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He stirred and looked at me, his eyelids heavy. “What are you thinking about, Duchess? Your face is all flushed.”
I sat up and put my hands to my cheeks. “It’s the sun,” I said. “I’m so fair-skinned I turn pink in no time.”
“Hmpf.” He closed his eyes again.
My explanation was only half the truth. I couldn’t exactly tell him I was fantasizing about undressing him. I reached for my water bottle and drained the last of it. “Shouldn’t you get back to work?” I said.
This time he kept his eyes closed. “I never take a day off. This is nice. What’s your hurry?”
“Well for one, I have to pee.”
My honesty caught him off guard, and he burst out laughing. His humor at my expense made me cross. “It’s not funny. You can go anywhere. Back home we have trees and bushes in the great outdoors. There’s not much cover around here.”
Finley sat up and wiped his eyes. “Ah, Duchess. You’re an original. Why don’t you hop back to Cedric’s place and use the facilities?”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“You are paying for it.”
“True.” The longer he stayed, the more I was tempted to do something far more stupid than hanging near a precipitous ledge and taking a photograph.
“I’m going to leave now,” I said politely. If you’ll get off the hood of my car.
He didn’t take the hint. “I’ll watch for other cars,” he said. There’s no one for miles around. Feel free to take care of business.”
“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “With my luck, a busload of tourists would pull up at exactly the wrong moment. I’ll go back to Cedric’s. I need you to move, please.”
He slid off the car and stretched, extending his arms toward the sky. “You’re such a spoilsport. I’ll head back. Promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“Try not to put yourself in other dangerous situations. We have rocks and cliffs and bogs. Stay out of trouble.”
His condescending attitude was a bit much. “I wasn’t in any trouble this time,” I said. “But thanks for the warning.”
The sarcastic tone was impossible to miss, even for a deluded male. His jaw jutted forward. “You seem to attract trouble, Duchess. How are your knees, by the way?”
Truthfully, they stung like the devil. I wasn’t about to admit that to him. “No worries.” I paused to remember my manners. “Thank you for feeding me. It wasn’t necessary, but I appreciate it.”
He grinned. “You don’t like accepting help, do you?”
“I’m used to getting by on my own,” I answered, avoiding a direct answer. It was true. I wasn’t a Kardashian or anything, but around Atlanta, people knew who I was. A Southern heiress was so clichéd. Sometimes it felt as if I walked around with a dollar sign over my head. So maybe I overcompensated by making sure any success I had was my own.
Finally, Finley straddled his motorcycle and donned his helmet. “I’ll see you back at the house,” he said.
I nodded. “I’ll be there.”
As he drove away, I jumped in the car and followed, though I turned off at the drive up to the McCracken place. Mrs. Clark greeted me with a frown. Maybe she thought I was checking up on her. When I expressed a dire need for the restroom, her expression cleared.
The women had done an amazing job already. All the windows in the house were open to air things out, and the heat was running to take care of any lingering moisture. The beds had been stripped. The laundry, hanging on clotheslines, flapped in the breeze as it dried.
Soon, this little cottage would be all mine. For weeks I had looked forward to my solitary getaway. Nothing but time and space on my hands to think and to exercise and to read books. It had sounded like heaven. And it still did; only now I felt a twinge of regret at having to move out of Finley’s house.
I was only beginning to know him. When I moved up here on the hillside, I wouldn’t be able to use my cell phone per my agreement with Hayley and Willow, even if I could get a signal. Hopefully, Cedric had a landline that would be my connection to Finley and to Portree.
After thanking Mrs. Clark again for her willingness to tackle such a big job, I headed back down the rutted track to the main road. For the rest of the afternoon, I was going to drive without stopping.
I kept my promise to myself. Mostly. At times I simply had to pull off and take a picture through my open window. In some places the road skirted the edge of the island offering magnificent ocean views. Elsewhere, like the Quiraing, where a massive Jurassic landslip created strange and beautiful rock formations, the scenery was mountainous and impressive.
