Page 36 of Christmas at the Scottish Lodge
She didn’t laugh at the joke and Jed scratched the light dusting of hair on his chin looking embarrassed. He’d always had to shave twice a day, and she’d loved the way he’d looked in the morning, had gloried in the soft scrape of his beard against her skin when they’d kissed.
‘You really care what all those people think?’ Mairi asked quietly. She knew the answer. Jed cared deeply about everything. He just didn’t like showing it, especially not to her.
He shrugged, his expression blank. ‘Some things are difficult to ignore,’ he said roughly.
She scoured his expression, trying to see beyond his words, trying to look between the cracks to where his real feelings lay. It was frustrating that the months apart hadn’t changed anything. He was still just as stubborn – just as determined to shut her out. Only this time she wasn’t going to let him. The stubborn oyster was about to meet his match.
‘Do you really want everything to go back to the way it was?’ she asked, watching his face, trying to excavate something from under his shell. ‘Your career I mean?’ She wasn’t going tomention the two of them – this wasn’t the right moment. Even if they were more closely linked than she’d ever imagined.
Jed’s forehead crushed. ‘I’m not sure it can.’ He looked disconcerted. ‘I’ve told you, I’ve tried to ski down one of the runs I used to do but…’ He swallowed and glanced out of the window – this time to where a fresh storm was raging.
She moved another step closer. She could smell him now, that familiar scent of fresh snow and pine and every cell in her body tingled and stretched like a cat begging to be stroked.
She had a sudden urge to make Jed feel better. To find a way to show him that she understood. Perhaps in the process, she might even be able to help him get past whatever was standing in his way. If he did, there might a chance to fix things between them? It was a big dream, maybe an impossible one, but it wouldn’t come true if she didn’t try.
Besides, she wanted more clarity on what he’d said in the bedroom.
She tugged a chair from the opposite side of the sitting room until it was facing Jed. Then sat until their knees were hovering close to each other and both dogs were snoring in between their legs.
‘Do you know the first review I got on my most recent book, the one that came out five months ago, said “I’ve just wasted ninety-nine pence I can never get back.”’ She gave him a half smile. ‘It hurt when I read it.’ She paused because she could still feel disappointment in the pit of her stomach. ‘I couldn’t get past it for weeks. It gave me writer’s block.’ Well, that and what had happened with him. But she clearly remembered staring at the words on her new manuscript, wondering if this book was going to be awful too.
‘I didn’t know that,’ he said, sounding surprised.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘I never told Quinn,’ she muttered, her meaning clear.
‘And you couldn’t tell me because we weren’t talking.’ He sighed, looking pained. Their eyes met. ‘What did you do?’ he asked after a long pause. There was a flicker of something in his expression now. She didn’t know if it was interest or sympathy, but the fact that he was listening was progress.
She screwed up her nose. ‘Kenna sent me an email with fifteen five-star reviews and told me to read them. I loved them, don’t get me wrong, but they didn’t make me forget the other one. Our brains enjoy torturing us with our failures, don’t you think?’
He cleared his throat, but his gaze remained fixed on hers, hot and intense. ‘Is this story supposed to make me feel better about the accident?’ he asked roughly. His expression was grim, but she could see a hint of curiosity – perhaps even humour around the edges of his mouth. And she rejoiced in it, because finally after all these months they were making a connection.
She pursed her lips. ‘You need to wait for the next part of the story,’ she whispered, leaning forward and catching a trace of his sexy scent again. ‘This is all part of my character arc. Things don’t get fixed straight away. It’s a process. Sometimes that process can be painful.’
This time his lips tipped all the way up. ‘Aye. I see what you’re doing now.’ He picked up the bottle of whisky and nodded the spout in her direction. ‘If you’re going to share the rest of this emotional journey, we’re going to need a drink.’
‘Like in the bothy?’ she asked, recalling how he’d touched her leg while they’d been talking, how incredible it had felt.
He shrugged and looked away, perhaps because he remembered too?
‘There’s only one glass,’ she said. She wasn’t inclined to get another and clearly neither was Jed because he poured the liquid into his and offered it to her. The gesture was intimate and made her insides go gooey.
‘We’ll share. Sip and then finish your story. I’m guessing there’s going to be a moral in there for me somewhere.’ His eyes met hers again and she felt a swoop in the pit of her stomach, then the familiar slow roll of attraction.
She drank, shut her eyes when the flaming liquid slid down her throat, and prayed for strength, and the ability to find the right words. Jed was talking to her and that was a lot more than he’d done for the last eleven months. It was progress. Even if she had no idea what it meant.
She handed him the half-full glass as the warmth inside her throat lingered and spread downwards, taking with it a wild lick of lust. ‘I thought about something else. Emptied my mind of what worried me and found something to distract me until I got over it.’
Their eyes held.
‘Distraction can be helpful,’ Jed said, roughly taking a long sip from the glass she’d just given him, holding her gaze. A gust of wind whistled outside and she shivered, realising the cardigan had dropped open. When she looked at Jed again, his eyes had shifted and were now running hungrily over her bare skin. ‘What did you use to distract yourself?’ He frowned suddenly and his eyes flashed. ‘The new boyfriend. Harry. I presume you knew him then?’
‘No, not him.’ She shook her head. ‘Besides I told you our relationship’s not like that.’ She took the glass and sipped before shrugging the cardigan back on her shoulder. ‘Yet,’ she added because it wouldn’t hurt to rile him.
He glared, making the warm glow of emotion in her chest heat.
‘Okay. Not really,’ she murmured. She’d have to go with the truth and lay herself bare. Jed had confided in her in the bedroom; she had to offer him the same raw glimpse of her own feelings.
‘I thought about you,’ she said huskily. If she was looking for something to jolt Jed back into the land of the living, then she’d hit the nail on the head because he jerked back in his chair and his chest rapidly rose and fell.
