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“Please,” he says. “Come back to the house – I’ll get you a coffee. Maybe some cake to get your blood sugar up. On me. What do you say?”
I bite my lip and look up at him.
An incredibly handsome, tall, strong, older Scottish man was asking me, in the sexiest accent I’ve ever heard, if I wanted to have coffee and cake with him.
Why the hell not?
What else was I supposed to say?
“Sure.” I nod. My heart somersaults in my chest when he answers me with a grin.
CHAPTERFOUR
Finlay
I know there is no doubt about it now.
I want her.
I want her so badly that I’m making excuses just to stay in her presence for a little while longer.
It’s a fair distance back to the house, though, and it’s with regret that I realize it. She’s already hurting. But then again, a walk back to the house is shorter than a walk back to the hotel she came from.
“Can you walk?” I ask, gesturing down at her ankle. “If not….”
“Oh, no, I can walk,” she says breezily, smiling. She had the kind of smile which seemed to turn the sun on. I was sure it must have been winter before she came, but now the bright summer sky above seemed to have been created just for her. “It’s not that bad, really, just a little sore.”
“If you’re sure,” I nod. I’m not sure what the alternative solution would be, anyway.
Offer to carry her?
To leave her here, go back for an off-road vehicle, and then drive her back?
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she says with another smile.
“Alright,” I say and turn, beginning to walk toward the house. “It’s this way, then. You’re here on holiday, are you?”
She laughs as she falls into step beside me. “What gave it away?” she asks, chuckling again.
I give her a sideways look and chuckle.
Her accent is, after all, pretty obvious. “You’re from the States?”
“Yeah, I’m here on vacation,” she replies. “I chose to come here because I have ancestral roots in Scotland. My grandmother was from here.”
“Oh, really? Did she come from this area?” I ask.
Now my mind races in the direction of a serious worry.
What if we were somehow distantly related? That would put a damper on the whole thing.
“No,” she laughs, filling me with relief. “No, she’s actually from somewhere near Glasgow. But she always told me she visited this area when she was younger, and it was so much prettier than where she grew up. So, I thought I’d see it for myself.”
“You know,” I say, feeling more confident now. “In all the confusion, I forgot my manners. My name is Finlay Barnbraw.”
“Oh!” she exclaims. “Alana Covington.”
“Nice to meet you, Alana,” I say, pausing to turn and offer my hand with a grin. When she takes my hand, I clasped hers between both of mine, keeping her cool fingers between mine for a moment too long.
