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He’s quiet, but he’s not finished.
“I vowed vengeance. It was all I could think of.”
I go to sit beside him. “Hawk—”
He shakes his head to quiet me.
“The distillery is the main income generator of the estate. It’s been privately held within the family for more than four-hundred years. But Ann convinced my father to go public. When he did, I saw my opportunity. I bought shares. I had others buy shares and bought them back. It took me years, but I now own fifty-one percent of MacLeod Distillery. And I’ve been driving it into the ground since I started. The more money they sank into it, the more they lost. I made sure of that.”
“Oh, Hawk.” I touch his face, push his hair back and make him look at me.
“You see, Melissa, this is what I’m capable of. So you’re wrong. I’m not a good man.”
“You were hurt.”
He shakes his head, gives a sad little smile. “He tried to make contact with me over the years, but I never allowed it. Ignored his calls until he stopped calling.”
He looks away again.
“And what did I care about Ann? What pleasure would it give me for her to see that her son would inherit nothing but debt? But none of that matters because they’re both dead now. My father is gone. It’s too late for anything.”
“It’s not too late,” I say, taking one of his hands between mine. “There’s your brother, your nephew. Your grandfather.”
He doesn’t reply or even acknowledge that he heard me at all.
“I know every inch of these cliffs, you know. Grew up playing in the wild. Never thought I’d lose it all,” he pauses. “I don’t want to lose it again.”
I think about what Declan said about Scotland being in his blood. In Hawk’s. And I realize something.
“You’re staying, aren’t you?”
30
Melissa
I’m alone when I wake up the next morning.
He never did answer my question yesterday. And I can’t stop thinking about the cave. The way he took me, it was different than any time before. Like an animal marking his territory, this was him marking me.
But what he said afterwards, about losing this. About not wanting to lose it again.
I wish I could talk to him now. Make him tell me more.
I wish I could stop thinking about going back without him.
I take my phone and head downstairs hoping to find a charger for it. I have an iPhone and I’m sure at least one other person here has one. First thing I do is go into the kitchen where I find Alice wiping down the counters.
“Alice, do you know where I can find a charger for this?”
She turns to look at the phone. “Oh, yes, dear. In the study. Check the desk. Third door to your left.” She points and I go, counting the doors, taking in the faint musty scent of the ancient house, imagining how old the stones that make up the walls are.
When I reach it, I knock on the door, just in case someone is inside, but there’s no answer. When I turn the knob, I find it’s empty.
I switch on the light, looking around at the large room. Bookshelves line the wall behind the enormous wooden desk, and I wonder how old it is. If it’s an antique. It must be.
Leather-bound books take up most of the shelves. One houses empty whiskey bottles.
I walk over to it, read the labels. MacLeod Whiskey each with a year on it. I follow the row and notice how the logo has changed over time. See how the colors of the tartan, the only thing from here that was at Hawk’s Vegas penthouse, are somewhere on each label.
The mahogany leather chair looks like it’s been here forever. Two windows overlook the lush green back of the house and a large armoire takes up the space between them.
On the desk are piles of papers, not neat but not messy either. I think about Hawk and wonder if he’s twitching being here. He likes order and things put away. Everything in its place. This house is the absolute opposite of that.
I open the wide, thin drawer at the center and inside it, I find pens and pencils, paperclips, no phone charger. I close it and open the one on the top right. There are some folders and papers, and I pull it out farther but don’t find a charger here either.
Closing the drawer, I open the next one and when I see more folders, I’m not optimistic. I’ve almost closed it when I see a charging cable at the back of the stack.
“Bingo,” I say out loud and reach for it. I plug my phone into the wall socket and sit back down to wait. Once it has enough juice, I’ll call Deirdre to check on things.
But when I go to close the drawer, one of the folders catches. There’s so much stuff in the drawer that I have to tug it to get it out and when I do, something slips out and falls to the floor.
