Three Years Later, Glasgow
Juniper
“Are you looking at the documents I emailed over from the Boutique Hotel conference? I’ve highlighted a few paragraphs under the sustainable business model section—”
“This all looks very modern. You know your dad preferred to keep the inn traditional.”
Yeah?
Well, Dad isn’t here anymore.
Clutching my phone tighter, I swallowed the cruel retort, eyeing the door of my Glasgow city centre hotel.
“I get that, but we need to make changes now if we want to compete with the influx of private holiday rentals on the island.”
“I love your enthusiam, Juney, Dad would be so proud.” But no – she didn’t need to say it.
This was pointless. I knew before I’d got on the damn ferry from Skye that the conference was useless and, like a fool, I’d come anyway.
I scrubbed a tired hand over my face.
“Maybe we should talk about this when I get home.”
“If that’s what you want, love.” It wasn’t.
But I acquiesced. As I always did.
“Do you have any big plans tonight? You haven’t visited Glasgow in so long.”
“A mountain of room service and that lame wedding movie, you know the one where the guy falls in his in-laws’ pool,” I lied, already headed for the door.
“ Father of the Bride ? A classic. They don’t make love stories like that anymore.”
“If you say so.” My adoptive mother had always been overly romantic.
“You’re not meeting up with Alistair?”
“No, why would I?”
“I’m just saying, after so many years together it’s a shame to let things—”
“Fiona.” I issued her name like a warning.
“—it would be nice if you could be friends at the very least. He was your fiancé.”
“Call me crazy, but I wouldn’t put a fiancé who abandons you the second your father gets sick in the great future friend category,” I snapped.
Silence. Shit. “Fiona, I’m sorry—”
“I know.” Her voice wobbled.
“It’s just hard to remember him sometimes.” I started to apologise again but she cut me off, sniffling in that way she always did while composing herself.
“It’s hard for me too.” My voice was quiet.
Homesick not for a place, but a person.
“Look … I’ll see you tomorrow. My bus is early so I should get to bed.”
“Tomorrow.” Did I imagine the disappointment in her tone?
“Love you, Juney.”
My chest ached when I couldn’t offer it back.
Out on the street, the familiarity of Glasgow’s Victorian architecture moulded around me and I fuelled my frustration into each beat of my heels on stone that screamed Home, home, home .
Instead of taking a left that would carry me toward the River Clyde and the gleaming tower of city apartments, I turned right, circumventing arm-in-arm couples to the string of upscale restaurants lining Hope Street.
That neighborhood belonged to a younger Juniper.
A little more wild, monumentally less jaded and owner of one too many band t-shirts.
By some miracle I’d put my journalism degree to good use and wrangled an entry level position at the Glasgow Herald only a year out of Uni.
I always left out the part where I worked for the Gossip column, the ancient editor had taken one look at my septum piercing and declared, “ You’ll bring a little edge” whatever that meant.
I hadn’t cared that the stories were trashy.
I’d loved the endless bustle of the Cube Farm office and the smell of shit coffee from my World’s Sexiest Journalist mug (a gift from my best friend Heather).
I’d loved that when I got really into a story, my fingers refused to type as quickly as the words flowed through my brain because it felt like I had my finger right on the pulse of something great.
I’d loved that every Friday, Alistair took the subway from Hillend to Buchanan Street to take me out for lunch.
Almost a year since I’d set foot in the city.
Almost a year since my engagement party that changed everything.
The memory of my father, Alexander, collapsed on the dance floor clutching his chest, left me cold.
A heart attack. Overnight, the strongest man I’d ever known became so frail he’d almost appeared childlike as he recuperated in a hospital bed.
I’d dropped everything.
Rushed home to help take care of him.
Put my life and my relationship on hold.
And then he’d died not even four months later.
And every dream I’d had for myself died with him.
You’re better off alone anyway, wean.
Who’d want to stay with you anyway?
The phantom voice slid through me like a white-hot poker.
The voice of a nameless, faceless woman who’d abandoned her one-year-old daughter in a hospital toilet.
Brushing off the urge to glance down at my empty ring finger, I careened into the first bar I came across.
Thirteen months – I’d been without it longer than I’d worn it – and yet I still felt the weight of it like a missing limb.
A young man greeted me at the door, head tilted back to meet my eyes.
His widened ever so slightly and my lips tipped with wicked delight.
Oh, I really enjoyed that .
Shame he was a little short for my taste.
Call me old-fashioned, but when a man fucked me against a wall, I preferred when my toes didn’t drag on the floor.
Height was the very least I required when searching for a companion for the night.
Not that I was looking, exactly.
All I wanted was to drink and eat my own weight until I forgot the little fact I was back in Glasgow, the ghost of my old life haunting my every step.
Taking a seat in a small booth in the back, I paused the waiter before he could leave, ordering two martinis and a small feast of carbs from the bar menu.
The food was with me in minutes: two bowls of skinny fries, whisky-battered onion rings, those little balls with veggie haggis in the middle, and a bowl of olives.
I popped one into my mouth, savouring the salty flavour as a shadow fell over me.
A hand gripped the back of the booth.
I tracked it up to its owner.
A man around my age.
Handsome in a generic kind of way.
He was the kind of man you’d find modelling in an office supply catalogue, attractive, but not attractive enough to distract you from the swivel chair with adjustable lumbar support.
“Having a party?” He grinned across the circular table showing a dimpled cheek he probably thought was adorable.
I wondered if he practised the move in the bathroom mirror.
“A wake if you don’t remove your hand from my booth.”
He jerked, eyes flicking between mine incredulously.
“A shut-down, just like that?”
I dragged the second olive from the stick with my teeth.
“ Just like that .” A man behind him – his friend, I assumed – snorted into his drink.
“Bitch!” he hissed, flipping me off and stalking away.
“Rude!” I called to his retreating back.
“I thought you wanted to be friends?”
I’d barely dug back into my food when a second figure shadowed my table.
One of his friends here to shoot their shot with the bitch in the back, no doubt.
Perhaps I’d gotten extra lucky and they’d wagered money on it.
Not in the mood, I didn’t even glance up.
“Come any closer and I’ll plant this cocktail stick in your eyeball.” I held the miniature weapon up for his viewing pleasure.
“Unnecessarily vicious and yet I admire the creativity, harpy.”
I froze.
Every hair on my body rising at the deep brogue.
The nickname. The lilt of humour that exposed a man who took very little seriously.
A different kind of ghost entirely.
Sitting back slowly, I had to fight to keep my voice even.
“Callum Macabe.”
He nodded to my new friend at the bar.
“That looked brutal.” His smile revealed pointed incisors I’d always envied.
He wore a charcoal suit, dark but not quite black.
No tie. His light brown hair, the exact same shade as Alistair’s, was a little longer than when I’d last seen him, curling at the edges of his open shirt collar.
I folded one leg over the other in a move more confident than I felt.
“For him or me?”
“The lad looked heartbroken.”
“I’m sure he’ll find another bitch to keep him entertained for the evening.”
Callum’s grin vanished, shoulders pulling taut beneath the fitted jacket.
“He called you that?”
He looked almost …
angry – an emotion I didn’t know Callum Macabe was capable of.
It delighted me enough that I crooned, “Why Callum … you making plans to defend my honour?”
“If you ask nicely.” The words were casual.
The glare he tossed at my new friends was not .
I could have sworn they all slouched in their seats.
We lapsed into silence, and I twizzled the now empty cocktail stick between my red-painted lips.
Callum watched it with an intensity I wasn’t accustomed to, the blue eyes he shared with Alistair flashing a sharp cobalt.
In an instant I was dragged back to that day on the train.
The unconcealed heat in his eyes when he saw me again at Alistair’s place.
There, and gone so suddenly, I’d seen the regret settle like a mask over his features.
Polite. Distant. A little cold.
Perhaps that’s how everyone looked at their brother’s girlfriend.
He wasn’t looking at me like that now.
Tugging off his jacket, he slung it over the back of the booth and sat.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, steadying the table when he knocked it with his knee.
“Having dinner.” His shirt cuffs came next, as he unbuttoned and then rolled the white cotton over toned forearms dusted with light hair.
He kept a polite distance between our thighs, however his eyes lingered on the lacy bralette just visible beneath my shirt.
A muscle in his jaw pulsed.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Ordered your own, have you?”
Laughter lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled.
“You’re seriously going to eat all of that?”
“ Yes .”
Clearly, he thought I was talking shit, yet when the waiter approached, he put in the exact same order – minus the olives – then sipped his drink with rapt attention while I pretended he didn’t exist and sampled one of everything on the table.
I didn’t ask him to leave.
I should have. Because in the short time it took for the waiter to return with his food, an invisible third body had squeezed into the seat between us.
Alistair, who at that very moment was probably a ten-minute walk away in his fancy high-rise apartment.
“What are you doing here?”
He seemed relieved by the question, or perhaps relieved by what I didn’t ask.
“Met up with some old army pals. And you?”
“A small business conference in the city.”
He nodded, thick fingers tracing the rim of his glass.
“You’re running Ivy House now, how’s that going?”
Awful , I wanted to shout.
Fiona has turned into a control freak ever since Alexander died and refuses to let me change a thing.
Heather and I barely talk, and I’ve got no fucking idea what I’m doing.
All I said was, “It’s going.”
His brow furrowed, clearly reading between the lines.
“ Ah , family fun … I’m really sorry about your dad, I wanted to talk to you at the funeral—”
I snorted into my martini.
“Absolutely not. If you start with that you can take your food to go.”
“What?”
“Pity.” My nose wrinkled.
“It’s not pity, it’s sympathy.”
“They are the exact same thing and I don’t want it.”
“Okay.” He slung an arm over the booth’s curved back, fingers a hair’s breadth from the sharp ends of my bob.
The last time he’d seen me it had fallen down my back in long waves.
“What do you want, Juniper?”
Fuck , it was suddenly stifling in here.
I couldn’t remove my jacket without him thinking it was some sort of come-on.
Maybe I should remove it.
“I want to drink my two martinis in peace.”
“You only have one.”
“I have another on a tab.” I pointed to the waiter who flushed adorably and raised his hand in a half wave.
“Hmm.” Callum’s eyes slid to the waiter and back to me.
Then he shifted closer, the leather of the seat creaking under the weight.
“I don’t think that’s what you want. I think you love that I came over here and ruined your lonely little evening. And when those two martinis hit, you’re going to thank me for interrupting an evening of disappointing sex with some two-pump twenty-something.”
I rolled my eyes.
Hard. “ Christ, I’d forgotten you were like this.”
“Honest?”
“No, arrogant.”
“Harpy, I’ve had sneezes last longer than that boy will between your legs.” His eyes swept over my every feature, ending at the line of my jaw where my shorter hair now brushed.
I did the same. He’d grown more handsome in the year since I’d seen him, features a little more chiselled with age, the scruff of facial hair a little longer.
I used to find him too rugged, favouring Alistair’s more refined features.
He looked different now.
Or maybe he looked exactly the same and something else had changed.
His throat bobbed.
“I like your hair this way,” he said.
Rough and low, as though he meant something else entirely.
It was like he’d licked the words into my skin for all that my body reacted.
Still holding his gaze, I lifted a hand to signal the waiter.
“What are you doing?”
“Ordering those drinks.” I was going to need them.
“Did you bring a coat?” Callum cleared his throat, following me to the bar’s exit.
I shook my head.
We’d talked for hours, Callum eventually stepping in to finish my fries without comment when I pushed the bowl away.
The conversation never once straying to Alistair, and when we eventually slid from the table, I no longer felt the weight of his presence between us.
Probably the effect of two martinis.
The last had tasted extra strong and was subsequently the exact same moment kissing my ex’s brother stopped feeling like a monumental mistake.
He still wore only his white shirt, his suit jacket now gallantly hanging over my shoulders after the bar’s aircon became too much to stand.
“Where are you staying?” We paused in the small entry.
“The Grosvenor.”
He stared at me for the longest time, then scrubbed a hand over his jaw and shook his head.
“Me too.”
I sensed his lie, too distracted by the heat pulsating through every limb to mind as I replied, “What a coincidence.”
His head whipped to look at me.
“I could … drive you. I only had one drink.” We’d retreated to opposite corners of the small space, like opponents in a ring, waiting for the other to tap out first. His jaw ticked as he tracked lower, down the line of my neck and pausing at the V of my shirt, half hidden beneath both of our jackets.
When the tension became too much, I broke our stare, dropping my gaze to my feet in time to see him step closer.
Not stopping until his dress shoes whispered against my open-toed heels and my back pressed against the exterior door.
The long silence pulsed.
“Turn me down, Juniper.”
I couldn’t think.
Couldn’t speak around my racing heart.
This was so wrong. God , I knew it was half the reason I was getting off on it.
His finger swept down my throat.
“We both know where this is going. Tell me … fuck , tell me to step away. Tell me to act like a half-decent brother … tell me to put you in a taxi and not look back.” He was trembling, the words so raw they sounded dragged from his chest. “Juniper. Tell me this is a bad idea. Tell me … tell me I’m not for you.” When I remained silent, he thumbed my chin up until our eyes locked.
His expression was caught somewhere between fierce arousal and panic.
“You need to be the one to say it. I can’t walk away from you on my own.”
Silence echoed for two thunderous heartbeats, Alistair’s handsome face rising behind my eyelids.
His smile the cruellest taunt.
And that voice slipped into my mind like an eel, reminding me that I deserved nothing.
Deserved to be lonely.
“Bring the car around.”