“Good evening.” Constance smiled at me.
“Good evening.” I smiled back at her and paused to lean over and press my lips to Isla’s. They were as sweet as I remembered, and I wondered if this would ever get old. Our sexy afternoon had been as amazing as I’d hoped it would be, probably more, and now I had to figure out where to go from here. We’d rushed right into sex, and while I was more than okay with that, I wanted to make sure we didn’t go too fast with everything. I wanted this to be something long-term, maybe even forever, but we lived two disparate lives, so we needed to have a solid foundation going forward. And friendship probably wasn’t enough.
“Good evening, everyone.” Isla’s grandfather, Ian Campbell I, came striding in with a friendly smile on his face. Three of Isla’s other brothers, Mac, Liam and Lachlan, trailed behind him and we all took our places at the table.
Merrie began serving dinner and I wondered what it would be like to live here, dealing with this type of formality on a daily basis. No wonder Isla was tired of it all and had begun to push back on family tradition. I hadn’t grown up this way and I definitely didn’t have formal dinners as an adult. On the road, we ate as a team, which was organized but decidedly casual. On nights off, when I was home, I usually grabbed something quick and ate in front of the TV. I occasionally went to dinner with friends or a date, but the bulk of my meals were solo. So this was foreign to me and now that I was paying attention, it was obvious Isla wasn’t particularly comfortable either.
In fact, none of them were. Finn fidgeted like an antsy toddler, Lachlan spent a good deal of time surreptitiously glancing at his phone, and Mac drank more than I probably would have on a random Wednesday night at home with the family. Were they unhappy or simply bored? It was hard to tell and I’d never gotten the vibe from Ian that there were issues in the family. Or maybe I just hadn’t paid that much attention until now.
“So, Dax.” The elder Ian Campbell spoke directly to me and I glanced up.
“Sir?”
“Will you be taking our Isla away from us and spiriting her off to the U.S.?”
“I…” I frowned. I was mostly prepared for this, but more from the perspective of how serious we were, not a detail like whether or not she was moving to the U.S. “The purpose of me coming to Scotland early, and potentially staying for a bit of the summer,” I said slowly, “was for us to figure all that out. We’ve never spent a significant amount of time together, so we have to make sure this is what we want before we work on logistics like who’s moving where.”
“Well, obviously, you’re not leaving hockey to move to Scotland,” her grandfather said with a laugh. “No high-level hockey here, and I don’t imagine you have a backup career the way Ian does.”
I didn’t know whether to be insulted or not, but Isla stepped in before I had a chance to think about what the older man meant.
“Granddad,” she said quietly. “We’re still new. We haven’t a clue what we’re doing in the future, so please don’t put us on the spot this way. It’s impolite.”
“Nonsense.” The duke raised his glass, looking at me. “You’re like family already, Dax, so there’s no reason we can’t be honest and up front about your relationship with Isla. Frankly, I couldn’t have chosen better for her.”
Isla’s lips tightened slightly and she just shook her head. “Granddad. You. Promised.”
He sighed. “Very well. I’ll leave it be for now, but we’ll be revisiting this conversation again before he leaves.”
“Deal.” I nodded and reached under the table to squeeze Isla’s hand. She glanced at me but didn’t say anything, so I let it go.
There was definitely a weird dynamic happening here and I was confused because this was the fourth summer in a row I’d come to Scotland and stayed here with the family, and it had never been so stilted before. I wondered what had changed, but couldn’t very well ask. I planned to ask Ian, though, and made a mental note to call him in the next day or so. Of course, he and Everly were arriving on Friday, so maybe I’d just wait.
After we ate, the duke, Liam and Lachlan retired to what they called the library, Mac claimed he had a date, Finn excused himself, and Constance merely waved Isla and me away after I turned down the invitation to go to the library.
“Go on with you,” she said. “Spend time together. And ignore the duke—he’s just being overprotective.”
“He’s being a wanker,” Isla muttered.
Constance chuckled. “Don’t let him hear you say that.”
“Let’s go sit outside,” Isla said to me. “I don’t think it’s raining at the moment.”
“Sure.” I took her hand and let her lead me out a set of double doors that led to a balcony overlooking a garden. It was dark now, but I knew how pretty it was during the day.
We sank into chairs that someone had thought to dry off since it had been raining all day, and Isla pulled her knees up to her chest, staring out at the dark garden.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“I don’t know why he insists on being such an old curmudgeon!” she hissed under her breath. “I’m twenty-eight fucking years old. I love him, but he’s driving me mad lately. And I don’t like him embarrassing you.”
“I wasn’t embarrassed, babe. He can ask anything he wants. We have the answers we prepared for him.”
“Yeah, but we…” Her voice trailed off and she glanced at me. “We slept together and now it’s not a game anymore.”
“It wasn’t a game from the time we spoke on the phone about it,” I said calmly.
“I don’t usually
