Must Love Scotland (12 page)

Declan smiled, the first purely sweet smile Julie had seen from him. She set down her lunch-cum-dessert, knowing he’d not touch it.

She waited outside in the sunshine for Niall—hungry, but not interested in food.

At least she
knew
she was hungry, and what and who she was hungry for. Niall came sauntering along about fifteen sunny, pleasant minutes later, his expression relaxed.

“All done, then?” he asked, taking a seat on the stoop beside Julie. Glasgow wasn’t a skyscraper city, so sunlight found the streets easily. Flowers liked it here too, and the restoration shop favored geraniums in its window boxes.

This would not be a bad place to come in to work, not bad at all, compared to a criminal courtroom.

“Done for now,” Julie said. “Declan is guarding the bread pudding. I don’t have an answer yet.”

“Then I won’t ask you for one.” Niall kissed her, a lazy, sweet, not-a-care-in-the-world kiss.

“You’re kisses get better and better,” Julie said, resting her forehead on his biceps. “I’m leaving the day after tomorrow.”

Niall’s arm came around her shoulders. “You must do what makes you happy, Julie. I’m counting on you doing what makes you happy.”

Would Niall say that, if he knew that, so far, the will showed every appearance of leaving much of the golf course property to Declan MacPherson?

Julie had made love with Niall with the sort of desperation that suggested she was still planning to use her plane ticket back to the States. Over a breakfast of cheese omelets and toast, she’d been quiet but composed, and when Donald came by at eight a.m., she’d been ready to join him for a traipse along the river.

“I’ve studied the walking trails, and the map of the valley, and the will,” she said. “I need to figure out a few more details, and then I’ll meet you and Declan for lunch at the Hare.”

Niall was not invited on this outing, in other words. “I’ll tell MacPherson.”

Donald—spry as a mountain goat—went jaunting off with Julie, and a morning stretched before Niall empty and quiet. He considered spending an hour at his own driving range and discarded the notion. In his present mood, he couldn’t have hit a melon with a Sasquatch driver.

So he sat on the porch swing and dreamed. When Declan showed up, Niall moved over and made room for him on the swing.

“Julie Leonard leaves tomorrow,” Declan said, giving the swing a push with his boot. No mud or manure on that boot today. “Jeannie confirmed it.”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t bugger this up, Cromarty. When I run sheep over your golf course, you’ll need a good woman to sort you out. Julie watches you the way… the way I watch my crops and my ewes and heifers. She has plans for you.”

Spring was a beautiful season. Golfing in spring was the best, the most joyous.

“I have hopes for Julie, too.” Though hoping was scary, when a man had limited himself to mere planning.

Declan tipped his head back, eyes closed. “Lindy never looked at you the way Julie does.”

Ach, well.
Finally
. “I’m sorry, Declan. I’m sorry, and I wish that all could have gone differently.”

The breeze murmured through the trees, the pansies fluttered cheerfully.

“I might run cows over your fairways. Nothing makes my girls as happy as good, green grass.”

“I might build my clubhouse where your greenhouses are,” Niall said, because the civilities had to be observed. Julie would be proud of them, though.

Niall was proud of them, and that felt good.

“Let’s walk down to the Hare, have a wee nip,” Declan said, getting to his feet, “in anticipation of my victory over Cromarty greed and disregard for the environment.”

“A wee nip sounds good,” Niall said, rising. “Several wee nips, in fact, to celebrate the expansion of an environmentally responsible business that occupies a respected place in Scottish culture and can work marvels for the local economy.”

Declan waited for him at the bottom of the steps. “Or we could just get drunk for the hell of it.”

“As long as we understand each other, MacPherson.”

“I don’t understand this,” Julie said, dropping onto the bench. “We’ve been up and down this river, paced off the metes and bounds on both sides, walked half of Declan’s farm, and most of Niall’s nine holes.”

“Care for a nip?” Donald asked, coming down beside her. “All that tramping about gives a man a thirst.”

Julie took the proffered flask, not for the first time. The stuff got better the more she sampled it.

“When you don’t have the evidence for a criminal conviction, you don’t waste the court’s time putting on a case,” she said, passing Donald the whisky. “If you have the evidence, you go forward and do the best you can.”

“Here I thought we were sitting on some old tree trunk, and you tell me we’re in a court of law.”

“I’m a prosecutor, and I could well become a judge. I deal with evidence, and the evidence isn’t adding up.”

The bench they were sitting on was a single tree trunk, one of such enormous proportions that somebody had merely cut out a quarter section and propped the remaining three-quarters longwise beside the river.

“I’d heard something about your judicial aspirations,” Donald said, capping the flask and tucking it away. “Judges do important work.”

Judges also rendered opinions, and they eventually retired. Julie had made a few calls, and the rumor was, Judge Davidson was indeed thinking of stepping down, though nobody had a date.

Very likely, Derek had heard those rumors, and been inspired by them, not the other way around. Derek might have had lunch with Davidson, and dangled a few hints, but Judge Davidson was a shrewd guy who played by the rules.

While Derek was… an ass and an idiot and Julie’s
ex-
husband.

“You’re sure this is the right river, Donald?”

“No more whisky for you, madam. This is the same river that’s been flowing through this valley for centuries. Scotland might have temporarily misplaced her national identity, but she keeps good track of her rivers.”

Scottish politics wouldn’t solve this riddle.

“The will states that each child, Nancy’s son and Nancy’s daughter, got half her land. She also said it was to be divided down the middle, so each would have access to the river, but the river doesn’t flow between the two properties.”

Donald stretched out his legs and laced his fingers over a flat belly. “If you’re a judge, you’ll have to handle property cases, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

“And lock people up, and decide who gets custody.”

The sun was warm, the breeze lovely. The river flowed placidly past as an occasional bird flitted. Donald could probably have told Julie the names of each species and their song.

Judges did lock people up. They also decided how a broken family was to reorganize its assets and liabilities, and its parenting responsibilities. They made decisions based on bad evidence, or worse, very good but entirely conflicting evidence.

They made mistakes, despite their best efforts, and people’s lives were wrecked or spared as a consequence.

“I don’t want to leave here, Donald,” Julie said. “I don’t want to leave Niall, but as best I can figure, Nancy MacPherson’s last will and testament ruins his plans.”

“Then it ruins his plans, Julie. Another nip?”

“No, thank you.”

A spring morning by the river wasn’t silent, but it was quiet. A bird twittered somewhere in the woods, the water lapped at rocks along the bank. Niall and Declan were probably glaring daggers at each other back at the Hare, and Julie had no good answers for them.

Or for herself.

“I’ll toddle over to the Hare,” Donald said, shoving to his feet. “Take this,” he said, pushing his flask at Julie. “It wants a good home, and I have plenty of others.”

He walked off, whistling
Scotland the Brave
, while Julie felt anything but courageous.

“You left her half-pickled, wandering around the river by herself?” Declan asked from the stool on Niall’s right.

“Julie’s not pickled,” Niall shot back. “Donald likes to be dramatic.”

“Hamish, get down the Longmorn,” Donald said, taking the stool to Niall’s left. “It’s not the whisky that has the woman fuddled. It’s the will, or the deciding about the will. You two should never have asked this of her.”

Niall set the bottle of Longmorn in front of Donald, along with his empty glass. Hamish went on polishing glasses.

“You just want poor, daft Cromarty to put the only woman who’ll have him right back on the plane, then?” Declan asked. “Spank you, thank you?”

“God help your sheep, MacPherson,” Hamish muttered.

A change in the air hit the back of Niall’s neck. He turned, and Julie stood framed in the doorway. Thick walls meant the Hare’s windows didn’t let in much light, so Julie was silhouetted against the sunny day, her hair limned with gold by the sunshine.

“I figured it out,” she said, marching across the common. “I figured out the damned will, and you will not believe where it leaves you two.”

Nor did Niall care about the will. He cared very much that Julie was done with a task they should not have put on her shoulders.

“So don’t keep us in suspense,” Declan said. “Do I have a say over half his golf course, or will he get the use of my farm?”

“Hamish,” Julie said, straddling a stool, “this calls for the Longmorn.”

Hamish slapped a clean whisky glass before her, Donald slid her the bottle, Niall poured.

“I couldn’t figure it out,” Julie said. “Nancy left each half of the family half the property, but she described boundaries, and said she wanted you to have equal access to the river.”

“Our properties are about the same size,” Niall said.

“Mine’s prettier,” Declan muttered into his whisky.

“I was stumped,” Julie said. “Flummoxed, bumfuzzled, ready to cast you upon the tender mercies of the Edinburgh solicitors.”

“A prospect to strike fear into the heart of any Scotsman who values his wallet,” Donald said. “But get to the point, child.”

“The river changed course,” Julie said. “The damned river tried to trick us. This has happened with the Potomac River, between Maryland and Virginia. I’d forgotten about that. Tigers can’t change their stripes, but rivers can change course.”

“Granny mentioned something about this,” Declan said. “Said her own grandmother talked about fishing from limbs of the big oak, but the river is hundreds of yards from there now.”

“She would have been fishing well over a century ago,” Donald said. “Who knows what tricks the river has got up to since then?”

“I can tell you where the property lines go,” Julie said. “But neither one of you will like it.”

Niall liked it just fine. “They cut across the middle of his farm and my golf course, don’t they? He has a claim on half my golf course, and I have a claim on half of his farm, or I can certainly waste a lot of energy trying to convince the courts I do.”

Declan’s brows drew down, Donald took a judicious sip of his Longmorn, and Hamish abruptly needed to fetch something from the back.

While Niall began to laugh.

“I’m a little tipsy,” Julie said as she and Niall meandered back to the cottage. “That Longmorn is wicked good.”

“You’re relieved,” Niall said. “Declan is too.”

“What about you?” Julie asked. Niall was so damned good-looking, in his kilt and boots, so sexy. Lord, she wanted to take him to bed for the rest of her—

Right. The plane took off tomorrow. She’d reached a decision about that too.

“Declan’s advice on environmental matters will be very useful,” Niall said. “And I’d rather he be on my board of directors than suing me over every golf ball that strays into his pastures.”

“You get free organic dairy and eggs, and landscaping out of the deal.”

Solemnized on a bar napkin, as the best deals always were. Scottish common sense had won the day, while the Longmorn had suffered a thorough defeat. Declan had been eyeing a bottle of the twenty-one-year-old, and neither Donald nor Hamish had seemed inclined to stop him.

They’d been too busy arguing over why and when the river had changed course.

“Niall, how would you have reacted if you’d lost your dream for the golf course?”

He slung his arm over Julie’s shoulders, and that, oddly, lifted a weight from them.

“Declan was probably fretting over that very outcome. Converting my golf course into properly fenced pasture would have taken capital, and he’s not fond of parting with his capital. If I’d lost control over half my land, I’d probably have offered to farm with him. We’re cousins, if you go back far enough.”

“You’re friends, right now. That makes me happy. I think it will make your family happy, too.”

Niall remained quiet, but it was a contented, sweet silence that lasted until Julie was sitting side by side with him on the cottage’s porch swing, her hand in his.

“If I hadn’t sat by the river,” Julie said, “if Donald hadn’t offered me a few sips of inspiration, if Maryland and Virginia weren’t recently quarreling over the Potomac River, I might have misinterpreted Nancy MacPherson’s will, Niall. You could have lost everything, or Declan might have, because I couldn’t see the evidence clearly.”

He kissed her knuckles. “You might have made a mistake, true. I would not have lost everything.”

His voice no longer bore a Scottish accent to Julie, it was simply Niall’s voice, and beautiful.

“You have your family,” she said. “You have golf, you have the ability to dream. You’re right, you would not have lost everything. We still have most of the afternoon. Do you want to hit some balls?”

“No, Julie Leonard, I do not want to play golf right now, not in any fashion.”

“Are you angry?” Niall was something, not necessarily upset, but neither was he asking Julie to tear up her plane ticket.

“I am in love, Julie Leonard,” Niall said, kissing her cheek. “And I would also like to be in bed, with you.”

The words felt good:
I am in love
.

The emotions were indescribable. Niall had hit a hole in one twice and an albatross on a par five once in his life, and what he felt for Julie was stronger.