He released her hand. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
He’d doled out cash he didn’t have for a new mattress, bedding, and towels for her, and Cheryl had decorated the room for him. He wasn’t sure the New York skyline duvet cover and matching lamp from Tesco would be to Portia’s taste, but she’d deal with it.
He maneuvered around her giant suitcase and rolling bag. He couldn’t imagine how much the set had cost. “What’ve you got in there, an elephant?”
“No, I’ve got several folding chairs for men who act like fitting your entire life into two bags is some kind of diva move.”
It seemed she’d tucked vulnerable Portia away again. Good. He didn’t need her giving him calf eyes when he was in the mood for veal.
He hefted the larger bag and headed into the hallway, stowing his complaints, and the only sound behind him was the wheels of her rolling suitcase on the thin runner that covered the old hardwood floor. His office and room were on the topmost floor, and he tried to manage some sense of dignity and grace as he lugged her bag down the stairs to the next landing.
“This is a beautiful building,” she said, as they walked down the corridor toward the guest room. Her room. In Tav’s home.
Fucking hell.
“It looks imposing on the outside, but up here feels homey,” she said. Homey was a nice way of saying “run down,” he figured. He could tell she was trying to be friendly, but his eyes still burned and the bloody bag was heavier than he’d anticipated; he refused to give in and roll it.
“How old is this place? The exterior looks Georgian but I’m guessing it’s been renovated more recently than the seventeen hundreds.”
“It’s old,” he said.
Beads of sweat were breaking out on his hairline and her room was still a few meters away. Dammit. How had she carried this on a train? He imagined men had fallen over themselves to help her with the luggage. After all, Kevyn was the one who had dragged it up to his office unnecessarily.
“When did you move in?” she asked.
“Almost twenty years ago,” he said. “Let out the extra rooms to my uni friends for a few years, and then I got married and moved and rented out all the rooms. When we separated and I started the business, I moved back in and stopped renting.”
And he regretted it every time he saw a moving truck carrying away one of the neighborhood’s residents and replacing them with people escaping the even higher rent of the tonier Edinburgh neighborhoods. He knew time stood still for no man, and he couldn’t run a boarding house, but sometimes he felt like an alien on the streets he’d walked since he was a wean.
“Twenty years?” The sound of her luggage wheels grew louder and then she was beside him, peering up into his face with her bloodshot eyes. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight.” Just a few more steps to her room.
“Whoa. That’s . . .”
He shot her an annoyed look.
“Not old at all!”
She was near thirty herself, according to what Jamie had told him, but Tav had never felt older—huffing as he carried a suitcase with a bright young thing chirping up at him.
“Wait, so you bought this place when you were eighteen?”
They reached the door and he dropped the suitcase in front of it with a thud and took a controlled breath through his nose. He opened the door and ushered her in ahead of him, mostly so he could have a second to wipe the sheen of sweat that had gathered on his forehead.
“One of the benefits of having a rich shite for a biological father. They leave you their extra properties. Was probably a write-off for the codger.”
Tav wouldn’t know. He’d never met his bio dad and had never sought him out either—he’d never cared to meet the type of man who’d impregnate a refugee who’d lost everything, then abandon her and their child.
He glanced at Portia and took in her look of discomfort, then realized he was scowling hard.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have pried,” she said. “It’s just a fantastic building. My entire place in New York is about the size of this room, has walls as thin as tissue paper, and would sell for as much as the GDP of a small nation.”
Tav kept himself from commenting on the last bit, by the skin of his teeth. She was a spoiled, rich American, but he didn’t want to see those puppy dog eyes again.
“Pry away, it’s fine. It worked out for me. Mum married when I was young, so I got a life with a great dad and property from a shite one.”
“Sounds like a pretty good deal.” She flopped down on the bed and sighed, snuggling into the duvet. “I’m sorry, all the traveling is catching up to me.”
He looked at her sprawled out on the bed with her eyes fluttering shut, with that damn nose, and that damn mouth, and those damned freckles. He liked looking at her, and he hated that he liked it. He didn’t want to.
A passing fancy was one thing, but this jittery awareness of her felt both new and devastatingly familiar.
Nope. Not dirtying my soles on that road again. The destination is always disappointment.
Her eyes flew open and she gazed up at him, one hand pressing into the bed as if testing it. “Do you have a mattress topper or something? This mattress is kinda . . .”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Tav turned and walked out of the room, closing the door soundly behind him.
He was going to kill Jamie.
Chapter 3
Now thrust like you’re trying to disembowel me. Come on! I’m the English marauder come to storm your castle, and those weak-ass jabs aren’t going to stop me!”
Sweat poured down Portia’s neck. The gray silk blouse she’d chosen to wear was soaked through beneath her breasts and down her back; she was sure she looked like a Rorschach test in which one could find the image of a woman who was going to need an Epsom bath soon. At least her jeans were proving they’d been worth the money for the stretchtech/denim blend. Her heels were lined up on the bleachers because she was good in heels, but not that good.
She hadn’t expected to do anything but observe the class; Jamie and his wife Cheryl had been out all day, so they hadn’t been able to go over the parameters of the internship earlier. She’d avoided Tavish as best she could by walking around the neighborhood and checking out coffee shops, trying not to replay her disastrous first morning in Scotland on a humiliating mental loop, then fallen asleep in her room for a few hours. She was dressed more “casual chic” than “CrossFit” when she’d walked into the gymnasium located just off of the courtyard, she’d realized that when Jamie said “come check out my class before we chat” he’d actually meant “come meet my sadistic drill sergeant alter ego.”
Jamie—tall, dark-skinned, with short, glossy curls that made her want to ask what product he used—had pulled her into a welcoming hug, then turned and lined her up with the group of students waiting for the evening’s class to start. She’d thought herself reasonably in shape, but the Defending the Castle boot camp was kicking her ass.
They’d lifted kettle bells in a “pour boiling oil on the bastards scaling the wall” maneuver, then did wall sits in an exercise called “battering ram resistance” just before entering the hand-to-hand combat training. The gray-haired older woman beside Portia was leaning forward and faux-parrying with all her might, but her shirt was dry and her face serene.
“Jab! Jab!” Jamie commanded, his curls bouncing as he cheerfully stabbed imaginary attackers while jogging in place.
Portia’s thighs burned and her arms were getting heavier and heavier, but even so . . . it was kind of fun. She’d tried barre, and yoga, and Pilates, but pretending to ward off attackers fulfilled some primal urge that had apparently been lying dormant within her.