Chapter 19
Alistair
“Do you actually know how to bake?” A few hours later we stood in Isla’s kitchen.
I scratched my jaw, taking in the dizzying array of ingredients spread out on the counter. Apples, peaches, blueberries, lemons. Sacks of sugar and flour. How had she afforded all of this? Why hadn’t I offered to pay? “Do those box cakes count?”
I’d attempted to make Juniper a birthday cake the first year of our relationship. Between giggles, we’d managed to choke down two mouthfuls of the undercooked monstrosity, before I’d vowed to order from a bakery from there on out.
“Mummy says box cakes are for lazy people,” Teddy interjected. She was lying on the living-room rug, putting together a different Lego set I’d dug out before coming over. It was a little harder than the dragon we’d built together, but she was quickly getting the hang of it.
“Teddy!” Isla gasped.
“But it’s true,” Teddy replied. “You did say that.”
Isla pinched the bridge of her nose. “Even if I did say that—”
“You did.”
Isla closed her eyes in mortification. I couldn’t hold back my laugh.
“—we don’t always have to repeat it to other people. What if it hurt Alistair’s feelings?”
“Which it did.” I threw Teddy a wink that made her giggle. “What do you think, Theodora? Should your mummy apologise?”
“Definitely.” She nodded, grinning at the new nickname. It was only fair as she called me Ali. “At school we make an apology promise not to upset each other again.”
I turned to Isla expectantly and mouthed, “Apology promise . . . I’m waiting.”
She scowled and a second laugh cracked its way up my windpipe. I imagined it pluming out in a cloud of dust and cobwebs, my body still unused to the action.
Had the past few years really taken such a toll on me, I couldn’t recall the last time I’d laughed? That was really fucking sad.
Isla and Teddy Lang needed to be studied for witchcraft. I’d been in their kitchen less than five minutes, and I was already having more fun than I’d had in days . . . since the last time I’d seen them.
“I’m not apologising, but I’ll give you half a star for effort. Here,” she said, handing me an apron, then slipping her own over her head. She lifted her braid off her neck to untuck the strands, then wrapped and secured the apron ties in the little divot of her waist.
I watched the entire thing like I was front row at a burlesque show, the little pep talk I’d given myself on the drive home from the distillery crumbling like a sandcastle, never built to stand the test of time.
“Why do I feel like you’re being generous?” I forced myself to move to the sink, unclasped my watch, set it on the windowsill then washed my hands, hoping the cool water would be enough to stem the direction my thoughts were taking.
I blamed the damn cardigan; it kept slipping off her shoulder. Showing the thin little white camisole she wore beneath.
I’d never had a type.
After Juniper, I’d been so wrecked it had taken me a long time to dip my toe back into the dating scene.
When I did, it was never anything more than casual.
Dates for work functions with women I’d picked for their ability to charm bow-tie-wearing doctors who’d been growing out their ear hair for the past two decades, and a strong enough mutual attraction that if it ended in a one-night stand, both of us would have a good time.
But Isla – if I had a type, she was it. It was like I’d circled her on a map without even knowing what I was searching for.
I watched her slip off her rings, utterly entranced by the innocuous action. I wanted to feel the cool weight of each of those rings on my neck. On my stomach.
Fuck. This was bad.
So bad.
Her lips were moving. Talking. I scrambled to catch up.
“. . . baking should be more about the experience than what you receive at the end. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a perfectly laminated millefeuille as much as the next girl.
But I’d take the burned cookies Teddy and I make on a Sunday morning over fancy treats, hands down. ”
“Now I know why the smoke alarm is always going off.”
She rolled her eyes. “She likes them crispy.”
“Course she does.” I glanced at Teddy. She was completely entranced by her Lego.
“We’ll start with the shortcrust pastry.” Isla moved confidently around me, adding flour, salt and cubes of butter to a large bowl. Not even pausing to weigh them. This was Isla in her element. Like she’d been at the food market, before Cam the dick ruined it all.
“How much baking is going to be required of me, exactly?”
“Probably should have asked that weeks ago.”
“Probably.” But it was just dawning on me now that we were doing this. That I had the ability to fuck up this thing that was important to her. I guess I’d imagined that she’d handle the baking and I’d . . . be there. An extra body to ensure she was eligible to enter the competition.
“We both have to contribute, whether it’s the crust or the filling.
We’ll literally be making it from scratch on the stage so you can’t get away with doing nothing.
You can take the easier jobs on the day, but it’s better if I show you every step.
” She pushed the bowl in my direction. “Ready to get your hands dirty?” My gaze dropped to her lips then rocketed back to her eyes when she cleared her throat.
“For the pastry, I mean.” Right. “You have to rub the flour and butter together with your fingertips until it starts to resemble breadcrumbs, like this.” She demonstrated, working the mixture.
“Looks easy enough,” I said, entranced by the slow, methodical way her fingers moved.
“You try.” She grabbed my hand, and our fingers brushed in the bowl as I tried and failed to copy the movement. If I were hooked up to an ECG machine, I’d be in tachycardia. Every brush of our skin sent my heart racing.
She flicked me a look. “What?”
I was staring.
“Nothing.” Nothing at all. Just wondering how the hell you’re so calm while I feel like I’ve been sucked into an eighties porn movie. “How’d you fall in love with baking?”
She removed her hands from the bowl, leaving me to continue solo.
“My gran, actually. Granny Pat. I spent a lot of time with her as a kid when things at home were . . .” She broke off, and I twirled a flour-covered finger to encourage her to continue with the story, to skip over the painful details.
“She always said there wasn’t any problem in the world that couldn’t be made better with sugar.
It hasn’t proven her wrong yet.” Her entire face softened at the memory, and I wished I had a photo of that moment.
Something to keep in my wallet and unfold every time the world felt shit.
“I’d sit on her kitchen counter like Teddy does sometimes, legs swinging as she worked. ”
“Was she a professional?”
She laughed. “Not at all, just a tiny Scottish woman with a rolling pin and a hatred for ‘store-bought shite’. A lot like Jessica Brown, now I think about it.”
“So you’re not a true Sassenach after all?”
“The saltire tattooed on my arse usually gives it away.”
I froze.
With one sentence, I realised, Isla had the power to make me blush.
I saw the exact moment she realised it too.
She stared at me, eyes all over my face.
For a split second, indecision warred in her expression, and the urge rose to ask what she was thinking.
Then she looked away, and continued speaking as if the moment never happened.
“When I was a teenager, I used to dream about opening a bakery – that’s how I ended up in Edinburgh.
But then I got pregnant and life got in the way.
” She shrugged, in a the rest is history way.
“How about you? Did you always know you wanted to be a doctor?”
“Always,” I answered quickly, keeping my eyes firmly on my sticky hands. “Even if I had wanted something else, I don’t think my dad would have allowed it.”
“Why not?”
“He always had high expectations for his kids.”
“No running away to join the circus then?”
It was a joke but my answering laugh was bitter. “He would have found me and dragged me home by my ear.”
“What if you’d wanted to be an astronaut?”
I thought about it for a second while she tugged the bowl away and added a little water. “That would have been worse than the circus.”
“Why?”
I answered without thinking. “Growing up with Jim Macabe was like walking a tightrope. The balance between being impressive enough to make him proud, but not so impressive you overshone him. He circumvented this by trying to map out our lives for us. Callum joined the army straight out of school, just like my dad wanted,” I explained.
“Hated every damn second of it too. And medical school was always on the cards for me, whether I wanted it or not.”
“What about Mal and Heather?”
“Mal’s always had a stubborn streak a mile long, no one could make him do anything.
He and my dad stopped speaking for a while after he refused to go to university and started full time at the distillery.
Which is actually kind of funny, when you think about it.
” I cracked a smile in her direction. “All my dad’s bluster about the distillery being a ‘dead-end job’, now he’s probably the most successful one out of all of us. ”
“And Heather?” she prodded again.
“My dad pretty much ignored her.” I winced, shoving my hands harder into the dough. “I don’t know if it’s because she was the youngest . . . or because she was the only girl. But that probably explains why she was such a roughhouser as a kid, always trying to beat up her big brothers.”
“That sounds like Heather.” She laughed. Then turned to me, and I could practically see the indecision on her face before she asked, “If you could go back . . . would you do anything differently?”
“Honestly . . .” I blew out a long breath, staring at the flour crusted beneath my short nails. “I don’t know. My whole life, my whole career . . . it’s always been tied up in him. I don’t think I’ll ever know if I wanted it for me . . . or just to make him proud.”
I regretted it almost immediately.
Isla only blinked, like a blindfold had been removed and she could see all the way into my brain. Like she’d found the dusty corner hiding insecure teenage Alistair, who I’d striven so hard to scrub away. “Alistair, I—”
I pushed the bowl toward her. “What’s next?”