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“You know me?” Kris repeated faintly.
“I spoke with ye on the phone. Rented ye the cottage. Who else would be arriving today bag and baggage?”
Kris let out the breath she’d taken. She was no good at cloak-and-dagger. She liked lying about as much as she liked liars and was therefore pretty bad at it. She needed to get better and quick.
“You’re Ms. Cameron,” Kris said.
“Euphemia,” the woman agreed. “Everyone calls me Effy.”
Effy’s brilliant eyes cut to the driver, who was as thin and tall as she was short and round. “Ye’ll be bringing that suitcase inside now, Rob, and be quicker about it than a slow-witted tortoise.”
Kris glanced at the old man to see if he was offended, but he merely nodded and did as he’d been told.
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Very slowly.
Kris’s lips twitched. She’d have been tempted to do the same if Effy had ordered her around.
Rob came out of the cottage, and Effy shoved the plate in front of him. “Better eat a few, ye great lummox, or ye’ll be starvin’ long before supper.”
He took several. “If ye didnae cook like me sainted mother, woman, I’d have drowned ye and yer devil’s tongue in the loch years ago.”
Looming over the diminutive Effy, deep voice rumbling like the growl of a vicious bear, Rob should have been intimidating. But there was no heat to his words, no anger on his face. He just stated his opinion as if he’d stated the same a hundred and one times before. Perhaps he had. The two did seem well acquainted.
Effy snorted and shoved the entire plate of biscuits into his huge, worn hands with a sharp, “Dinnae drop that, ye old fool”; then she reached into the pocket of her voluminous gray skirt and pulled out a key, which she presented to Kris. “Here ye are, dearie. And what is it ye’ll be doing in Drumnadrochit?”
“I’m … uh…” Kris glanced away from Effy’s curious gaze, past Rob, whose cheeks had gone chipmunk with cookies, toward the rolling, gray expanse of the loch. “Writing.”
“Letters?” Rob mumbled.
“Why would she need to travel all this way to write a letter?” Effy scoffed.
“Some do.”
“I’m writing a book,” Kris blurted.
There. That had even sounded like the truth. Maybe the key to lying was thinking less and talking fast. No wonder men were so good at it.
“A children’s book?” Effy asked.
Kris said the first thing that popped into her head: “Sure.”
Silence greeted the word. That hadn’t sounded very truthful.
“Mmm.” Rob gave a throaty Scottish murmur, drawing Kris’s attention away from the loch and back to him. Luckily for her, it also caught Effy’s attention.
“Ye ate them all?” She snatched the empty plate from his hands.
“Ye said not to drop them. Ye didnae say not to eat them.”
“And if I didnae tell ye not to drive into the water would I find ye swimming with Nessie of an afternoon?”
Rob didn’t answer. Really, what could he say?
“Nessie,” Kris repeated, anxious to keep their attention off her inability to lie. “Have you seen her?”
“Mmm,” Rob murmured again, this time the sound not one of skepticism but assent.
