Emotion choked him.
His brother’s strength was humbling.
Nodding, he patted Thane’s hand and tried to get a grip on the thickness in his throat.
“Does that nod mean you’re going to pull your head out of your arse and go to Robyn?”
Lachlan’s pulse leapt at the thought. “Aye.” He nodded. “Let’s just hope she’ll take me back.”
“Well.” Thane stood, grinning at him. “You’ll have a better chance if you go to her not smelling like a distillery.”
Lachlan grimaced. “Right. Food, shower, brush my teeth first.”
And then he’d go to her.
Because Robyn was wrong.
She was the one worth fighting his fears for, and he refused to be another person in her life who didn’t put her first.
After enduring breakfast with his family (his head was killing him and as much as he loved his niece, she was going through a phase of shout-talking), Lachlan decided to cross the land between their homes and use his place for once.
Letting himself into the large home, he pictured Robyn there and wished he’d brought her to see it and made love to her in the large master that overlooked the inlet. While there was a large, open-plan living space from the front to the back of the house—the kitchen and lounging area set against wall-to-wall bifold doors that opened out onto a deck that looked out over the Ardnoch Firth—there were also smaller rooms behind the kitchen. There was a small viewing room with a giant picture window and window seat where you could sit, lean against the glass, and look out over the water.
Robyn would love it.
Hurrying upstairs to the master that sat above the kitchen with its own overhanging deck, he moved with urgency. Shower, dress, get to Robyn.
Two days was far too long as it was for her to think he didn’t love her the way she loved him.
He shook his head in wonder as he stepped into the shower.
Robyn loved him.
How did he get so goddamn lucky?
It seemed implausible, but he wasn’t going to question his good fortune.
In the walk-in closet, he chose clothes without his usual care for appearance.
In fact, he was so focused on Robyn, the sudden explosion of pain across the back of his head and the lights sparking in his vision came out of nowhere. Confusion was the last feeling to absorb him as he stepped into his bedroom, the floor the last thing he saw, coming toward him at speed, before everything went dark.
35
Robyn
While extremely cozy, Mac’s cottage seemed to close in on me. In the sitting room, I stared around dazedly with hands on my hips. Outside, vigilant in a car, were two members of the security team. Guarding me. I flinched thinking how much paying for this had to be draining Lachlan’s coffers.
But Mac wouldn’t have felt free to leave me to go to work on the estate if his men weren’t outside. And I’d promised I’d stay put today, a promise I now regretted.
I was not a person who lounged around the house.
Deciding I could work on uploading new shots to my website, I moved to return upstairs for my laptop when I saw the pile of get-well cards sitting on Mac’s coffee table. Oh right. He’d told me those came through the letterbox for me from the villagers after they heard about the car acc—well, it wasn’t an accident. The car incident.
I smiled at the thought, thinking how different it was living in a village compared to Boston. Growing up, Mom complained all the time how much things had changed since she was a kid.
“This used to be a community,” she’d gripe. “Now my neighbors can barely look me in the eye long enough to say a goddamn good-morning.”
But here, in Ardnoch, people cared enough to send a card to someone who’d only lived among them for a few months. Deciding to open the cards first, I brought the pile into the kitchen, made coffee, and sat at the table. There was one from Gordon and his wife. One from Morag and her husband. Chen and her husband Wang Lei, Janet from the tourist shop, Suveer and Moira from the chocolate shop, and even a bunch from villagers I didn’t know well or hadn’t even met. A card from Arrochar, and one from Thane and the kids. There was even one from Jock and his family.
I was just reading a cute little card from Fergus when something prodded the back of my mind.
To Robyn,
Hope you feel better soon.
Fergus
I squinted at the handwritten card with its succinct, straight-to-the-point message. What was so familiar about it? Irritated, I took another sip of coffee, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off the words.
What was—
I tensed with dawning. “No way.”
It wasn’t the words that were familiar—it was the handwriting.
Suddenly, I was running through the cottage and only the tender scream of my ribs slowed me as I attempted to hoof it upstairs. Damn it, I huffed, irritated at my body. I still hurt from the crash.
Grabbing my laptop, I hurried downstairs and ignored the jarring pain of it against my bruised ribs. I was too excited to slow down.
Back in the kitchen, I reopened the card after opening Lachlan’s case file. I’d transferred it from Mac’s laptop to mine weeks ago.
Zooming in on the photo of the Post-it Notes Mac was obliged to hand over to the police, a chill brushed down my back.
We missed it. We should have ordered all of Ardnoch’s staff members to write something down for handwriting forensics to analyze.
I placed the get-well card up against the screen, my eyes bouncing from it to the Post-its bearing the message “Why don’t you see me?” Those were the ones that had been placed all over Lachlan’s stage office at the castle.
There was no mistaking it.
It was the exact handwriting.
Fuck!
I’d suspected the little shit weeks ago when Mac was first attacked, but I’d let his good-boy attitude and the Adairs’ belief in him sway me from questioning him further.
The handwriting was something, but we would need more evidence. Fergus was working at the estate because it wasn’t his day off and Lachlan hadn’t furloughed him. Quickly checking the file I’d obtained from Mac with staff addresses, I memorized Fergus’s.
I should call Mac. Yet I knew he’d leave me behind and go after Fergus without me. I wanted the satisfaction of getting the evidence to nail this prick. Call it stupid pride, call it vengeance, but this was personal. And it wasn’t like I’d go alone. I couldn’t.
There were two bodyguards waiting outside in a car.
Grabbing a few supplies, as ready as I could be, I locked up the cottage behind me and walked over to the car with the alert security guys. I slid into the back seat, and the two men turned to look at me.
“I’m Robyn,” I introduced myself. “You are?”
“Gillies,” the driver said.
“Smithy,” the other replied. “Problem?”
“Yeah. I need you to take me somewhere.”
“Okay.” Gillies switched on the engine. “Address?”
I told them, and he popped it into his GPS.
Only a few minutes later, I realized we were driving toward Arrochar’s bungalow. But then we veered off onto a quiet cul-de-sac with an ugly-looking, midcentury apartment block situated around a pretty courtyard. Arrochar’s home was a mere few minutes from here.