Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Iona
Pressing his fingers to the base of my spine, Cargill leads me to the bar.
At his nod, the bartender makes a vamoose gesture to two of the men crowding around, and they throw looks behind them at Cargill, immediately scrambling off their stools.
Either he comes here often or his reputation precedes him.
Or his magnetic personality commands respect wherever he goes.
Cargill pulls out one of the stools and waits till I’ve settled on it to perch on the adjacent seat.
“Mr. Cargill, howzigaun?” The bartender slaps two beer mats in front of us. “What can I get you fine people?”
Pleasant flutterings stir in my stomach as Cargill turns, training his powerful gaze on me. “Iona?”
I squint at the board, picking the first thing I see. “Ehm, an Over the Rainbow pale ale.”
“A Kilchoman Loch Gorm,” Cargill says without shifting his gaze away from me. “Double.”
As the barman messes about with glasses and bottles, Cargill tilts his head, considering me. “Who was he?”
“One of Horizons’ publicists. Stennis.”
“What does he want?” Cargill clips.
My secrets. Me under his thumb. Me.
Instead, I name the putative reason we meet up so often. “To strategize about how to sell more books.”
The barman sets our drinks down, but Cargill’s penetrating gaze doesn’t waver from mine. After a long, intense silence he asks, “What do you want?”
“Well, the better books do, the more I?—”
“I mean in general. What are your aspirations?” He takes a sip of his whisky, leveling me with a look that strips me bare.
To be a highly sought-after bookstagrammer and booktoker.
To get over my trauma.
To stop being anxious, indecisive, and procrastinatory.
To find my assailant and bring him to justice.
Which one of these, if any, is fit for his ears?
Here I am, sitting across from the Syndicate’s main legal advisor, who’s probably heard any number of sordid tales in his time, and I’m afraid to come clean about what makes me tick.
Not because it’ll shock him but because he’ll think I’m a pampered, sheltered princess.
He’ll think I’m blowing my past experience out of proportion, letting it have too much power over me, and asking too much of the justice system.
I select the most socially acceptable aim. “In five years’ time, by age thirty, I’d love to be a major name among book reviewers. I’d like to have my own review column in The Times.”
He takes another calm swallow of his drink. Is he inwardly laughing at my bold ambitions? Why do I care so much about what he thinks?
“What will it take to get there, Iona?” Curiosity and a hint of challenge color his tone.
I consider this. “Luck, talent, determination, and connections, I think.”
“Connections.” The word is a soft reflection. He turns his glass around, looking down at my hand around the beer glass. “Do you think the public will look into your past?”
I startle, realizing he’s probably right. “My past?” I echo to buy time.
Cargill’s eyes skip between mine. “In my experience, if you have any skeletons in your closet, it’s best to air them before the prying media can.”
Swallowing, I think of Aaron Frye. Surely reporters wouldn’t dig that deep into my past?
Will the great unsolved mystery of my life surface at the least convenient time and come back to bite me?
“Since you shone the spotlight on me earlier, why don’t we shine it on you a little?” Propping one elbow on the bar counter, Cargill laces his long, elegant fingers.
I smile weakly, a sinking feeling weighing down my stomach. “Okay.”
“Which parent do you favor?”
I gape, incapable of answering. As a matter of fact, I’m quite sure I look more like my father, but since he left us when I was one year old, I try not to think of him. “Why do you ask?”
Cargill’s lips twitch. “It’s a simple question, Iona. You did agree we’d focus on you now.”
“Ehm, my father,” I acknowledge in a small voice.
To my relief, he doesn’t follow that thread further, though the damage has been done. Now I’m thinking of the man whose photograph I briefly saw at age seventeen and whose name I only just learned last week.
The man who, I believe, was inexplicably there That Night.
“Boyfriend?”
“None,” I find myself admitting frankly enough.
He cocks his head. “To quote you earlier, why is that?”
A blush suffuses my face. He has an uncanny ability to peel me open at my most vulnerable points.
“I’m too busy,” I lie.
He tips his head back, observing me through lowered eyelids. Assessing, calculating. “What do you do when you’re not working?”
“Read, ride my bike, and conduct research.” Even to my ears I don’t sound very booked up.
I realize my mistake when he seizes on the last. “Research on?”
Other men who could’ve been at the party that night. Men with dark goatees, one stud, and a tattoo on his neck that I’ve been trying to remember for four years.
Did I ever know what that tattoo was of?
I think quickly. “A bit of everything. Glasgow’s history”—not such a stretch, since I did look into that the other day—“the etymologies of words”—also true—“and dogs. I’d like to get a dog.”
Draining his drink, he lifts a finger for another. I’m still halfway through my beer.
“Like yourself, I conduct a lot of research.” He raises a thoughtful brow. “It’s requisite in my field.”
“You must love your work.” I’m grateful to turn the conversation back to him. “I imagine you don’t have to work at all anymore.”
“I could, but then what? Follow the long, easy path to a slow, early death?” He smiles to himself. “I prefer to generate material for my next memoir.”
Questioning him further about his recent memoir, I bring us back to talking of him. He tells of exploits he omitted from the book that leave me riveted. Some time later, we stand, and he once more splays a hand on my lower back, urging me toward the door.
He’s the first man since That Night whom I haven’t recoiled from being close to. It’s unfathomable that I’m not shrinking from his touch, shaking at being in such close proximity, or having my usual horrific visions.
“I’ll give you a ride home.” He calmly steers me to the right when we emerge from the pub.
I’m so fascinated by my ability to tolerate him that I accept his offer. “Thank you.”
He smells of the Highlands near Achnasheen, where Maw used to take Skye and me for summers—the coconut aroma of gorse, the floral scent of fresh heather, the mentholated odor of bog myrtle, and the underlying smell of wet peat and earth.
I breathe him in deeply as I used to gulp in air clambering from the car on our arrival at the cottage we rented.
Will I start having my usual anxiety attack in his car?
But on our silent ride back to my apartment overlooking Govanhill Park, where I moved three days ago, I feel oddly safe.
Stealing keeks?3 at Cargill’s gorgeous profile, I wonder if I’m simply starstruck.
He is the handsomest man I’ve laid eyes on in recent memory.
Despite his forbidding aura, there’s something deeply familiar about him, almost as if I’ve come home.
* * *
Lying on her belly on the bed, Skye watches as I set out my jewelry atop my dresser. “I can’t believe we fit all your books in the crate bookshelves you made. You have a lot of books.”
Sorting the books took two full days of us both unpacking and ordering them nonstop. It’s a week after my interview with Leith Cargill, and I’ve spent most of it settling in to my new bit.?4
“If I had my druthers, I’d have double this amount.” I squint at my arrangement. “All I need is a vase of flowers to liven up the living room.”
“You’ve got enough room in this apartment to fit plenty more books.” Skye climbs off the bed and draws aside the curtain at one of my windows. Her dark-blonde hair gleams golden in the rare sun. “Have you thought any more about when you might meet Phyfe MacGilson?”
MacGilson is our biological father, whom Skye and her boyfriend Lachlan recently unearthed in Brazil.
“If I decide to meet him, it’ll be well after I’ve fully settled in here.”
Once Skye found MacGilson, we were finally able to claim our trust money, in the amount of twenty-four million pounds each, paid out annually at two percent.
According to Great-Uncle Andrew’s will, we needed a signed statement of paternity from MacGilson.
And thanks to our newfound wealth I can finally afford an apartment on my own in the city.
Skye turns to me, her soft brown eyes full of empathy. “Lowden and Maw are a five-minute walk away.” My stepfather and my mother live in Strathbungo. “And Lach and I are a twenty-minute drive away.” She and her fiancé live in Renfrew.
“Och, ah ken,” I concede. “But I haven’t lived alone . . .” I trail off, leaving the rest unspoken.
Since That Night.
“D’ye want to move back in with us?” Skye blinks at me. “We’d love to have you again.”
“Nah.” I roll my shoulders back. “I need to get used to living on my own.”
Even if I didn’t want to be the third wheel, interfering in Skye and Lachlan’s relationship, I’d consider it beyond time to get used to looking after myself.
Having finished in the bedroom, we file out toward the kitchen, where I still have to unpack my utensils and dishware. I’ve been living out of boxes all week.
I fill up the kettle and set it on the hob. “I have a controversial idea to run by you.”
She takes a seat at the breakfast bar, lifting her brows. “Shoot.”
“I want to find my assailant and bring him to justice.” I place tea bags in a couple of mugs.
“But I lack knowhow, experience, and underworld connections.” I lean against the bunker,?5 meeting her eye.
“As the main Syndicate lawyer, Leith has all those. What if I hired him? Thanks to the trust, I now have enough funds to afford him, whatever he charges.”
“Why don’t you have Lachlan do it?” She cocks her head like a curious bird.
A flush jets across my cheeks. “I don’t want him looking at me differently when we all get together. I know it sounds glaikit.”?6