Chapter 8 #3
I laugh, even though I’m trying to hide that my eyes have welled up too. ‘That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.’
‘He fixed everything by hand. If he didn’t know how to do something, he learnt.
My grandmother died young, he raised my father here and worked as a labourer, a farm hand, an odd-job man all his life.
He was never still, always doing something, fixing something.
He showed me how to do all of it even when I was far too young to learn.
He was an old romantic, he believed in whimsy and magic, and tried to instil that in me too. ’
‘I don’t think you can live in a place like this and not believe in whimsy and magic and something enchanted hiding just beyond where we can see.’
He looks at me and then turns back to the window with a wistful look, like he’s trying to remember the times when he thought that too.
‘Your father was more sensible?’ I ask because I’m not ready for this conversation to end yet.
‘Aye, he had his job at Galligan & Brenton and he liked the security of that, even though my grandad thought he’d sold his soul.
He loved the castle, he loved living here, but he didn’t have my grandad’s drive for fixing things.
He wanted the safe, steady job so he could afford to hire experts to fix Hollybrae’s problems, but the job took over.
His dreams for the castle were put on hold until the retirement he never got to have. ’
‘You’re so lucky to have such special memories here,’ I say because this has made me unexpectedly emotional. ‘Knowing those stories makes Hollybrae Castle even more magical.’
‘You’re a ray of sunshine. I’m so glad you’re here.’ He looks over at me again and the warmth in his eyes makes my breath catch.
That’s the third time he’s said that and every time, it makes me go so warm all over that I don’t even need the borrowed jumper I’m wearing, and it truly is freezing up here.
‘That’s not what most people call me. Most people think I’m a nuisance.
Annoying, slightly batty, should have my life together at thirty-nine. ’
‘I’ll let you in on a secret…’ He motions for me to lean closer, and his voice is a whisper when he speaks. ‘I turned forty this year and didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want anyone to know that I’m forty and still this much of a mess.’
His gorgeous voice is low and close enough to my ear to make me melt in all the right ways, and I pull back so I can look at him. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’
‘All my secrets are safe with you! In the past forty-eight hours, I’ve been more honest with you than I’ve been with anyone else for years.’
It’s the same for me. He’s easy to talk to and non-judgemental. From the very first chat on the video call, I’ve felt safe to be completely honest with him.
His hand reaches towards me and one finger traces an invisible pattern on my knee, through my trousers, and as I’m trying to persuade myself not to take that hand, hold it, draw some mindless patterns of my own somewhere on his body, his stomach lets out the loudest rumble that any stomach has ever made, and he yanks his hand away as we both dissolve into laughter.
‘As you can tell, I came up to ask if you wanted to join me for dinner and we got distracted.’
‘Sor—’
‘No, it’s a good thing.’ He doesn’t let me apologise. ‘It’s nice to see this place through someone else’s eyes. I live here, but it’s been a long time since I’ve really seen it, do you know what I mean?’
‘You work so hard to pay the bills that you forget what you’re paying them for?’
His face breaks into the most open, unguarded beam.
It’s the kind of smile that, if he was really my husband, would’ve made me take his face in my hands and press my lips to his.
I quickly push the thought away. Apart from the fact he’s my employer and I barely know him, he’s obviously got a lot of emotional baggage connected to this place, and I need to remember that I’m here to decorate and that’s where it ends.
To remind myself of how inappropriate it would be, I imagine the reaction I’d get if I was to kiss Patricia Calloway instead, and the thought of a stiletto embedded in my neck is a swift reminder of how even entertaining the notion of kissing bosses is likely to end.
Ollie nods emphatically, like I’ve hit the nail on the head with that sentence, and our eyes meet. In my peripheral vision I see his hand move towards to my knee again, and it would be so easy to shift closer…
‘Dinner is a good idea.’ I get to my feet and tidy the photos on the desk because these are not thoughts a pretend wife should be thinking, and he shakes himself and gets up too.
On the stairs, he holds his hand out to help me down.
There are no handrails in the tower, and even though I’ve been up and down these stairs many times today without the need for assistance, I can’t resist slipping my hand into his.
It’s not every day you get to be the wife of a gorgeous, castle-owning Scot…
It’s not entirely wrong to make the most of it while I’m here, is it?