Scotland for Christmas (Harlequin Superromance) Read online

  And he would tell her, even though there was a good chance she might leave him.

  There was a large, flat rock at the side of the meadow, and Isabel went to it, drawing up her feet and sitting cross-legged. She looked as though she belonged there, on a hike on a beautiful day in the country with him.

  “You’re easy to love, you know that?” He wished he could erase everything he’d done up until this moment and start over again. He sat beside her, looking out over the field. “Alex was an idiot.”

  She smiled sadly. “Maybe, but I don’t care about that anymore.” She rubbed his chest. “Jacob, I’m really sorry about your dad. Emily didn’t know how he died until just now, did she?”

  “I’m not sure what my siblings know, honestly.” He sat beside her and put his chin in his hands. “I’ll make things right with her later. Right now I’m more concerned about you.”

  He interlaced his fingers with hers. Their situation killed him. Every day was slipping by so quickly. He really did want her to stay with him longer. “We don’t have much time left.”

  “I know.” Isabel turned, sliding her arms around his waist in a sweet, sexy hug. “I’ve been thinking about that, too.” Shyly, she nibbled at his ear. He was instantly aroused. He just wanted her so damn badly.

  “When you come home with me for Christmas,” she whispered, “will you be coming because you want to visit Scotland, or...because of me?” She lowered her eyes. “I mean, I just...wish you cared more about spending Christmas with me.” She put her hand on her chest. “This isn’t coming out right, is it?”

  “It’s coming out perfectly.” His voice was hoarse. “You want me to go with you because of you.”

  She nodded. “I’d be lying if I said otherwise. It’s Christmas,” she whispered. “It’s not a time to be...false.”

  “No,” he said, “it isn’t.”

  “I don’t want to pretend anymore.” Isabel stared at her hands, twisting them in her lap. “I know what I feel. I mean...of course I want you to go for dinner with my uncle and me, that goes without saying. But it’s grown into more than that for me.” She gazed up at him. “I loved meeting your friends and your family. I like feeling closer to you.”

  He traced her cheek with his finger. He just wanted to make love to her. Skip all this other stuff they needed to talk about.

  “Say what you will about your family,” Isabel said, laughing softly, “but they really do want to be together. Do you see how careful they are with each other?”

  “They’re careful with my mom because they don’t want to upset her,” he said.

  She blinked at him, a questioning look on her face.

  Dammit.

  There was no turning back. He’d started on this path. All he could do was hope she understood.

  “Please hear me out,” he said quietly. “Don’t leave me until I’m finished.”

  “Why would I leave you?”

  He took a breath. “Because me being your bodyguard? That wasn’t an accident.”

  She looked at him in disbelief.

  He ran a hand through his hair and plowed on. “I asked my friend Lee to help me meet your uncle. Driving you to Vermont was the solution he came up with.”

  Her face seemed to pale. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Because...” This was where he had to choose his words carefully. “I needed some information about my real father that only your uncle knows.”

  Isabel was blinking fast, no doubt thinking back to that weekend. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

  “Because I hadn’t fallen for you earlier, Isabel.”

  Her hands went to her head as if she was angry and flustered. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”

  Which part? That he’d fallen for her? Or that he’d used a job with her to meet her uncle? “It’s all true.”

  She pushed up from the rock and paced between two trees, rubbing her arms. “What did you need to know about your real father? What does he have to do with my uncle?”

  Jacob braced himself. “The name Donald Ross doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t understand.”

  This had gone on too long. Jacob was sick and tired of the whole charade. “Donald Ross was the policeman who was killed during your cousins’ rescue.”

  Her hand went to her heart. She seemed to be in shock.

  “Isabel, I need to know what happened to him,” he said quietly.

  “Does my uncle know this is why you were at the wedding?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He was all in, going for broke now. He had to be completely honest with her. “Positive. I was in the middle of talking to him about it when you walked into the men’s room and he invited us for Christmas.”

  “You didn’t!” She held her head with both hands. “You told him that? He knows why you were there at the wedding and I didn’t?” She rocked, in pain, seeming to be thinking through the ramifications.

  “I doubt he’ll hold anything against you.” He hurried to reassure her. “He realizes that you and I have something important in common. I’m sure he figured we would work it out between us.”

  “You and I have nothing in common when it comes to this!” she said, her voice shaking. “I didn’t betray you.” She thumped her chest. “I don’t betray people I care about.” Her voice cracked. “All this time, and you should have told me what was going on.”

  What could he say to that? She was right—he wished he could have told her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me when I first asked you to be my date to the wedding?” she asked.

  He only had the obvious answer. “Because our trust wasn’t strong enough. You wouldn’t have helped me.”

  “No, your trust wasn’t strong enough. My trust is fine. I would’ve realized the importance of what you were asking, and I would’ve found some way to help.”

  “You would have?” His wonder at her never ceased.

  “Our families are connected in this, Jacob.” She shook her head. “But you didn’t give me a chance.”

  “Isabel, I just want this finished. I’m tired of the effects rippling through us. You were at dinner today—you saw how everybody clams up at the mention of Scotland. I was born there, too, by the way. And yet I can’t talk—”

  “You were born there?” Her mouth fell open. She stared at the scarf—the Black Watch scarf she’d given him—and then back to his eyes. “All this time you’ve let me go on and on, getting closer to you and telling you things about Scotland that you already knew, and yet you still couldn’t tell me?” Her voice rose, and she stood.

  “Isabel, wait...”

  She turned. “Do you even have any idea how you’ve hurt me with my uncle? I’ve given up everything to try to be CEO because it means that much to me. I promised my father, Jacob. My father—on his deathbed. And you, by making me look foolish, using me for my connection to my uncle, you’ve done me more damage than anyone else ever could have.”

  “Isabel, I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I really am.”

  “I wish I could believe you.” She looked so worried and upset. Jacob had threatened everything she most cared about in herself. He saw that now.

  She walked away from him, the wind blowing in her hair. His heart sank to see her leave, but after everything, he couldn’t blame her.

  “I wouldn’t have done it,” he called to her, “if I hadn’t had a damn good reason.”

  “There is no reason good enough,” she turned and shouted.

  He jogged toward her. “But you haven’t even asked me what my reason was. What drove me to do something so crazy and outrageous.” He went to her, stood as close as he could without touching her or making
her back away. They were both breathing heavily.

  “I never would have done this,” he said quietly, gazing into her stricken face, hoping he could convince her, “if my employer hadn’t been pushing me to find out. The only place I could find the information was from your uncle. Of course I want to know what happened to my father, especially the more I get into it. But it’s the Secret Service who really made me see that the only way to solve this, to get my transfer at work, is to go to Scotland and conduct my own investigation of the kidnapping and—”

  “Stop!” Isabel gaped at him. “Are you saying that you told my uncle you need to investigate the kidnapping of Malcolm and Rhiannon? That’s what you said to him?”

  “Well, yeah, that’s what I need to do, in a nutshell. What did you think we were talking about?”

  She backed away from him, her face etched in pain.

  He stepped forward and reached for her arm. “Isabel, wait...”

  “Don’t.” She’d balled her fists, but in the end she just pushed him, two flat palms on his chest. She packed more of a wallop than he’d believed possible.

  He stumbled backward. Off balance, he reached for a tree trunk to straighten himself.

  “After all this time, you have no consideration for what’s important to me,” she said, her voice shaken. “You don’t even see how you’ve destroyed my chances with my uncle. That’s the worst of it.”

  “Isabel—”

  “Don’t ever talk to me again. Don’t even call me.”

  And then she turned and strode up the hill.

  He straightened, brushing his palms on his pant legs. Isabel was headed in the wrong direction, away from the house and deeper into the woods. “Where are you going?” he yelled.

  She had pulled her phone out and was punching buttons as she walked. He loped after her, and in a few strides was beside her.

  “Please stay away,” she insisted, holding up her hand like a stop sign.

  He saw that she was messing with the location app on her phone, probably trying to figure out a way home that didn’t involve him. He’d ruined their relationship that badly.

  But he was still on her side. He was worried about her. He cared about her. “I brought you here,” he said. “Let me at least get you home safely.”

  “No,” she said flatly. “I can’t be with you any longer.”

  “Isabel, don’t—”

  She stopped. “This is my life you’re messing with! You made me look like a fool, and to the one person whom I cannot look a fool to. You should know that you betrayed me in the worst way possible to me.” She glanced at the path, reassessed where she was heading and then started speed walking back to the house.

  “I’m sorry,” he called to her.

  She turned her head back to him. “There’s nothing you can do to fix this. The damage is done.”

  “Let’s talk it through,” he reasoned.

  “I need to go home.” She stopped and scrolled through more information on her phone.

  “Are you calling your uncle?” he asked, catching up to her.

  “It’s late in Scotland. Of course not.”

  She was probably calling a taxi.

  “At least let me find someone to drive you home safely,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Lee Palmontari. I can ask him to send a car here.”

  “Right,” she said sarcastically. “The man who set you up with me in the first place. He knew about the connection with my family’s kidnapping, too, didn’t he? And don’t lie.”

  “Lee’s a good man,” Jacob said quietly. “He warned me not to screw this up, and it’s not his fault that I did.”

  That seemed to appease her, his admission that he’d made a mistake. Well, he had. A colossal one.

  “I wish you’d told me the truth before you met my uncle,” she said again.

  “Would you have helped me if I had? Honestly? If you’d had to choose between helping me and staying on your uncle’s good side, which would you have done?”

  “We’ll never know, will we?” She turned away, looking as if she was going to cry.

  Jacob felt like the world’s biggest jerk. He wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know how.

  He let his hands hang to his sides. “I’ll call Lee,” he said finally. “He lives twenty minutes away. You can trust him with your life.”

  She didn’t argue, because really, what was she going to do? Call a taxi? Even if Isabel managed to reach a dispatcher on the holiday, they were still forty-five minutes from Metro-North, the nearest train station with service to Manhattan.

  Jacob pulled out his phone and called Lee while she hugged herself, shivering.

  “It’s me,” Jacob said when Lee picked up. “I wouldn’t be calling if this wasn’t an emergency.”

  “That’s why I picked up,” Lee said. “Jake, what did you do?”

  “I...” He looked into Isabel’s eyes. They were watering now.

  He tore his hand through his hair. “I’m begging you to come to my parents’ house, pick up Isabel Sage and drive her back to the city for me.”

  There was a long silence. Jacob knew he was asking a lot of his friend, on Thanksgiving Day, during family time.

  “You’re begging me?” Lee finally said. “Since when do you beg?”

  Jacob bit the side of his cheek. “Since now,” he said.

  There was another silence. “I’ll be right there.”

  Jacob closed his eyes. He ended the call, put the phone in his pocket and opened his eyes to face Isabel.

  She was walking alone, across the meadow toward his parents’ house. He followed her down the path, across the backyard.

  At the house, she paused before heading up the porch steps. With a resolute grasp, she pulled back the sliding-glass door and went inside.

  But it was the old Isabel inside his family’s kitchen, polite and poised. Thanking his parents for inviting her. Saying goodbye to Emily and his other relatives.

  And then, a few minutes later, she was outside again, this time at the end of the driveway, standing beside the mailbox. He walked over to wait with her. But he didn’t have to stay long, because Lee roared up in his 4x4 pickup truck. Lee wore a sweatshirt and a New York Rangers cap.

  Isabel opened the passenger door and climbed into the front seat. Jacob headed for the driver’s side and leaned into the open window. “Thank you,” he said quietly to Lee.

  Lee shrugged. “It was a boring game anyway. Pretty much a blowout.”

  Jacob hadn’t even thought about watching football. “You know where Isabel lives, right? Please get her home safely.”

  “Will do. We’ll, ah, talk tomorrow, Jacob.”

  Jacob nodded. He stood back and gave the roof of the truck two light taps with his palm, by force of habit.

  He watched them drive away. He felt numb. His brain didn’t seem to process anything. He only knew that he’d screwed up.

  “Jacob!” Emily hurried down the front stairs, barefoot, not wearing a jacket and shivering. She handed him a sealed envelope. “This is for you from Dad. And Isabel forgot her purse.”

  “Oh, hell,” Jacob muttered as he took the bag from his sister. But he sucked in his breath and smiled at her as best he could, pocketing the envelope she’d handed him, too. “Hey. You want to talk about anything?”

  “No! I want you to go get her!”

  Jacob wanted that, too, but Isabel had made it clear she didn’t want to see him. He didn’t tell Emily or anyone else that, however, because he still hoped that he could fix this situation for both of them. There had to be a way. The forgotten purse, at least, gave him a reason to see her.

  After he said his goodbyes, he set Isabel’s purse on his front seat and drove back to the city, alone.
r />   By now it was dark. He took the long way, with all the lights and the traffic and the extra cars and people. He didn’t want to be on a lonely back road in the dark, not now.

  He kept an eye on his phone, also on the seat beside him. How many times had Isabel called him over the past two weeks? Plenty. He knew she had her phone with her—he’d seen it in her hand. But she didn’t call him now.

  Obviously, she would need her purse—he couldn’t remember if her apartment keys were inside or not. Lots more stuff was inside, as well, but no way was he risking betraying her by rummaging through her private things.

  He kept waiting for his cell phone to light up—maybe even with Donna’s number so that Eddie could arrange to pick up the purse for Isabel—but it never did.

  Isabel wanted to avoid him that much.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THAT EVENING, ISABEL paced her apartment, hands over her ears. She’d calmed down a bit during the drive home, though she still hadn’t processed everything Jacob had confessed. It had taken all her control not to quiz Jacob’s friend Lee. Did you know he was going to do this when you gave him the job of driving me?

  She thought of everything she’d gone through with Jacob that first weekend he’d shown up in her residence as her bodyguard—from Alex breaking up with her to introducing him to her family at Malcolm’s wedding, and ending with Jacob kissing her.

  Kissing her! And then, somehow, Jacob managing to find his way to Uncle John before she could, saying God only knew what to him.

  That was the real problem she needed to concentrate on fixing. In all likelihood, Uncle John now considered her incompetent—or at least gullible, which to him was the same thing.

  She’d wanted to be with Jacob at that wedding. She’d enjoyed his company, and she’d thought they had a connection. But it was also her fault for not taking charge more, for allowing him to deceive her. Yes, in a sense she could understand why Jacob wanted to talk with her uncle. She sympathized with Jacob’s situation—felt sick that his father had died protecting her cousins—but he should have told her earlier, from that first day they’d met.

  Maybe she really could have helped him. Now she was so angry and hurt, she didn’t see how that was possible. That he’d messed with everything she had worked so hard to achieve during her months in New York only made the pain worse.