Some Like It Scot Page 6

  “Hold on,” he instructed.

  Like she was going to do anything else. Her dress wasn’t exactly made for expedient transportation on foot. “Where are you going?” she asked, as he ducked left.

  “My car is in the park, in the rear.”

  “Limo. Curbside. Much closer.”

  “But—”

  Just then the doors burst open behind him, purging a throng of satin- and suit-clad people from the inner sanctum of the chapel.

  “Limo it ’tis,” he said, and carried her down the stone steps with both a speed and agility that, at any other time, she’d have paid proper homage to, but at that moment, just hung on for dear life and prayed they made it to the limo in one piece. “Sir,” Graham shouted at the driver. “If you could be so kind as to start the car!”

  The driver, who was leaning against the far side of the car, smoking a cigarette glanced up, his eyes widening in surprise—which wasn’t all that odd, considering the spectacle they were making. His eyes widened farther as he spied the throng descending behind them.

  “Right now, if you dinnae mind,” Graham shouted, as he closed in on the rear, curbside door.

  The driver finally snapped to attention, automatically moving around the back of the car, ostensibly to open their door, as he was trained to do.

  “I have it,” Graham assured him, as he held Katie more tightly with one arm. He fished his other hand out from the sea of streaming satin and lace to grapple with the door handle. “Just drive. Due haste, man.”

  Katie wasn’t sure if it was the accent, the outfit, or both, but the driver sketched a quick salute and dashed for the driver’s side door. “You can put me down,” she told him. “I can manage the dress, if you’ll just—”

  But he’d gotten the door open by then, and after a quick look past her shoulder, turned and all but stuffed her into the back seat. “Sorry,” he said, clambering in behind her. And there was a lot of him to clamber.

  She was sorry the sudden waterfall of veil that flipped down over her face prevented her from getting a glimpse of what he wore under that tartan. Not that she’d been thinking about that. Of course she hadn’t. She’d just run out of a church. On her wedding day. Creating chaos and leaving her poor, beloved Blaine behind to handle God knew what. The very last thing she had any business thinking about, even in the most abstract of terms, was whether her partner in crime was going commando under his kilt.

  She fought her way clear of the veil as the driver peeled away from the curb, sending her sprawling toward Graham, who was getting his own self situated on the seat next to her and couldn’t brace himself for the collision.

  “Oh!” she gasped, planting her hands on his chest—his broad, well-muscled chest. How was it, back in the garden, she’d thought him a kind of gentle giant, albeit a bit of an odd soul as well, who’d just happened across an angry bride and tried his best to console her? Because the man who’d stood up inside her family church and loudly proclaimed her to be his, who’d caught her in his arms, then boldly confronted her parents before making his way through an angry throng, leaping down old stone steps and carrying her swiftly to their escape chariot…wasn’t anything like that guy in the garden.

  “Sorry,” she said, trying to extricate herself, but her veil was hopelessly caught and knotted on the giant sword he had pinned to his plaid, keeping the tartan from slipping off his shoulder. Like it would dare.

  “Stop squirming for a wee moment,” he instructed, trying to blow the netting off his face. “Just—”

  She reached up and tugged the whole thing off her head, sending a number of pins and clips flying. She didn’t care, although she was certain her veil-hair look was ever-so-delightful. But it wasn’t like she had to worry about the after-ceremony photos. “There,” she said, thrusting it at him. “It’s not like I need it anymore.” Then it hit her, all over again. What she’d done.

  Had she really, truly, just done that? Walked out on her family?

  How wrong was it, that on her wedding day, when she’d left a man standing at the altar—a man she did love—it was leaving her family that scared her more.

  Graham took the veil from her, frowning, and held it in his hands, not looking at it, but staring at her.

  She noticed, and paused in her attempts to tame the skirt of her dress into something she could actually sit in, while simultaneously keeping her tightly laced boobs from not cutting off her breathing entirely. “What?”

  He snapped out of his reverie, and ducked his chin as he went to work, carefully untangling the veil from his sword. “Nothing, nothing a’tall.”

  He sounded like the man in the garden—which would be interesting at any other time. She dared a glance out the rear window as the limo careened around the corner, mercifully cutting the church from view. She let out a deep sigh of relief, which did absolutely nothing to quell the wave of nausea climbing rapidly up her throat. “Driver! Pull over! Pull over!”

  The driver immediately swerved to the nearest curb, sending her once again sprawling across Graham’s lap. She shoved the door handle and pulled herself straight over him, just in time to get her head past the running board, and…nothing. Dammit. She’d feel so much better, so much…freer, if she could just—

  She froze when she felt his fingers moving along her spine. “What”—she cleared her throat, and it had nothing to do with the tightness of her dress or the urge to toss her cookies—“are you doing?”

  “Ye canno’ breathe in this…contraption,” he said, and went to work unlacing the back of her dress.

  “Seriously, you can’t do—oh.” She stopped speaking as her ability to take in a deep breath became a possibility. She breathed deeply twice more. Then sighed—heavily, for a change—in abject relief. “Thank you,” she said, never more sincerely. “But…you need to stop, uh, or I won’t have—”

  “Give me a moment,” he said, every bit as calm and collected as he’d been in the garden.

  Her port in the storm, indeed.

  He tugged gently on the laces, but not so much that she felt constrained. He fiddled about a moment longer, then said, “There. All set.”

  She fumbled and reached behind her, then struggled to sit back up. He helped her by all but lifting her from him and settled her back in her seat. The way one might a stuffed doll. Albeit a doll one had affection for, as he’d done it as gently as possible.

  “Thank you,” she said again. “I can—” She paused, breathed, and realized she didn’t feel nauseous anymore. “Thank you,” she repeated.

  “Are ye all right?” Graham asked. He had one steadying hand on her shoulder. And it was steadying. Also distracting.

  “I’m sorry for the drama there. I thought I was going to…you know.”

  “And are you?”

  She shook her head. “I just wanted to.” Right before curling up into the fetal position and doing her damndest to forget the entire day had ever happened. “I’m good now. It was the dress, I guess.”

  Graham tapped on the divider window with his free hand, and the town car pulled away from the curb and resumed their journey. He lifted his hand from her shoulder and pushed the tumble of hair from her face. “I’m certain it was more than the dress. But I’m glad that much has been resolved.”

  He pushed the last wayward strand from her cheek, which was such a soothing gesture, she caught herself pressing lightly against the palm of his hand. It was hard, and callused…but also warm, and gentle despite being broad enough to cup most of the side of her head in his palm alone. The acid wave in her gut was gone. Instead she had to contend with a sudden burning sensation behind her eyes. No. She was not going to get emotional. McAuleys didn’t get emotional.

  Though she’d always thought that rule was restrictive bordering on cruel, especially when she’d been a youngster, all that training should be good for something. Right then, crying was not going to do her any good. Later, when she was alone, it was going to be the sobfest of the century, accompanied by a g
luttony of chocolate if she had anything to say about it. And possibly large quantities of whatever adult beverage she could get her hands on.

  But not yet. She’d done the hard part. Okay, so part one of the hard part. Certainly there was worse yet to come. She could not allow herself to fall apart at the first sign of someone showing concern or caring. She’d just claimed her independence, literally in front of God and everyone. She was on her own, her own woman. Hear her roar.

  And though she hadn’t been in that new stage of her life very long, she was pretty sure being independent precluded leaning on anyone. Certainly not inside the first five minutes, anyway.

  “I’m okay,” she said, forcing the words past the lump in her throat, then forcing that down, too. She removed herself from his warmth and care and concern. It would be her undoing if she allowed herself even a second more of it. It was all catching up to her in a giant rush of reality and she wasn’t prepared to deal with that part yet. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready.

  “Where to, sir?” The driver’s voice crackled through the intercom. The glass partition between them was smoked, making the driver nothing more than a shadowy figure on the other side.

  “Airport,” Graham said. “Baltimore.”

  Katie didn’t argue. In fact, hearing the word airport helped yank her brain back to the matter at hand. She had not a prayer of figuring out what to do with the rest of her life, much less the catastrophic ramifications of what she’d just left behind—especially during a hell-for-leather limo ride in her half undone wedding dress, with a gigantic, mad Scotsman who claimed he owned her, as her only support system. That would not be happening. All she really had to do, right that very second, was figure out what to do next. The rest would work itself out in time.

  An eon or two should do it.

  She had no idea what Graham had in mind, although she assumed it was a flight back to the U.K. Scotland, however, was not on her itinerary. Not that day. Not ever. She and Blaine were supposed to be flying to Italy for an extended tour through wine country, followed by a river cruise through the Gota Canal in Sweden. She had all the tickets and documents tucked in her bags in the trunk of the limo. While a part of her wished, badly, that she could have somehow gotten Blaine out of the country and away from the fire and brimstone and hell hath no fury that was surely happening back in the church, she also knew that by leaving her family behind, she’d had no choice but to also leave Blaine. They couldn’t continue to be partners in crime if only one of them wanted the prison break.

  She had realized for some time, their co-dependancy was the biggest part of the reason why they’d put up with their families’ respective crap as long as they had.

  So she’d go to Italy. Alone. And maybe Sweden, too. Though the canal part had been for Blaine. He was an engineer trapped in the body of an heir to an empire he didn’t want. Seeing one of the great wonders of the engineering world was to have been her wedding gift to him. It was as close as he would come to realizing his own dream of designing new infrastructure systems to help solve engineering issues in underdeveloped countries. Maybe she’d overnight his tickets to him from the airport. Encourage him to go on his own. Or take Tag. Whatever. Maybe he’d embark on the new chance she’d given him by finally, mercifully, breaking them both free.

  She wondered if he was doing that…or if he was already struggling to patch things up. At least, leaving as she had, clearly showing that he’d had no knowledge of it, he could be the poor victim, and martyr the whole thing. If he wanted to go that way. She fervently, fervently, prayed he would not. If he didn’t use her escape to break free, she knew he never would. And he’d spend the rest of his life living a lie. Multiple lies.

  She wasn’t doing that. Not anymore. She’d go to Italy, soak up lovely scenery, drink copious amounts of alcohol, eat an obscene amount of pasta, and figure out what a woman did who’d just turned her back on every scrap of support she had—on her family, on her entire life. If that wasn’t enough of an emotional whirlpool, she was also going to come home to the stark reality of no roof over her head, no bank accounts she could access, and surely no job to report to. And most likely no one to turn to while she got on her feet. She doubted her friends would stand up to the pressure her family was certain to bring to bear on them. She couldn’t blame them for that. Her only true friend was Blaine. And she doubted he’d be opening his door to her after what she’d just done to him.

  It struck her then. So obvious, and yet previously so unthinkable. But…What if…Could she just…never go home?

  She stifled an urge to gasp. But the skies didn’t open, terror didn’t reign down. She wasn’t even struck by lightning for daring to have such an anarchist thought.

  Wow. Could she really not go home? Actually, now that she thought about it, did she really have a choice?

  She rubbed a spot over her heart, the pain there like a sharp stab. But what other choice had there been left to make? Her family hadn’t left her much of one. Yes, she should have planned a better exit strategy than bailing out on a lifetime commitment to the joint family empire then ditching it and running away from it on her wedding day.

  But…too late! There was no turning back, no do-over.

  So, okay. Fine. Good. She’d spent the past six years since completing her MBA making sure that McAuley-Sheffield, a company that employed hundreds of people, ran like a tightly oiled machine. Surely she could figure out how to run a tightly oiled company of one. She’d just pick some new place and…start from scratch. She was educated. She had skills. She had dreams. Okay maybe not actually fully realized ones, like Blaine had, but that was only because she’d been too busy being self-protective. Don’t allow yourself to want what you can’t have, and life went a lot more smoothly. With her thirtieth birthday in viewing distance, she was finally daring to dream.

  So what if, at the moment, it felt a lot more like a hallucination.

  The idea should have terrified her, or at the very least caused a case of semi-hysterical giggles. Instead…it excited her. In a terrifying, semi-hysterical way. The kind that didn’t so much make her want to giggle as to throw up again, but she could work on that part. It was early yet.

  She looked at Graham, who was still unknotting her veil. More likely he was simply politely leaving her to gather herself, and her thoughts. She appreciated both. She looked away from him and through her passenger window as her beloved waterfront hometown passed by in a blur. There was a slight prickle behind her eyes again. Nothing was ever going to be the same. Would she ever walk the docks there again? Eat ice cream at Storm Brothers? Chat up Dixon over at Waterbend? She might have issues with her family, but she loved her hometown. Deeply. In many ways, it was her only other true friend. She fought back the tears, but her deep sigh brought Graham’s head up.

  “Ye’ve done the right thing, you know.” He said it with quiet confidence, as if she’d just carried on her entire internal debate out loud. It was exactly the kind of unquestioning support she needed. Except he was a complete stranger and had absolutely no idea the enormity of what she’d just done.

  “I dinnae claim to understand what all you’re dealing with,” he said, as if reading her mind. “But you wouldn’t have been out in that garden, so angry and upset, if being inside and saying your vows was the right thing to do.” He tucked the netting in one hand and reached out with his other. “I know what I said, back in the chapel, must ha’e sounded like the rantings of a lunatic. I-I honestly don’t know where that came from. Heat of the moment, perhaps. I did mean what I said in the garden, though. I promise you, we’ll talk it all through, come up with a working plan, that does the best by both of us. You’ve my word on that.”

  He laid his hand over hers then, and she wanted to yank it away, to tell him right then and there that while she might have agreed to things back in the chapel, she had no idea what she’d been saying either. Guilt took the place of the sadness of watching her hometown fall into the distance behind th
em. But she couldn’t let that undo her.

  She’d thank him for getting her out of there, and make it worth his while, if there was any possible way to repay a man for saving her life. But she wasn’t going to Scotland with him. And she certainly wasn’t going to marry him. She’d just run from one arranged marriage.

  She’d have to be crazy to even consider running toward another, regardless of the reasons behind it.

  But she didn’t yank her hand away. Nor did she tell him any such thing. Instead she lifted her thumb and stroked the sides of his warm, strong fingers, guiltily allowing herself, for those few moments, to drink in his easy strength, his confidence.

  He was both haven and shelter. He was on her side. It was wrong of her to take that shelter and not tell him the truth. She knew that. But she had no one else. Very soon she wouldn’t have him, either.

  She’d already used up all the backbone she had in her for the day. Possibly a lifetime, comparatively speaking. It was purely about survival. She’d apologize for that, too. Later. As soon as they got to the airport and escape was in sight.

  After all, she’d already left one man at the altar. How hard could it be to leave another at a ticket counter?

  Chapter 4

  “Thank you,” she told him. “For the support. I know you don’t understand why I’d even put myself in that situation. It’s—”

  “Complex,” he finished. “That, I understand. We are oftentimes at the mercy of our duty to others. I’m no’ passing judgment, sitting as I am, on the outside looking in, anymore than I’d want anyone judging me.” He gestured between them, smiling. “Given the circumstances.”

  She relaxed a bit further, and he was glad he’d cleared the air somewhat. After their rather dramatic exit from the church, changing the topic to the matter at hand—at least where he was concerned—wasn’t an easy task.