it was one of those long, soft Highland evenings she had come to love so much. Corran had told her it was a different story in winter, when the days were short and it was dark and bitterly cold, but in June the sun was only just setting at half past nine, and the cloudless sky was washed with an uncanny orange light.
The breeze ruffling the surface of the loch still carried the warmth of the day, but Lotty was hugging her arms together and her shoulders were hunched with tension.
‘Cold?’ Corran asked her. ‘Do you want to go back and get a jacket?’
‘No, I’m just… No, it’s fine.’ He could see her making an effort to relax her shoulders. ‘I’m fine,’ she said again, but she tucked her hair behind her ears in a gesture he had seen her make before when she was uncertain.
She had been tense all afternoon. Corran couldn’t put his finger on when things had changed. She had been her usual self on the way down to Glasgow, but gradually the ease had leaked out of the air, and then she had started talking about going home.
Her home, which wasn’t Loch Mhoraigh at all. Corran had been conscious of a nasty jolt at the reminder. Of course, he knew that Lotty wasn’t going to be there permanently—that had been the deal, after all—but he hadn’t thought she’d be thinking about going home yet.
He hadn’t thought at all. He’d just got used to Lotty being there. She’d turned into a more useful worker than Corran would ever have imagined and between them they were making good progress on the cottages. Which would explain the rush of relief when she had said that she wasn’t leaving immediately, of course.
Corran didn’t want to think about an alternative explanation.
On the whole he was glad Lotty had reminded him that she was only there temporarily. For some reason she was making a point of it today. Corran almost hadn’t recognised her when she came into the kitchen earlier. She was wearing trousers and a top, just as she had done every evening, but that outfit screamed sophistication and style. And money. Corran didn’t know much about clothes, but even he could see that it must have cost a lot of money. He wondered how many rams he could have bought for the cost of that pair of trousers.
She looked different. Elegant, expensive, a creature from a different world. She made Ella’s fashionable wardrobe look cheap. She didn’t look like she belonged at Mhoraigh any more.
And that was a good thing, Corran tried to convince himself. It made it easier for him to ignore the way her mouth tilted when she smiled. Made it easier to pretend that the blood didn’t rush to his head every time he looked into those luminous grey eyes.
She was walking beside him in silence, fiddling with the inevitable scarf at her neck, slender, straight-backed, those trousers swishing around her legs. Her face was averted slightly, and that meant he could let his eyes rest on the pure line of her throat as it swept down from her ear and curved into her shoulder. Sometimes Corran let himself imagine kissing his way down it…
He pushed the thought aside with a scowl. What was the point? Lotty was the last kind of woman he needed, Corran reminded himself. She didn’t belong here any more than Ella would have done, any more than his mother had done. There was no point in imagining what it would be like to draw her close and taste that soft, sweet mouth, to gentle his hands down her spine and discover if her skin was as warm and smooth as it looked.
No point at all.
Corran didn’t even know why he had suggested this walk. It was just reminding him how out of place Lotty was. And yet somehow she looked completely right here with the hills and the water. Somehow she felt right walking by his side.
Still thoroughly overexcited by their return, Pookie jumped around Meg, who did her best to ignore him as she trotted at Corran’s heels. They walked past the beach where they had lunch, and on around the loch side until the track petered into a narrow deer path which led at last to a perfect curve of beach at the end of the loch. Behind, the hills soared up into the sky, while the loch stretched gleaming down the glen.
Lotty just stood and looked for a while. Then she drew a long breath. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.
‘I always think of this as my beach,’ said Corran. ‘I used to come here all the time. No one ever found me—not that they would ever have looked.’
He sat down on the ledge of tufty grass, stretching his legs out onto the shingle. After a moment, Lotty sat down beside him, close but not touching.
The spectacular light was fading slowly from orange to a purplish colour, but it wouldn’t get properly dark until well after midnight. It was lovely to be out without the midges pestering and Lotty leant back on her hands and lifted her face to the breeze. She could hear it rustling over the grass, and the faint slap of the little waves ruffling the water.
And the boom of her pulse.
Corran was very close. He was looking out over the loch. Lotty could see the heart-wrenching line of his jaw and the very edge of his mouth. She wanted to tear her eyes away, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t stop thinking about how it would feel to touch him.
Then he turned his head and all the air left her lungs in a whoosh.
‘You’re very quiet,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking about?’
Lotty felt as if she were teetering on the edge of a cliff. If she stepped off, she could never step back.
She stepped anyway. Almost before she had thought of what she was going to say, she had opened her mouth and the words came out as if they had a will of their own.
‘I’m wondering if I dare ask you to k-kiss me.’
There was a long, long silence, while her words echoed out over the water and rang up in the hills. K-kiss me. K-kiss me. K-kiss me.
‘Do you?’ said Corran at last.
‘Do I what?’ She could feel embarrassment prickling beneath her skin as the colour crept up her throat.
‘Do you dare?’
Lotty drew a breath. ‘What would you say if I did?’
A suspicion of a smile hovered at the edge of his mouth. ‘I think I’d be able to oblige.’
‘Oh.’ The wretched colour deepened. This was when some darkness would help. She pulled at the grass beside her. ‘The thing is…I should warn you…I’ve never had a boyfriend.’
It wasn’t often she caught Corran by surprise, but he definitely blinked. ‘What, never?’
‘No.’ She moistened her lips. She had started, so she might as well tell him it all. She couldn’t be any more embarrassed anyway.
She went back to plucking at the grass, not looking at him. ‘I’m a v-virgin. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to have this time by myself. I know it can’t last for ever, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to…to…lose my virginity,’ she finished in a rush.
‘It would just be a temporary thing,’ she hurried on before Corran could speak. She was desperate to get it all out before she lost her nerve completely. ‘I know I’m not your type. It’s just…I wondered…’ Moistening her lips, she took a determined
