Jessica Gilmore - Her Highland Boss

‘But when you touch me, I feel...’

And there it was, out in the open. This thing between them.

‘If we’re to survive these twelve months, we need to avoid personal attraction,’ he told her.

Her face stilled. ‘You feel it, too.’

Of course I do. He wanted to shout it, but the wariness in her eyes was enough to give a man pause. That and reason. Hell, all they needed was a hot affair, a passionate few weeks, a massive split, and this whole arrangement would be blown out of the water. Even he had the sense to see hormones needed to take a back seat.

‘Jeanie, this whole year is about being sensible. You’re an attractive woman...’

She snorted.

‘With a great smile and a big heart,’ he continued. ‘And if you put a single woman and a single man together for a year, then it’s inevitable that sparks will fly. But we’re both old enough and sensible enough to know how to douse those sparks.’

‘So that’s what we’re doing for the next twelve months. Dousing sparks?’ She ventured a smile. ‘So do I pack the fire extinguisher today?’

‘If we feel the smallest spark, we hit the water. The water temperature around here is barely above freezing. That should do it. Will you come?’

There was a moment’s hesitation and then: ‘Foolish or not, I never could resist a puffin,’ she told him. ‘My only stipulation is that you don’t wear a kilt. Because sparks are all very well, Alasdair McBride, but you put a kilt on that body and sparks could well turn into a wildfire.’

He was free to make of that as he willed. She turned away, grabbed a picnic basket and started to pack.

* * *

He couldn’t just manage a boat; he was one with the thing.

Jeanie had been in enough boats with enough men—she’d even worked as crew on Rory’s fishing trawler—to recognise a seaman when she saw one.

Who could have guessed this smooth, suave businessman from Edinburgh, this kilted lord of all he surveyed at Duncairn, was a man who seemed almost as at home at sea as the fishermen who worked the island’s waters.

The Mary-Jane was tied at the harbour wharf when they arrived, with a note from Dougal to Alasdair taped to the bollard.

Keep in radio contact and keep her safe. And I don’t mean the boat.

Alasdair had grinned, leaped lightly onto the deck and turned to help Jeanie down. She’d ignored his hand and climbed down herself—a woman had some pride. And she was being very wary of sparks.

The Mary-Jane was a sturdy cabin cruiser, built to take emergency supplies out to a broken-down fishing trawler, or as a general harbour runabout. She was tough and serviceable—but so was the man at the helm. He was wearing faded trousers, heavy boots and an ancient sweater. He hadn’t shaved this morning. He was looking...

Don’t think about how he looks, she told herself fiercely, so instead she concentrated on watching him handle the boat. The Duncairn bar was tricky. You had to know your way, but Alasdair did, steering towards the right channel, then pausing, waiting, watching the sea on the far side, judging the perfect time to cross and then nailing it so they cruised across the bar as if they’d been crossing a lake.

And as they entered open water Jeanie found herself relaxing. How long since she’d done this? Taken a day just for her? Had someone think about her?

He wanted to see the puffins himself, she told herself, but a voice inside her head corrected her.

He didn’t have to do this. He didn’t have to bring me. He’s doing it because I need a break.

It was a seductive thought all by itself.

And the day was seductive. The sun was warm on her face. Alasdair adjusted his course so they were facing into the waves, so she hardly felt the swell—but she did feel the power of the sea beneath them, and she watched Alasdair and she thought, There’s power there, too.

He didn’t talk. Maybe he thought she needed silence. She did and she was grateful. She sat and let the day, the sea, the sun soak into her.

This was as if something momentous had happened. This was as if she’d walked through a long, long tunnel and emerged to the other side.

Was it just because she’d taken the day off? Or was it that she’d set her future for the next twelve months, and for the next year she was safe?

It should be both, but she knew it wasn’t. It was strange but sitting here in the sun, watching Alasdair, she had an almost overwhelming sense that she could let down her guard, lose the rigid control she’d held herself under since the appalling tragedy of Alan, let herself be just...Jeanie.

She’d lost who she was. Somewhere along the way she’d been subsumed. Jeffrey’s daughter, Rory’s girlfriend and wife, then Alan’s woman. Then bankrupt, with half the world seeming to be after her for money owed.

Then Eileen’s housekeeper.

She loved being the housekeeper at Duncairn but the role had enveloped her. It was all she was.

But today she wasn’t a housekeeper. She wasn’t any of her former selves. Today she was out on the open sea, with a man at the helm who was...

Her husband?

There was nothing prescribed for her today except that she enjoy herself, and suddenly who could resist? She found herself smiling. Smiling and smiling.

‘A joke?’ Alasdair asked softly, and she turned her full beam onto him.

‘No joke. I’ve just remembered why I love this place. I haven’t been to sea for so long. And the puffins... I can’t remember. How far out?’

‘You mean, are we there yet?’ He grinned back and it was a grin to make a girl open her eyes a little wider. It was a killer grin. ‘Isn’t that what every kid in the back seat asks?’

‘That’s what I feel like—a kid in the back seat.’ And then she looked ahead to the granite rock needles that seemed to burst from the ocean floor, isolated in their grandeur. ‘No, I don’t,’ she corrected herself. ‘I feel like I’m a front-seat passenger. It’s one of these rocks, isn’t it, where the puffins are found?’

‘The biggest one at the back. The smaller ones are simply rock but the back one has a landmass where they can burrow for nests. They won’t nest anywhere humans can reach. It means we can’t land.’

‘We’d need a pretty long rope ladder,’ Jeanie breathed, looking at the sheer rock face in awe. And then she forgot to breathe... ‘Oh-h-h.’

It was a long note of discovery. It was a note of awe.

For Alasdair had manoeuvred the boat through a gap in the island rock face and emerged to a bay of calm water. The water was steel grey, fathoms deep, and it was a mass of...

Puffins. Puffins!

Alasdair cut the motor to just enough power to keep clear of the cliffs. The motor was muted to almost nothing.

The puffins were everywhere, dotted over the sea as if someone had sprinkled confetti—only this confetti was made up of birds, duck-sized but fatter, black and white with extraordinary bright orange bills; puffins that looked exactly like the ones Jeanie had seen in so many magazines, on so many posters, but only ever once in real life and that so long ago it seemed like a dream.

Comical, cute—beautiful.

‘They have fish,’ she breathed. ‘That one has... It must be at least three fish. More. Oh, my...I’d forgotten. There’s another. And another. Why don’t they just swallow them all at once?’

‘Savouring the pleasure?’ Alasdair said, smiling just as Aladdin’s genie might have done in the ancient fairy tale. Granting what he knew was a wish...

‘You look like a benevolent Santa,’ Jeanie told him and he raised his brows.

‘Is that an accusation?’

‘I... No.’ Because it wasn’t. It was just a statement.