going. Ella was—is—gorgeous, but she’s desperately needy, and I’m not well-equipped to deal with that. She wanted constant attention, and I was too busy trying to keep the company running to give it to her. When you’ve seen the aftermath of a roadside bomb or watched kids used as human shields, it’s hard to care much about sending text messages or arranging little surprise treats. I just didn’t have the patience to deal with Ella’s neuroses. To be honest, it was a relief when I found out that she was having an affair with Jeff.’
Lotty’s jaw dropped. ‘With your friend?’
‘Jeff was much more Ella’s type. God knows why she wanted to marry me in the first place.’
‘Apart from the sex?’ There was an unusual squeeze of lemon in Lotty’s voice, and a tinge of colour along her cheekbones. For some reason that made Corran feel better.
‘Apart from that,’ he agreed gravely.
He propped the cardboard against the wall and balled up the plastic sheeting. ‘As it turned out, it all worked out for the best. Ella would never have come up to Loch Mhoraigh. She’s a city girl, like my mother. Things got complicated with Jeff, of course, and the business went down the pan, but I’d heard from my father by then and I didn’t care as long as I could get to Mhoraigh. I agreed to an outrageous divorce settlement, which is why I’m so skint now.’
‘That doesn’t seem very fair,’ said Lotty. ‘She was the one having the affair.’
Corran shrugged. ‘But she was probably right when she said I didn’t pay her enough attention. Besides, it was my fault for choosing a woman who was as unsuitable as my mother,’ he said, stuffing the plastic into a black bin liner. ‘You’d think I would have known better.’
‘You love your mother,’ said Lotty with such certainty that his head came up and he stared at her.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘You’re looking after a dog called Pookie, for a start.’ She glanced at his mother’s dog, who was stretched out in a patch of sunlight, his flanks twitching as he dreamed of chasing rabbits.
Corran sighed. ‘It’s very hard to say no to my mother,’ he conceded. ‘I love her, of course I do, but she’s impossible. Frivolous, scatty, the attention span of a midge. Utterly unreliable. She drifts through life dispensing charm and kisses and leaving emotional and financial chaos in her wake.
‘It never occurs to my mother that someone—usually me—has to clear up the mess she leaves behind her,’ he said, jabbing the last piece of plastic into the bin bag. ‘Which is why I can’t now understand how I ever got involved with Ella in the first place. It should have been obvious that we were completely unsuited, just like my parents.’
‘Sometimes opposites attract,’ suggested Lotty, her eyes on the dustpan and brush she was using to sweep up sawdust. For some reason she was feeling dispirited.
‘In bed perhaps,’ said Corran, ‘but I’m looking for someone who’s in for the long haul now. My mother was a disaster here, and Ella would have been too. My stepmother stayed, but it was her fancy ideas that proved the real drain on the estate. It would be nice to have some female company, sure, but I’ve learnt my lesson. Next time, I’m going to be pragmatic. I’m looking for a nice, sensible, practical woman who’ll fit right in and be prepared to share my life here. I don’t need glamour. I need someone who can drive a tractor and help with the lambing.’
‘Why stick at that? Why not insist that she can cook too?’ said Lotty waspishly. ‘Then she can be really useful!’
‘The kind of woman I’m looking for will be able to cook,’ said Corran. ‘That goes without saying.’
He was warning her off. Lotty was sure of it. Just in case she was getting ideas.
Well, she had got the message. Lotty liked to think of herself as sensible, but she suspected Corran wouldn’t agree. She had done her best with the cleaning, but there was no denying the fact that her practical skills were limited. And she certainly wasn’t a cook.
She wasn’t at all the kind of woman Corran was interested in.
And, even if she was, Lotty reminded herself, she couldn’t stay at Mhoraigh. I’m looking for someone who’s in for the long haul, Corran had said. She was strictly short haul. Her allegiance was to Montluce. That was the life she had been born to. She might be loving this brief escape, but nothing altered the fact that her place was in her own country, with the people she had been brought up to serve, not in these wild hills with a grim-featured man who hadn’t even believed she would last this week.
A divorced man who would never let anyone close to him.
He wasn’t at all the kind of man she should be interested in, either.
Still, she couldn’t help the way her heart jumped when Corran came into the cottage the next morning. He had changed out of his usual old cords and holey jumper and was wearing dark trousers and a jacket. His shirt was open at the collar, but Lotty spotted a tie rolled up in his pocket. He was obviously going to wait until the very last minute before he put that on.
‘You look very smart,’ she said.
Corran grimaced as he glanced down at himself. ‘I thought I’d better brush up for the solicitor.’ He looked around the room, which was still dingy and grubby, but transformed from earlier in the week, and his gaze came back to Lotty, who was on her knees cleaning the skirting boards. ‘Are you going to be OK here on your own all day?’
‘I’ll be fine.’ Lotty wrung out a cloth into the bucket. The water was already filthy. ‘I’ve got Pookie to protect me.’
Corran snorted as he eyed the little dog, who was sitting next to her, looking like a soft toy with his bright eyes and ears cocked as if he was following the conversation.
‘He’s not what you’d call an intimidating guard dog,’ he pointed out. ‘Unless you get a burglar with a phobia about fluff, in which case he might come in handy, I suppose.’
‘No burglar is going to be bothered to come all the way out here,’ said Lotty. ‘Besides, there’s nothing to steal.’
That was true enough. Still, Corran couldn’t help worrying.
And that made him cross. This was exactly what he had been afraid of when he first let Lotty stay. Worrying about someone else. He didn’t need it, he thought irritably.
He had known Lotty would be a distraction, but he couldn’t have guessed just how great a one she would prove to be. He couldn’t shake the image of Lotty in the bath. It was as if the curve of her throat, the slim shoulders, the delicate line of her clavicle were burned into his mind. He could still see the wet, pearly skin, the arms clutched over her breasts, her soft mouth open in shock, her eyes huge and startled.
If only he wasn’t so aware of her all the time. Even when he was ripping up floorboards or knocking down walls, he could see Lotty, slender, eyes shining, smiling that smile that made something stir queerly inside him. He could still picture her wrinkling her nose at a mug of tea or chewing her lip as she studied a recipe.
Much as he would like to dismiss her as a pampered brat, Corran couldn’t deny that she was a hard worker. There was a steely resilience to her that he hadn’t
