Chapter Twenty-Seven
Angus
I strip off my clothes and step into the hot shower, letting the water scald me, letting it wash everything away.
I don’t want to think about what is happening in the Den.
What I’m allowing to happen. Rowan doesn’t belong to me.
She isn’t mine. What do I care if she takes her cheating slimebag of a boyfriend back?
We’ve only known each other for five days.
No feelings, I remind myself. No commitment.
Last night was a mistake. One that I won’t repeat.
So why do I want to tear this shower apart with my bare hands?
No. I lather shampoo into my hair and force myself to stop thinking about it. I’m home now. There’s work to do. Prep to be getting on with. Starting with myself. The first of the wedding guests will arrive from three, and I need to be ready well before.
Come on, brain. Engage. Hair washed, I flick the switch off and grab a towel. Start making a mental list of everything I need to do. Dry off. Get dressed. Find Stuart. Check on the catering. Check the wine cellar. Make sure everything we’ve ordered has been delivered. Look at the barn.
Who am I kidding? Stuart has probably done it all already. He’s the most organised man I’ve ever met. There is likely nothing left for me to do.
Still, the list helps. I need to feel useful. Productive. Not think too deeply about anything – or anyone.
What are they doing down there? Are they still talking? Or something more?
My fist curls around the towel. Get a grip, Angus.
“Knock, knock,” Stuart says, slipping inside the room, two beers in his hand. “Thought you might need this.”
I check my watch. “It’s barely midday.”
“And yet, so much has happened.”
I take one of the beers. Stuart settles himself primly on the corner of my bed.
His grey eyes are stormy and serious behind his achingly cool metal-framed glasses.
A few strands of his chestnut hair curl over his forehead, and he’s wearing neatly pressed grey slacks and a tight dark-green polo-neck that shows off his toned frame.
“How are Lila, Priya and Ewan settling in?” I ask. Anything to keep the conversation – and my mind – off Rowan.
“Your waifs and strays? Ross has adopted them, and roped Mason in, too. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“Last I heard, he was giving them a tour of the farm on the tractor.”
I groan. “Last time he tried to drive that tractor, he crashed it into the barn.”
“Well, there had better not be a repeat if he values his life. Final touches are going in now. She’s perfect.”
“Flowers arrived?”
“Yep.”
“Caterers here?”
“On-site as of this morning.”
“I didn’t see any signs to direct guests when I was driving in.”
“Going up now. What do you think I am? An amateur?”
“The cake?”
“Jonathan is putting the finish touches to it.”
“It’s like you don’t need me.”
Stuart laughs and sips his beer. “To plan a wedding? No. If it makes you feel better, you did provide the location. And what a stunner she is.”
“You helped with that too.” Without Stuart, neither of us would be sitting here. And no matter how many times he says he’s happy to do it, that he needed a new project, that the money was sitting there, my gratitude knows no end.
“Then let’s say it’s lucky you’re pretty.” Stuart laughs. “Now. Angus. My favourite crabby, emotionally stunted friend. I’ve known you for how many years? So please take this the way it’s intended, and with all the love in my heart, but seriously. What the fuck?”
I sit down beside him, finally swigging my own beer.
“Nothing? You’re giving me nothing?”
“I figured you’d have more to say. You usually do.”
“Touche. And you’re right. I do have more to say.
But fucking hell, Angus. First you disappear the week before the wedding – which, yes, I did basically force you into, you miserable sod.
But then you go MIA for three days. You stop answering your phone.
Which was really stressful by the way. And then I get a call from Ross telling me that he’s found you in bed with the bride’s sister.
” Stuart shakes his head. “Is this a joke to you?”
“It’s not a joke.” I want to be angry. That he can think that, knowing everything he does. But I can’t let myself feel that. I can’t let myself feel anything. “Of course not. It’s… Rowan. She’s—”
Stuart watches me, eyes wide. “Oh, man.”
“What?”
“You’ve got it bad. You’ve got it real bad.”
A restless itching has begun beneath my skin.
They’re kissing. I’m sure of it. He’s pushing her hair back from her face, and she’s biting her lower lip, and— I get back off the bed and rummage on the clothes rail for my formal clothes.
I pull out my kilt: dark green and blue tartan, with faint yellow lines across the weave.
Short single-breasted black jacket, worn over a waistcoat.
White shirt, bow tie, low-hanging sporran.
Silver cufflinks in the shape of holly leaves, in honour of the farm, given to me by my grandad on my eighteenth birthday.
In it, I know I look good. Sharp. In control.
I need that right now.
Stuart sighs. “Oh, good. Emotionally unavailable Angus is back. Hello? Knucklehead? Still there?”
I don’t know what to say. I think of Rowan: Rowan muddy; Rowan wet, hair plastered over her face; Rowan’s freckles lit by the sun; Rowan after sex, half-asleep and sated; Rowan’s eyes, blue as summer sky; Rowan in the bar, eyes lidded as she bobs to the music; Rowan’s slow, sly smile as she considers her next joke.
Rowan sitting next to her ex later. Rowan laughing at his jokes. Rowan half-closing her eyes as he hand-feeds her a piece of cake.
Fuck. Stuart is right. I do have it bad.
“What do you want me to say?” I exchange my towel for the kilt, wrapping it around my waist. “Yeah, I’m an arsehole.
I should have called. I don’t know why I didn’t.
I guess it felt good not to think about anything – the farm, this bloody event, any of it.
I’m sorry. I really am.” I tug on the kilt’s buckles, securing it in place.
“And Rowan… Fuck. Aye, I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t have done it.
I’m not going to pretend I don’t know that. She’s just— I just—”
Want to. Like I haven’t wanted anything in a long time. Like we are two magnets being pulled together by an irresistible force.
Stuart blinks. “Are you alright? Did you hit your head on the hike?”
“No. Why?”
“That’s the most words you’ve ever said to me about your feelings. Jesus, Angus. Get a grip.”
I turn on him, exasperated. The fucking nerve. Always harping on at me to open up, and when I bloody do he—
Stuart’s eyes are sparkling with laughter.
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little bit funny.” Then he sobers.
“Okay. I see that you’re really into this woman.
For reasons you don’t seem able to explain, which is neither here nor there.
But, Angus, please could you keep it in your pants for the rest of this weekend?
We are so close. Everything needs to go perfectly and then we’re set: rave reviews; referrals from the guests; a whole new lease of life for the farm.
What we don’t need is the bride telling her friends that you ruined her wedding getting balls deep in her sister.
Stand down, at least for a couple of days.
Get through this weekend, and then you pick things back up, hey? ”
I pull on my shirt. “Alright, dad.”
Stuart raises an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t go there if I were you. Only Jonathan gets to call me daddy.”
“That’s not what I—” I grab a cushion from the chair and hurl it at him. “I do not want to know that much about your sex life, Stuart.”
“Why? Ross told me all about yours.”
“And I wish the fucker hadn’t.”
Stuart leans back on the bed. “I’m still shocked. Angus. A bastion of restraint. A fortress of solitude. Wedded to the land. Taken in by some city girl. Again.”
“You’re a city boy.”
“Damn straight I am. And so is Jonathan. It works for us. Real talk, can you seriously tell me Rowan would be happy here? Because we both know you aren’t cut out for London.”
Shirt buttoned, I hang the bow tie around my neck and begin forming it into a knot. “It doesn’t matter anyway. She and her ex. They’re getting back together right now. I’m sure of it.”
“Him?” Stuart swigs his beer. “I don’t see it.”
“Regardless. You’re getting ahead of yourself. You don’t know Rowan. I barely know her. There’s nothing between us.”
Even as I say the words, I know I’m lying.
“I know, I know. I’m being over-protective. But watching Violet rip out your heart and stomp all over it in her shiny Malono Blahnik’s was excruciating. I don’t want to see you hurt again.”
My hands still. “Rowan isn’t Violet.”
“English? High maintenance? Prone to drama?” Stuart ticks them off one by one.
“Let’s see. So far, she’s pissed off her sister by failing to show up for any of her maid of honour duties, slept with the owner of the venue, and had her ex turn up to – what?
– win her back the day before the wedding. Seems dramatic to me.”
He gets off the bed and hands me my jacket as I finish buttoning my waistcoat.
“Look, Angus. You’re a grown man. I’m not going to tell you what to do.” He catches my eyes in the mirror, and I can see the sincerity radiating there. “All I’m saying is, be careful, okay?”
I nod. “Okay.”
Stuart claps me on the shoulder. “Good talk. Now, I need about half an hour to make myself fabulous. Think you can hold the fort in my stead?”
“I reckon I can manage.”
“Try not to ruin all my good work.”
* * *