Chapter 35
Alicia
Jamie told Alicia to drive to his house. It would have been quicker if it hadn’t begun snowing again, but the roads were empty and the village was so small that the journey was a quick one.
Being back at Jamie’s home was a heady mix of strange and comforting. The cottage smelled as she remembered it: of wood smoke and Jamie’s cologne. The same scent was drifting warmly from his skin and Alicia sidestepped a little to calm the effect it was having on her nervous system.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘You must be exhausted. Would you like a cup of tea, or something stronger?’
‘I’m good,’ Alicia lied. She would love a cup of tea or a nap. More than that, she would give anything for Jamie to pull her into his warm, wide chest and take away all her worries. She wanted to feel safe by his side. To lie down on the bed tucked into his bear-like form and fall fast asleep.
Recognition flashed in Jamie’s eyes. Like he understood her thoughts, wanted the same.
His gaze skitted across hers, scanning for her true feelings.
Of course, she hadn’t considered that Jamie might not be one hundred percent confident of what she wanted.
There were several nano-moments, where he could have been about to touch her face or when he made a miniscule movement towards her before stopping himself.
Instead, he said, ‘I’ve missed you, Leesh, I’ve really missed you.
Come with me and I’ll show you how much.
’ Jamie walked towards the hall and motioned for Alicia to follow.
He led her into the room she had used as a studio.
It was much as it had been when she’d worked here.
The easel was standing by the window, although now empty.
‘I took your work to show my dad,’ he said. He loved it as much as I do. Everyone I showed it to was blown away.’
This compliment on her art was lovely, but it wasn’t why Alicia had flown from America or why she had come to this cottage.
‘Aye. I know what you’re thinking,’ Jamie went on.
‘That’s business. And it is. But I wanted to show you these.
’ He opened a door in the sideboard, took out two bottles of whisky and placed them on the desk.
‘I got these mocked up to show you how amazing your art looks on the bottles. Even if we do nothing with them, I had to show it to you. I had three, and I brought one over to LA and gave it to that guy in the gallery, but I don’t know if it ever found its way to you. ’
Heart racing, Alicia took the bottle from Jamie and stared at it.
A miniature version of her painting of Ben Corrin was on the label, and it looked so polished, like it could be on sale in a liquor store.
She traced the letters of the Butler’s name.
This was her and Jamie, blended together.
And like the blending of whisky expressions, so many strong, intoxicating feelings were swirling in her bloodstream.
‘I’m at a loss for words, Jamie.’ She looked up at him and saw and that she needed to find some words. ‘So these are mock-ups?’
‘Aye.’
‘They are so professional.’ She exchanged her bottle for one with the lighthouse on the label. ‘This. This is everything.’
‘Your work and my work complement each other well, huh? Even if “we” go no further, I want to give you these.’
Tears stung Alicia’s eyes like tiny sharp bullets. He was right. The concept of her art on Butler’s whisky bottles had worked. She loved that he envisioned and executed this so successfully and even more grateful that he had done this for her, regardless of what the end outcome might be.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much. I love them.’ She rubbed her eyes as if there were something in them that wasn’t tears.
‘I love them too,’ said Jamie. ‘They’ve come out better than I could have hoped for. Seeing our work together like this is kind of emotional, don’t you think?’
He was right, it was beautiful and forged a bond between the two of them. And the longing on Jamie’s face affirmed to Alicia that this was about way more than business for him.
‘I have something else to show you.’ Jamie reached out and Alicia let him wrap her tiny hand in his.
He’d already won her over with the bottles but he was beckoning her down the hall and she would go on this mini adventure with him.
‘So, I’m no woodcraftsman, and what I’m about to show you took me way longer that it should have, but I wanted to do it myself.
Call me presumptuous or whatever, but I couldn’t let go of the hope that you’d come back here.
’ Jamie swung open the door from the kitchen to the garden and Alicia scanned the area trying to work out what was different.
She hadn’t spent much time in the garden but immediately she saw it.
A wooden cabin in the corner, its roof covered in a thick layer of snow.
‘A shed?’ she said. ‘But you have one of those already. Over there.’
‘I do. And it would be a perfect artist’s studio. But this is not a shed. It’s a sauna.’
‘Oh! You built a sauna?’
‘Aye. Bit of a gamble but I needed to keep busy and to believe you’d come back. I know it’s over the top, but I can’t let go of you and me.’
Alicia was rendered speechless by Jamie’s gesture. This was so personal and better than a thousand red roses or even diamonds.
‘And in case you are thinking,’ Jamie added, ‘he just built that so he can get me naked inside it, please know that wasn’t on my mind one bit.’
Alicia raised a sceptical but flirtatious eyebrow. ‘Not one little bit?’
‘Well, okay, a little bit. I’d be lying if I said all my thoughts of you were totally pure.’
‘I much prefer the truth. There is no way that all my thoughts of you are totally pure either. In fact, many of them are quite impure.’
A wave of relief washed over Jamie’s face highlighting how tense he must have been. ‘You think about me?’ he asked.
‘Of course. All the time. In fact, since leaving here, I’ve done very little that wasn’t accompanied by thoughts of you.’
Jamie squeezed Alicia’s hand. She pressed back, ready for him to kiss her now, to bring them back to each other. But Jamie had something else in mind.
‘There’s one last thing I want you to see,’ he said.
‘Really? It’s like Christmas Day with all these gifts.’
‘Well, it is Christmas Day.’
‘Oh yeah, so it is. I’ve lost all sense of time.’
‘So, I keep this gift under lock and key.’ He led Alicia down the hall again, but this time to his study where he typed a code into a safe in the corner. What was in there? Money? Diamonds, after all? That would be… No, she shouldn’t get ahead of herself.
To Alicia’s surprise, Jamie didn’t reveal money or any other valuable item from the safe. Instead, he brought out another bottle of whisky. And when he rolled the bottle round in his palm to present the label to Alicia, her laughter barrelled into the room.
‘Oh my God! Jamie! You didn’t!’
‘I did. For you. But I’m not sure it would get through customs so it had to stay in Scotland.’
Alicia creased over with laughter. ‘Oh, this is so good,’ she gulped in a breath between laughs.’ How did you manage to get it printed?’
‘Let’s just say I have friends in certain places who were willing to look the other way. Quite literally.’
She took the bottle from him and examined it more closely. On the label was the nude painting of him that she had done at the lodge in Ben Corrin. As she gazed at it, her face warmed with delight, and an overwhelming love for Jamie swamped her, for making her laugh and cry simultaneously.
‘By the way, that is your real gift,’ he said. ‘The other bottles and the sauna were side presents.’
‘Yes,’ said Alicia, dreamily. ‘Yes. Side presents.’ She turned the bottle over in her palm, enjoying its weight. It was solid and dependable, like Jamie. And thick in her grasp, like his…
‘Can I get you to tear your eyes away from my naked form and be serious for a moment,’ Jamie cut into her dreamscape.
‘Obviously, I can never fully understand your experience with those photos, but I did have a mortifying moment when some members of my family discovered this painting and I have to say that it gave me the tiniest – and I do mean tiniest – insight into what that might have been like for you. My mum seeing me naked, at aged thirty-three, isn’t the same thing, but it was still harrowing and I woke up feeling so ashamed the next morning. So I get it a bit more now.’
Alicia studied Jamie. He was right; he could never entirely grasp what she had experienced. Yet, what he had just expressed was likely the nearest he could come to understanding, and he had shared that with her. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That means a lot to me.’ Her gaze drifted back to the bottle.
‘The real thing is right here, by the way.’
Alicia looked up and Jamie winked at her. My God, the real thing was almost too much to bear. But she bore it out because the truth was, she couldn’t take her eyes from his. Locked onto his gaze, she could see his pupils dilating black amidst the clear loch blue. Then his expression turned serious.
‘Alicia, listen to me. I love you. Stronger than all the cask strength whisky in Scotland. Fiercer than the winds whipping the water out there. As certain as Ben Corrin will be standing in a thousand years’ time.
Everything I’ve shown you here is because of how much you mean to me.
You’ve turned my world on its head with your beauty, your vulnerability, your talent.
I’ve gone for walks on the beach at 2 am because I can’t sleep for thinking about you.
I’ve come home and watched your movies because the sound of the roaring waves wasn’t enough to calm my mind.
I’ve worn my hand out playing over our memories at the hotel – if you catch my drift.
I didn’t know it was possible to be this bad for someone.
You’re all I think about. And if I’ve made a giant arse of myself then I’ll live with that because I cannot let the chance to be with you slip away. ’