His Emergency Fiancée (7 page)

‘I am
not
braking,’ Kirsty muttered.

‘Yes, you are. Typical surgeon—you don’t like it when you’re not in charge,’ he teased. ‘Gran, this ceilidh tonight—are we talking posh dress?’

‘You won’t need your “Prince Charlie”, if that’s what you mean,’ Morag said.

‘I didn’t bring a dress or anything with me,’ Kirsty said.

‘Didn’t bring a dress? She doesn’t actually
own
one, Gran,’ Ben added, laughing.

‘A skirt’s fine, lass.’

Kirsty didn’t do skirts either. ‘How about trousers?’

Morag chuckled. ‘They’re fine, too. Clothes really aren’t that important. But you’ll need pumps or ghillies—the floor can be a bit slippery. What size shoes do you take?’

‘Five.’

‘Perfect. You can borrow my spare pair,’ Morag said.

‘Thanks.’ There was no way she was going to get out of dancing, Kirsty thought glumly. And Ben was probably good at it. He was good at everything.

Especially kissing.

No. She wasn’t going to think about that.

‘Kirsty?’

‘Huh?’ She hadn’t realised he’d been talking to her. ‘Sorry. I was…er…’

‘Rapt in the scenery. I know. It’s gorgeous. What I said was, I thought I’d drive us round the loch, then we’ll have lunch at Drumnadrochit,’ Ben repeated. ‘That OK with you?’

‘Fine.’

‘Good.’ As they drove round, Ben told her all about the history of the area, from ruined castles to cairns to the iron bridge. When Morag remarked how beautiful the walking was around Glenmoriston, Ben said immediately, ‘I’ll take you there next time we come.’

The way he was talking, Kirsty thought it was almost as if he really were her fiancé, making plans…But of course not. Forget that kiss. They were doing this for his gran, that was all—and she had to remember that.

‘They pioneered trial marriages here,’ Ben said, giving Kirsty a sideways look as they passed through one village.

‘Trial marriages?’

‘There’s a special stone in the churchyard. The couple used to join hands in the hollow of the stone and agree to be married for a year. If they didn’t have children in that time and their love cooled, they were free to go their separate ways.’

Separate ways. Just like she and Ben would have to go their separate ways. End their fake engagement, when he finally met the woman of his dreams…

Kirsty was silent until they finally reached Drumnadrochit.

‘I know it’s a bit of a touristy thing to do,’ Ben said, ‘but we just have to go Nessie-spotting.’

‘Ben Robertson, remember your tongue,’ Morag directed, laughing.

‘Since you clearly want me to ask,’ Kirsty said, ‘have you seen Nessie yourself?’

‘No.’

‘And do you think Nessie exists, or are all those pictures fakes?’

Ben shrugged as he climbed out of the car and unlocked the boot. ‘Who knows? Nessiteras rhombopteryx—that’s our Nessie, to you—was first spotted in
AD
565 by St Columba. Apparently, he drove the monster away by prayer.’

Kirsty took the picnic rug while Ben hauled the hamper. She linked her arm through Morag’s and followed him down to a picnic spot at the side of the lake, where they spread the rug on the grass and sat down.

‘A big-game hunter claimed to have seen it in the 1930s,’ Ben continued, ‘but he’d rigged the footprints with a stuffed hippo’s foot he’d borrowed from the Royal Zoological Society.’

Kirsty laughed. She could almost imagine Ben plotting a prank like that as a child. ‘But all the famous pictures—they were all fakes?’

He nodded. ‘’Fraid so. Expeditions with sonar equipment haven’t found anything—but they haven’t definitely disproved Nessie’s existence either. And you do see strange things on the loch sometimes. I’ve been out fishing on it—there are weird currents across and below the surface, and people have seen sturgeon swimming across. Some people claim to have seen dolphins.’

‘Surely it’s too cold here for dolphins?’ Kirsty asked.

He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

She stared across the deep waters. It was a cloudless day, warm even for springtime, and the lake was an unfathomable expanse of blue that reminded her of Ben’s eyes. Ben’s eyes, which were also becoming unfathomable these days.

‘Ben, don’t go filling the girl’s head with nonsense. There isn’t a monster,’ Morag declared briskly. ‘He’s telling tall tales.’

And they’d both told Morag an even taller tale—that they were engaged.

She became aware that Ben was talking about the local wildlife. He sounded wistful—almost, Kirsty thought, as if he wanted to come home to settle down. And if he did that…would she ever see him again? His wife certainly wouldn’t want Ben’s plain little doctor friend popping up to see them, even infrequently. Especially if she had any idea that Kirsty was in love with her husband.

She closed her eyes momentarily. In love with Ben? Of course not.

And yet she couldn’t get that kiss out of her mind. Or the way she’d woken up to find herself intimately tangled with him…

‘Hmm?’ she asked, aware that Ben was looking at her as if waiting for an answer.

‘Scotland’s really turned your head, hasn’t it?’ he teased. ‘You’re not listening to a single word I say.’

She flushed. ‘Sorry.’

‘All I asked was if you wanted a cup of coffee,’ he said mildly.

‘Oh. Yes, please.’ Please, don’t let her start being awkward with him.

Ben gave her a look she couldn’t read, then unscrewed the lid from the flask, poured coffee into a mug and handed it to her.

‘Thanks.’

Somehow she made it through the rest of lunch—chatting with Morag, teasing Ben and eating the glorious picnic he’d packed—and then Morag declared that she wanted to pop in to see a friend, and the young couple should have a romantic walk along the lochside.

They returned the rug and the remains of their picnic to the car, and then Ben slipped his arm around Kirsty’s shoulders. ‘Gran’ll expect it,’ he warned her softly, whispering in her ear to make it look as if he were making some lover-like private comment.

A little hesitantly, she slipped her arm around his waist, and they walked back down to the lochside. Though she noted that Ben didn’t move his arm from her shoulder, even when Morag was well out of sight, and she felt too awkward to make a point of moving her arm from his waist.

They walked in silence for what seemed like hours. Kirsty didn’t know what to say to break the tension without being inane. She couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d kissed her that morning. Worse still, she found herself actually wondering what it would be like if he kissed her again. Right now.

Then she felt his fingertips brush her jaw. She stopped and turned to face him.

‘Kirst.’

Was he going to kiss her again? Her pulse quickened at the thought.

‘Do you think Gran might…well, if I stay out of the way for a bit…tell you what’s going on?’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ she promised.

‘Thanks.’ He drew her towards him then—but his kiss was that of a best friend, on her forehead. Not a lover’s kiss on her mouth. Not a kiss like he’d given her that morning.

Stop it, she warned herself. He might be Dr Charming but you’re not Cinderella. You’re not a tall, leggy blonde and you’re most definitely not his type. He doesn’t think of you in that way. This morning didn’t mean anything to him, so don’t make a big deal out of it.

She knew all that. She’d known it for years. So why did it hurt so much now?

CHAPTER FIVE

B
EN
in a kilt.

Kirsty hadn’t been prepared for this. Not on the drive home, not when Morag had lent her a pair of dancing shoes and reassured her it didn’t matter that Kirsty wasn’t wearing a long skirt and a plaid fastened with a clan pin, not when she went to shower and change. She hadn’t even realised Ben
owned
a kilt. He’d never worn one at a university or hospital do, to her knowledge.

And she certainly hadn’t expected him to look so incredibly sexy in the kilt and plain white shirt. Sure, she and all her female friends had lusted after Mel Gibson in
Braveheart
, and, sure, she’d seen Ben wandering round their garden in a pair of cut-off denim shorts and nothing else on a really hot summer’s day—but she’d had no idea just how gorgeous Ben would look in Scots national dress.

‘It’s the Robertson tartan,’ he explained. A red background with narrow black lines and a mirror-image pattern of wider blue and green lines, some full and some in diagonal stripes, made the tartan look almost chequered. The red was a perfect foil to his dark good looks and the blue emphasised the colour of his eyes.

‘I…um…It looks good.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I should have guessed you’d have a kilt.’

‘Only for formal stuff up here. Like I said, I haven’t worn one for years.’

She had a piercing vision of Ben in the slightly more formal version of the outfit—with the addition of the short black jacket known as a ‘Prince Charlie’ making his eyes seem even bluer—standing at the altar in a tiny Scots church, lit by candles, waiting for his bride to walk down the aisle towards him.

‘Are you OK?’ Ben asked.

Then she realised that she must have gasped at the stabbing pain she’d felt at the vision, knowing that the bride Ben was waiting for was someone else. Someone tall and slender with long legs, someone beautiful, a stunning vision in ivory silk and an antique veil. Not the woman who never wore skirts because they made her look even shorter and dumpier. ‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘Just a bit nervous.’

‘What about?’

‘You know I’ve got two left feet. Remember our graduation ball?’

‘I’ve still got the bruises,’ he teased.

‘That was just an ordinary dance—this sort of dancing involves the whole room! Ben, I’m going to embarrass you,’ she warned.

‘No, you’re not.’ He smiled at her. ‘And the dances don’t involve the whole room. Not all the time. Some of the dances are for couples—like the Gay Gordons—and some of them are for sets of couples, like Strip the Willow. And we won’t be dancing all the time, anyway. Someone’ll sing, someone’ll play music and there’ll probably be a round supper. Which usually means haggis, with a dram of whisky poured over the top.’

Haggis? Was this a wind-up—or was he really expecting her to eat sheep’s intestines? Not to mention the fact she didn’t drink spirits. ‘I can’t do it,’ she said, panicking even more.

‘Kirst, if you can perform open heart surgery, you can cope with a couple of dances at the village hall,’ he reassured her. ‘And I was joking about the haggis. There might be neeps and haggis there, but there’ll be sandwiches and biscuits, too. And stop worrying about the dancing. I’ll talk you through it if there isn’t a caller.’

‘Don’t ceilidhs always have callers?’ she asked, surprised. The weddings she’d been to had had a caller. Weddings Ben had been to as well, she remembered, though he hadn’t worn a kilt then.

‘Down south, maybe, not usually north of the border. You grow up learning the dances at your parents’ knees—grandparent’s, in my case—so there’s no need.’

‘But what if—?’

‘Someone else asks you to dance?’ he guessed. ‘That’s fine. Just give them your soppy brown-eyed puppy look.’

‘I do
not
have a soppy brown-eyed puppy look,’ she said fiercely.

He chuckled. ‘Yes, you do. You just don’t use it very often. Kirst, everyone there will know exactly who you are. They know you’re English and they’ll assume you haven’t done country dancing since infant school, except at the odd wedding. They’ll help you with the steps. Just tell someone if you get stuck. They won’t laugh at you or anything like that.’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘Don’t make me say it.’

‘What?’

‘T.M.I.A.D.,’ he said in a stage whisper.
Trust me, I’m a doctor.
Their private joke. Except right now it wasn’t funny. She trusted Ben. But how could she go to this dance as his fiancée when she knew she was going to embarrass him—big time—in front of everyone from his home village?

* * *

Kirsty’s nerves returned in full force when they walked into the village hall and changed their shoes. The ceilidh had already started and everyone was dancing reels, all without a single step out of place. The men were mostly dressed in kilts, except half a dozen whom she guessed to be English, probably newcomers to the village who had too much respect for the natives to wear a tartan they weren’t entitled to. Likewise, most of the women were wearing the same sort of soft-soled lace-up dancing shoes she’d borrowed from Morag, teamed with long skirts and plaids. Even the women not wearing tartan—presumably the partners of the non-kilted dancers—were in long skirts.

Kirsty’s trousers—despite being black, extremely well cut and smart—stood out a mile, and she wished herself a million miles away, to some place where she wasn’t expected to dance and make a fool of herself!

Ben clearly sensed her nerves because he gave her a sideways glance and immediately put his arm round her shoulders. ‘You look lovely. And stop worrying about the dancing, will you? You’ll be an expert by the end of the evening. It’s a great way to meet people,’ he informed her.

People who’d be inspecting her and wondering why Ben Robertson had got engaged to a woman who was the complete opposite to his usual type.

She didn’t get the chance to argue any more because one of the dancers stepped up to the microphone. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, take your positions for the Gay Gordons.’

‘Come on, Kirst,’ Ben said, not giving her time to make an excuse, then talked her through the position for the dance. He slid his right arm over her shoulder, taking her fingers in his, and squeezed them encouragingly. But when he joined their left hands together, the butterflies in her stomach went mad.

Stop it, she told them silently. It’s the way everyone’s dancing. It doesn’t mean a thing.

The butterflies had other ideas.

‘Now four steps forwards. Count,’ Ben whispered into her ear. ‘The music has four beats to the bar so it’s easy. Just count.’

His breath fanned against her skin, sending a shiver down her spine. She hoped he hadn’t noticed it—or, at least, interpreted it as nerves about the dance. She was not, definitely
not
, going to start lusting after Ben Robertson. If she tried to have a relationship with Ben, she’d lose his friendship
and
have to find somewhere else to live.