Page 5 of Christmas at the Scottish Lodge
Jed nodded and forced his legs to move. He needed to head back to Holly Berry Lodge before he turned into a yeti. The wind was picking up and it felt like the temperature had plummeted at least ten degrees since they’d been talking. Or maybe that was just his cold dead heart.
‘I’m sure he’s not.’ Jed swallowed. ‘And I know Mike was a total bampot.’ He cleared his throat. ‘But you never did think anyone was good enough for her.’ He felt a familiar ache of hurt in his chest.
Quinn sighed. ‘Probably because no one ever has been. But you’ve known her for years too, Jed. She’s a romance writer. She lives in her head and thinks the best of everyone.’
‘Aye.’Everyone but him, he frowned. Although, whose fault was that? ‘Who would be good enough?’ Jed asked because – hell – why not torture himself some more.
‘No idea. But I’ll know when she meets him,’ his friend said. ‘This one’s definitely not.’
‘Why?’ Jed asked, curious.
‘He’s…’ Quinn paused. ‘I’m just concerned she’s romanticised him. I looked him up online and he’s always in the company of a different woman. He’s been engaged to five of them. After a few months he moves on to someone else. I don’t want her getting hurt and I definitely don’t want her getting involved with someone so shallow.’
Jed bit his lip. ‘So you think she might like him?’ he asked, feeling a little sick.
Quinn huffed. ‘Aye. But I think she’s been drawn into a charmer’s web.’
Jed forced himself to move. He had to bunch both of his ski poles in one hand so he could still hold the mobile, which meant he could only edge along the pathway slowly. He was almost at a familiar clump of dense fir trees and knew it was about a twenty-minute ski from here. ‘What are you going to do?’
Quinn was silent for a beat. ‘I’ve got no idea. Talk to her I suppose,’ he muttered. ‘Which is going to be impossible if she keeps ignoring my messages. I’m on call with mountain rescue for the next week, so I can’t go looking – there are a lot of rescues in the lead up to Christmas. Who knows why. Surely everyone should be shopping?’ He sounded frustrated.
‘What can I do?’ Jed asked.
‘Just tell me if you or your aunt Effie hears from her. I’ve been calling her friends, but either they don’t know where she is or they don’t want to tell me. Her bloody agent is the worst.’
Jed grinned. Quinn’s ongoing battle with his sister’s literary agent was amusing. They both loved Mairi and had her best interests at heart, but neither of them agreed on what those were.
‘I’ll let you know if Mairi gets in touch,’ he promised. Even though that was about as likely as him skiing down Devil’s Run stark naked with his eyes shut. ‘In the meantime, try not to worry.’ Jed grimaced as he hung up feeling a sour mix of dread and unease.
But this is what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? For Mairi to move on and be happy. Why then, did the idea of her dating someone else make him feel like someone had just reached into his chest and torn out his still beating heart?
He shook his head. He needed to stay busy, perhaps he’d head into the village later, drown his sorrows in one of the hotel bars.
He had to stay focused on his goal. Had to make himself ski down Devil’s Run so he could win the Aberlinnie Winter Wonder Ski Championships and put things right for his dad. Then he could get back to his real life. Whatever that was.
Obsessing over Mairi and who she may or may not be dating was the last thing he should be thinking about.
3
MAIRI
17 December
Mairi yawned and pushed her long auburn hair out of her face as she put the kettle on in the Holly Berry Lodge kitchen the following morning. She glanced up when she heard the pad of heavy footsteps in the hallway, and felt her pulse notch up.
She hadn’t seen her husband last night and had barely slept a wink anticipating their first encounter. She swallowed a wave of yearning when Jed suddenly strode through the door and all the careful words she’d planned to say evaporated from her mind.
‘Jed,’ Mairi croaked instead. She hadn’t seen him for eleven long months, and she drank in every perfect inch of him. Everything inside her wanted to sprint across the room and leap into his arms, but his face paled and his body looked rigid, telling her everything she needed to know.
‘Mairi,’ Jed choked and he immediately tugged off his black beanie hat, releasing a tangle of sandy brown hair that she’d run her hands through more than once. Then he folded his arms over his large body in a gesture that told her nothing had changed. There was no fairy tale ending here.
‘Jed,’ she repeated. The name felt wrong in her mouth now, it had been so long since she’d last used it. Today it was as if she’d swallowed a bunch of wire wool and Mairi lost her ability to speak for a moment. She was going to have to force herself to go through with talking to him, though. If she could just make herself form a coherent sentence.
Jed continued to gaze at her, his expression brooding – his eyes, that face, so gorgeously familiar and yet so distant. He cleared his throat and his eyes glittered with emotion. ‘What are you doing here?’ he ground out, his voice rough like he’d just been out on the slopes – as if the cold had stripped his vocal chords bare and they were trying to renew themselves.
Mairi reached out and leaned on the stainless-steel kitchen top as her legs liquified. She’d always found the sound of his voice sexy.
‘I came to talk to you.’ She forced herself to speak naturally, forced herself to hide how thoroughly he affected her. Time hadn’t dulled the visceral pull, the powerful urge to jump into his arms.
