Chapter 23
Struan was tempted to take Rae home and never let her leave.
An hour later, after drying off on the rock, his body still felt electrified from the orgasm she’d driven through him.
He wasn’t sure it would ever be the same between them again; her perfect warmth and gorgeous keens had rewritten him, senses rooted in every sound and expression she made.
They giggled like school kids as they wrestled on their shoes, skin still tacky and cheeks still flushed.
He knelt down to tie her laces and considered making her come on his tongue again.
Once, he’d thought that being unable to keep his hands off someone was a cliché made for rom-coms, but his skin itched to be close to hers, so much so that he placed a soft kiss on her knee, another on her inner thigh.
Goosebumps danced across his skin when she raked through his hair. ‘It’ll be dark soon.’
‘So?’
Pointedly, she clamped her legs together, denying him access. ‘Don’t you think we got a bit too carried away?’ That earlier worry returned to her face as she leaned back on her palms. ‘We’re making it harder for ourselves.’
‘You’re certainly making it harder for me.’ It wasn’t a lie. With her smell all over him, his cock begged to be between her legs again. If he could bottle her up and wear her like cologne, he would. Anything to keep her from slipping away.
But he could sense it happening already in the way she stood to tidy the food they’d snacked on while drying off.
She piled the bottles and Tupperware with expert precision, rearranging when something didn’t fit quite right.
He wanted to ask if her anxiety had always been with her, or if it was OCD she struggled with, but he wasn’t sure how to bring it up.
How to say I see you without fear she’d shy away.
After her earlier reluctance, he had a feeling she didn’t like people to know that her mind could sometimes be as turbulent as his.
‘Are you okay?’ he questioned.
‘Yeah. I’m just ready for a proper shower. We should get going.’
He swallowed thickly. ‘You could stay at mine again if you wanted.’
‘Honestly, I’m getting a headache. All this heat…’ She rubbed at her temples. ‘I need my pyjamas and my own bed.’
He took her hand. He hated how much he needed her reassurance, but his stomach was turning over itself with a million reasons why she might be pulling away. The first: ‘You don’t regret it, do you?’
She softened, leaning into him to sling her arms around his neck. ‘No, of course not. Not at all.’
He turned to kiss the inside of her forearm, where another map piece inked her skin. He hadn’t had time to explore them all yet, but he wanted to, more than he wanted to explore the countries themselves.
‘I’ll remember this forever,’ she promised him. He felt a flicker of fear. It sounded like she’d already locked this away in the past tense.
She squeezed his hand as though sensing his unease – like she always seemed to.
‘Really, Struan.’ With sincerity shimmering in her voice and his name an oath on her tongue, he began to believe her – even with that shred of doubt niggling just beneath his surface. It was difficult to imagine he’d done anything at all to deserve a woman like Rae.
But he knew life often gave you more than what you deserved. For all the cruel twists of fate, sometimes, luck swung the other way to even itself out.
Now he just had to hope that he was quick enough to catch it.
When they pulled up to the farm, Rae’s grandmother’s hunched figure was on the porch bench outside.
‘Great,’ Rae muttered. ‘Can’t hide anything from that woman.’
Deciding to greet Audrey and perhaps check on Doug’s healing ankle before he went home, Struan got out of the car with Rae, fighting the urge to take her hand.
With his skin still dewy from the falls, and from her, he felt rooted and giddy, transported to a time when his old house had still been a home and long summer nights felt like a living, breathing thing that would catch him with gentle arms at the end of every scorching day.
It even came with that same reprimanding look he used to get when he stayed out too late, though now, it was from Rae’s gran instead of his mother.
Audrey raised her brows, folding her arms over her chest. ‘What time do you call this?’
‘I’m twenty-eight years old, Gran,’ Rae said.
‘And aren’t you just making the most of it?’ Audrey’s lips curled into a smirk. Struan suppressed a laugh. He was glad she wasn’t giving him a hard time.
As Rae reached for the door handle, Audrey said, ‘That delinquent friend of yours has turned up. You’d better find her a B&B room, because I’ll not have her defacing another one of my trees.’
Rae froze. Struan couldn’t work out why, mind too lazy to understand who the friend might be – until he saw the colour drain from Rae’s face.
His sister.
‘Martha’s here?’ Rae asked.
Gran nodded begrudgingly. ‘Made herself right at home she has, too, with her wee lass. Are we a hotel now, are we?’
He met Rae’s worried gaze with his own trepidation.
He thought they had longer. For what he wasn’t quite sure, but this?
This was too sudden. Martha wouldn’t understand.
She was too set in her ways. Even when they were younger, she’d treated his girlfriends badly if she didn’t approve.
She’d argued with Mum many a time about how incompatible she was with her new boyfriend, Michael.
She believed she knew what was best for everyone, liked things her way, and this…
This was not her way at all. This was them detached from Martha, and it felt wrong that he’d enjoyed that freedom so much.
He knew that if she’d been in town when Rae arrived, this wouldn’t have happened.
He and Rae would have spoken only in passing, only when Martha was there to anchor them, and even then she’d have hurried him on so she could enjoy Rae’s company without him cramping their style.
He loved his sister, had longed for her to come home since her last visit over Christmas, but now he felt as though she was snatching something from him.
Rae smoothed the wrinkles in her skirt, shoulders squaring with new – old – tension.
Her hair, loose and damp, was promptly tied into its usual knot before she started rubbing the dirt and grass stains off Struan’s T-shirt and shorts, though they were barely noticeable and not exactly uncommon.
Most of his clothes were spattered in mud, or torn, or faded.
‘Rae.’ His hands curled around her wrist to calm her… and to stop her from going near his crotch. She was getting dangerously close, and the last thing he needed was to get another boner.
She glanced at Audrey, mouth opening and closing as though she wanted to say something but couldn’t in front of their rapt audience.
A peal of laughter bellowed from inside – Doug’s, it sounded like, followed by Martha’s and Vik’s. They couldn’t spend all night out here, avoiding this, as much as Struan wanted to.
‘I don’t want this to go away,’ he whispered, knowing full well Audrey and her hawk ears could hear him just fine.
He found himself aching for some sort of confirmation that she felt the same, but Rae’s face shuttered all at once as she took a step back. Away.
‘This was wrong.’ Her monotone voice shattered something inside him, and only then did he realise just how quickly he’d fallen for her.
How much he’d believed that they were right for each other, and would figure the rest out.
‘We can’t do this to her. She shouldn’t know, ever. We fizzle, like we agreed.’
Audrey clucked her tongue. They both ignored her.
He considered fighting for her, considered telling her it didn’t matter what anybody else thought, but it wouldn’t be true.
Martha might be a difficult person to please and an easy person to piss off, but she was still his sister, and he loved her enough that the thought of angering her left him nauseous.
Worse was the thought of tearing apart Rae’s friendship with her.
They’d grown up attached at the hip. Rae had drawn the first smile and laugh out of Martha after Dad died.
She’d been there after the break-up with Cam, and was the first person Martha had called when she’d gotten upset about Mum and Michael, claiming Struan was ridiculous for even entertaining the two of them.
He couldn’t imagine Martha without Rae, even if they’d grown apart recently. And he certainly couldn’t imagine what it would do to their already shrunken family if he was the reason something snapped between them.
‘Okay. Consider me fizzling.’ The lie tasted bitter as limes. This adoration, swelling inside him like a hot air balloon, wouldn’t fade quickly. She’d felt too much like the sanctuary he’d been yearning for without realising.
Rae’s chin wobbled, but her glare turned steely as she whirled on Audrey. ‘You can’t say anything, either.’
The older woman scoffed. ‘I’ve got far more interesting things to talk about, thank you very much. Mind you, I’ll not have you tell an old woman what she can and can’t mention in idle conversation.’
Rae rolled her eyes and said, ‘We’re going inside now.’ To Struan: ‘If Martha asks, you were just helping me in the fields.’
That was it then. No lingering, no final moment where it could be just the two of them. She didn’t even pose it as a question, rather an instruction she didn’t deign to wait for the response to.
Struan caught the front door before it slammed in his face, breathing in the waft of sweat and perfume that Rae left in her wake. At the sound of Martha’s bubbly chatter, he took a deep breath.
Everything was fine, he convinced himself. He just had to pretend he wasn’t devastatingly infatuated with his sister’s best friend, who had just rejected him in front of her grandmother.
How hard could it be?