Chapter Three #2
“Him!” Evie went to point at the handsome man, but he was gone. “Hey, where did he go?”
“There is no one there.” Morganna cleared her throat and nodded at Evie’s seat. “I think the fog’s lifting a bit. Come along now. Let’s be on our way.”
“I saw a man,” Evie insisted, stepping away from the car and walking toward the last spot he’d been. She pointed at it. “Right here. The sort of guy who makes you forget how to talk. All you can do is stare at him and hope he notices you.”
Morganna waved for her to return. “Well, there’s no one there now, and the fog’s finally thinning. Come along now. Do ye not wish to be done with all our traveling today?”
“He was right here,” Evie said under her breath, still searching the area for the best welcoming committee any place could have offered.
Frustrated and confused, she slowly returned to the car and plopped back into her seat.
“He was amazing. Dark hair. His muscles had muscles, and he was just”—she blew out a heavy sigh—“indescribable.”
“I’m sorry I missed him.” Morganna put the car back into gear and headed onward. “We can ask Callum about him. He takes care of Craig Durness, so to speak. Head of the town council. He’ll know of any newcomers.”
“That guy was amazing.”
“So ye said…in so many words.”
“But there was something else about him, too. Not just his…uhm…striking looks. There was something about his eyes.”
Morganna glanced at her and cocked a brow. “His eyes?”
Evie didn’t know how to describe feeling as if she’d looked into that man’s eyes a hundred times before without sounding like a fool, so she just shrugged.
“I don’t know. His eyes were just as compelling as the rest of him, I guess.
Just more so.” She rubbed her forehead, suddenly noticing the beginnings of a nagging headache.
Which was weird. She never got headaches.
“Like you said, maybe Callum will know him.”
“We’ll ask him first thing when we see him,” Morganna promised her. “Now, let’s get ye settled in yer cottage, aye?”
“Sure. That’ll be fine.” Confused, tired, and stressed to the nth degree, Evie stared out the window, fixing her gaze on the large white stones that lined the road and guided them through the remaining mist. After a while, she noticed that the pattern of the rocks repeated: four short, fat ones, then three tall, skinny ones.
Over and over. The same repetition of shapes and sizes.
She shook her head. It was nothing. It just meant the rocks were man-made, plain old concrete poured into molds to make them more scenic, rather than standard curbs.
The windshield wipers swished back and forth with the same rhythm as the stones streaming through the headlights.
She propped her elbow on the armrest and covered her eyes.
A strange queasiness hit her. Not motion sickness, exactly.
Maybe it was an odd sort of jet lag. After all, she’d never wandered this far from Nashville before.
“Are ye unwell?”
“Just tired, I think, and having a little trouble adapting to the different time zone, I guess.”
“Time at Craig Durness will heal ye.”
Evie had her doubts about that. In fact, second thoughts about this life choice had her insides tangled in ever-tightening knots.
She should have stayed home and hunted for a job.
She rubbed her eyes. What the hell had she been thinking?
Coming here to Scotland for a freaking month? By the time she got back to Tennessee…
She covered her face with both hands, worries spinning out of control about everything she’d have to deal with when she returned.
“Evie?”
“I just need to get to my cottage and have some alone time. All this travel has way overstimulated me.” She hated sounding so sharp and bitchy, but even her usual good nature had its limits.
She dropped her hands into her lap, pulled in a deep breath, and blew it out.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to growl at you. Everything hitting me from every direction is wearing down my walls. ”
“I understand.” Morganna shifted gears to better handle the steep incline the road had taken. “We’re here. Yer cottage.” She cut off the engine and exited the car without another word, almost as if she knew Evie needed a moment.
Unable to see much of the cottage through the fog other than the whitewashed wall illuminated by the car’s headlights, Evie sat there and stared at it.
“Mockingbird.”
She jerked and thumped a hand to her chest, swallowing hard to shove her heart back down where it belonged.
“This is freakin’ crazy.” She threw open the car door, slammed it shut, then leaned back against it, hugging her purse like a shield.
Neither stress nor weariness had ever messed with her mind before.
Why in the blue blazes would it mess with her like this now?
“I got yer largest bag,” Morganna called from the open doorway of the cottage. The warm, golden glow of the lights inside was like a beacon in a storm, promising safety. “There’s naught but yer carry-on left in the back seat.”
“Got it.” Evie snatched hold of the bag and ran to the door as if the devil himself were chasing her.
And maybe he did. Maybe he was the one tormenting her with the pet name Granddaddy had given her.
She halted just inside, hugging all her bags to her chest and trying to get her heart to stop pounding.
Morganna emerged from a doorway on the other side of the living area, eyeing her with a dubious look. “Ye look like old Scratch himself touched yer shoulder. What scairt ye?”
Evie shook her head and tossed her bags onto the plump couch overflowing with cozy throw pillows. “Nothing scared me. Don’t be silly. Just ready to be done with traveling and get all settled in.”
“If ye say so.” Morganna’s tone called Evie a liar.
At this point, she really didn’t care if Morganna believed her or not. She vaguely motioned at the small kitchen to the right. “You said your assistant brought in a few essentials, right? I’ll be able to make a pot of coffee in the morning?”
“Aye, Petra said she’d stocked the pantry with enough for the first few days. When ye think of anything else ye might like, the council opened an account for ye at Farbis’s Wee Sundries and Such. ’Tis the village mercantile and grocery and guaranteed to have everything ye need.”
“That’ll be great. Thank you.” She wasn’t too certain about cooking for herself every night, but probably wouldn’t have much of a choice here.
They stared at each other. The same uncomfortable silence they’d experienced when they first met settled back between them. Which was odd, because during the trip, they’d discovered a relaxed friendliness.
“Well,” Morganna said, “I’ll leave ye to it, then. Get yerself some rest. I’ll be by in the morning to fetch ye and give ye a tour of the village. We can have breakfast at Petra’s pastry shop. Ye’ll love it.”
“That’ll be great. Thank you for everything.
” Evie couldn’t wait to get the woman out the door, set all the locks, and barricade it with a chair or whatever else she could find.
Both her pepper spray and baseball bat were back in Nashville.
She’d have to improvise to secure this little space in Scotland, and secure it she would.
Especially since somewhere out in that mist was a man with a deep, sultry voice calling out her childhood nickname.
And even if that man turned out to be the amazingly fine sir she’d seen earlier, that didn’t mean she wanted to risk any unexpected late-night visits.
A girl on her own couldn’t be too careful.
Not that she’d mind meeting him in broad daylight with other folks around.
Just not in a remote cottage where the only person she knew had just driven away.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she called out to Morganna, waving as the car pulled away.
The mist swallowed it up, leaving only the sound of its engine fading in the distance.
She slammed the door shut, locked it with the one pitiful lock it possessed, then noticed the heavy iron brackets mounted at about waist height on either side of it.
Blackened with age, they looked sturdy enough.
She yanked on one, practically hung from it, and it didn’t budge.
“Wow. All I need is a big board or a tree limb or something to put across it.”
Then she spotted a long, thick wooden bar leaning in the corner closest to the door.
“Well, Merry Christmas to me.” She hefted the weighty thing up and settled it down across the door into the brackets.
“Perfect. The door is now officially barred.” The sight of the secured portal made her feel ridiculously better.
So much so that she almost cried—and she never cried.
“Purrrp?”
“Dammit!” She spun around and stumbled back against the door.
Looking up at her with a pair of golden eyes that almost glowed sat a sleek black cat with a white star in the center of its chest. It tilted its head and studied her while slowly flipping the tip of its tail.
“Purrrp?” it trilled once more, repeating its original greeting.
“How did you get in here?”
It flicked an ear, then rose from its haunches, sauntered over to the kitchen counter, and leapt up onto it.
A cat on the kitchen counter. Evie almost laughed. Grandmama would be rolling in the grave. “You need to get down from there,” she told the animal.
It gave her a bored look, then gracefully walked over to the sink and leapt up onto the ledge of the open kitchen window.
“Well, I did ask how you got in here. Thank you for answering.” She didn’t care much for the lack of a window screen. If the cat had come inside, what other varmints might come to visit? At least the window was extremely small. A person couldn’t wriggle through it—but an agile little cat could.
She did a hurried sweep of the house to ensure all the other windows were closed and secured before returning to the cat on the counter. “You need to go home now.”