Page 30 of Bonetide

I pull the sheet down off the pegs.

He’s standing right there.

Alasdair. In daylight. In dark trousers and a plain grey dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, his hair dry for once and falling dark to his jaw, his hands at his sides like he’s been waiting and trying not to look it. The sun is full on him in a way the dusk last night was not. He is, in this light, less impossibly beautiful and more⁠—

—more human.

Which is its own kind of problem because why would I ever think he was anything but?

“I was at the front,” he says by way of explanation. “You didn’t answer. I came round.”

I blink at him, my pulse hammering along in my throat.

“I called out. Twice. I’d half-decided the cottage was empty, and then I—” He glances at the line, at the sheet now in my arms. “—well, you came out. Seemed worse to slink off then.”

“So you stood behind my laundry?”

“Yes.”

“A man hiding behind my laundry. Which is worse than slinking off.”

He has the grace to look briefly embarrassed. “When you put it that way.”

A breath comes out of me that’s halfway to a laugh. “Jesus Cripes.”

This man lacks more social skills than I do.

We stare at each other for a moment, at an impasse of sorts. The sheet is in my arms, smelling of sun and grass and Effie’s detergent, and it seems so damn wholesome compared to this darkly handsome, possibly dangerous man standing across from me.

The same man who…

Images flood my brain at the most inappropriate moment. Last night. The window. The binoculars. The smile. That fucking smile, the one the wolf might give before it devours the lamb.

I can tell he’s not going to mention it, and I’m certainly not in hell going to mention it. Which means it’s permeating the space around us until there is nothing else.

“Was there something you needed?” I inquire, my voice coming out steadier than I feel.

“No,” he replies plainly. “I was out walking. I thought I’d come by and see how you’re doing.”

“Walking…”

“Aye. It’s a thing people do.”

“From the castle.”

“And around the bay.”

“That’s not a short walk.”

He looks up briefly at the sky, squinting at it, and I take a moment to study his jawline and the fullness of his mouth. “It’s a fine afternoon for it, isn’t it?”

He says it like someone who’s prepared to stand in a back garden and discuss the weather for as long as I want him to. I look past him at the bay. The water is a hard blue under the sun, making it look like an ordinary loch and not whatever else it is at dusk, a place of dark thoughts and drowned wives.

I should send him home. The polite version, the one with a smile and a well, okay, thanks for stopping in. He’d take it. He’d go. He’s already shown me he can be told; I don’t even have to be rude about it.

Instead, I shift the sheet against my chest and hear myself say, “I just got back from Fort William. I bought a heater for the shed.” I say this as if he knows what I’m talking about, as if he cares.

“The shed?”