Must Love Highlanders (8 page)

Just like Liam’s mind. Arousal, visual pleasure, consternation, and surprise rocketed about inside him, but nothing as coherent as an actual thought.

“I know you’re there, Liam,” Louise said as the clay became a vase. “I thought I heard the door, and I can smell your aftershave. You’re allowed to watch. I’m not one of those artists who throws mud at someone who interrupts her work.”

From the CD player, Dougie MacLean—
such
a helpful fellow—sang gently about kisses, love, and going home.

“Wouldn’t fiddle music be easier to work to?” Liam asked, leaning on the doorjamb. “There’s a Paul Anderson album in that stack that’s breathtaking.”

Everything Paul Anderson recorded was breathtaking.

Louise used the back of her wrist to scratch her chin and got a daub of wet clay on her jaw.

“I’ll listen to them all before I leave, possibly before the day’s done. The forecast said rain for most of the day.”

And thunder and lightning behind Liam’s sporran, apparently. For years he’d not been plagued with unforeseen arousal, with much of any arousal. His equipment functioned, he made sure of that from time to time, but Louise with her wet hands and her hair in a haphazard topknot had ambushed him.

“If you want to spend the day here, I have plenty of work to do,” Liam said. “Papers to read, lecture notes to prepare. If you need anything, you have only to—”

“I need a hard-boiled egg or two and a cup of coffee.”

Liam nearly told her, as he would have told any sister, cousin, or other presuming female, to get it herself or at least say please, but Louise hadn’t looked up from her project. She bent closer to the wheel, shaping the vase into a taller column, gently, gently, then spreading the base with the same deft, sure movements.

She’s happy.
She was once again happy.

“You’ve done this a lot,” Liam said. Louise did it well, too. Her expertise was evident in her focus and in the results of her efforts. Some people had the gift of creating art directly with their hands—no brushes, knitting needles, or musical instruments required. They had art—vision, texture, composition—in their very touch.

Louise apparently owned that gift, an ability that went beyond talent to the very nature of the beast doing the creation.

“Used to stay up all night, throwing and re-throwing the same clay. If clay worked for God, why not for a high school kid dragging around thirty extra pounds in all the wrong places?”

More self-disclosure, or another nod to the Georgia pecan pie mafia. “I’ll fetch you an egg and a cup of tea.”

“I asked for—damn it to hell and back. I’ll need all day to learn this wheel. I asked for coffee.”

“I don’t know how to work that fancy machine,” Liam said, and his ability to read directions was none too reliable at the moment. The smudge on Louise’s chin was driving him ’round the bend. “Jeannie bought the coffee maker for a couple of German engineers who visited over the winter.”

Then too, tea might steady Liam’s nerves.

Without looking up, Louise smiled at her vase and let it pirouette on the wheel for a few rotations, delicacy and dirt dancing together. Then she demolished it, smushing it back onto the wheel with both hands so a formless lump of wet mud twirled off-center where art had been.

“Tea then,” she said, using a tool that resembled a wire garrote to free the clay from the wheel. “And some of that tablet stuff you keep in your man purse.”

“Sporran,” Liam muttered, leaving the lady to her mud. He considered stopping off in the loo, he was that randy, but turned his thoughts to making tea, peeling three hard-boiled eggs, and slicing some cheddar made on the Isle of Mull—island cows were happy cows, according to Jeannie.

The tablet, he left in his sporran, for now.

“Breakfast,” he said, setting a tray on the studio’s work table a few minutes later. On the CD player, Mr. MacLean had mercifully switched to a pair of fiddles waltzing along in slow harmony.

“All I need is a bite,” Louise muttered, leaning far enough forward that a loose hank of hair dropped forward over her shoulder.

An inch more forward and that hair would hit the wheel, which was arguably dangerous and certainly messy. Liam caught the errant lock and tucked it back among its mates.

“Thanks,” Louise said, coaxing the clay upward. “This clay acts like it’s cold, but it’s not. We’re having a discussion, the clay and I, or maybe an argument.”

Liam held Louise’s mug of tea up to her mouth. She took a sip, peering at him over the rim. The smudge of clay on her chin was drying to pale dust, and he wanted to brush it off so badly his fingers itched.

“A bite of egg?” he asked.

“I see you put salt on the tray. I like a sprinkle of salt on mine, please, but just a sprinkle.”

As the clay twirled endlessly on the wheel, Liam suffered the torture of feeding the artist by hand. She nibbled delicately from his fingers, the intimacy endurable only because Louise was apparently oblivious to it.

Her attention had been seduced by a lump of wet clay, while Liam eyed the clock and wished the call he expected from Ankara would come in.

Though the image of Louise and the chapel cat had become his phone’s wallpaper. Not very smart, that.

“You’re an art historian,” Louise said as a lovely fluted bowl was obliterated on the spinning surface. “Are you also an artist? I’ll teach you to throw in return for driving lessons.”

“I dabble with a sketch pad, but I haven’t any real talent.” Karen had assured Liam of that, but only in recent years had he ignored her laughing assessment and drawn anyway. “Would you like more egg?”

“Cheese first,” she said. “I can smell it even in here. I love cheese.”

“What happened to the thirty extra pounds?” Liam asked. Louise had found good homes for some of those pounds, in all the right places.

“My older brother got me a horse. Six months of practically living at the barn, and no more thirty extra pounds. I was mostly out of shape, sitting at the wheel by the hour when I wasn’t sitting in classes at school, or sitting at my desk doing homework—”

Liam held the lightly salted egg up to Louise’s mouth. She took a bite, then another.

“What happened to the horse?” he asked, mostly out of desperation.

“When I went to college, my parents gave me the choice of selling the horse or passing him along to my sister. I went off to school, and by Christmas, Bobo had been sold. My mother claimed my sister lost interest. My sister claimed Mom wouldn’t drive her out to the barn.”

Liam held up the egg again, and Louise’s attention shifted from what had possibly been the beginning of a teapot to the food.

Liam didn’t think. He let protectiveness, sexual arousal, and a need for her to not ignore him drive his actions. When Louise turned toward the half an egg Liam held, instead of the egg he gave her a kiss.

“To hell with Georgia, Louise. If you were happy at the horse barn, sign up for lessons again. You’re happy throwing. Set up your studio again. Teach other people to throw. Finish that art degree.”

She remained right where she was, her mouth an inch from Liam’s.

“I did.” She kissed him back, then resumed tormenting her clay, as if people kissed in the course of discussion with her all the time. “I got the damned degree, a lot of good it did me. Tea?”

This art degree had made her unhappy, or perhaps art degrees didn’t go well with pecan pie and controlling parents.

While lawyering hadn’t gone well for Louise?

“Losing that weight, learning to ride, gave you strength your family wasn’t accustomed to seeing in you,” Liam said.

“Growing four more inches didn’t hurt either,” Louise replied, scraping the clay off the wheel. This time she shut the wheel off, so it spun gradually to a halt. “Your tea will get cold, Liam.”

She picked up his cup in her wet, muddy hands and held it up to this mouth. He drank despite the incongruous scents of wet clay and roses blending with an understated Darjeeling he’d found in Edinburgh.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your work,” Liam said. “You’ll want to converse with your clay, and I’m sure—”

She took a drink of his tea. “I need to think about the clay. I’ve thought about something else, too, though. I’ve thought about taking you to bed.”

Scottish men were supposed to be hot, fun, and emotionally unavailable. Liam wasn’t exactly fun, and he ignored his own sex appeal so thoroughly Louise might have blinked and missed it.

But emotionally, he paid attention. He listened, he saw, he thought about the information he took in. Careful he might be, also shy, reticent, and probably snake-bit—he’d mentioned a bad breakup—but he was emotionally more present than any guy Louise had spent time with since, well, Bobo.

Louise had thought about Liam Cromarty all night, just as, long ago, she might have imagined the last piece of pecan pie in the pantry. What the hell good was being on the rebound if she let the only guy to hold her attention in years go hiking out of her life without even letting him know she wanted to peek under his kilt?

“I have a theory,” Liam said, setting his tea cup down in the precise middle of its saucer. “The standard wisdom is that American girls are easy.”

He leaned back against the heavy worktable, looking like a relaxed, kilted cover for a men’s magazine, right down to drinking his tea from a cup with a saucer under it.

“I’m not a girl.” Nor was Louise in the mood for a morality lecture. “If you’re not inclined, professor, a simple ‘no thank you, pass the salt,’ will do. I’m interested, I’m not easy.” When nobody asked, a woman had no opportunity to
be
easy.

“Louise Cameron, I have noticed that you are no longer a girl.”

Louise got up to wash her hands, the better to turn her back on Liam’s rejection.

“I have noticed,” Liam went on, “that you are an intelligent, interesting woman to whom I am attracted. You’re also quite pretty, but a man never knows if he’s supposed to mention a woman’s appearance.”

And next would come… the
but
. Liam would walk out the door, and Louise would never see him again. Some other handsome, smiling Cromarty would appear in a different vehicle, to do some Nessie-spotting or tour the nearest whisky distillery with her.

Louise resisted the urge to flick water at Liam. She instead did a very thorough job of washing the mud from her hands.

“I’ve never invited a guy into my bed before, Liam Cromarty. I don’t expect I’ll make a habit of it.”

Because guys like him didn’t come along very often. Not in her life. Louise got the slick, smart, dishonest kind instead. The users who never paid a price for their lack of honor and were proud of their guile.

The bow that held Louise’s smock up came undone as she turned off the tap.

“You don’t kiss strangers, Louise. I’ve long since outgrown any interest in disporting with easy women.”

Liam spoke directly against Louise’s bare nape, a stern, talking kiss that sent a lovely shiver through her. He’d taken off his leather purse thing, which he usually wore front and center over his kilt. His arousal was front and center now, snugged against Louise’s backside.

“I like you, Liam. I respect you. I also desire you.” More than that, Louise
trusted
him. He’d never casually assume she’d provide free editorial services for his stupid, stilted articles while he packed up to move in with another woman.

Another warm, lingering kiss, this one to the juncture of Louise’s shoulder and her neck.

“I’m out of practice, Louise, but I like you and I respect you, too.”

And holy God, could Liam use his mouth. He tasted, he teased, he nibbled, he bit Louise’s earlobe
just right
, he slid his hands around her middle, and Louise would have cheerfully put the work table to use despite a lovely bed available on the next floor up.

“If you’ll put away the clay,” Liam said, patting her bottom, “I’ll feed the cat and lock the door. Uncle Donald is ever fond of the sneak attack.”

Louise managed a nod, grateful for a few minutes to compose herself—and to anticipate the rest of the morning in bed with Liam.

As Liam locked
and
dead-bolted the front, back, and side doors, he inventoried his internal security system, looking for panic, dread, second thoughts, anything that suggested intimacy with Louise Cameron was a bad idea.

“It’s a messy idea,” he told Dougie as he spooned wet food into the green bowl. “A complicated idea. Also irresistible.”

Liam petted the cat, who went noisily and enthusiastically facedown into the dish of food.

“Maybe that’s why I want to give it a go,” he said softly. “One small ocean will limit my folly to two weeks fondly remembered.”

He’d spoken the truth, though. He liked Louise and respected her. A lot. Far more than he’d liked the several encounters he’d allowed himself since Karen’s death.

Louise had good timing, among her many other fine qualities.

“If she’d left the overtures to me,” Liam said, “I’d have been putting her on that plane in two weeks, wondering what might have been and kicking myself for not—”

Louise came striding into the kitchen. “I fed Dougie before I got started this morning. He’ll be sleeping off a tuna drunk, and that’s a good thing.” She kept coming across the kitchen, until she was smack up against Liam, her arms twined around his neck. “You never did tell me your theory.”