Page 37 of A Scottish Lighthouse Escape

Chapter Fifteen

I thought I’d misheard for a moment.

My grandma had been engaged to another man before my grandpa?

Reece nodded at my shocked expression. ‘Aye. It’s true.’

My eyebrows fired up.

‘I was madly in love with her and she with me.’ He glanced up at the tumbling clouds over our heads. ‘That’s why I still think about her and have done over the years. It’s why I regret what happened.’

I shook my head. ‘Well, this has come as a bit of a shock.’

Reece gave me an embarrassed glance. ‘I expect it has. I’m sorry, lass.’

‘Look,’ I faltered, thrown that my late grandmother had never told me anything about this before. ‘Why don’t you come in, Mr Stewart … sorry … Reece, and I’ll make us some tea?’

The older man’s eyes widened with gratitude. ‘Thank you so much. I’d appreciate that.’

I encouraged Bronte on, and she followed Reece and me up the cottage garden path. Reece was taking everything in, examining my late grandparents’ plants and the colour of the front door.

He studied the cottage over my shoulder.

I unlocked the front door. I couldn’t quite believe what he’d just told me. Talk about a bolt out of the blue. My grandma and I had talked about everything, and I’d confided in her about my teenage crushes during the holidays and my hormones raging.

But never once had she mentioned to me that she’d been engaged to another man before she’d met my grandpa. The name Reece Stewart had never passed her lips.

I turned in the hallway to take another look at Reece, but he was unaware I was checking him out. He was too preoccupied, appreciating my late grandfather’s green fingers in the garden. He hesitated at the doorstep.

Bronte leapt inside. ‘Please come in,’ I said to him.

He offered me a gentle smile of gratitude and bowed his head almost reverently as he stepped through the doorway.

His attention turned to my late grandmother’s paintings in the hallway. ‘She was always so very talented,’ he remarked with a wistful air. ‘I don’t think your grandmother realised how great an artist she actually was.’

I beckoned Reece into the sitting room and he took up a seat in one of the armchairs.

My head was brimming with questions. My grandmother had been engaged to someone else before my grandfather? It seemed so unlikely somehow. And why hadn’t she mentioned this before? Had she ever said something to my mum about it? If she had, Mum had certainly never breathed a word to me.

I realised I was staring at him again, with fascinated curiosity. I supposed it was because he was a connection to my grandma, one that had just erupted out of nowhere. Another part of her past. ‘How do you take your tea?’ I asked him, trying to visualise him as a young man. I could picture him now, all long, lean legs and thick hair. Handsome, in an intense, long-nosed sort of way.

‘Just a dash of milk please.’

I hurried off into the kitchen and busied myself with making the tea. Bronte, meanwhile, had melted. She’d morphed from Satan’s hellhound back into a wriggling ball of fun.

She’d picked up her new, squeaky apple toy, clamped it in her mouth and proceeded to push it against Reece’s leg in an attempt to get his attention and coax him into playing with her.

I kept mulling over thoughts of my grandparents.

It was almost incomprehensible to imagine Tilda with anyone other than my grandfather, let alone contemplating marriage to them. I knew she’d had other boyfriends when she was younger, before settling down with my grandfather, but she’d never mentioned Reece, let alone another engagement.

She and Grandpa Howard had been like two bookends. Even when the odd argument erupted, it would soon blow over with laughter.

They were demonstrative and affectionate, cajoling each other. Just like Joe and I had been. Or so I thought.

I fetched the milk from the fridge and dashed some into Reece’s mug.

I could hear Bronte thumping her toy with her paw.