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“From the Cairn O’Mohr Winery,” he continued. “In Perthshire, near Errol, which is the center of our best fruit-growing area in the Carse of Gowrie.”
“Okay.” Kris lifted her glass.
He left with their appetizer orders—duck with raspberry sauce for Kris, seafood salad for Dougal.
The wine was fantastic, the food excellent. After the duck, Kris ordered salmon with Cajun spices—who’d have thought?—lime and sun-roasted tomatoes. Dougal had lamb with mint-roasted potatoes, rosemary, and port.
Kris made a face when he ordered it.
“You don’t like port?” he asked.
“I don’t like lamb.”
“But they’re so cute,” he deadpanned.
“Exactly.”
“I’ve worked with sheep,” he said. “I prefer them on my plate. But veal—” Now Dougal made a face. “Baby cows with big brown eyes. How could you?”
“I don’t,” Kris said. “Believe me.”
She ate every last bite of her dinner and drank two glasses of wine. When the waiter suggested dessert, she puffed out her cheeks, but Dougal insisted she try the Pavlova, which was light, or the sorbet and berries, even lighter. With the promise of coffee as an accompaniment, Kris succumbed.
Out on the loch, something moved.
“Did you see that?” Kris stared at what appeared to be three humps bumping along halfway between this shore and the next.
Dougal narrowed his eyes. “It’s a wake.”
“From what?” Kris didn’t see a boat in either direction.
Dougal lifted his chin, indicating the towering mountains. “Those actually continue into the loch and form a basin. When something makes waves, those waves come out.” He spread his hands, then stopped them dead as if they’d struck something solid. “They hit the rock, then come back again.” He brought his palms toward each other in a rippling movement. “Because Loch Ness is so big and deep, sometimes the boat, or whatever, that made the original wave is long gone before the ripple returns. By then the cause of those ripples has left more wakes, and when the reflected ones hit those coming in the other direction, you get humps.” He nodded at the window. “Like that.”
Made sense. And Dougal’s matter-of-fact tone had Kris feeling foolish. Of course she’d seen a wake. What else could it have been?
The waiter arrived with their desserts and coffee. As soon as the man finished, Dougal spoke softly: “Greater skeptics than you have been fooled by the loch.”
“How did you know what I was thinking?”
He shrugged. “Your face doesn’t lie.”
Great. Not only was she unable to lie with her mouth, but her face gave her away, too. She shouldn’t be disappointed—after all, didn’t she loathe liars?—but she was.
“Out there,” Dougal continued, “everything is deceptive. A wake, a tree, the reflection of a black-throated diver at dawn, or a red deer at dusk.”
Kris let her lips curve as he listed some of the things people had seen and thought to be Nessie. How could any intelligent person believe in a fairy tale?
She was nearly done with her sorbet, which she’d preferred to the small taste she’d had of Dougal’s Pavlova, when she again had the bizarre sense of being watched. She was used to the feeling—she was on television—so why did the sensation suddenly bother her?
Dougal stared at the loch, scowling at what appeared to be a heavy log with a thick protruding branch that could easily have been mistaken for the head of a sea serpent, if you were inclined to mistake such things. If you were also inclined to paranoia, the log seemed to stare back.
Kris peered around the room. Several people nursed drinks at the bar, but they all peered at the glittering bottles on the wall, no doubt deciding what they might have next.
The other diners were occupied with their own fine meals. Not that one or two of them couldn’t have been staring at Kris a minute ago, then stopped. However, she still had that tickle at the base of her neck.
She glanced over her shoulder just as a man left the dining room. There was something about him that made Kris get to her feet, mutter, “Ladies’ room,” and follow.
*
