Broch put his hands on his hips. “Sae whit noo?”
“Noo, we fix her door and leave her a note telling her where to submit the bill for fixing it.”
“Bit then she’d ken we did it. How come would we dae that?”
“Because we did do it.”
“Nah. Ah dinnae ken whit yer oan aboot.”
Catriona found a piece of paper and a pen in a kitchen drawer and started writing a note. “We can’t let the poor thing think she’s been robbed.”
Broch shrugged. “Ah dinnae see how come not. She may well be robbed, nae that her door is open.”
Chapter Eight
“How come are we going to Sean’s?”
Catriona glanced at Brochan from her spot behind the wheel of her trusty Jeep Cherokee, almost surprised to find him there. She’d been musing about how much her world had changed since he arrived. It all felt like a dream. Or a nightmare, depending on the moment. Her new world had some dark places, but there were sunny spots as well.
Like Kilty.
Am I actually married to this man?
It had only been a handful of weeks since she’d discovered him, barely conscious, on a movie set at Parasol Pictures. She’d assumed him to be background talent for some Braveheart knockoff in production. He’d seemed drunk, lying there with his kilt naughtily akimbo on his truly magnificent hind-end—
“Whit ur ye smilin’ aboot?”
Catriona snapped to and straightened the Jeep between the lines on the road.
Whoops. She’d drifted off again for a moment.
“Hm?”
“Ye didnae answer me. How come we’re goan tae Sean’s?”
Didnae. If they were going to be working together, let alone married, maybe it was time to start modernizing his English. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she had no trouble understanding him, but she was tired of acting as his translator when interacting with the talent at Parasol.
“Why,” she corrected.
“Why whit?”
“You said ‘how come are we going to Sean’s.’ The correct way to say it is why are we going to Sean’s.”
“Did ye ken whit ah meant?”
“Yes, I knew what you mean but—”
He shrugged. “Then ah said it perfect.”
“Funny. But that’s the point, I understand you, not everyone else does. I don’t know what to do about that heavy brogue, but maybe we can at least fix the parts that aren’t even English.”
Broch snorted. “Ah grew up closer tae England than ye did.”
Catriona pressed her bottom lip against her top, until the swollen bit began to hurt.
He has a point there.
She pulled into Sean’s long dirt driveway. Why her adoptive father insisted on living in the middle of the desert, an hour away from the studio, she didn’t know. She guessed he liked to remove himself from the daily insanity he had to deal with at Parasol. Actors weren’t always the best behaved people.
Shocker.
Catriona parked and leaned into her back seat to grab a bag off the floor behind Broch’s seat. He opened his door and walked around to meet her on the driver’s side. His gaze dropped to the bag in her hand as she slid from her seat.
“Whit’s that?”
She handed it to him. “I ordered it for you.”
“Aye? A wedding gift?” He looked panicked.
“No, it’s not a wedding gift. I’ve had it for weeks.”
Seeming relieved, he tore into the bag, ripping the thick plastic as if it were tissue. From inside, he retrieved a second, thinner plastic bag with a swath of plaid fabric showing through.
“Whit is it?”
“They’re swim trunks. I got them in plaid so you’d feel at home.”
He ripped open the second bag and slid out the shorts. “How come ahm ah needin’ wee breeks tae swim?”
Catriona opened her mouth to correct his how come a second time and then closed it.
What’s the point?
Though, even she had missed part of that sentence.
“Breeks?”
“Breaches. Trousers.”
“Oh. You need breeks because you can’t keep swimming naked.”
“How come?”
He was really pushing it now.
She jerked the box from him and left him holding the trunks. “Because it’s weird, okay? You can get away with it here at Sean’s pool but anywhere else—you’re just going to have to get used to wearing clothes. Sorry.”
Kilty grunted and eyeballed the trunks as if they might bite him. “They seem awfully wee...”
“Try them on inside.” Catriona strode to the front door of Sean’s mid-century desert rancher and let herself inside with Broch behind her still holding the shorts up against his hips.
“Sean,” she called to announce their arrival. At his longstanding request, she never called him Dad. When he’d found her as a little girl, and kept her like a lost dog, he hadn’t been entirely comfortable being thrust into fatherhood. She suspected calling him Sean instead of Dad had made her seem more a diminutive roommate than a child. The concept of sharing his life with a tiny roommate was easier for Sean to swallow.
“Out here.” Sean’s muffled voice called from the back patio.
Catriona wound her way through the kitchen and through the outer, sliding door. Sean sat in his usual patio chair, a whiskey on the wobbly table beside him. He smiled at the sight of her, but his expression soon shifted to concern.
“Wow. You look worse today.”
Catriona smoothed her hair, as if putting hairs in place could rearrange her swollen face. “Please. All this flattery will go right to my head.”
“I mean the bruises seem larger. Or at least they’re worse colors.”
She tapped her lip with the fingertips. “I know. No amount of makeup was ever going to do anything about this.”
“You should have visited that group doing the special effects for that monster movie on Lot J. They could have
