Chapter 42
Cal
‘Welcome to Glen Tummel Lodges, Mr and Mrs Butler.’ The receptionist almost sang her greeting.
Cal suppressed a slight smile at this error but held back on correcting the woman. Wondering if Bea minded being assumed his wife, he turned and saw amusement glimmering at the edges of her perfectly pink lips. Clearly not. And had he imagined it, or did she slide her left hand behind her hips?
Mr and Mrs Butler it was.
The receptionist clocked Cal and Bea’s shared look and adopted a little ‘Isn’t wedded bliss adorable?
’ expression which she held whilst clacking at the keyboard and entering Cal’s card details to complete the booking.
Cal was sure he sensed Bea stiffen at the sight of his credit card, but he suspected she wouldn’t bring it up if trying to give the illusion of being married.
And that was fine with him. Bea was of a different mettle to Elisabetta and the other women he’d been intimate with, and her offering to pay for her lunch today had cemented that idea in his mind.
The accommodation turned out to be as Cal had hoped.
Only a few footsteps from the loch’s edge, separated by a small shingled beach, sat their lodge – a hot tub on the fenced deck overlooked the deep blue of the water.
Inside was perfect, too: two spacious bedrooms with huge king-sized beds, an enormous bathroom with double monsoon shower and ample windows with copious natural light streaming in and affording views out to the cobalt loch and mountains beyond.
The entire place smelt of wood and mountain air.
And a complimentary bottle of vintage champagne and artisan chocolates sat on the dining table.
Cal hoped Bea was as enamoured as he was.
It seemed they were on the same page.
‘Oh, Cal, this is perfection.’ Bea was spinning slowly and soaking in her surroundings as if she were a character in a fairy tale.
She floated around the lounge, skimming her fingers over the surfaces before drifting into the main bedroom and bouncing on the bed next to where he’d put her bag.
His own was in the other room: even if they were to share a bed, Cal thought that Bea might like some space to get changed and dressed in private.
‘But I can’t let you pay for this.’ She stroked the lambswool blanket folded across the foot of the smooth cotton bedspread. ‘It’s too much.’
‘Och away, woman.’ Cal stood in the doorway drinking her in and thinking how luminous she looked in jeans, a light sweater and understated make-up. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘It might be nothing to you, but it’s not nothing to me.’
Bea was talking about money, but Cal let his mind flirt with the alternative meaning to that comment.
This was feeling less like the nothing they both protested it was as each day passed.
Of course, he wasn’t about to admit that to Bea, not when she was here for a bit of fun before she went back to the States.
‘Bea, I know you are fiercely independent, but would you please accept this as a gift from me?’
Bea sighed. ‘I know you can afford this, Cal. I know how hard you work, but you don’t have to prove anything to me.’
‘I’m not trying to prove anything. I just want you to appreciate Scotland. This loch is one amazing part, but I don’t expect you to pay for my choices.’
‘Maybe you could have given me the choice?’ Bea poured herself a glass of water from a bottle on the dresser.
‘Of all the lochs? There’s about thirty thousand to choose from…’
‘Don’t patronise me, Cal. You know what I mean.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m being flippant. But, Bea, I am more than happy to pay.
I want to treat you, is that so wrong?’ Jeez, that was something a boyfriend would say.
‘Think of it as an employer reward,’ Cal added, putting the thoughts ‘employer’ and ‘treat’ together in his head and coming up with nine. ‘For being my best bartender, ever.’
Bea hit Cal with a stony expression he couldn’t read, her sapphire eyes dark. This was hard work, exactly the sort of hard work he hadn’t wanted. Maybe they should pack up and go back to Edinburgh. Tell the receptionist that the marriage wasn’t working out.
‘I don’t want you doing all these things for me when I can’t repay the favour,’ she explained.
‘You’ve already repaid the favour.’ Cal cursed that his mouth was in drive before he’d considered where it was driving to. ‘You’re...’ He shuffled his feet and rethought his words. ‘It’s like this. I pay for the lodge and you… what is it you Americans say? You bring it.’
‘I bring it?’ Bea folded her arms. ‘That sounds all kinds of wrong, Cal.’
‘I didn’t mean it that way.’ He truly hadn’t. All he’d been trying to say was that she was so amazing that he wanted to do something in return. It wasn’t meant to sound sordid.
‘Well, what did you mean? Because to be honest, what you said makes me feel kind of cheap.’
‘Cheap? Oh, Bea, come on. How could anyone think that you are cheap? You’re the most exquisite woman I’ve met in…’ He didn’t finish his sentence. She was the most exquisite woman he had ever met, but he couldn’t say that out loud, could he? It sounded too intense.
‘You have no idea, Cal.’
‘No idea about what? You’re right, I do have no idea. Please tell me, help me understand.’
Bea’s eyes flared. She shook her head and brushed past him and out of the room. Cal followed her out onto the veranda where she leaned on the rail and stared out to the loch. How he wanted to hold her and show her she was safe, but it seemed that Bea had words she needed to let breathe.
‘Bea? What is it?’ Cal spoke as tenderly as he could to encourage her to open up. ‘What have I no idea about?’
‘It’s not something you need concern yourself with.’ There was a brittleness to Bea’s voice but he knew it was from fear rather than wanting to drive him away.
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ he said. ‘Whatever’s upsetting you, it’s affecting things between us.’
‘Officially, there is no us,’ Bea countered.
Cal was more than aware of this and it was bothering him.
But how could he word a response to her without sounding possessive, or like he had the two of them labelled as a collective.
‘Okay, well I know there’s strictly no us,’ he said.
‘But it’s affecting this trip, you having a nice time while we’re here.
You won’t relax and let me pay for lunch or this place without being offended. Why?’
‘It’s hard to explain, Cal.’ Bea gripped the veranda rail.
‘I do understand that you want to pay your way,’ Cal said. ‘But there’s no need to feel cheap because I’m paying for somewhere nice that I chose. It would be a dick move to make you pay for that.’
Bea turned to him and he could see the glistening of incipient tears. Oh, how he wanted to wipe them away, but he knew that first he had to listen, because if she was upset there would be no pasting over things on his part. She deserved to be one hundred per cent happy.
‘I can’t help hating you paying for me,’ Bea said finally. ‘Because for the past five years all I’ve done is feel cheap – because that’s what one man did to me.’
Cal noticed Bea’s face change as she opened up to him.
Those precious eyes filled now with tears instead of light, the sweet lips that laughed so readily were quivering.
The last thing he wanted was for her to have to relive any trauma, but he also needed to understand, to be able to make this better.
‘I’m so sorry, Bea. Who was he? I’m presuming it’s a he.’
‘Yeah. My ex, J…’
‘It’s okay, you don’t need to say his name.
’ Cal knew this might be difficult for her.
For years, his mother referred to his biological father as ‘him’ or ‘he’.
‘But can I ask, did he…?’ Cal didn’t want to finish the sentence because it killed him to even suggest out loud that someone might have physically hurt Bea.
‘No, he didn’t.’ Bea answered Cal’s unfinished question.
‘Only slowly wore me down with five years of emotional control: of forcing me to stay home and not work, but then withholding money from me and making me beg him if I needed any. When you put up with that, after a while you believe it yourself.’
Cal’s head was spinning. It stung to hear about Bea going through what she’d described.
He understood well that emotional abuse could be as harmful as physical.
He’d been a young child when his biological father had done the same to his mother and he would forever wish that he’d done something to stop her pain, even though he’d only been a little boy.
All he’d been able to do was try to comfort his mum with words. The same was true now.
‘I’m so sorry, Bea,’ Cal said. ‘The guy sounds like an absolute arse.’
‘He was.’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, what happened in the end? Did you leave him?’
Bea choked on a laugh and Cal narrowed his gaze. He was pretty sure this wasn’t funny and the laughter came from incredulousness or nerves.
‘Would you believe it, that he left me?’ she said, revealing the irony of the situation.
‘Well, no, I wouldn’t. What sort of muppet would leave you?’.
‘Muppet.’ Bea smiled tenderly. ‘Yes, he is what you’d call a muppet, although that’s an insult to Kermit and the like. And he’s the sort of muppet who basically got a better offer, a trust fund baby who would support him.’
‘Sounds pathetic.’ Cal tensed, wondering if he should hold back on the judgements but knowing he couldn’t.
This sort of behaviour riled him too much.
‘Sorry if you think that sounds sexist, but any guy who expects his girlfriend to support him, without a genuine, necessary reason, is a sorry excuse for a person as far as I’m concerned. ’
‘But is it okay the other way round?’