course. I wouldn’t invite a guest and then take off.” He frowned. “Then again, I probably have done that, but I promise I won’t this time. I need to put in some face time there. The natives get restless if the lord of the manor goes AWOL for too long.”
“Is it really like that?”
He nodded. “I don’t understand why they care what I do, but they seem to feel I should be there judging flower displays at the village fete and hosting banquets on obscure saints’ days.”
“Very medieval.” There was something sexy about that. Which just proved how loopy she could be. He obviously hated it and ran off to Singapore all the time to avoid his feudal responsibilities. “Do you get to have people executed if they cross you?”
“I’ve never tried.” A tiny smile tugged at his broad, seductive mouth. “I don’t think anyone’s ever ticked me off that badly.”
I might. She let her own secret smile slip across her lips. “Are they putting pressure on you to find a lady of the manor?”
He laughed. “They wouldn’t dare.” Then his eyes darkened. “Though I’m sure they would if they didn’t think it would make me run for the hills.”
They certainly wouldn’t be too enthused about her, a snarky American with her roots in Singapore. No doubt they’d prefer a delicate Scottish rose with red-gold hair and pink cheeks, who thought arranging flowers on the church altar was the ideal way to spend a weekend.
Not that James was bringing her there to romance her. In fact, she had no idea why he did want her to come. She frowned and looked at him. His eyes smiled slightly when she met them, sending a frisson of … what? Excitement, terror and hot lust coursing right through her.
Did he really want her to find the cup? Surely someone closer to home would be a better choice. Did he want to bed her?
Yes. The subtle gleam in his eye made no secret of that. Maybe he was a lothario. And maybe he’d be disappointed in his efforts to add her to his list of conquests.
She took a bite of her sea urchin, sitting almost forgotten on her plate, and was surprised to find it tender and delicious. James was very distracting. She’d better make sure she kept her mind on her task—getting her father’s factory back. “This is good.”
“I told you it would be. Now you know you can trust me.”
She laughed, partly because he said it so innocently, as if he really believed it. If she didn’t know of his reputation as a heartless corporate shark, she’d have taken him for a genuinely nice guy. He certainly seemed generous and enthusiastic. Luckily for her, his reputation preceded him. “I don’t trust that easily. I do apparently have a taste for adventure, though. I’m excited about coming to Scotland.”
“You’ll win the reward if you find the cup.”
“If I do, I’ll donate it to charity. I’m not exactly hurting for money after the sale of Smileworks.”
“What are you going to do next?”
That’s for me to know and you to find out after I’ve done it. She shrugged. “Whatever takes my fancy. I’m in no rush.” Maybe she could convince him to sell her the factory for a pittance. She wasn’t sure why he’d bought it in the first place. “What’s your latest project?”
“I’m becoming interested in real estate. Sooner or later this recession will end and people will want everything bigger and better and newer than ever.”
“And you plan to be poised to take advantage of that.”
He sipped his wine. That mouth was wasted on a businessman. He should have been a pouting rock star. “I try to be ready for anything.”
Her father’s factory was centrally located in an old business district that was ripe for redevelopment into a yuppie paradise. The building was from the 1950s and looked like a giant shoebox. Until six weeks ago it had employed eighteen people and provided her father with his only source of income. But James had engaged in some skullduggery with the local government and managed to buy it out from under her dad for a pittance in unpaid taxes. At least that was how she understood it. All the workers had been laid off, and her dad was now facing bankruptcy, so the clock was ticking.
When she was younger, her dad had owned a chain of restaurants, but that had apparently disappeared. They’d had so little contact with him after she moved to the States with her mom that she was surprised to find him so close to the edge, when family legend had pegged him as a high-rolling, self-made tycoon.
She’d always planned to show him just how like him she was when she made her first million. Her anticipated triumph had been utterly destroyed by his sudden ruin. Now it looked as if she’d come to Singapore to crow over the father who abandoned her, when that was the very opposite of her intention.
Her heart squeezed. She’d grown up without her dad and she wasn’t going to lose him now. “I try to be ready for anything, too. And I had no idea I was so ready to go to Scotland with a complete stranger.”
He lifted his glass. “Here’s to the unexpected.”
She smiled and clinked hers against it. If you only knew.
Two
“These berms mark the edge of the estate.” James nodded to the window of the fast-moving Land Rover that had picked them up at Aberdeen airport.
Fiona peered out. Anticipation coursed through her body. Which was ridiculous. She was here on the most underhanded mission, yet she felt excited as if she genuinely hoped to find that damn cup and maybe even have a torrid affair with James while she did it. Deep ditches on the side of the road swooped up into high walls of grass and trees. They drove straight along this avenue for almost twenty minutes. “How big is the estate?”
“Big. But don’t worry. We’ll reach the business end soon.” Eventually, the road swung around and took them through a tall stone gateway. Hills soared around them, making her feel tiny in the dramatic landscape. “My ancestors liked privacy.”
“And you don’t?”
“Not that much.” He smiled. “A wall between me and my neighbors is quite enough. I don’t need a few miles.”
“Then it’s lucky you’ll have me here to bother you.”
“It is.”
Her skin tingled at the affirmation that he was glad of her company. She should feel guilty that she was here only to get her father’s factory back. She didn’t, though. The reports she’d read of James’s business practices had made her toes curl. He was all about the bottom line and clearly didn’t care whom he steamrolled over on the road to more greenbacks. And he hadn’t brought her here just to find some old cup. She wasn’t the worldliest person, but she’d been around the block to know he had some ulterior motive himself, even if it was just a highland fling.
The road was dead straight, carved right through the undulating landscape in what must have been an engineering feat to rival building the pyramids. High hedges loomed ahead, and once they passed those her jaw dropped as a menacing storybook castle rose in front of them.
A
