didn’t care what happened north of Hadrian’s wall.
She had had it with Scotland. She wanted no more of those trilling r’s and soft ch’s and lilts and waterfalls of Gaelic—
Her suitcase suddenly left the pavement. She whirled around, ready to scream bloody murder.
She squeaked instead.
Robert Francis Cameron mac Cameron stood behind her, holding on to the handle of her suitcase and looking rather less groomed than usual. She was so surprised to see him, no, stunned to see him when she’d never thought to again, she could only stand there and gape.
He looked dreadful. His mouth was cut and his black eye was now purple. He had another bruise forming above the other eye, just under his hairline. He also looked very green, truth be told.
“What happened to you?” she asked without thinking.
“Your brother-in-law’s fists.”
“I’d hate to see what he looks like,” she said with a low whistle.
“I didn’t touch him,” he said briefly, looking as if he would have liked to have done so—vigorously, and more than once. “I thought I had enough of your family angry with me without adding your sister to the list.”
Well, he had that right. She looked down and found his hand covering hers, his scarred, strong, once-medieval-but-medieval-no -more hand. He was so close, she could feel his breath on her hair.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
He removed her fingers from her suitcase handle and took her by the elbow. “I’ll tell you in a more private place, if you don’t mind.”
That was incentive to move. “Thanks, but no. I’ve been in a private place recently with you, and it didn’t go so well for me.”
“Sunshine, don’t make me beg,” he said quietly. “I guarantee I’ll cause a scene if I go down on my knees here in the street. Please just come with me. I need to talk to you.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and looked up at him, dry-eyed but in absolute anguish. “What in the world could you possibly want to talk to me about?”
He took a deep breath. “1375.”
Things began to spin suddenly around her. She reached out and clutched his shirt to keep herself from falling. Maybe she shouldn’t have indulged in any of Madame Gies’s vegetarian omelet. She’d known she would pay for it, and apparently she’d been right.
“I don’t feel very good—” she whispered.
She didn’t remember hitting the sidewalk.
She woke to a very bumpy ride. She thought at first that she’d fallen asleep on the plane and they’d hit a patch of rough air.
She didn’t like to fly and she hated turbulence.
It didn’t make her sick; it made her terrified.
She didn’t care what sort of rational explanations she reminded herself of on the ground; when she was 39,000 feet up, she hated it when the plane bumped around.
She realized, though, that she wasn’t on a plane, she was in a cab—and she wasn’t alone.
She sat up, but that made her see stars.
Strong arms urged her back against an unreasonably comfortable shoulder.
She gave in only because she thought she might throw up otherwise.
She closed her eyes and willed her head to stop spinning.
“See if you can get me out of tomorrow, won’t you?” Cameron was saying. “And I’ll let you know about the other later. Thanks, Emily. Cheers.”
Sunny heard him set his phone down on the seat, then felt his arms come around her.
“How are you?” he asked quietly.
“I feel terrible.”
“I understand, believe me.” He shifted, then caught his breath. “I think your brother-in-law broke something.”
“He isn’t happy with you.”
“That, love, is an understatement.”
Sunny was tempted to enjoy the absolute comfort of his arms for another minute or two, but she knew she would regret it if she did. She pushed away and leaned against the door, putting as much distance between them as possible.
“Where did you see Patrick?” she asked. “He promised me he wouldn’t go back to your hall.”
Cameron smiled briefly. “He didn’t. I found him guarding your front door, actually, where he greeted me with his fists.
He did me the favor of leaving me all my teeth, but I imagine that was an accident.
He was very reluctant to give me any aid past directions to hell.
I had to pay him to get your sister’s mobile number so I could call her and find out the particulars of where you’d gone. ” His smile faded. “I had to see you.”
“Well, you’ve seen me,” she said, trying to sound brisk. She didn’t think she’d succeeded in sounding anything other than shattered. “And now that you have, you can do me the favor of getting me to my hotel. I have a plane to catch tomorrow.”
He shifted on the seat to face her. “Sunshine, if I were to ask you for one thing, would you give it to me?”
“Oh, not that again,” she said. “Didn’t we try this already today? ”
“Let’s try again. I promise to answer even more of your questions than I did this morning.”
“You answered nothing this morning,” she said with a snort. “You spent all your time hedging.”
He smiled. “I’m a Cameron. ’Tis what we do.”