Brilliant. I was almost there, I could see massive stone walls ahead, and a gate, but my car was stalled on account of the sudden snow storm and the fact that the rental was not a sturdy four wheel drive. In fact a four wheel drive would probably drive over my car and think it was a speed bump.
I’d managed to pull it into what looked like a layby, so it was out of the way at least.
I had to admit that heels hadn’t been the most practical driving footwear. But, I was no longer driving so there was that.
Everything was turning white. No sign of another human. When I’d got the information detailing his address, the fact that I’d been working in Edinburgh had been serendipitous. I’d made a spur of the moment decision to come here in person but I hadn’t really factored in the actual Highlands. And an impending snow storm.
And now, I was in danger of being snowed in before I could get through the gates of my destination. My phone had no signal and my sat nav had stopped working back around the last majestic mountain peak. I had to hand it to the Scots, we Irish did beautiful landscapes but theirs were like super-sized epic versions of ours.
Everything was bigger, stiller, more dramatic. Showing off basically.
I held up my phone. Still no service. Panic fluttered and I pushed it down. Edinburgh felt very far away. Dublin, where I was from and lived, felt even further away. I couldn’t keep the car engine running indefinitely. The windscreen wipers were becoming stuck because the snow was coming so thick and fast now. Shite.
I’d have to get out and walk. The fact that I couldn’t even see any kind of building was a little daunting. He won’t be here, I assured myself. I’d long ago given up trying to geo-locate Jamie Ross – his job took him all over the globe and he was as likely to be in Borneo as in Scotland. All I had to do was find the house and put the papers through the letter box. In and out. However with no idea how far beyond the gates a house might be, I was woefully underdressed for a storm, in a trouser suit, silk shirt and the aforementioned high heels.
Well, in my defence, I had come straight from the wedding I’d been overseeing. Weddings were my business. Not that I’d had a brilliant example in my parents. They’d divorced when I was twelve and yet somehow I’d found that I had a prodigious talent for curating the wedding fantasy.
Maybe, because I didn’t buy into the fantasy, it gave me an edge over competitors. I ignored the prick of my conscience that I wasn’t as immune to the lure of the Happy Ever After as I’d like to pretend. As had been excruciatingly exposed three years ago.
I’m sure a psychologist would suggest that by choosing to be in control of weddings, I was healing childhood trauma but the way I figured it, the business model was as solid as undertaking. Like death, weddings were never going out of fashion.
If I was going to get out and walk, I’d have to change into something more practical and the only other clothes I had with me were my traveling clothes, jeans and a jumper. And sneakers. I put on the hazard lights to warn any oncoming vehicles to the car, took a deep breath and opened the door. A blast of icy wind cut right through me. My carefully styled bouncy sleek waves were the first to take a hit, hair strands slapping me in the face like little icy whips.
I opened the boot and took off my suit jacket in preparation to change and tried not to be so conscious that I was now on Jamie Ross’s home turf.
Just then I heard the rumble of an engine behind me and turned around to see a green four-wheel drive, lights shining through the swirling snow. It stopped.
My heart palpitated. It wouldn’t possibly be – the driver’s door opened and a figure got out and walked around the front of the vehicle. Barely visible. But I could make out he was tall. Broad. He was wearing a hat and thick jacket. He stopped a couple of feet away.
‘Christ’s sake, I almost ran you over.’
It was him. Even in the middle of the growing snow storm and fading light I recognised that voice. He seemed way bigger than I remembered.
‘Hi, Jamie.’ My voice felt thin and reedy.
The figure went very still and then took another step towards me. Suddenly I could see him properly and my legs felt weak. Even swaddled as he was, his sheer good looks stood out. Those dark eyes. The shock arresting his features told me he’d recognised me.
He said as if he couldn’t believe it, ‘Lucy?’
I nodded. I had sometimes wondered if we met again would he recognise me at all? So this was somewhat heartening that he did. And then I remembered why I was here and locked my legs. There was nothing heartening about this reunion. It was long overdue.
He said, ‘What are you doing here?’ He sounded baffled. He certainly wasn’t looking at me like I was someone he’d desperately missed. I tried not to let it land inside me like a dead weight. The same lead weight I’d felt when I’d finally heard from him, but through a legal proxy. Not him.
‘A letter from your solicitor arrived at my office, saying you wanted to set up a meeting.
He said, ‘Yes but… I’d meant at a future date… Aren’t you based in Dublin?’
Oh god, he thought I’d come all the way here from Dublin? I burned with humiliation. ‘Yes, but I happened to be in Edinburgh the last couple of days.’
I could feel the wind biting through my extremely flimsy silk shirt and trousers. My teeth started to chatter. Snow was falling fast now and I noticed Jamie’s eyes drop to my chest. I looked down to see my shirt turning transparent pretty rapidly as snow fell and sank into the material.
I looked back up, but his eyes had lifted. Maybe I’d imagined it? But treacherously I felt the heat sizzling along my veins. Welcome heat. Unwelcome reminder of his effect on me.
I tried to explain, ‘I was going to change into something more practical so I could go and find your house. The car’s stalled.’
His mouth tightened. Oh, I recognised that all right. The same shape it had made when he’d said to me three years ago, ‘This was a huge mistake’ and I’d quickly agreed for fear he might see that I hadn’t been so sure at all that it had been a mistake. And because the rejection of what we’d shared over the previous forty-eight hours had been like a physical blow to my solar plexus and a valuable lesson in never leaving myself vulnerable to hurt again.
He took off his jacket and handed it to me, ‘Put this on and get into my car, I’ll get your stuff. We need to get out of this.’
I didn’t need encouragement, I pulled on the coat which was deliciously warm and grabbed my handbag not even caring how ridiculous I must look. I was too cold.
I climbed into the Land Rover and was greeted by a wet nose and a curious tongue in my ear. I looked around to find myself eyeball to eyeball with a dog. Big and gold and shaggy. My heart melted, ‘Hi there, who are you?’
Jamie left the hazards flashing on the rental car, put my stuff into the back of this vehicle and then got back behind the wheel. I avoided looking at him. He smelled of pine and cold and something spicy.
He said, ‘That’s George.’ I noticed he whacked the heat up before he started driving again, slowly. We went through the gates and I noticed a sign: Kinlay Castle. I didn’t have time to really register it, too busy dealing with the fact that I was not a welcome surprise visitor.
But not even that could stop my insides fizzing and jumping. I snuck him a look and took in the defined lines of his face and the dark blond scruff around his jaw and mouth. His hair was peeking out from under the hat clamped onto his head. Dark blond. Thick, curling. He had dark brown eyes. Almost black. Long lashes.
He looked the same but a bit older. Grimmer. He’d be around twenty-nine now to my twenty-eight. Over the last three years I’d somehow told myself that he couldn’t possibly be as much as I remembered. But he was. His shoulders really were taking up an indecent amount of space in the vehicle, his muscles honed from his work as a nature and wildlife camerman. He worked all over the world on documentaries and TV series with some of the biggest names in the natural world.
I diverted my gaze to his hands on the wheel thinking that might be safer but it wasn’t.
They were beautiful hands. Big and square and masculine. Not soft, hard. Long fingers. Blunt nails. I remembered how his hands had felt on me, clamping tight on my hips as he’d thrust up and so deep inside me I couldn’t breathe.
Jamie flicked me a glance, ‘What were you doing in Edinburgh?’
Godammit but his voice went straight to my clit like a heat-seeking missile. I squeezed my thighs together. ‘I was working. A couple who’d been at a wedding I’d done earlier this year in Ireland had had problems and called me in last minute to take over. I run my own company now.’ I couldn’t keep the pride out of my voice.
He didn’t react. Brightly I said, ‘So when your solicitor sent that letter to say you wanted to meet and I saw that your address was a couple of hours drive away I thought why bother wasting time, I’ll just come to you.’
His jaw tightened slightly. ‘It couldn’t have waited? I would have come to Dublin.’
Confirmation as if I’d needed it that he was so not happy to have me here. Well tough. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to be here. I was just coming to deliver the divorce papers in person. My solicitor sent them over to a partner firm in Edinburgh. I presumed that’s why your solicitor was in touch.’
I noticed his hands tighten on the wheel at that. He said tightly, ‘You could have dropped them off at my solicitor’s office.’
He wasn’t denying it. I felt that like a blow. Wow. He really, really didn’t want me here. And I was cursing myself for being so impetuous. ‘Does that really matter? We do need to deal with this situation…the divorce, because it’s long overdue.’
That word hung in the air like a little toxic cloud. For three years we’d both managed to ignore it.
Oh, did I forget to mention that pertinent fact? That, I, Lucy Collins – the up-and-coming wedding planner who everyone wanted to curate their perfect Happy Ever After – have been harbouring a dirty little secret?
Specifically, a husband-of-three-years-shaped secret. Married in a quickie, slightly inebriated ceremony in a Las Vegas wedding chapel. A husband I haven’t seen since the morning after our wedding night.
Admittedly, up to now, I’d preferred to bury my head in the sand, but no more. I could feel the bulge of the papers in my bag. I welcomed the chance to finally get some closure. It was time for new beginnings.
‘That’s why you came all the way up here,’ Jamie said now. Why did that sound like a question? I was about to reply yes of course, why else? but then we came around a tree-lined corner and my jaw dropped.
