The Legend of Lady MacLaoch (12 page)

“Ms. Baker,” he said, interrupting me, “just
think
.”

I was quiet and stared at him, hoping he could feel some of my contempt.

After a moment I said, “Still thinking. Though I’m thinking now about why you want these two ancestors to line up. Why is it you so desperately want them, want me, to be that descendant?”

“Ms. Baker, before ye embarrass yourself by assuming I want ye to be anyone other then who you are, let me lay it all out for ye: yer great-great-granddad, Iain Eliphlet Minory—so deep in his debts, with no love for his wife or her children—he fled to America. While on the ship, he met a woman and got her pregnant, then married her, most likely at the end of a gun barrel. Your great-granddad was born a nice healthy nine months later and the rest ye can map for yerself.”

I sat there trying like mad to formulate an argument, something to prove him wrong. And yet I came up with nothing. It was simply another theory—one that I wanted so badly to be wrong because of his attitude, but not because of his argument alone.

“I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this point,” I said to the impassive MacLaoch.

“Which point? Your great-great-granddad being the philanderer I present to you, rather than the saint ye envisioned?”

I clenched my jaw not be baited by him. Calmly, after swallowing my first retort, I said, “I think I’m done here.” I stood, still holding the documents.

MacLaoch stood as well, but he turned and walked to the sideboard
under the window and poured himself a whisky.

“Whisky?” he asked over his shoulder at me.

“No,” I said, then remembered the letter in my pocket and quietly placed it on his desk, hoping he would see it after I had left. Left the country.

“There is just one more thing,” he said turning from the window. “We need to discuss last night.”

I really had no idea which part of the evening he wanted to discuss, but the low roll of anxiety in my belly said this was going to be even less fun.

“The charges ye laid against Kelly,” he began, “I take them seriously. If someone from my clan or from outside of it lays a judgment against a clansmen, I meet it. And since ye did not stay so tha’ I could talk with ye about them, I had to find out for myself.” He took a sip of whisky, watching me over the rim of the tumbler.

“And?” I said, not feeling the love toward anyone right then.

“The pub has surveillance, and it’s obvious that Kelly was extremely out of line. And because he was out of line, I’ll ask if ye plan to press charges against him,” he said flatly.

I closed my eyes and prayed for calm, not because of his question but because of what he had done to be able to ask it. “You watched surveillance video?” I opened my eyes and met his stare. “Was that to make sure I was telling the truth?”

“Ms. Baker.” He paused, then continued, “I spoke to Kelly after ye left the pub and his take of the event was quite the opposite of yours. I had Johnny pull the feed to see for myself.”

“What did the heir to the clan MacLaoch throne have to say?” I said bitterly as the last dregs of my self-imposed calm began to evaporate. “Did he mention anything about the discussion we were having?”

“Aye, if I remember, he said a few things—”

“So he told you that right before you showed up, I said to him, ‘Kelly, your girlfriend is at the bar, and I don’t want to fuck you.’ Pardon my language, but that’s what I said. And his response? ‘That’s not my girlfriend at the bar, and you can’t be serious about not wanting to fuck me, not dressed like that.’” I felt the heat of that moment, the warmth of anger at being taken advantage of coloring my tone. “But you know all this, don’t you? Because you watched the surveillance video, you saw what he did when I walked away. You saw him yank me back to him, you saw him grab my ass, and you saw him say something to me, which was, by the way, ‘You don’t leave until I say you do.’”

MacLaoch was silent. His knuckles went white as he gripped his tumbler. He set the glass down.

“What?” he asked.

I stared back at him and said softly, trying not to shout, “Oh, you heard me. Did you get your jollies, too, watching the video?” I was pissed, feeling like everything up until then had been the carrot to get me into his den and corner me about last night.

His eyes narrowed, and the hard edge of his jaw clenched and unclenched. “I turned off the video when ye walked away. I dinnae—” he said and stopped, his eyes blazing. “I dinnae see Kelly pull ye back, I am sorry. The question still stands: do ye wish tae press charges?” He spoke in a near hiss, his accent becoming stronger.

For sure, I wanted Kelly to pay, but I wanted him to pay in a little bit more of an old-fashioned way. Pressing charges, while a very American thing to do, wasn’t really what we Bakers were brought up doing. You solved your issues one-on-one, and if you couldn’t, you would have someone close to you do it for you. Say, for example, an older brother, or a father, an uncle, or a savage mother—take your pick.

“I’d really like for Kelly to learn that he can’t treat women the way he treated me, and if he could learn that lesson soon and forcefully, I would be grateful. Should he ever see me again, he should know to keep his distance because if he ever touches me again, I will break his nose with my fist and his balls with my knee. This I promise. As for the charges,” I said, thinking about how to phrase it, “right now, I won’t press any.”

MacLaoch had turned back to the windows, hands in his pockets. His reflection in the glass showed me he was still working up to a quiet fury. “Kelly will be
dealt
with.”

The way he said it—that Kelly would be dealt with—made some small
part of my being feel scared for Kelly. Kelly would no doubt be moved by whatever this MacLaoch chieftain had in mind for him. He would be punished.

Feeling like we were done, I looked down at the report in my hand on Iain Eliphlet, thinking I should say something, like “thank you,” when MacLaoch spoke again.

“Ms. Baker,” he said, turning to look at me, his flinty-blue eyes back to being impassive, belying nothing of what was on his mind. “One last thing.” He went to his desk, pulled a file, and handed me a check.

I looked down at it, puzzled. It had his signature on it, made out to me, Nicole Baker, for an amount that made my head spin.

“Wha—?” I said, confused. “Why are you giving me money?” Before he could answer, I connected the two.

This was buyout money. It was keep-quiet money. It was we’re-done-here money. “Oh-ho-ho. Oh no, you don’t,” I said and flicked the check back on his desk. “Keep your fucking money.” I tore the air open with my words, losing all fancy-pants pretense. His status no longer meant anything to me and any last bit of cordiality was lost, gone, burned.

I turned on my heel, dropped the documents—oh, precious history—onto the low table, and strode to the stairwell.

“Ms. Baker, stop, please.”

I turned at the top of the stairs. “Why? So you can insult me some more? No, I think I’ll head to the constable’s station—or whatever you people call the police here in your bass-ackwards little town—and file a report against your bastard of a cousin.” I stabbed the air with my finger. “From there, I’ll press charges so fast it’ll make your prestigious head spin. And if you have the town constable in your pocket, I’ll go a little route called freedom of the press and see how you like the world knowing how your clan does things up here.”

MacLaoch’s jaw was working overtime as I yelled, but in a very controlled voice he said, “Keep your voice down, please.”

“Why? Oh right, the reputation of one large clan is everything compared to that of one lowly tourist?”

His eyes narrowed and he took two strides toward me before I added hastily, “I closed the downstairs door.”

“Good.” He stopped. Then he gestured to the chairs. “Please sit, Ms. Baker, so we can discuss this. I am not paying ye off—”

“Explain,” I said.

“Please. Sit. Down.”

I wanted to say no and march my righteous ass down those stairs while flipping him the bird, but I refrained. I glared at him as I made my way back to the chairs and sat across from him. He took up his position again, leaning back against his desk, arms folded, staring me down.

“It’s no’ a payoff. Ye said ye would not be pressing charges against Kelly and yet ye have been used unkindly by him. I’m no’ so daft as to think tha’ ye will walk away from Scotland, from MacLaoch lands, with a pleasurable mind right now. I have no other way to ease the discomfort Kelly has done tae ye other than monetarily.”

I scoffed at him. “These documents would have been more than enough, and don’t tell me that you aren’t paying me off. You’ve written me a check for thousands of dollars! How’d you even come up with that number? The average cost of what I’d get going to the tabloids with this information?”

“No. It’s—” he managed before I cut him off.

“Oh my god,” I said. I’m not the fastest person on the planet with numerical puzzles, but I’m no slouch. The day I flew into Scotland, the exchange rate was point-six-something to the British pound, so with that rough estimate, I calculated the check amount into dollars. Nearly ten thousand US dollars. That was a lot of money, which made me think of the last time I said that phrase. I was sitting in my apartment checking the limit on my credit card before I bought my plane ticket and room at Will and Carol’s. The limit, which was ten thousand exactly.

“Not a payoff? Not a payoff?” I stood again—I couldn’t argue sitting down. “This check covers all my debt! How the hell did you get that information?” I nearly screamed.

“Ms. Baker, please be calm. I am doing no such thing,” he said, his voice straining for control.

“Oh, really? So if it’s not a payoff, it’s more like insurance, isn’t it?” I growled, “It’s insurance that I won’t press charges on the clan’s golden child after he molested me in a bar.”

That struck a nerve in the chieftain.

He came off the desk and got within an inch of my face, his Scots accent thick. “No,” he said forcefully, “I have told ye it’s no’. Either ye take tha’ check or ye don’t, Ms. Baker, but dinnae trifle with me.”

We stood glaring at each other. I could feel the fire in my veins at the fight that was rolling between us. Then, as might happen when a songbird flutters, singing, through the battlefield, the mood suddenly changed. Something happened, something else entirely. It was as if we had not been screaming at each other—all the tension, raised tempers, and hot-blooded fight turned into something carnal. MacLaoch and I stood face-to-face, and I watched as the emotion slipped suddenly from undeniable anger to an attraction that would cause screaming of another kind.

My breath caught in my throat as his gaze traveled from my eyes, slowly down my face, and back up, his intent crystal clear.

Only then did I take a step back.

“I come from a proud family, and in no way would any of us ever take money for something like this. Ever.” I walked over to his desk, took the check, and tore it into tiny pieces and dropped them like rain out of the palm of my hand onto his desk. “Instead, we call these favors. And now you owe me one.”

CHAPTER 17

I
got to the top of the stairs before he spoke.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly from behind me. “For giving ye the money.”

If he had asked me to stop, I wouldn’t have. Even if he had begged, I would not have stopped, but that statement stopped me dead in my tracks.

I turned around slowly, deliberately. “What?” I asked.

“I dinnae mean to insult ye.” He watched me, then said, “Here,” and pulled an envelope from his inner jacket pocket and held it out to me.

The envelope was a crimson, blue, green, and black plaid that shimmered. Half of me wanted to walk over just to flick it to the floor and proceed on the path I had been hell-bent on not a moment before. Yet, the other half wanted to know what it was.

Reluctantly, I walked over to him and took the envelope. “What is this?” I asked, as MacLaoch walked back to his desk.

He shed his sport coat and laid it over the back of his office chair. He looked tired, weary even. As if what I held in my hand was going to take all of his remaining energy. Picking up his whisky, he sat heavily into one of the leather chairs and began rolling up his sleeves as he spoke. “Every four years the entire clan assembles for a gathering and week-long fundraiser. This is taking place next week. In light of your research, ye might like to attend. If so, ye may, as my guest of honor.”

I wasn’t sure that round three of our fight, or round one of something else, wouldn’t happen, but my curiosity was winning over the heat between us.

I slid open the envelope and pulled out its matching invitation. It was an invitation to attend the entire week’s worth of festivities, which they referred to as the Gathering—from an opening gala Monday evening to a closing gala on Friday evening. A list of activities was available upon my request—I was to RSVP.