Page 17 of Scotlander

Gabe gave her one of his more penetrating looks then, with a low baritone ‘C’mere, you,’ pulled her into his arms for a hug.

He smelled delicious. Male and citrussy fresh. Strong and comforting in equal measures.

Once settled in the plane (lavender-scented hand towels disposed of and fresh glasses of fizz in hand), she set about extracting information from him. She thought things were going well until she realised Gabe had deftly flipped the tables on her pretty early in the operation. She still knew next to nothing about him and he knew pretty much everything there was to know about her. Mom and Dad met when they were both in the Marines. After two tours in Iraq, her dad had retired and opened up an auto shop with his dad (Grease Monkey & Son) in Pendleton where her mom joined him after her tours in Iraq and a short stint in Walla Walla, Washington where she’d retrained as a schoolteacher. Two older brothers. Both married to their high-school sweethearts. Dean worked in the auto shop with her dad, and Rob was a probation officer at the local penitentiary. Her brothers also led a 4-H group with their mom.

‘4-H?’ Gabe asked, as if that was the one thing in her life history monologue that stood out.

‘You know? Head, heart, hands, health?’

He shook his head.

‘It’s a mentoring programme for kids. They do old-fashioned stuff like grow vegetables and can peaches and make pies for the county fair. Farmer stuff mostly, out where I’m from.’ She gave an eye-roll to show she might be from the country, but she wasn’t actually country herself.

‘Sounds like you’ve got a close-knit family,’ Gabe said.

She snorted. ‘Unless being with them makes you want nothing more than to leave town, sure.’

Gabe frowned.

Willa looked away and drained her champagne. It wasn’t an entirely fair comment. Or considerate, seeing as he hadn’t seen his own family in twenty-plus years. She may have nothing in common with her family, but when she’d left for the bright lights of LA, they had all gathered on the driveway to give her Tupperware containers of her favourite foods for the long trip, reminders of the best rest stops to use, and waved her off while pulling checked hankies out of their pockets to blow their noses and pretend they weren’t crying. They’d been proud of her (and perplexed as to why she couldn’t be happy in Pendleton but . . . proud). Gabe’s departure, on the other hand, sounded as if it had happened under a searing cloud of white-hot fury.

According to Val, the extended Martinez family were woven too tightly together – there wasn’t enough space to know who you actually were. It was why she and Diego decided to move to LA. To find out if they could survive on their own. Make their own mistakes, pick themselves up, learn from them and grow.

Gabe had obviously needed a lot more space. Twenty years’ worth.

And she got it. Willa knew first-hand that sometimes the loneliest place in the world was at the dinner table with your own family.

‘Do you want another one?’ she asked Gabe as the flight attendant approached them.

He shook his head and pointed at a bottle of sparkling water he’d picked out of the bank of mini fridges when they’d first come in. ‘I want to get some sleep.’

Oh.

That was disappointing.

Clearly sensing it wasn’t the answer she’d been hoping for, Gabe put on an appalling Scottish accent, ‘So I can be at my rugged best for you when we land, lassie.’

Then he put up the divider between them leaving her to her own devices.

She sat back and took a sip of her drink, the fizz barely landing in her stomach before she grew restless.

She unbuckled her seatbelt, pretending she needed to get something from the overhead locker so she could steal a fresh glimpse of him. With his eyes closed and a careful ‘do not disturb’ expression arranged on his features, he seemed just out of reach. It was difficult to imagine how he’d look in yesteryear gear. Even trickier to picture him all rough and tumble. She squinted, trying to add in some stubble along his clean-shaven jawline, picture a crooked tooth appearing when he smiled, replacing his aquiline nose with one that might’ve been broken while taming a fierce stallion or defending a maiden’s honour against a marauding pirate. Something – anything, really – to make him just a bit more . . . mortal.

‘He’s a bit of alright, isn’t he?’ came a male whisper in her ear.

She turned and met the wolfish smile of a flight attendant.

‘Is that one with you?’

‘Ish?’ She wasn’t really sure. ‘No. Yes?’

‘Oooh,’ meowed the flight attendant, taking away her glass and pointing to the ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign. ‘I would.’

She flashed him a playful who wouldn’t? smile, then buckled herself back in.

She would. Right?

Maybe the better question was, would he?