Page 21 of Kiss of Smoke

I wiped my mouth as I laughed. “I do feel better so, yes, I admit it.”

“Think you’re up for a tour of the castle?”

The word “castle” was all it took to banish the last of my nausea. “I know how crazy you are about castles,” Josh had said. “Go stay in one and enjoy yourself.”

He could fuck right off, but his advice in that regard was solid. I was sitting inside a real castle in the Scottish Highlands, and an honest-to-goodness Highlander was offering to act as my tour guide. I probably wouldn’t get this kind of opportunity again.

I smiled at Alec. “Honestly, I would love it.”

* * *

Halfway through the tour, I had to clutch my sides because they hurt so much from laughing. Alec should have worked in a museum, because he had a story for every painting, piece of art, and stick of furniture. And his stories were more often than not raunchy or downright outrageous.

In the long gallery, which was literally a long room built for indoor strolling during Elizabethan times, I blushed at a painting of a man in a fur-lined doublet and an enormous codpiece.

“Och, that’s a bad look, isn’t it?” Alec said beside me. Big shafts of late morning sunlight slanted through the windows and turned his hair to a rich garnet.

“Why would men wear those?”

“There were no trousers yet. Just hose, like a pair of stockings a woman might wear today. When fashion changed and men started favoring shorter doublets, they found their bits and bobs were exposed, so the codpiece was the solution. They started out as fabric and then evolved into a contest o’ sorts.”

“So, basically, you’re saying nothing’s changed in five hundred years?”

He grinned. “Fair point, lass.”

My heart rate picked up, and my relief at Lachlan’s absence evaporated. Without his gruff snarls and stern looks, there was no buffer between me and Alec’s unrelenting charm. Every time he smiled or winked, scenes from the dream threatened to surface. The easy solution was to make up an excuse and escape to my room. But Alec had been kind enough to show me the castle. I’d already caused enough disruption with my wedding nightmare and nausea at breakfast. I wasn’t about to add unnecessary drama to the mix.

We moved to another painting, and I gasped. “He looks so much like Lachlan!” A forbidding-looking figure stood on a green hillside with a horse at his side. Except for the knee breeches and curly wig, the man was the spitting image of my taciturn boss.

Alec stared at the painting. Then, almost to himself, he murmured, “He loved that horse.”

“How do you know? Did he leave documents behind?”

Before he could answer, my phone buzzed. Right away, my blood turned to ice in my veins. What if it was Josh? What would I say to him?

But when I dug in my pocket, it was my mother’s name on the screen.

Oh no.

I looked at Alec. “It’s my mom. I’m not sure I want to answer it.” I kept my voice low, as if speaking too loudly might summon her through the phone.

“It’s your choice, honey. If you let it go to voice mail, I won’t tell anyone.”

His steady, quiet support was exactly what I needed. My mother couldn’t hurt me. Not with six-and-a-half feet of Scot at my side.

Besides, if I ignored her for too long, there was the possibility she would get on a plane and come find me. “Stubborn” was too weak of a word to describe my mother.

Taking a deep breath, I swiped the screen and put the phone to my ear. “Hey, Mom.”

My mother’s voice was sharp as a rapier and so loud it frazzled the ear piece. “Chloe, you have outdone yourself this time!”

I winced and pulled the phone away. “What are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about? I’m talking about your wedding! I’m talking about you abandoning Joshua so you can spend two weeks with those men.”

I swung away from Alec and hunched my shoulders. “Mother—”

“I’ve held my peace all this time because you’re a grown woman and you make your own decisions, but do you realize how unsavory this looks? A woman vacationing alone with two gay men? No wonder Josh got cold feet.”

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