do the right thing by Layla by making sure she had no illusions about their marriage from the get-go. He would pay her generously for her time as his wife. They would marry as friends and part as friends. He knew how much this place meant to her—how much she used it as a base when she wasn’t in Edinburgh, where she ran her small business. Any niggling of his conscience he settled with the conviction he was helping her in the long run. He was offering her a staggering amount of money to be his temporary wife.
How could she possibly say no?
‘BUT YOU HAVE to say no,’ Layla’s best friend Isla said on the phone later that evening. ‘You’ll get your heart broken for sure.’
‘But it will break my heart to see Bellbrae sold,’ Layla said. ‘This is the first real home I’ve ever had. I’ve spent the last fourteen years here—it’s made me who I am today. I can’t bear the thought of it going out of the McLaughlin family. It belongs to Logan. It was wrong of Angus to make his will in such a way.’
‘Do you know why Angus did it that way?’
Layla sighed so heavily her shoulders slumped. ‘Logan has made it pretty clear over the years that he has no intention of settling down again. Losing Susannah was such a terrible shock to him—as it would be to anyone. I’ve overheard a few conversations where Angus insisted Logan move on with his life but Logan isn’t someone you can tell what to do. Once his mind is made up, that’s it.’
‘So, he’s made up his mind to marry you in a marriage of convenience?’
Layla pulled at her top lip with her finger and thumb as she thought about her conversation with Logan in the north tower. ‘Yes, well, I think I kind of planted the idea in his head. But we both love Bellbrae and we both know how impulsive Robbie can be. He doesn’t love the place the same way we do. He thinks it’s boring and cold and too isolated. We have to stop him inheriting the estate even if it means giving up a year of our lives in a paper marriage.’
‘Are you sure it’s going to be on paper? Logan’s a full-blooded man. You’re a young and beautiful woman. Living together is going to test the boundaries surely?’
Layla affected a laugh. ‘Calling me beautiful is a bit of a stretch. Anyway, can you imagine him being attracted to me? I’m hardly what you’d call his type. I’m not anyone’s type.’
‘You’re way too hard on yourself,’ Isla said, echoing Logan’s words. ‘You shouldn’t let what happened in your teens colour how you see yourself now. But the whole friends-to-lovers thing can happen, you know. It doesn’t just happen in romance novels.’
‘I’m not sure how to describe our relationship,’ Layla said. ‘Friends is probably too generous a description. We’re distant and polite to each other. I sometimes think he doesn’t even register I’m around now that I’m an adult. I’m like part of the furniture.’
‘I just hope you don’t get hurt in the long run,’ Isla said. ‘I want you to be as happy as I am. I still can’t believe how wonderful it is to be married to Rafe, knowing he loves me more than anything. We’re both so excited about our Christmas baby.’
‘I’m excited about your baby too.’
It was hard not to feel envious of her best friend’s happiness. After a rough start, Isla and Rafe had finally come together again and were eagerly awaiting the birth of their ‘accidental’ baby. But would Layla’s marriage to Logan have an equally happy ending?
The odds were stacked against it and the sooner she got that straight and clear in her mind, the better.
Logan walked through the south garden at Bellbrae, the scattered leaves of the ancient deciduous trees crunching under his feet. The vivid reds and golds and bronze and yellows were like wild splashes of paint. The autumn air was crisp and redolent of the smell of cooling earth and leaf litter with a hint of the harsh winter to come. Each season at Bellbrae held its magic for him. The gardens and fields and Highlands beyond could be blanketed in white as thick as a pile of duvets and still stir him to the marrow. But unless Layla agreed to a marriage of convenience, he would have to say goodbye to this place. The land and home of his ancestors, the place where he felt deeply rooted to the estate as surely and securely as the ancient trees around him.
Logan waited for Flossie, his grandfather’s old Border collie, to keep up. She was sniffing around the tendon-like roots of an old oak tree. ‘Come on, Floss.’ He patted his hand against his thigh and the dog slowly waddled over to him, her tail wagging, her tongue hanging out of her mouth in spite of the chill in the air. He leaned down to scratch behind her ears, a pang jabbing him deep in his gut at the thought of what would happen to her if Robbie inherited the estate. The old dog would not cope with a move to another home and Robbie wouldn’t want to keep her.
Logan straightened from petting the dog and caught a glimpse of a slim figure walking through the archway of trees in the distance. With her wild chestnut hair and creamy skin and irregular gait, Layla looked as much a part of this landscape as heather on the Highlands. For years he had seen her moving about on the estate, reminding him of a faery or other mythic person. Touching her on the arm the day before had sent a shockwave of awareness through him—an awareness he found faintly disturbing. He would have to try harder not to touch her unless absolutely necessary.
The boundaries were not to be blurred and especially not by him.
Layla turned her head as if she had suddenly sensed him nearby. She clutched the front of her jacket around the front of her body and began to walk in his direction. ‘I was looking for Flossie,’ she called out to him, sweeping the cloud of her hair back over one slim shoulder. ‘I thought she might have gone out alone and got lost.’
Logan met her more than halfway across the wooded garden to save her from negotiating the treacherous tree roots. ‘I took her out with me earlier. Sorry to worry you.’ He turned back to look at the lumbering Border collie. ‘She’s slowed down a lot, hasn’t she?’
Layla bent down to ruffle the dog’s ears just where his hand had been moments earlier, her hair tumbling from behind her shoulders. He suddenly had an urge to run his fingers through her hair—to see if it was as soft and silky as it looked.
He curled his hands into tight fists and gave his willpower a pep talk. No touching. Hands off. Paper relationship only.
‘Yes, I noticed a big change after your grandfather passed,’ she said. ‘She misses him, don’t you, sweetie?’ She addressed the dog affectionately and was rewarded by an enthusiastic tail wag. Layla straightened and met his gaze. ‘We all miss him.’
For a moment, Logan wondered if his grandfather had planned this all along—a marriage between him and Layla. The old man had spent a lot of time with her over the last months of his life. And his grandfather had given her that loan she’d mentioned. After all, she had been the one to suggest he enter a marriage of convenience when they’d spoken in his grandfather’s suite in the north tower. Had that been deliberate on her part or just a throwaway line borne out of her love for Bellbrae?
And why the hell was he suddenly so cynical about her? She was part of the family—or close enough to being so. He couldn’t imagine Bellbrae without her.
