Chapter Nine

Shay paced the length of the floor of his cottage, surprised he hadn’t worn a groove in the rug by now. He’d checked the champagne at least a half dozen times, to make sure it was chilling properly, and the food he’d had ordered and delivered was all arranged perfectly in chafing dishes. Music played, candles were lit.

And it all felt so ridiculously over the top. It had seemed like a good idea when he’d planned the whole thing from Edinburgh. What must Kira have thought when she opened the door to a liveried footman? He’d fully expected to hear from her, asking a dozen or more questions, but all he’d received back was her formal acceptance. And he’d felt too big the fool to ask the footman what her mood had been after reading his note. Too much? Would she think he was making a mockery of what was very important to her? It was the last thing he’d intended.

“Och, and bloody hell.” He and Kira had started things off in such a different manner from the norm. He’d never really had the chance to court her, to date her. They’d sort of moved straight onward into a full-on relationship that . . . well, that was blissful heaven, actually. But he’d wanted to do something special for her, and he’d wanted to reassure her, show her in a way that could not be mistaken, how much he wanted her here. Their discussion in his steamfilled jitney had truly been a turning point for him. In many ways. This week, while in Edinburgh, his mind had been, of course, on the case at hand, but it had also been on Kira. Relentlessly. In fact, the two had gone in tandem. He’d—

His musings were mercifully interrupted by a sharp rat-a-tat on the door.

He strode to the front door and swung it wide just as the footman was stepping back to allow Kira to step up.

“Hullo,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

“Hullo,” Shay said, and his heart clicked right into place. Just as it always did, every time he saw her. And he knew he’d been silly to worry about anything. In fact, he knew he could stop worrying—about everything.

“Come in,” he said, realizing they were both staring at each other. “Please.” He stepped back to let her pass, then quickly took care of the footman. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”

The man smiled and sketched a light bow. “My pleasure, sir. Milady is quite charming.”

“Thank you. I think so, too.”

“Have a good evening,” the older gentleman said, then stepped back.

“I hope to,” Shay said, then closed the door and turned to find Kira slipping out of her heavy coat. “Here, let me help you with that.”

“Wait,” she said, and handed him a small, handled bag. “Here, take this first.” She laughed as he frowned at what looked like an unwieldy pile of sticks, protruding from the tops of the tissue paper stuff inside the gift bag. “Some people bring wine, I bring baskets.”

He took the bag and set it down. “Let me help you with your coat.”

“Bag first,” she said. “I want you to see it. I’ve been dying to show it to you; then I realized, when I finished, it was yours all along.”

He pulled out the basket and disentangled it from the tissue paper. It was an unwieldy, unusually shaped form, combining hard willow twigs and richly dyed waxed linen; there were beads and other raw materials. It was earthy, wild. Barely tamed, was the phrase that came to mind. “It’s stunning,” he said, and meant it. “I dinnae know how you look at all these bits and pieces, and imagine something like this.”

She ran her fingers over the patterning. “I wanted to work with really different materials that were almost completely at odds with each other, things you couldn’t imagine in the same, woven pattern, that when bound together, would form something truly beautiful.” She looked up at him. “Kind of like us.”

He smiled then. “Thank you.” His tone was equally heartfelt. He was truly touched. “No one has ever . . . made me anything. It will mean a great deal to me, Kira, every time I look at it.”

“Good,” she said, her smile bright. “That was my hope.”

He set it on the entryway table. “I’ll need to think on where I want to put it.” He helped her out of her coat and she turned around to face him. He took in her shiny hair, curled and pulled back from her face, specially for the occasion. And her dress was silky and sexy and form-fitting and . . . “You look so incredibly lovely, and I—come here,” he said, and all pretense of a civilized little dinner flew straight out the door as he pulled her into his arms. “God, I’ve missed you.”

Kira had slid her arms around his neck, but he felt the extra squeeze at his heartfelt proclamation. “It’s so good to hear you say that. I did, too. I suppose it should get easier as we get used to it.” She eased back in his arms so she could look up into his eyes. “But I don’t sleep well at all anymore when you’re not next to me. I keep reaching for you in my sleep. How silly is that?”

“No’ so silly. I don’t sleep well, either.” He drank in her smile, her brilliant, sparkling eyes, and the love and trust and adoration he saw there. He’d spent a lot of time thinking on that, on whether he was worthy of such love, then realized he was an idiot for questioning any of it, risking it with his own foolish fears. He made her happy. Just being himself. Her smiling face was proof of that. What more of a guarantee did he need, for God’s sake? “I wanted to woo ye,” he said.

She giggled a little at that, and it was a delightful sound that warmed his already thoroughly smitten heart. “Woo me, now, did ye? Well, I must say, I don’t typically need a liveried footman and town car.” She tipped up on her toes and kissed him. “But it was rather exciting. You shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.”

“It wasn’t trouble, it was my pleasure. I . . . I wanted to do something special for you, but mostly, I wanted to announce to you, the world, anyone who cares, that this evening, I’m entertaining a very special woman. In my home. And that it means everything to have you here. To see you here.” He tugged her closer. “I want ye here, Kira. I want ye in every nook and corner of my life. I hated coming back to an empty space. You’re right, about it being like a jail. Only I never knew it. Now I canno’ imagine going back to it.”

Her eyes had grown a bit moist, but her smile was so wide he didn’t doubt her tears were born of happiness. “So,” she said, trying for a teasing tone even as the waver in her voice betrayed the depth of emotion she was feeling, “are ye saying I have full visitation rights then?”

He laughed, scooped her up against him, and swung her around.

“I like your home,” she said, as she took in the whirl of her surroundings. “It’s no’ remotely cell-like,” she noted, as he settled her back on her feet. Then she caught the twinkle of lights, turned her head, and gasped. “Ye have a tree!” She swung her gaze back to his. “I thought ye weren’t much for the Christmas holidays.”

“I haven’t been. Before,” he added. “If it’s too hard for you—maybe I should have asked, but I’d thought, hoped—”

They had talked of her marriage and her divorce during one of their phone calls from Edinburgh, but now he wondered if he’d gone overboard, getting a tree.

“No,” she said, sliding from his arms, but grabbing his hand as she walked closer to the tree. “It’s beautiful. I love all the colorful lights.” She looked back to Shay. “But there are no ornaments.”

“I don’t have any, and it seemed . . . I don’t know, wrong, I guess, to just buy them. At the celebrations with Roan and Graham growing up—mostly Graham in this case—there were always handmade ornaments and ones given or received as gifts. They all had meaning and I rather liked that. Not only the memories associated with them, but the foundation they built, so . . .” He bent down and slid out a small box from under the tree, then straightened and handed it to her. “I hope it’s okay.”

“Okay?” She jumped up into his arms, and wove her arms around his neck, kissing him firmly on the mouth. “It’s . . . perfect.”

Shay smiled and kissed her back, but didn’t put her down quite yet. “Ye havena opened it yet.”

“The fact that you thought to . . . that you . . .” A quizzical look crossed her smiling face. “What happened this time in Edinburgh anyway? You’re like . . . a changed man.”

“Aye, but that happened the day I met you. I’ve just finally come to fully understand it.”

“What happened?”

“Open the box,” he said.

She slid from his arms, then turned and leaned back against him. He circled his arms around her as she tore off the paper and opened the small box. Inside was a small, badly chipped, hand-painted china angel, hanging from a frayed gold string. She dangled it from her fingers. “She’s lovely.”

“Hardly,” Shay said, amused, then turned Kira in his arms. “When I was back in Edinburgh, working on this divorce . . . there was nothing new or different about it, nothing I hadn’t witnessed a hundred times over. But I kept thinking about our talk, and how much ye ground me, and how easy it would have been to ring you up and talk to you about it, about what a shame it was, and how ridiculous and sad it was that this couple felt they had to argue over belongings that were, otherwise, utterly meaningless. And so, I thought about the worst case scenario. With us. What if that was us, five years from now, ten, twenty? And I thought about my life, and how . . . and how I’d made sure that nothing in it had real meaning.”

He gestured to the room, and turned her so she could take it all in.

“It’s a nice place, Shay. Comfortable furnishings, beautiful antiques, lovely paintings and art. It’s peaceful, and calm. Like a retreat. And that makes perfect sense, I guess.”

“Thank you, and yes, it is all that. But there isn’t one thing in this house that I’d miss if it were gone. That I’m attached to. I don’t know that I even realized I’d done that. My car—” He broke off, and let out a short laugh. “That’s it. The only thing I care about.” He turned her back to face him. “How pathetic is that?”

“It’s no’, Shay. It’s survival. For you.”

“A hollow life, if you ask me. Or at least, that’s how it felt to me, when I came back here, to pack, after . . . after our last night together. And when I was in the city, listening to all that bickering about stupid things . . . I thought, well, if I was going to fight for something, I’d at least like to fight about something I cared about.”

Kira smiled, then lifted up and bussed him again, hard, on the mouth.

“What was that for?” he asked.

“I like that fighting spirit. All those years of fighting for other people. You’re finally fighting for yourself.”

He pulled her back into his arms. “I’m fighting for us. And I hope to God we never come to fight against one another, but I damn well want something worth fighting for.” He lifted her hand, which still held the angel. “When my father died, I had all his things put in storage before selling his flat. I never looked through them. Here, either. He only kept a little place in the village, and . . .” He shrugged. “It was all left to me, but I wanted no part of any of it, so I sold it all off, along with most of the furnishings. But his papers and some of his personal things . . . I didn’t know what to do with those, so I just locked them up. Anyway, while I was in Edinburgh, I went to storage, and . . . I went through his things.”

“You did?” Kira’s eyes were wide and that sheen of tears had returned. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, aye.” He leaned down and kissed her temple, as much to soothe himself as to soothe her. “I don’t know what I’d expected to find—something of my past, our past, his past, even, I suppose.”

“And?”

He shook his head, laughed ruefully. “Like father, like son. And ye’ve no idea how much it pains me to say that. His papers were all business. In fact, there was nothing personal in them at all.” He cradled her hand, holding the angel in his. “Except for this. I found a small box, either kept by my mother, or a nanny, I don’t know. I found the certificate of my birth, a few photos of me as an infant, and the angel.” He turned it over. The gold inscription on the back was badly chipped. “I believe it says First Christmas. I assume for a baby. I dinnae know why it’s in such poor shape. As far as I know it’s been in that box since I was an infant. So perhaps it was passed down. It could have been my father’s or my mother’s. I don’t know. But it was the only thing they kept.”

Kira looked up at him. “Why are you giving it to me? It’s the only thing you have.”

He turned her in his arms. “You’re the only thing I have. The one I want to keep, to hold on to. This, the angel, is what I have of myself to give ye, Kira.” He framed her face. “It’s no’ much, but it’s wha’ I have. And, so help me God, I’ll do whatever it takes so that I’m never fighting against you, to get that back. Do ye understand?”

She nodded, tears gathering in her eyes. “I do.”

Heart pounding in his ears so loudly he thought he might go deaf, Shay pressed the angel more tightly into her hands, then, with those exact words echoing in his ears, he slid his other hand down her arm to steady her . . . before lowering himself on one bent knee.

Kira gasped, clasping one hand over her mouth, and the other one, clutching the angel ornament, over her heart, as she realized what he was about to do.

But she didn’t stop him.

He reached up and she lowered a badly shaking hand to his. He took it gently, but firmly, running his thumb over the back of her hand.

“I’d planned this whole evening out. I had so many things I wanted to say to you. But, like every other step we’ve taken . . .” He smiled up at her, stunned, at how utterly easy this was. “You’re the one thing I’d fight for, Kira. The only thing I want to keep.” He fumbled in his pocket, and drew out a small ring box. “I want you to know, every single day, that I mean to keep you. That I’ll do whatever it takes, for us, to make this work. No matter the risk. I can’t think of anything worse than losing you, so ye should know that I’ll fight like hell to keep you. I am in love with ye, Kira MacLeod. Head over heels, with everything I have in me.” He opened the ring box. “Please tell me you’ll marry me. Be my wife, Kira. Take me as your husband.”

Kira took the box with shaky hands, but she wasn’t even looking at the diamond ring nestled inside. She was looking at him, lips trembling, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

“If it’s no’ to your taste, we can—”

“Come here,” she said, grabbing his wrist and tugging hard. “Come here.”

He straightened and she launched herself into his arms. “I love you, Shay Callaghan. And I can’t think of anything that would make me happier, or more proud, than to be your wife.”

“So, you’ll take me, then?” he asked, pushing her hair from her face, dashing the tears from her cheeks with his fingertips.

“Oh, aye, that I will. Just try and get rid of me.”

He laughed, then he shouted, loud and long, and spun her around.

When they stopped laughing and kissing, and after he’d wiped a bit of moisture from the corners of his own eyes, he said, “I’ve dinner, all set up, but, right at the moment, I’d much rather feast on you.”

“See? We’re really very compatible.”

“I’ll show ye compatible,” he all but growled, then made her squeal by swinging her up in his arms.

He spun them around, intent on heading to the second floor bedroom, but she said, “Wait!”

“What?” he asked, worried that he might have forgotten something important about the whole ritual. He’d wanted it to be a good memory. A perfect one. For them both to hold onto.

“The angel,” she said, unfolding her hand, where she’d had it in a tight grip. “I want to put it on the tree.”

He carried her over to the tree and she picked out a branch, then carefully slid the gold string over the needles, until he was safely anchored.

“First Christmas,” she said, softly, then tipped her head up to look at him. “Ours. And I can’t wait to fill our trees with more.”

“You know,” he said, looking from her to the ornament gently swaying from its perch, then shifting his gaze to the basket, proudly displayed on the entry table, then back to the woman in his arms. “Ye’ve only been here but a moment, and this place already feels more like home.”

“It only took a moment to know it’s a home with you that I want,” she said, pulling his mouth down to hers. And they stood in front of the tree, kissing deeply, again and again, until both were out of breath.

But when he lifted his head, it was to find that rare devilish twinkle in her eyes. “Now,” she said, “I believe there was some mention—a formal mention, no less—about wearing clothes that I didnae mind being torn from my body.”

“Aye, I do believe I was in a rather heightened state of . . . missing you, when I wrote that part.”

“I still can’t believe you told the engraver to write that.”

“Aye, we’ll likely be hearing about it, in the village.”

“You had the invitation done here? I thought maybe the city—”

“No. This is where we live, so this is where we love. I dinnae mind if the whole world knows I plan to ravage the woman who will be my wife. And often.”

“Well, in that case, perhaps you should take me to your bed. It’s possible you’re going to like what you find underneath this entirely disposable dress.” She bit his chin. “A lot.”

They only made it as far as the parlor wall.