No, not that.
On that fateful day at Dùndubhan, Cat and Alex both resolved to forget each other, but of course they can't. They've burrowed too deep under each other's skin. Nine months later, they still can't stop thinking about each other. How will it all end? Maybe they'll never forgive each other. Maybe they're both doomed. Or maybe, just maybe, you'll have to wait a bit longer to find out.
Their journey begins now.
Chapter One
Alex
The truth and I have a different sort of relationship, not best mates, but more like third cousins once removed. Maybe that explains why Catriona MacTaggart storms into my office and whacks me with a book she grabbed off my desk. I've expected to be murdered at any moment, but not by her hand. And not with my own book.
Well, at least it's a paperback.
It's possible I've given her reason to despise me, and despise me she does. Once, long ago, she loved me and wanted to make a future for us together. Whether I'd wanted that or not is irrelevant. Someone like me doesn't get a fairy-tale ending, not that I believe in true love or any of that bollocks. Fate, on the other hand… Let's just say I don't believe it's on my side.
But I should start at the beginning, right before Cat found me in my office.
For me, Monday mornings mean grading papers. Bloody awful ones. How did these children get into college when they can't write coherent sentences? One student composes his essays entirely in capital letters. Another—a girl, naturally—inserts emojis into her opuses. Staring at another depressingly awful essay, I let my mind travel back in time more than a decade, to the one student who had never disappointed me. She hadn't been my student. I'd first met her on a bench on the grassy lawn of the campus where I'd been teaching, though we spoke for only a few minutes. But I really met her when I gave a guest lecture in a colleague's classroom later that day.
The lecture hall was cavernous and filled to capacity, though I couldn't see the students in the back as more than blurry shapes. Not that I had vision problems. They were simply too far away.
I remember scanning the crowd, not paying attention to the faces, not really, just taking in the sight of so many people gathered to hear me speak. Archaeology isn't the most popular discipline, after all. But on that day, it seemed like half the campus had turned up. Only one face stood out from the crowd.
The most beautiful face I'd ever seen. The face of the Scots lass who'd told me she loved my accent.
She had creamy skin, with a faint natural blush on her cheeks, and the most captivating blue eyes, as pale as glacial ice but with a warmth behind the cool color. Her sensuous lips seemed ripe for a good, hard kiss. Her cinnamon-brown hair tumbled over her shoulders in loose waves, kissing her cheeks and leading my gaze down to her full breasts, concealed beneath her blouse. She watched me while I watched her, our gazes connected by something I couldn't define or explain. My pulse accelerated, and I licked my lips as I imagined what it might feel like to kiss her beautiful mouth.
Her name was Catriona MacTaggart.
If I'd known then that our affaire de coeur would end in disaster, and that she would curse my name for more than a decade, maybe I wouldn't have spoken to her on that bench or after my lecture. Maybe I would've stayed away from the Scots lass with the fire in her eyes and in her soul.
No, I would've seduced her anyway. The fates be damned.
That's what I'm ruminating on when Cat barges through the door, thrusting it open with such force it slams into the wall and bounces off it.
She stops on the other side of my desk, her eyes wild, breathing hard, and stabs a finger in the air at me. "Alex Thorne, you slimy, conniving bastard. What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?"
I gesture at the essays on my desk. "Grading papers."
"Donnae be cute with me." She peels her lips back, almost hissing at me when she says, "How dare you interfere in my life. I should've known it was one of your games when I was offered a tenure-track position at a university in America. What are you hoping to gain from this?"
Her naked, in my bed, that's what I hope to gain.
But I tell her something a little further from the truth, something more truth adjacent. "You are the cleverest woman I've ever met, and I knew you'd do smashingly here."
Her eyes narrow. She bends over my desk to plant both hands on its surface directly above the papers I'd been grading. "Stop your scheming. I have half a mind to quit right now and go home to Scotland. But I deserve this job, even if I didn't get it on merit, and I will prove I can do it."
The way she's bent over my desk makes her blouse pull away from her skin, revealing her skimpy bra. The breasts I'd dreamed about obsessively for so long nearly spill out of those cups.
"I know you can do the job," I say. "That's why I recommended you."
Yes, I'm sliding a bit further away from the truth, not as adjacent to it as a moment ago.
"No, it's not," she hisses, then slaps both hands on the desk. "Get this through your head, Alex. I will never have sex with you again. Never. If an asteroid were heading straight for Earth, about to annihilate every living thing on the planet, I still wouldn't have sex with you. I will never crawl into whatever dank hole you live in, you…soulless Sassenach."
"I may be British, but I do have a soul." Do I? No idea. That isn't a topic I spend much time examining. Hearing her call me a Sassenach, the Scottish word for an Englishman, I experience a strange sensation of unease. I've been called plenty of insulting names, but Cat's insult… What? Bothers me? No, it must be heartburn.
"Maybe I should have you deported," she announces, lifting her perky little nose.
"You can't. I'm an American citizen."
Cat squints at me, her lips tight. "You gave up being British?"
"No, I'm both British and American. It's called dual citizenship, love. Everyone's doing it these days."
"Cannae see what game you're playing by becoming a citizen, but I'm sure it's something dead rotten." She straightens, lifting her chin this time. "Stay away from me."
"We'll be working in the same department, so that might be rather difficult."
"I don't want to see or speak to you unless it's work related." She leans in again, and her blouse falls away from her breasts again. "No tricks, no schemes, no cons. The only conversations we will ever have will be about work. Nothing else. Understand?"
"Yes, I grasp your subtle meaning."
Her lips pucker. "Donnae be staring at my breasts. You will never see them again."
All right, I am staring at her breasts. I remember how beautiful they look bouncing above my face when she straddles me and—
"Stop that," she says, slapping her hand on my desk. "I know you're thinking about sex. You clearly weren't listening the first time, so I'll say it again." She points that finger at me one more time, the tip of it grazing my nose. "I will never sleep with you. Never. I despise you, Alex Thorne."