“My heart’s in no danger,” she declared, brushing away the tears with the back of her hand.
“I hope not,” Julia said, “because there’s nothing worse than loving a man who doesn’t love you.” She paused. “Especially if you’re expecting his baby.”
Chapter 11
Duncan found Sam in the dining room an hour later. She was bent over a thick black Filofax, and the sound of her fountain pen scratching against the pages filled the air.
“Your mother is well?” he asked from the doorway.
She looked up and it seemed to take a second for her to recognize him. “Yes,” she said. “My mother’s well.”
“Was she surprised to hear about the wedding?”
“You could say that.” She scribbled another line then capped her pen. “We need to talk, Duncan.”
He sat down across the table from her. It was clear the conversation with her mother had upset her. “I’m listening, lassie.”
“My files will be arriving from the States tomorrow or the next day,” she said, “and I need a place to set up an office.”
“An office?” That was the last thing he’d expected to hear from her.
“Yes,” she said, all business. “I’m still on salary with Wilde & Daughters. The sooner I get my office situation straightened out, the sooner I can earn my keep.”
“You’re in a hurry,” he observed, leaning back in his seat “You’ve been here less than twenty-four hours.”
An odd expression shadowed her eyes. “And another twenty-four wouldn’t change a thing,” she said. “The business has always been my top priority.”
He felt her words like a knife in the heart. “And the baby?”
Her cheeks reddened. “The baby obviously comes before business.”
“Aye,” he said slowly, “that’s what it says in our agreement.”
“I don’t need an agreement to put my baby first.”
“What is it you need to establish an office?” he asked.
“I need quite a bit,” she began. “Fax machine, telephone, a printer, file cabinets, a desk.” She paused. “And a place to put them.”
“You can put them anywhere you wish, lassie. The room is yours to choose.”
“I saw a room overlooking the garden that would work quite well.”
“Then it’s yours.” He would put no obstacles in her way as long as she understood the child came before all else.
She nodded. High color still stained her cheeks, from anger or embarrassment he couldn’t say. “Now my next question is, where do I go to find office equipment?”
“There aren’t many choices in Glenraven.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“I can take you into town and introduce you to Dixon the stationer.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“I’ll bring the car around.”
WILLIAM DIXON was a garrulous old man with an encyclopedic knowledge of business equipment and suppliers. Within an hour he had helped Sam place orders for everything she needed and a few things she didn’t.
“I’ll see to it myself, Samantha,” he said as she handed over her American Express card. “You’ll be all set up by Friday.”
“You’ve been a wonderful help, William,” Sam said as she signed the receipt. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”
“Glenraven is small but enterprising,” he said, winking at Duncan, who stood near the doorway. “We even have a web site.”
Sam laughed, but she noticed that Duncan only managed a quick smile. The charged atmosphere that had existed between them in his studio had been replaced by silence and unease, and she blamed her mother for the change.
If Julia had been looking to undermine Sam’s self-confidence, she’d succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. Although maybe it was a good thing to be reminded this wasn’t a love match, not by any stretch of the imagination. For a little while, in the privacy of his studio, she’d forgotten everything but how she felt beneath his gaze.
It was better this way, she thought, as she followed Duncan outside. With everything else in her life turned upside down, she needed the predictability of work. Work was something she understood. All those neat vertical lines of numbers eager to be organized into ever neater rows. Even when the numbers argued with you, you could find a logical reason for it if you knew where to look.
So far, life had turned out to be much less predictable.
“Are you hungry?” Duncan asked as they started. down the street.
“A little,” she admitted.
“We could go back to the castle—”
“That’s fine,” she said.
He looked at her, a half smile on his face. “You didn’t let me finish, lassie. We could go back to the castle or stop at the Heather and the Thistle.”
“The latter,” she said, nodding. “That sounds wonderful.”
He put his hand under her elbow and shepherded her up the narrow street and around the corner. The streets were quiet. Duncan nodded at two elderly women who whispered as they walked by, and he waved at a trio of men who stood talking in front of a place called Drummond’s. People seemed to like Duncan but they gave him a wide berth, as if they recognized he wasn’t quite one of them, even though his history was tightly woven with Glenraven.
He pushed open the door to the Heather and the Thistle and motioned her inside. The pub was dark and a little smoky, but not unpleasantly so. It smelled faintly like Guinness but more so of bread baking in some back room. The place bore little resemblance to the noisy, brightly lit chain restaurants she knew back home, and she loved it all the more for that fact. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so instantly, completely comfortable.
An attractive young woman with a mane of fiery red hair approached them. She smiled broadly at both Duncan and Sam.
“So William was telling the truth,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “And here I called him a—” She laughed. “Well, I won’t be telling you what I called him.”
“This is Lucy,” Duncan told Sam. “She grew up here at the Heather and the Thistle. Her parents own the place.”
“Aye,” said Lucy, nodding. “Single malt is mother’s milk to me.” Lucy
