"You weren't supposed to be back from your stupid trip to that stupid mountain until July!"
He had to admire her ability to completely ignore the bigger issue. "I suppose I should apologize for that," he said dryly.
"I'll forgive you," she said magnanimously. "Now, should I catch a flight up tomorrow?"
"I won't be home."
He could feel her eyes narrowing over the phone.
"You won't?"
"I won't."
"Some other stupid quest?" she asked acidly.
"Something like that." He wasn't about to tell her where he was going. The last thing he needed was Tiffany haunting him in England while he was trying to remodel.
"When are you coming back?"
"Next year, probably."
"What?" she screeched. "Thomas, you can't go anywhere. I love you. No one will ever love you like I do."
Heaven help him.
"Good-bye, Tiffany."
"I'll do anything!" she said, sounding decidedly frantic all of a sudden.
"Good-bye, Tiffany."
"But my ring!"
Thomas smiled grimly as he clicked off the phone. Her name was appropriate, as all she had ever seemed to be interested in had been trips to that particular jeweler. It had cost him a bundle. That might have left him permanently grinding his teeth had Tiffany not done him the favor of taking his ring off along with her clothes to accommodate his former friend Robby Saunders. Thomas had picked up the ring, nodded politely to the two, then taken a cab to Tiffany's, where he'd sold the ring back at a substantial loss. He didn't care. The ring and Tiffany were out of his life.
As were a very long string of women who just weren't right for him. Thomas didn't consider himself a failure, but when it came to women, he suspected he needed to start.
Ten minutes and a cube of butter deposited on all food surfaces later, he was walking into his den with a roll of paper towels tucked under his arm, a pop in his other hand, and nothing more complicated on his mind than watching some preseason football. He frowned at his couch, covered as it was with last-minute gear to stuff in his suitcase, then settled for an uncomfortable straight-backed chair that Tiffany had insisted he buy. He sat down gingerly, balanced his plate on one knee, the can of pop in his lap, then reached for the remote. He had almost made thumb contact with the On button when he heard something behind him. Well, perhaps heard wasn't the right term for it. He felt something behind him. Damning every Scottish ancestor he could think of for passing on such unpleasant flashes of intuition in the gene pool, he turned his head as slowly as he could and looked behind him.
And then all hell broke loose.
Out of thin air, a pair of mouse ears materialized, sitting prominently upon the head of a flame-haired, ruddy-complected Scot in full battle dress.
And then the phone not six inches from his left leg started to ring.
Thomas jumped, apparently hard enough that the back right leg of the chair gave way. He wondered absently as he was falling if Tiffany had been at the damned thing with a nail file for just such an occasion as this. He landed flat on his back with egg literally on his face, and pop sloshing all over his jeans and a very expensive Aubusson rug. He rolled to his feet, then whipped around to gape at the apparition behind him.
Which was, he found as he managed to remove grease and fried egg from his eyes, no longer there.
And still the phone continued to ring. Great, more distress from his former fiancée. Couldn't she just leave him alone? Thomas dragged his sleeve across his face and grabbed the receiver.
"What?" he snapped.
"What? It's your father calling, that's what."
"Oh, sorry, Dad," Thomas said. "I'm a little indisposed at the moment."
Thomas could feel his father's frown traveling through the airwaves as if it possessed a life of its own. "I don't approve of these premarital relations going on—"
"I'm not in the middle of sleeping with Tiffany, Dad," Thomas said in exasperation. "I just fell out of that damned chair she made me buy, and now I'm wearing what was supposed to be my last decent meal!"
His father grunted. "Then you'd best whip up something else. I'm the first one to tell you that that inn of your sister's will ruin your appetite."
"Megan said the place was wonderful."
"Your sister's opinion in these matters is not to be trusted."
Thomas pondered just what that might mean for his immediate future. Given that he'd based his plans for that future on Megan's judgment, that could spell serious trouble for him. At the time, she'd seemed like the logical choice to do his castle reconnaissance. She'd been between jobs the year before—which unfortunately for her always seemed to be the case—and, with time on her hands, had been happy to do his investigating for him. The results of her journey had been the acquisition by some means he still wasn't clear on of a reportedly lovely little inn down the way from his castle. She'd taken a couple of pictures of both his castle and the Boar's Head Inn, then up and married some big-shot CEO who'd been vacationing at the inn with her.
Thomas's father, having stayed at the inn for the wedding, had been less than impressed by the little hotel, but would say no more than the place gave him the willies. Thomas's mother had told him that he would really find it interesting, and she'd said it with a wicked twinkle in her eye that left him wondering if he might have been better off to accept his father's conclusion. The inn could be draped with cobwebs, lack basic necessities like running water and toilets, but if Megan had heard rumors of a love story having happened there, she would have called it fabulous. All of which led him to wonder how reliable her opinion of his castle
