“Must you rush off?” Mum demanded when I got up too. “I never see you beyond dinner. Can’t your poor old mum get a wee bit of attention from you?”
I laughed. “You’re full of it. You’re busier than I am and you don’t even have a job.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t have time for my children. Especially my only daughter.” She cocked her head, her eyes searching my face. “You all right, love?” Mum was watching me carefully and I gave her a little shrug.
“Yeah.”
“Liar.” She smiled. “You’re my child and my only daughter. You cannae lie to me.”
If she only knew.
“You’re upset that Dax abandoned you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I need to go to the lab anyway, catch up on a few things.”
“Then what is it? Is it Dax?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.”
I sighed. “We weren’t really dating… I made all that up.”
Mum’s eyebrows rose and then she let out an amused laugh. “And Dax agreed to the charade? How delightfully naughty!”
“But that’s the problem.” I rested my chin in my hand. “It’s not a charade now that he’s here. He said he has…feelings for me.”
“And I know you have feelings for him. What’s the problem then?”
“I’m terrified.”
“Of what?”
“The way it is between us. It’s so easy, Mum. We don’t have to work at it, everything happens naturally. We fell asleep last night watching movies. Sex wasn’t even on his radar.”
“Is this a bad thing?”
“No, not at all. We, er, well, you know, we were at the cottage alone all afternoon.” I flushed a little. Mum and I didn’t normally talk about these things, but somehow it felt right telling her about Dax and me. Because he was special and already a part of our family.
“And?” Her eyes met mine and I smiled.
“It was wonderful. He’s wonderful.”
“You’ve loved him for a long time. I’m so glad to see the two of you together.”
“Yes, but what if he’s just being nice? He says he’s not, that he’s had feelings for me for a long time as well, but I asked him to be my pretend boyfriend and now he’s my real boyfriend and I’m feeling very self-conscious about it.”
“I see.” She peered at me curiously. “What I want to know is why you’re not taking him at his word and merely accepting the fact that he wants to be with you.”
“Because he could have anyone and I’m…here.”
“Here as in Scotland?”
“Yes. And he’s in Vegas, playing professional hockey. How would it work?”
“You’ve been together a day,” Mum said gently. “What if you just enjoyed yourselves?”
“To what end? I didn’t realize what I was doing would turn into something so real so quickly, and not only do I not want to hurt him, I don’t want to be hurt either.”
“Seems to me you need to ask him those types of questions.”
“It feels too soon for that, don’t you think?”
“I believe so, but if you’re worried about it, you need to talk to him. What type of future do you have if you cannae communicate?”
“It’s just so difficult. Ian, Everly and the others will be here soon, I still have work to do at my lab, there are a thousand wedding events coming up, and we can’t truly be together here at the house, which leaves us very little time for intimacy.”
“Bloody hell, I hope you don’t let your grandfather’s antiquated rules keep you from enjoying him while he’s here. You’re an adult, Isla. What will your grandfather do? Put you out?”
I met her gaze. “You think it would be all right?”
“Certainly. Especially if he doesn’t know about it.”
We laughed quietly.
“We’ll see.” I put down my cup. “I really do have to go, Mum. See you later. And thank you for listening.”
“All right, love. And I’m always here to listen.” She reached out to squeeze my hand before I made my way up to my room. Yesterday had been a good day. The best I’d had in a long time, and I didn’t want to let go of these feelings. Dax was special, and though I’d told a big lie that set about the chain of events that brought us together, I wasn’t going to walk away from this opportunity now that I had it. He said he wanted me as much as I wanted him, and I had to have faith. Both in him and in myself. It wasn’t that I had low self-esteem or anything. It was quite the opposite, in fact. I was attractive, smart and successful, and men asked me out regularly. The problem was my interest in them. In general, there wasn’t any. And for the last two years, I hadn’t thought about anyone other than Dax, though I’d dated a little here and there.
The issue at hand was simply logistics, not that there was anything simple about them. Now that Dax was here and I saw how good it could be between us, I was already worrying about all the details that would become pertinent should we decide to get serious. On one hand, it was soon to talk about that kind of thing, but on the other, we’d been friends for nearly five years and already knew each other well. We’d slept together and had incredible sex, and so far, we were incredibly compatible. Which left me wondering how it would work if we actually fell in love. I’d been falling in love with him over time, but that wasn’t the same as actually being in a committed relationship with someone who loved you back.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I muttered under my breath as I gathered my purse and dug out my keys.
My mother’s words echoed in my brain and I made an impulsive decision. I was going to
