Page 16 of Falling for Her Highland Steward
“I am a newly widowed woman, Michael,” she replied. “I do not care about myself, but for Stephen’s sake, I have to behave with the utmost propriety. I cannot afford to notice if he is attractive or not. He is just a man—an employee at that. It helps that he is a pleasant person, but that is all he will ever be to me.”
“Now you owe me another favor,” Michael reminded Erin. “And you have not yet repaid the first one.” He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
She shot him a sharp glance of annoyance. Caillen and Stephen were too far away to have heard Michael’s words, but servants and guards were walking past constantly. “Keep your voice down!” she hissed. “You will be repaid in time.”
“I hope so,” he replied, then looked at her with concern. “I am sorry, Erin. I did not mean to sound so harsh.” He looked contrite, but Erin wondered if he was sincere.
“Of course.” Erin smiled. “It’s merely that I am sometimes embarrassed by how much I owe you.”
“Let’s not mention it again.” His voice was firm, but he smiled as he saw Stephen running toward them, followed more slowly by Caillen, who was still carrying his long stick and pretending to be injured.
Stephen threw himself at Erin and hugged her around her waist since she was considerably shorter than Caillen. “I won!” he exclaimed excitedly. “Did you see me, Mama? I beat Uncle Cal. I knocked him down!” He was smiling from ear to ear.
“Well done, Son!” Erin laughed and ruffled his hair. “You will be a great swordsman one day.”
“Look—I hurt him!” Stephen pointed to Caillen, who proceeded to grimace and rub his knee as if in pain.
“You did indeed!” Caillen complained. “But I will win the next one. Wait and see!” He growled. “Nobody beats me twice—not even you!” He glowered and pointed his “sword” at Stephen, who giggled.
“Then I challenge you again!” Stephen held up his sword, but Caillen shook his head, then narrowed his eyes and thought for a moment as if trying to remember something. Suddenly it came to him.
“I think I remember someone saying something about an orange!” he exclaimed.
“But only if he behaved himself,” Michael agreed, raising his eyebrows. “Has he?”
Caillen looked down at Stephen for a moment, deliberately drawing out the suspense while the little boy looked up at him pleadingly. “Yes, he has,” he said at last. “Come down to the kitchen.”
“I want you to be my horse again!” Stephen demanded.
Caillen shook his head. “My shoulders are sore,” he complained. He bent down and lifted Stephen into his arms, and the little boy wrapped his legs around Caillen’s waist, smiling.
“I like you, Uncle Cal,” he said as he rubbed the big man’s scratchy cheeks with the palms of his hands.
“I like you too,” Caillen answered, grinning.
Just as they began to walk away, Erin and Michael heard Stephen ask: “When will I get a hairy face, Uncle Cal?”
“Oh, dear.” Michael shook his head. “That poor man’s head will be rattling with questions before the day is over!”
Erin hardly heard him, distracted as she was by the thought of how close Caillen’s stubbly cheek had been to her face when they had almost kissed. She knew that somehow she had to resist him, but she had no idea how.
“Erin?” Michael was waving a hand in front of her face. “Are you there?”
Erin shook herself back to reality. “Sorry, Michael. I was daydreaming.”
“About what?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.
“About nothing in particular,” she replied airily, even as her heart began to race. “Did you want to talk to me about something?”
“I did indeed,” Michael answered. “I think Stephen should get away from here for a while. I could take him to visit the rest of his aunts, uncles, and cousins in Edinburgh. He could see the castle, and it is a wonderful spectacle.”
Erin considered this for a moment. “But Michael, it is a three-day journey by carriage. How will you keep him amused? And there is always the danger of bandits to consider.”
“We will have six guards and four carriage dogs,” Michael replied, “and we can take every toy Stephen wants. My sister has three sons, as you know, and one of them, David, is his own age. As well as that, she has written to tell me that her Dalmatian bitch has just had a litter of puppies, and perhaps he could have one. I know what you said about waiting for him to be seven, but...” He shrugged. “We can change that, surely? It will do him good to be away from this place. He has not taken the laird’s death too hard, thankfully, but seeing a new place and new people will be good for him.”
While they had been talking, they had climbed up to the first tier of the battlements, and Erin leaned over the lip of one of the crenellations on the turret as she thought about Michael’s proposal. He was sure that Stephen would love to go; he adored Michael, but she would miss her son terribly, and she was terrified of her attraction to Caillen, which, no matter how much she fought it, seemed to be growing every day. If neither Michael nor Stephen was there, who would be there to distract her?
“I am not sure,” she said at last. “Do you not think he will miss me too much?”
