The Trouble with Scotland Read Online Free PDF Page A

armoire.
    Sadie eased herself down on the closest bed. “Sorry.”
    â€œYe’ve nothing to be sorry for. Do you want to use the loo first?”
    â€œYes.” She rose gracefully and left the room.
    He’d gotten himself into a tight spot. He wasn’t sure how to handle the lass. Even worse, how was he going to handle Deydie and the rest of the quilters when they found out he’d taken her from the village and had her out all night?
    He went to the window and stared out at the ocean until Sadie came back. He didn’t say anything or look in her eyes as he walked from the room to take his turn in the loo. When he came back, she was wrapped in one of the robes, but he could see she was still fully clothed, the hem of her dress showing.
    â€œI was cold,” she explained.
    He crossed the bedroom. “Lie down. Let’s get these covers on you.” He pulled the top quilt from his bed and spread it over her bed, too. He couldn’t help himself—he tucked the covers around her like his mum used to do for him when he was a wee lad.
    Sadie wasn’t a wee bairn, but she needed his compassion so he gave it.
    She gazed up at him with her deep brown eyes. “Thanks. For everything.”
    What could he say? It was his pleasure? Well, it had been . . . up until the point he’d learned who she was.
    He turned off the lights, and the room went dark. The moon was high, though, and he had no trouble making it to his bed. He pulled back the remaining cover and lay down. How strange the day had turned out.
    â€œRoss?” she said into the darkness.
    â€œYes?”
    He watched as she wrestled with the quilts to face him, his tucking-in job wasted.
    â€œWhy aren’t you married?”
    â€œWhere is that coming from?”
    â€œI’m curious. I was right about you. You’re a nice guy, and Harry’s trying to set you up? There has to be a story behind it all.”
    They’d spent most of their time in silence today, but now she wanted to talk? He guessed he could say anything under the blanket of night . . . even the truth.
    Ross sighed. “I was engaged once. Do ye have a beau back in the States?”
    Sadie snorted again. “Not hardly. Tell me about your engagement. Unless, of course, it’s too painful.”
    Ross could’ve produced his own snort, but he didn’t. “Nay. Not painful at all. Her name is Pippa. She’s a childhood friend. She runs the factory just outside of town. Our das set it up when we were kids.”
    â€œI met Pippa today, and her husband Max. They drove us into town after the bus broke down. You were engaged to her? An arranged marriage?”
    â€œSomething like that.” He told her what had happened over Christmas, how his life had gone from
settled
to up-in-the-air. “Max came into town and stole Pippa’s heart.I’m happy for her. We were never more than friends.” And he’d made his mind up that if he was ever to marry, it would have to start out with fireworks like it had with Ramsay and Kit.
And Max and Pippa.
Love at first sight. That way Ross would know for sure that what he was doing was the right thing and not wasting his time. And in this future relationship with his unidentified-as-yet wife, they wouldn’t be great friends at first . . . friendship would come later. In this way—hell, in all ways—his mystery wife would have to be the opposite of Pippa. He didn’t even know what that would mean exactly, but she would just have to be nothing like her. He finished telling Sadie the rest, admitting one of his greatest flaws. “But I was going to go through with it and marry her anyway. I believed that doing what my father wanted me to do—hell, what the whole town wanted—was more important than what I wanted. That it was the right thing.” And somehow, doing what everyone else thought was right turned out to be wrong for