Chapter 19
‘There’s nowhere like this, is there?’ Bear said quietly. ‘It’s spectacular.’
Friday evening, the sky bright and cloudless, Skye found herself with a helmet on, speeding up the glen on a quad bike. Without Hamish, she wasn’t confident enough to go off-piste. The bogs could take you by surprise. Instead, she took the track up to the Victorian hunting lodge a few miles from the castle where Hamish took visitors to the estate for rustic lunches.
Pulling up outside, she sat for a second, gazing at the view. Ahead of them, the glen peaked and fell like a colossal wave, in a deep, peaty green. Dotted all over were tufts of heather, huge clusters of them. There was a softness to their colour, like they weren’t prickly at all, as if the spread of purple blooms was nothing more than a cashmere blanket.
She turned around and grinned at Bear on the back of the quad, his face reflecting back admiring wonder.
‘We can either hang out here and take in the view or go for a wee hike,’ said Skye. ‘I’ve got some beers in the cooler, non-alcoholic ones for me, and a couple of regular for you. We could sit and drink, or wander down to the valley and walk there. I’ve also got a flask of tea and some biscuits in the rucksack.’
‘All bases covered then.’ Bear raised his eyebrows.
‘I like to be prepared,’ laughed Skye.
‘Let’s walk,’ suggested Bear, with a smile. ‘We’ll both be back in the city before long, and I don’t know about you, but after initial doubts, I’m really going to miss this sort of thing.’
Skye agreed. Bear climbed off the quad, unclipped his helmet with one hand and offered Skye the other to get down. She took it, gripping it slightly longer than necessary. He didn’t seem in a hurry to let go either.
Bear ran a hand through his hair, flattened from the helmet, and roughed it up. In the evening light, she could see he had a bit of stubble on his normally clean-shaven jaw. Would it give her a rash if they kissed? she wondered, lingering on his lips. Stop right there.
‘We can go this way,’ she said briskly, and pointed to a rough path between clumps of heather. ‘I came out here the other day with Hamish. He said it’s a picturesque route and we can paddle in the burn.’
‘I’ll roll up my trousers for that,’ said Bear.
Hamish had also suggested the location because it was secluded, and done so with a knowing look. Skye had told him that she and Bear weren’t there yet, and that she had no desire to engage in a round of tick removal. All the same, the image of the two of them, alone in the glen, had made her heart beat a little quicker than normal.
Taking care on the uneven ground, Skye led the way, pulling her bob into a stumpy ponytail to stop it sticking to her neck. It wasn’t exactly baking, but the walk was still strenuous. Bear had insisted on carrying the rucksack, which was a relief, because Skye was beginning to sweat.
‘Do you think we’ll see anyone else here?’ came Bear’s voice from behind her.
Skye shook her head. ‘I doubt it. It’s private land. There are footpaths, but you’d have to come a long way, and it’s pretty late in the day. There was a group up here this morning, but otherwise nobody else is booked in until tomorrow.’
‘And how are you enjoying working here?’
‘Loving it,’ said Skye. ‘It’s nice to be able to muck in. The family were so good to me when I was a teenager that it’s nice to give back. Not that they’d want to see it that way. But I do.’
‘What do you owe them for?’
‘For being non-judgemental, kind and welcoming people.’
‘A mysterious reference to your youth.’
Skye turned around. ‘Not really. How was Edinburgh?’
The track widened out, and Bear came to walk next to her. Skye took him in through the corner of her eye. He was wearing scruffy trousers, and a worn T-shirt with a couple of holes in the hem. Will wouldn’t be seen dead looking so scruffy, but Skye found his lack of self-consciousness refreshing. It also meant she felt comfortable about being totally bare-faced in front of him, and not caring that she had a good showing of roots, revealing her true colour — a light red.
She had a flashback to getting ready to go out with Will. Carefully putting on foundation, contouring if she felt she needed it, a few fake lashes to thicken up her pale red ones, and tons of eye make-up. The Skye she presented to the world when they were out together was very different to the Skye she was presenting right now. In fact, she wasn’t presenting at all.
‘Fine. Productive. I drove up here this morning.’
‘What were you up to there?’
‘Och, not a lot,’ he said, swiftly.
‘Ah, does that mean you were working on your top-secret project? Don’t tell me you’re a spook. I think you stand out too much.’
‘Really?’ Bear gave a small smile.
‘Spies have to blend in. You’re too tall and handsome,’ she teased.
Skye wondered if she was being too overtly flirtatious, but Bear wore it lightly.
‘How did James Bond manage?’ he joked.
‘I think being fictional helped. You’re allowed far more flights of fancy if you don’t exist outside the pages of a book. But really, what were you doing there? Am I any closer to wheedling out of you whatever it is you refuse to tell me? Come on, you can say.’
Bear raised an eyebrow. ‘No. And don’t think I’ll accidentally forget that I’m not telling anyone about it.’
‘So purposefully decide to. Go on, spill those beans.’
‘Are you always this nosy?’
Skye turned around, and began walking backwards, so she could stare him out. ‘When I’m interested, yes.’
What was she doing, being so openly brazen? It couldn’t have been the heat, because it wasn’t hot enough to melt your brain into an incoherent blob capable only of flirting. And it wasn’t alcohol, as Skye wouldn’t dream of going out on the quad having had anything to drink.
It wasn’t down to lust, either. Skye didn’t think she was being swept along on a tide of barely disguised desire, throwing out comments as if they were fishing bait, hoping to reel Bear in. She wasn’t that far gone.
It was fascination, plain and simple. She wanted to know who Bear was. What made him tick — other than cruck frames of course — what his hopes were, and his fears. What his secret project was, to some extent, but that mattered far less than getting to know Bear the Person.
‘I’ve never thought of myself as a person of interest,’ he said.
Skye, who had herself nearly been a person of interest — in the technical sense of the term — at least one time in her life, felt her heart leap at the phrase, and promptly stumbled back over a tussock. Landing on her behind, hands splayed, it took a second of water seeping through her trousers for her to realize she’d gone into a boggy patch.
‘Oh shite,’ she managed. She put out her hands to get up, only to stick them in more water. ‘I guess that’s why you generally hike facing forwards.’
Bear put out a hand for her to take. He gave a laugh of surprise, but his brow was lined with concern. ‘You’re not hurt, are you?’
He pulled her up, and Skye slammed into his chest. She gasped involuntarily. His body was just taut beneath his sweater as she thought it would be. Her heart jolted at the thought of them being so close, a vision of their being skin to skin flashing through her mind. She let it play for a second longer than she should, and stepped back.
Skye raised what she hoped would pass for an amused eyebrow. ‘Not from crashing into watery moorland, no.’
‘There could have been stones or something.’
‘Something? Like what?’ she asked.
Bear shrugged, a smile playing across his face. ‘Not entirely sure. But the great outdoors can be deadly. There could have been leeches.’
They stood for a second, idling.
‘Don’t scare me,’ she said. ‘It’s like space. Out here, nobody can hear you scream.’
‘I should have come here for my yelling session,’ said Bear, looking across to a far peak, then back at Skye. ‘Although then I wouldn’t be here right now with you.’
Skye fought off a blush and stepped back. She thought back a fortnight to when she had first encountered Bear. Back then, he had seemed so chilly and unapproachable. What a difference two weeks and some probing conversations made.
‘Did your parents know about your shouting?’ asked Skye. She tried to adjust her damp trousers, which were sticking to her legs.
Bear shook his head. ‘No. I never told them where I was going. Even now, I tend to deal with my problems alone.’
Maybe that was why everyone in Eastercraig had found him so disagreeable when they first met him. He was internalizing all the problems about the Auchintraid project. Closing himself away.
‘It usually seems easier not to burden anyone else with my issues,’ Bear concluded, and ran a hand through his hair.
Amen to that , thought Skye, thinking of her own parents again.
‘What about when you were married? You should at least be able to talk to that person.’
Skye knew it was a difficult question, but Bear was talking so openly, and she felt that she was slowly unboxing his personality, and that he was happy for her to do so.
‘I tried, but like I said the other day, we were on different planets. She thought my problems were trite. That my career trajectory was obvious. It was as if she never quite got the essence of me.’ Bear clenched his jaw.
Skye stepped closer towards him again, closing the gap between them. She was near enough that she could see his heart beating through his shirt.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know what it’s like feeling out of place. And also what it’s like feeling life’s not going the way you’d hoped. If you want to talk about the project at Auchintraid at any time, you can. Or you could just borrow my rock again. I’m happy to share it.’
A smile danced across Bear’s lips, making Skye’s fingers tingle. She wanted to touch those lips. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
It didn’t escape her notice that she was resisting sharing everything, but Skye wasn’t ready to be unboxed. Or to unbox herself. Could you unbox yourself? And sharing didn’t have to be of equal weight, not least when you were in the early stages of getting to know somebody.
They walked a little further, Skye letting her fingers run across the tips of the gorse It grew in great bushes that lined the side of the path they were on. Not much longer and they would reach the burn.
‘You’ve still not told me what you were doing in Edinburgh,’ said Skye, probing once more.
Bear halted and stiffened. ‘Georgia called me.’
Skye felt her eyes widen. What would she want with Bear? She stopped and turned around. ‘Oh?’
‘Our cat got run over.’
‘Oh,’ said Skye, trying to sound neutral, because in reality she found herself relieved. Not about the cat — that was horrible. But relief because for a split second it had seemed, despite everything he had said about her, Bear might have returned home to reconcile with his ex-wife. ‘I’m so sorry. Is it . . .’
‘He. Is he dead? No. He’ll live to fight another day, but it was touch and go.’
‘He’s OK, though?’
‘Yes. His leg’s in a splint, and he has to be housebound for a while to stop him getting into more trouble, but he’s fine. Useful having nine lives, isn’t it? Poor old Frank.’
‘Frank?’
‘It’s short for Frank Lloyd Wright. I wanted to give him a long name he could shorten if he wanted,’ he deadpanned.
‘And the cat lives with Georgia?’ Skye tucked a hair behind her ear.
‘Yeah. I’m more of a dog person, myself. I always wanted a terrier or two. But Georgia wanted a cat, so we got a cat. I got to name him, as you might have guessed, to make up for the fact I’d not wanted one. I’ve missed him far more than I have her; even when we were still married, Frank never wanted me to be anyone other than myself, assuming I provided food and water and a soft bed.’
Being someone other than yourself? Skye knew that feeling. As she had stared at that wretched exam paper, a realization had finally surfaced, running in tandem to the devastation over Will. That in fact, quite possibly, it might turn out that as a corporate lawyer she was going to be a big old square peg, in a tiny round hole.
At least Bear had shown some backbone and got out of the situation before he’d become unrecognizable to himself. Skye would like to turn back time, though exactly where she would have to go back to sort this out remained unclear. Was it agreeing to a role in the corporate department? Taking the traineeship at Tilling and Browne? It couldn’t be the law degree — that time had represented a pinnacle of happiness in Skye’s life.
Skye brought herself back to the conversation. ‘Poor wee mite. How awful for you all.’
Bear stuck his hands in his pockets, and made a face. ‘It wasn’t great. I’d hoped that after the divorce we could go our separate ways, and not see each other again. I mean, I’m over Georgia, and we manage to be civil on the whole — not that we’ve much cause to see each other.’
She had been referring to the cat’s accident, but Bear mistook her concern, thinking Skye meant his relationship.
‘We didn’t get spiteful and petty, though,’ he continued. ‘But it doesn’t mean I wasn’t left bruised. But it’s like . . . I see my life like a house. I let people in, I let them out. There are different rooms . . .’
Skye gave a small, encouraging nod, trying to picture what Bear was saying.
‘Anyway, when Georgia left the house, I closed the door behind her. You know — you have to preserve heat and . . . your well-being, your mental health and all that.’
Skye allowed herself to smile. Trust an architect to use a building metaphor, then continue it into the insulation stage.
Bear continued, shifting on his feet. ‘Sometimes, you want to close the door firmly on something or someone. You don’t need to bolt it, as you pray it won’t come to that, but leaving it open definitely isn’t an option. But bloody Frank means that I’ve built a cat-flap in my door.’
‘Ah yes. The famous emotional cat-flap theory.’
Bear grinned, the seriousness visibly leaving him as his body relaxed.
‘Sorry. I went off on a tangent there,’ he apologized.
‘No worries. I’m pleased Frank’s all right.’ She took a step closer, reached out and put her hand on Bear’s forearm.
‘Me too — shall we carry on? Unless you’re too wet through and don’t fancy it.’
‘No. I’m up for going on down to the burn. It’ll be worth it, promise.’
She took her hand back, wondering if she had kept it there too long, turned and began to lead the way once more.
For a second Skye wished she had brought a cossie to change into so she could take a dip. Even though she would emerge from the icy water more livid pink lobster rather than Ursula Andress in Dr No , dreamy summer evenings like this were made for it.